V2nd, C3

[alice wellintown]

The recent bloviating bout narrative technic and young P's brilliant
stroke (it's not a matter of Stencil = Adams at all, but anyway...)
with the Stenciized narrative reminds me of lE.L Doctorow's Homer &
Langley. Homer, the blind piano playing brother and narrator doesn't
much work. It seems a clever idea at first but He sounds like
Doctorow's attempt to sound like a rich guy in the 1920s, an
historical figure to boot,  who speaks like a very fine NY Jewish
author from the Bronx. Now Doc is no young Pynchon, or young author at
all, but his Homer keeps telling the reader about events as if they
are being read from a history book for dummies, and, although he
parades N.O jazz men and German butlers and Irish maids, Italian
gangsters, and dancers and prositutes and the silent movies and the
third avenue el through the house of Langley, who suffers from ptsd
and mustard gas and crankiness, and an obsession with making a single
newpaper that will replace aall newpapers, and Homer, who can't quite
get that jazz improv thing, it all hangs on a voice that reminds of
Pynchon does hardboiled hack, that is, his latest attempt to pay the
mortgage off.

It is P that is the 20th century adams, not stencil.

On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 2:00 PM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com> wrote:
> If we are to read Stencil by Alice's reductionist take as merely a
> 20th century Adams, where do we go with him with him from here? What
> is the educational value of these exercises in which Stencil engages,
> if they are only allusions to earlier American lit? Is there anything
> more to any of this? Or is it just a game of allusions?
>
> Yusef the factotum:
>
>   1.    {dag}a. In L. phrases: Dominus factotum, used for ‘one who
> controls everything’, a ruler with uncontrolled power; Johannes
> factotum, a Jack of all trades, a would-be universal genius. Also fig.
>   {dag}b. One who meddles with everything, a busybody.    c. In mod.
> sense: A man of all-work; also, a servant who has the entire
> management of his master's affairs. (OED).
>
> Is Yusef a Joseph? Scorned by his brothers, sold into slavery in
> Egypt, where he interprets Pharoah's dreams, rising thus to a status
> of factotum in the Empire? No? Is he just another yibbler, fantasizing
> within the fantasy a violent overthrow that can never happen, or never
> cease?
>
> This is the second mention of Victoria Wren, and her first appearance
> "in the flesh," which is enough to captivate Yusef. She is a "balloon
> girl," "lighter than the rest of her world," who has enough going on
> to use basic phrases in the local language. She perches herself at the
> apex of an isoceles triangle with Goodfellow, Porpentine, Mildred & co
> (forming a rather complex V).
>
> The spy v. spy narrative develops with Count Khevenmhuller-Metsch
> chatting up his Russian counterpart M. de Villiers. The political
> complexities of the French-Russian relationship are thus a part of the
> complexities of a triangle with Austria as a third partner. Lepsius
> appears in his 'blue-tinted spectacles and a false nose." His
> appearance, or the manner thereof precipitates Porpentine's acrobatic
> tumble. His only words are to do with V.W.'s good looks.
>
> Now, if Yusef is merely Stencil who is merely Adams, what does this
> imagining do to increase his education?
> Is he wiser about V. W.? or the social morass of middle-eastern
> political intrigue?
> Is there any possibility that young Thomas Pynchon is doing more than
> aping the past? Can he be developing a tableau of individuals in
> society?
>
>
> --
> "liber enim librum aperit."
>