V-2nd - 2: Stencil

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Alice:

Oh yeah, Adams is a nerd and a neurotic nerd; he has a wonderful
ironic humor, self deferential, though not obtuse, always an easy
tool,  so glad to be of use. And, Adams's tale is an inside story. It
doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense to an outsider. His quest, if we
can call it that, since he reminds us again and again that his tale is
of Education and n ot of adventure, is rather doomed from the get-go.
We await the crying, but it never does arrive because Adams is too
late or he was born at the wrong time.


Mark:

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.

Laura (third person):

So has Young Pynchon based Young Stencil solely on Adams?  He's still very much at the borrowing stage in V. - borrowing from his own early work, from Baedeker's, and from Adams.  Did Young Pynchon think:  Adams was out of place in his times - what if I create an Adams prototype who's out of place in these times (1950s)?  What, in the way of hilarity or drama or tragedy, would ensue?  His "idea for a novel" being:  Henry Adams in post-war America?  Could V. be described as such?