V2, C3

[alice wellintown]

This struggle of father's and sons and labor or vocation or calling,
it seems to me, is a major theme in P's works and one he obviously was
struck by when he read Adams. Henry is, we should never disregard the
obvious, a writer. Sloth is the sign a father might hang on such a son
or even trader, as Henry with the help of his brother publishes his
work under the rose, since his father would never approve of it.

On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 11:19 AM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> The idea is actually a brilliant stroke when you consider, first, that
> Henry Adams was an Adams and so were his father and his and his. Henry
> was cut from the same cloth--a stencil if yiu will. There is a
> wondeful part of The Education when Henry is dragged to school by the
> President. Adams was not merely a name to live up to and in for Henry,
> it was an abstraction, an idea, an institution. To work for one's
> father, as P did, his father was an important enough man, though no
> Adams, is an oedipal struggle even on the modern world, perhaps more
> so.
> On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 10:47 AM, Michael Bailey
> <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Ian Livingston  wrote:
>>> I won't be able to access the internet until the sun hits my panels
>>> tomorrow mid morning Pacific Time, so I thought I'd get these out
>>> ahead of the schedule by just a bit. Then I have to get back to my
>>> chores.
>>>
>>
>> interesting life you lead!
>>
>>
>>> (1) to echo Laura’s question, How closely are we to read the Stencil /
>>> Henry Adams link?
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> first, it's kind of a droll idea, to take the Adams of the Education's
>> way of referring to himself and apply it to a character: Bailey is
>> relatively sure that Mr Adams didn't comport himself that way in the
>> flesh...
>>
>> then, like so much in Pynchon, because he put elbow grease into
>> writing these books,
>> you notice the detail and research (I say, you, because quite often
>> it's not me...I have a disturbing tendency to stop thinking after a
>> couple of yuks)
>>
>> and then if one gets inspired to put some effort into reading, there's
>> a magic eye effect
>> of some kind that can be quite breathtaking
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Yippy dippy dippy,
>> Flippy zippy zippy,
>> Smippy gdippy gdippy, too!
>> - Thomas Pynchon ("'Zo Meatman's Gone AWOL")
>>
>