NP but an influence, Henry Adams

[alice wellintown]

I just wanted to say, he said. Ireland, they say, has the honour of
being the only country which never persecuted the jews. Do you know
that? No. And do you know why?
 He frowned sternly on the bright air.
 — Why, sir? Stephen asked, beginning to smile.
 — Because she never let them in, Mr Deasy said solemnly.
 A coughball of laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a
rattling chain of phlegm. He turned back quickly, coughing, laughing,
his lifted arms waving to the air.
 — She never let them in, he cried again through his laughter as he
stamped on gaitered feet over the gravel of the path. That’s why.
 On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung
spangles, dancing coins.

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 8:45 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I was led to ask because a quick look at ole cranky Henry in
> those HUGE Gale Publisher Lit Crit compendia that all good libraries
> have, had some say that Henry's cranky yankee anti-semitism had
> diminished his canonicity since his heyday.............
>
> Hey, day-lit.....
>
> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2012 6:59 PM
> Subject: Re: NP but an influence, Henry Adams
>
>> 1) Did Henry Adams' influence more writers back in the day--60s-- than
>> lately?
>
> Well, if I take the cranky position, I would guess that Adams was read
> by a select few and read deeper. Today, Adams is a best seller, a top
> read, a modern library classic must read, number one on the list of
> non-fiction, and, and, and, non-fiction is all the rage now, as
> fiction fades away, and deeper readings of more chllanging texts
> replace the cannon of spoon-fed young adult literature. I would say
> that Adams, like Mumford, like Freud, like Sontag,  like so
> many...because he had his finger on the pulse, on the zeitgeist, that
> beat of a  moment moving magically under memory's mumbling insistance
> in the moment when it ceased to matter much, will end up a footnote
> from which we may find an allusion to Pynchon.
>
>