IV (10) page 154

[alice wellintown]

What P does is this respect is really quite traditional, conservative
even. That is, he does what American authors of the Romance tradition
such as Hawthorne and Melville do, he historicizes or makes historical
or makes use of historical material. The term “Historicize” was used
by Hawthorne and his contemporaries to describe this element in
American Romance. Any reader of Hawthorne and Melville will recognize
the debt P owes to these two and other less known authors such as
Charles Brockden Brown. I’ve know of his debt to Melville for a long
time; V. and GR are attempts to write, with all the ridiculous
meanings of the phrase included “The Great American Novel.” The
Whiteness of The Rocket, the peregrinations of  the pair, Stencil and
Benny, these are sooooo Melville. But recently I’ve been diving deep
in Hawthorne and, although I always admired and respected his genius,
have improved my reading of his works and come to see the literary
theft by P. It makes sense really. We know that one of P’s methods is
to  read the histories of his family and make these into his fictions.
When he discovered that his ancestors were the Pyncheon’s of
Hawhtorne’s Romance, The House of the Seven Gables, it must have moved
him. That Hawthorne too writes from his biography—expiating the sins
of the forefathers visited upon posterity must have struck a chord.
That Slothrop he sure does remind us of Pearl in The Scarlet Letter.
Now, I’m not saying that P didn’t look to Joyce and all the other
influences he notes in the SL Introduction; he does, but the “anxiety
of influence” is strongest with Hawthorne, perhaps stronger than with
any other author of American Romance.