Fw: V-2nd C3

[alice wellintown]

> Adams is always doing something new (toward his Education) into his
> thirties....but whatever
> he does is NOT part of his (ideal) Education..................So, might they be
> seen an impersonations?


"Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it
accumulates in the form of inert facts.”  My favorite quote from The
education; it makes my collegues in the history department
uncomfortable. But why? What Adams discovers is that facts are but
playthings, tops spinning like yarns. He is there at the POINT, at the
PERIOD, where the two lines of facts or events form a V. The most
important historical crisis or V-point is the war in America. Adams is
in England and observes, from fairly close range, the forming V-point.
And yet, later when these facts and events are spun into yarns,
narratives told by a Lord at dinner, they are no longer facts or
events or history, but fables or romances and thus more meaningful.
The point of view has shifted; the once bloviating terror of the
House, who could call all Englishmen brutes and frighten powerful
cartels and trade unionists with a single phrase, is now a humorist
telling the tale to entertain, perhaps adding a bit of fabulation at
his own expense. When the crisis over the rebel ships and Lair  & Co
is past and Adams Sr. has won the day, Henry is truly unemployed:

This Anglo-American form of diplomacy was chiefly undiplomatic, and
had the peculiar effect of teaching a habit of diplomacy useless or
mischievous everywhere but in London. Nowhere else in the world could
one expect to figure in a rôle so unprofessional. The young man knew
no longer what character he bore. Private secretary in the morning,
son in the afternoon, young man about town in the evening, the only
character he never bore was that of diplomatist, except when he wanted
a card to some great function. His diplomatic education was at an end;
he seldom met a diplomat, and never had business with one; he could be
of no use to them, or they to him; but he drifted inevitably into
society, and, do what he might, his next education must be one of
English social life. Tossed between the horns of successive dilemmas,
he reached his twenty-sixth birthday without the power of earning five
dollars in any occupation.

How soon hath time ...(Milton's sonnet); what have you done with your
talents Tommy?


>
> Why does P have that twice-wakening dream bit?.....Henry James' twice-born
> notion?...
> At least, to tell the reader that the intellectual truths---dreams reveal
> truths, mostly, in Pynchon---
> are now personal, deeper (as Ian writes below--and above) ....REAL?...the quest
> is on?
>
> Seems to be Pynchon as author signifying Stencil's quest is his...........yes?
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> ----- Forwarded Message ----
> From: Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Sun, July 11, 2010 3:45:55 PM
> Subject: Re: V-2nd C3
>
> I’ll pick up by way of responding to a question tied over from Laura:
> “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)?”
>
> Looking at “chapter three. In which Stencil, a quick-change artist,
> does eight impersonations,” I think there is more to Stencil than his
> name and his Henriness. By way of a gloss on the introductory section:
>
> Right off the bat, we learn that V. is what gives Stencil his focus,
> the meaning of his presence, if you will. The Golden Bough and the
> White Goddess get prominent mention as Stencil uses them as a
> dismissal of his actual pursuit of V.: “He would dream perhaps once a
> week that it had all  een a dream, and that now he’s awakened to
> discover the pursuit of V. was merely a scholarly quest after all, an
> adventure of the mind, in the tradition of The Golden Bough or The
> White Goddess” (61, Vintage, 2000 edition) . He dreams that it is
> merely an academic pursuit, but, in fact, it is deeper, more personal
> and, well....
>
> Stencil is “capering along behind her, bells ajingle, waving a wooden,
> toy oxgoad. For no one’s amusement but his own.” For which see,
> http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.4peaks.com/10.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.4peaks.com/ppox.htm&usg=__u0LzEAWCyXXNEXb1XR_o9vwBv_Y=&h=350&w=274&sz=6&hl=en&start=13&sig2=Q7zbXY1T2bTfMjnL2HkOAg&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=NsO8hr4ZW3tuJM:&tbnh=120&tbnw=94&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dzen%2Box%2Bherding%2Bpictures%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26sa%3DX%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26channel%3Ds%26tbs%3Disch:1&ei=OmY3TI7oAdTNjAer6pjzAw
>
> (Holy smokes that’s a long address!)
>
> We learn, similarly, that Herbert’s is a mere pastiche of sleuthing
> and that it is more important that he is Stencil, than it is that he
> bears some superficial resemblance to Henry Adams. His use of the
> third person is neither out of a an affected self-reflexion, nor a
> pretension to royal superiority, but a “forcible dislocation of
> personality” (62), and even this is apparently meaningless. Of course,
> there are hazards to too readily dismissing any reference Pynchon
> offers. I think it is safe to say that if he refers or alludes to it,
> he likely read it, and it can likely, then, be counted as an influence
> on his work. The degree of that influence is open at all times for
> debate.
>
> His histories, if you will, are typically Fresian: matters of
> historiography, not of fact, necessarily, just stories about the past
> that might have been, based on his researches, which center on “the
> island of Malta, where his father had died, where Hebert had never
> been....” (62). See the Maltese cross for an illustration of this
> characteristic:
> http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.learnnc.org/lp/media/uploads/2007/08/maltese_cross.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.learnnc.org/lp/multimedia/6065&h=600&w=600&sz=93&tbnid=pYHSLMfoakLbBM:&tbnh=135&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmaltese%2Bcross&usg=__Z3LLCurorIhVyITxonPjlPXDT70=&sa=X&ei=M2s3TN_XLIWcsQPPtbRS&ved=0CCcQ9QEwAw
>
> (Holy cow! It’s another winner!) Everything points to the center. Of
> course, this is the only clear reference to Malta in this chapter (I
> think), and it may work here as an indicator both of young Stencil’s
> position in the world, and as recollection of the above stated
> significance of V. in Herbert’s life.
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> And, by way of Herbert’s only souvenir of Malta we embark on a very
> interesting tour of possible perspectives in an imagined history.
>
> --
> "liber enim librum aperit."
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