V--2nd, Chap 14, V. in Love

[Mark Kohut]

No to Wilson in Carry Grant, Companionable Gatherer. 

Here's my impression: The Recognitions showed TRP 
how to breathe with deepest comparative erudition as
he formed his Eliade, Weberian, yes Wilson on History
visions.............BUT

I have read To The Finland Station and it is so good, taught me 
a ton (about its subject) but Wilson did not theorize as Eliade,
Weber or others have........

I think Wilson was a key, maybe one of first deepest influencer
of revolution stuff on TRP but Mondaugen and African Holocaust
trial run----"not 6 million, but pretty good"----is not in Wilson.....

And, I might argue that yes to the great Invisible Man esp for 
P's American novels and, who knows, maybe even for him 
expanding, stretching the invisibilty notion....

I'm done bloviating here. 

Back to particulars.....



----- Original Message ----
From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sun, January 16, 2011 11:42:24 AM
Subject: Re: V--2nd, Chap 14, V. in Love

Does Grant or any of the critical studies he references take note of
Edmund Wilson? P mention's Wilson's _To The Finland Station: A Study
in the Writing and Acting of History_ in his SL essay. Recent
discussion of Mondaugan did not address the influence of Wilson, and
specifically, Enfantin was never mentioned.

Then, accompanied by twenty of his followers, and a number of
engineers, he went to Egypt with the intent of creating a Suez canal,
pursuing "odd symbolic ideas about the project being a marriage
between East and West". This irritated the Egyptian Viceroy, Muhammad
Ali, who wanted the Saint-Simonians thrown out, but de Lesseps, the
man who would ultimately build the canal, was sympathetic and
intervened on their behalf. Enfantin stayed there two years, and might
have entered Ali's service had he professed himself, as several of his
followers did, a Muslim.


from Wiki.

Wilson and Adams and Ellison, not Gaddis. No?