Back to V., MB's structure post cont.

[Robin Landseadel]

A bit of common, everyday bibliomancy

Looking for my copy of Jorge Luis Borges "Collected Fictions", find it  
on a cupboard shelf, sandwiched between an issue of Granta magazine  
featuring "Gazza Agonistes" by Ian Hamilton* and an as-yet-to be-read  
Hard-Cover edition of "The House of the Seven Gables" on the other.

*"Gazza Agonistes" sounds like it's some deliberately mis-spelled  
article on the ongoing Mid-East Crisis, turns out to be about Paul  
Gascoigne, a retired English professional football player with a very  
colorful and ultimately tragic life story. As for the other title, I  
realize I must read it.

I see a point where Terrance Wellington's obsession with what Chase  
calls 'American Romance' hooks up with my obsession with Pynchon  
family history. There's a chicken/egg thing going on here. Terri [and  
David Williams] provides evidence that Pynchon's relation to Hawthorne  
and Melville is based on essential literary kinship. And then there's  
the notion -- a hot one in the Sixties as my last two functioning  
neurons remind me -- of "The Great American Novel." "Moby Dick" not  
only is in contention for that honor, I would have no problem awarding  
it the laurels. And I can clearly see the parts of Moby Dick that  
rhyme with Gravity's Rainbow.

My take is that Pynchon's family history is the great "If Only" of all  
the books. If only William Pynchon of Springfield wasn't banished as a  
heretic. If only George M. Pynchon's "Pynchon & Company" didn't  do a  
mammoth fiscal belly flop in the depression. Elect/Preterite [a  
Pynchon constant] has a lot to do with William Pynchon's flammable  
tract .

http://www.springfieldlibrary.org/Pynchon/meritorious.html

On the other end of the yo-yo string, we have young, lazy, damn near  
unemployable Thomas Pynchon the third. Pointers to Pynchon Family  
history are particularly abundant in the author's three most recent  
books.

On Sep 3, 2010, at 6:34 AM, Dave Williams wrote:

> In his final essay Tanner considers how Mason and Dixon fits into  
> Pynchon’s and characteristically focuses in on how America is  
> conceptualized. It is at once a ‘symbol for boundlessness;  
> historically boundaried’. It is impossible to overestimate the  
> importance in this novel of surveying. As Tanner points out, it is a  
> far from
> innocent act but rather signals the appropriation of the terrain for  
> commercial and imperial purposes. To use Tanner’s own phrases,  
> surveying imposes the most dominant set of human signs on the scene  
> of Nature. He reflects on the associated symbolism of lines and  
> boundaries here, showing a continuity between Pynchon’s concerns and  
> those of Fenimore Cooper, among other American predecessors.  
> Boundaries imply oppositions between what lies on either side and  
> also open up the possibility of transgression in its most literal  
> meaning of going across. Tanner recognizes the special historical  
> moment of Mason and Dixon, the moment just before the Declaration of  
> Independence. Just as the term ‘preterite’ occupies a special  
> position in Gravity’s Rainbow denoting the human casualties of power  
> groups, so in Pynchon’s latest novel ‘subjunctive’ privileges the  
> imagined or the speculative over empirical fact. Thus as America  
> shades into material being
> away from dream and myth, it gradually ceases to be subjunctive.

This is true and this is great stuff. At the same time, I can imagine  
the image of his father -- a surveyor --  and his laying down of those  
first lines on the landscape being a pivotal inspiration for young  
Tom. And surely the Diary of William Pynchon of Salem -- a document  
covering the years 1776 through 1789, written by a Tory in the new  
found land -- was a prime inspiration for "Mason & Dixon."

 From the 1890 introduction by Fitch Edward Oliver:

	In his political views Mr. Pynchon was conservative, and during the  
critical
	period of the Revolution was not always in harmony with the popular  
voice;
	but, if opposed at first to the war as a measure of doubtful  
expediency, he
	was in these views by no means alone. "The eminent lawyers of this  
time,"
	says the late Ellis Ames, in a paper read before the Historical  
Society, I
	"mostly adhered to the British administration, and were all citizens  
of great
	uprightness, integrity, and ability." To this respectable class Mr.  
Pynchon
	belonged, and no one could have borne the treatment he received with 	
	greater patience and forbearance. He suffered much during the war  
from the
	general stagnation of business, and although he rarely, if ever,  
mingled in
	political controversy, he was not a little disturbed by the hostility  
of former
	friends, and the malevolence of party feeling. If he is sometimes  
emphatic in
	his language, it is rather from his intolerance of every species of  
political
	trickery than from an honest difference of opinion on the part of his
	opponent. He was as true to what he believed to be the true interests  
of his
	native country as any man that then lived ; and when the new  
government 	
	was finally established, he accepted it with all the heartiness of a  
loyal
	citizen.

http://tinyurl.com/23vyn3n

And while there's no question that surveying initiates the imposition  
of the most dominant set of human signs on the scene of Nature, it's  
good to remember that Kaufman and Broad are there to finish the job.

http://www.collegehillreview.com/004/0040501.html