Jay Gould

[Mark Kohut]

Neat.

Jay Gould, in P's fictional context is like V. (a little)?.....
and then Pierce Inverarity is also just a shadow with
a love connection once to our Oedipa...............


----- Original Message ----
From: Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Fri, November 26, 2010 1:00:28 PM
Subject: Jay Gould

Couldn't help looking after Mark posted from the Twain last week.
Found this little bit from Harvard business historian Maury Klein and
just had to ask, does this sound like anyone else we often talk about
here?:

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the man is how little we
actually know about him. Few persons of such public prominence
achieved so complete a personal privacy or guarded it so jealously as
Gould. In his private life no less than in his business affairs, he
frustrated the curiosity of reporters, associates, enemies, and
general public alike. This aura of mystery may be the single most
important clue to the enigma of Jay Gould. His contemporaries knew no
more about him than we do, and one wonders whether they despised the
mystery about the man more than the man himself. Whatever the case,
Gould remains a figure of shadows for whom contemporaries and
historians alike have filled in the substance largely from their own
imaginations. From this license has arisen the stereotype of Gould as
Robber Baron and financial vampire par excellence.
While there is some truth in the Gould legend, it is not the whole
truth because the mystery surrounding him goes well beyond conflicting
interpretations of the man and his career. It concerns the basic facts
of what he did and did not do, what powers he did and did not possess,
what the effects of his actions were, and why he did what he did.
Anyone in search of the real Jay Gould must therefore start by
separating fact from legend. Since the data themselves are so elusive,
the most basic questions turn out to be the hardest to answer: Who was
Jay Gould? What did he do? Why did he do it?

Makes me wonder if there is more to the bust over (Charles?) Pierce's
bed in CoL49 than I had previously granted. The tycoon bit was
obvious, the privacy thing less so.




-- 
"liber enim librum aperit."