V-2nd - 2: Stencil

[Mark Kohut]

I will forever more see Stencil as The Doubtful Guest.....

Yes, Adams is an intellectual "neurotic" fer sure....one might even say "crazy' 
in the common parlance.....his negativity (about his life; his world) is so 
total
that one sometimes HAS to laugh.....at him, not with him.

For example: He writes his own autobio in the third person!....He leaves out 20 
years of mid-life...He has almost nothing about his wife, Clover, who died
by her own hand. He does not even MENTION that!...

From older age, he writes about his CONSTANT failures to learn anything 
important to make it in life.....after a lifetime of writing among other 
things.......very later Benny who sez he learned nothing....

If all serious men and women can identify somewhat with that.........that he 
kept it up so long seems 'crazy....he saw all his experience this way....most 
pragmatic "American" types would have
said much much sooner......what will today teach me? IMHO

do you know Kafka's story The Hunger Artist?.....who could not find any food he 
liked......Henry.


 


----- Original Message ----
From: "kelber at mindspring.com" <kelber at mindspring.com>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Wed, July 7, 2010 7:06:30 PM
Subject: V-2nd - 2: Stencil

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