Masters of American Lit (except Pynchon)

[Mark Kohut]

The sins of the fathers story is mainly the Traverses, of course, and is just one part of this 'elephant in the room' masterpiece to cite John C. and mix metaphors, I guess. so, agreed, not an epic story of them. Just a sins fo the fathers story with them dominating that theme. 

Yes, he does explore revenge nuancedly, part of how the sins play out as sins but I do think that he focuses on the Traverses to show them more self-cursed than some others....

And, many other themes too which you touch on.

Anyone want to read this one closely again?

--- On Sun, 2/14/10, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> From: Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>
> Subject: Re: Masters of American Lit (except Pynchon)
> To: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Sunday, February 14, 2010, 11:31 PM
> I agree that there is no avid fanship
> of terrorism in ATD, but have a much harder time with the
> premise that it is an epic of the sins of the Fathers.
> 
> The imagery is closer to a religious epic in which an
> apocolyptic  local and family event (the crucifixion of
> Webb Traverse, religious revolutionary ala Tom Paine) takes
> on  a range of spiritual and natural consequences
> .  The image is a cross with 4 children going in 4
> directions. In the violence of their times the Traverses are
> no more cursed than others of the period.  Pynchon
> casts strong light on the negative consequences of violence
> but it is a shaded and nuanced look, where the relatively
> small scale of  violent of resistance to empire and the
> violent  response to injustice is differentiated from
> from the violence of colonialism and imperial wars,. 
> What he really seems to explore is the lack of expected
> satisfaction to be found in revenge, and how male
> female  and all human relationships are as fully
> transformative as political affiliations. He also points
> toward the sense that this male female balance is the
> omnipresent yet easily subverted foundation of an
> alternative to war as the dominant paradigm of the human
> enterprise.
> 
> 
> 
> On Feb 14, 2010, at 10:34 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
> 
> > Amother fine post, imho, BUT that last paragraph is
> more than fine----it
> > is superb, again in my increasingly opinionated,
> sometimes faux-humble, opinion.
> > 
> > --- On Sun, 2/14/10, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > 
> >> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> >> Subject: Re: Masters of American Lit (except
> Pynchon)
> >> To: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> >> Date: Sunday, February 14, 2010, 8:50 AM
> >> Mark Kohut  wrote:
> >>> I'm afraid I must comment......there is no
> avid
> >> fanship of terrorism in Against the Day. None. The
> book is,
> >> in fact, one of the longest worked-out
> >>> family epics of the sins of the fathers, the
> >> fountainhead terrorist beginnings shown to lead to
> death
> >> down the generations. Violence, as well as other
> things,
> >> kills in Against the Day. Up close or over time.
> >> 
> >> An important theme in P's works: sin of the father
> and loss
> >> of the
> >> mother. This makes the American an orphan, a
> renegade, a
> >> castaway (see
> >> C.L.R James on Moby-Dick). We can view these two
> cardinal
> >> sins that,
> >> with Gothic and Puritan strain, haunt, the
> American
> >> Romance. First,
> >> the extermination of the Indians and the
> destruction of the
> >> Vineland
> >> the Good. This retards the capacity to dream or
> wonder even
> >> as it
> >> haunts the dreams of American Romantic characters
> like
> >> Ishamel and
> >> Mason of M&D.
> >> 
> >> "I became aware of the old island here that
> flowered once
> >> for Dutch
> >> sailors' eyes-a fresh, green breast of the new
> world. Its
> >> vanished
> >> trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's
> house, had
> >> once
> >> pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of
> all human
> >> dreams; for
> >> a transitory enchanted moment man must have held
> his breath
> >> in the
> >> presence of this continent, compelled into an
> aesthetic
> >> contemplation
> >> he neither understood nor desired, face to face
> for the
> >> last time in
> >> history with something commensurate to his
> capacity for
> >> wonder."
> >> 
> >> 
> >> This very famous Fitzgerald passage can be traced,
> as much
> >> in
> >> Fitzgerald can, to Keats's famous poem (famous for
> its
> >> historical
> >> error), on Chapman.s Homer and then to Melville's
> >> Moby-Dick, Chapter
> >> 111, The Pacific.
> >> 
> >> Second, the enslavement and extermination of
> Africans and
> >> the
> >> exploitation of workers and Others by the
> indusctiral-then
> >> military
> >> industrial complex culminatiung in the holocaust
> fropped on
> >> Japan.
> >> 
> >> 
> >> Many writers lay very great stress upon some
> definite moral
> >> purpose,
> >> at which they profess to aim their works. Not to
> be
> >> deficient in this
> >> particular, the author has provided himself with
> a
> >> moral,—the truth,
> >> namely, that the wrong-doing of one generation
> lives into
> >> the
> >> successive ones, and, divesting itself of every
> temporary
> >> advantage,
> >> becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief; and he
> would
> >> feel it a
> >> singular gratification if this romance might
> effectually
> >> convince
> >> mankind—or, indeed, any one man—of the folly
> of
> >> tumbling down an
> >> avalanche of ill-gotten gold, or real estate, on
> the heads
> >> of an
> >> unfortunate posterity, thereby to maim and crush
> them,
> >> until the
> >> accumulated mass shall be scattered abroad in its
> original
> >> atoms. In
> >> good faith, however, he is not sufficiently
> imaginative to
> >> flatter
> >> himself with the slightest hope of this kind. When
> romances
> >> do really
> >> teach anything, or produce any effective
> operation, it is
> >> usually
> >> through a far more subtile process than the
> ostensible one.
> >> The author
> >> has considered it hardly worth his while,
> therefore,
> >> relentlessly to
> >> impale the story with its moral as with an iron
> rod,—or,
> >> rather, as by
> >> sticking a pin through a butterfly,—thus at
> once
> >> depriving it of life,
> >> and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly and
> unnatural
> >> attitude. A
> >> high truth, indeed, fairly, finely, and skilfully
> wrought
> >> out,
> >> brightening at every step, and crowning the final
> >> development of a
> >> work of fiction, may add an artistic glory, but is
> never
> >> any truer,
> >> and seldom any more evident, at the last page than
> at the
> >> first.
> >> 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 
>