Maybe V. and VERY maybe M & D .....

[alice wellintown]

The influence of Adams on Pynchon can not be overestimated. The theory
that P modeled his Benny&Stencil after Bloom&Dedalus, or is it
Dedalus&Bloom?,  seems a far flung one at best. The Catholic (Italian
and Greek) and Jewish Benny might be invested with Joyce's odd
couple--though P has neither the mind nor the language to trace the
"Irish-Jew" or any other wandering and broken looking glass to Hamlet,
Dante, Homer, nor does he have the reason to do so. Instead, we should
look into Adams and why P makes Stencil Sr. a British spy. Adams and
Adams Sr. do not come away from England with a favorable view of the
English. Henry  knows that his negative opinion clashes with the New
England view of the Brits, but  he has decided tht the Brits are, for
lack of a better word, eccentric. Decky Dance. What of the Americans?
What P learns from Adams, and he takes it from Melville too, is
determinism--the force is a moral force, like the virgin, like the
cross, like the dynamo. The nature of man? The young Adams tries to
understand the forces that move men to act as they do. This is the
young slow learner. After Chaos, after years and years, he formulates
his theory of history. P applies this theory as he works the margins
and footnotes.

On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 9:39 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> A just-read line from Adams' Education:
>
> "The system of 1789 had broken down and with it the eighteenth century fabric of
>
> a priori, or moral principles. "----about Grant's administartion @ 1869-1870....
>
> more bloviating on Adams & Stencil soon. Been away
>
>
>
>