V-2nd - 2: Stencil

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Stencil: 1 : an impervious material (as a sheet of paper, thin wax, or woven fabric) perforated with lettering or a design through which a substance (as ink, paint, or metallic powder) is forced onto a surface to be printed.

I'm at a real disadvantage, in that I haven't read The Education of Henry Adams.  In the next chapter, Pynchon will make the connection between Stencil and Adams pretty explicit.  Mark, Alice, question:  Does Adams come across as so, well, neurotic?  We get no physical description of the 50-something Young Stencil, but for some reason I picture him wearing a wool scarf, regardless of the weather - sort of like Edward Gorey's Doubtful Guest:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NGwSdSmbgTA/Sp6Y8yUTN5I/AAAAAAAAAKk/_ozB9eFfw28/s400/proper+Gorey.jpg

The name Stencil implies something that doesn't have any intrinsic value, but exists to impart some sort of meaning (or superficial image) on other objects.  In the next chapter, Stencil will impart his specific Stencil-ness on 7 different settings.  Here, at the Whole Sick Crew's party, he seems out of his element, annoyed with the pretensions.  Observing the excessively-slothful-on-principle Fergus Mixolydian, Stencil sees him as a horrifying copy of his prewar self.  Is he mapping his own image (and in third-person) onto anyone he comes into contact with?  Is that what Henry Adams did?

If Stencil's the narrator of this book about a certain V., is he a reliable narrator, or is he just creating V. as the personification (or mechanico-personification) of his cranky world-view?  Stencil was born (deliberately) in the first year of the 20th century, but maybe, as is his presence at the Whole Sick Crew's party, he's out of his element - doomed to be a cranky, alienated observer, a Doubtful Guest who doesn't belong there.  He sees V. everywhere, and he's annoyed about it.

Laura