Bact to AtD. Frank. Meteorites

[alice wellintown]

Reading another from the corrupted pilgrim's guide, this one by Coffman, in
which he discusses the meteors, I am still convinced that, while Eliade and
others may be helpful, it is Adams that remains the text we need to get at
P's use of religion. Moreover, Coffman cites both Eddins and Hohmann, but
claims, in error, that a shift in P's Orphic christianity is evident in
AGTD.

On Sunday, February 24, 2013, alice wellintown wrote:

> It seems obvious to me. The meteor-man, the train....these allusions
> here are as obvious to me as those in V..
>
> It is, once again, parody.
>
>
> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1969/nov/06/history-and-henry-adams-ii/?pagination=false
>
> http://grammar.about.com/od/classicessays/a/adamsaccel08.htm
>
> On Sat, Feb 23, 2013 at 3:57 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com<javascript:;>>
> wrote:
> > well, maybe..very subtextually....
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com <javascript:;>>
> > To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org <javascript:;>>
> > Cc:
> > Sent: Saturday, February 23, 2013 1:20 PM
> > Subject: Re: Bact to AtD. Frank. Meteorites
> >
> > It is an allusion to Henry Adams:
> >
> >
> > XXXV
> > Nunc Age (1905)
> >
> >
> > NEARLY forty years had passed since the ex-private secretary landed at
> > New York with the ex-Ministers Adams and Motley, when they saw
> > American society as a long caravan stretching out towards the plains.
> > As he came up the bay again, November 5, 1904, an older man than
> > either his father or Motley in 1868, he found the approach more
> > striking than ever,—wonderful—unlike anything man had ever seen,—and
> > like nothing he had ever much cared to see. The outline of the city
> > became frantic in its effort to explain something that defied meaning.
> > Power seemed to have outgrown its servitude and to have asserted its
> > freedom. The cylinder had exploded, and thrown great masses of stone
> > and steam against the sky. The city had the air and movement of
> > hysteria, and the citizens were crying, in every accent of anger and
> > alarm, that the new forces must at any cost be brought under control.
> > Prosperity never before imagined, power never yet wielded by man,
> > speed never reached by anything but a meteor, had made the world
> > irritable, nervous, querulous, unreasonable and afraid. All New York
> > was demanding new men, and all the new forces, condensed into
> > corporations, were demanding a new type of man,—a man with ten times
> > the endurance, energy, will and mind of the old type,—for whom they
> > were ready to pay millions at sight. As one jolted over the pavements
> > or read the last week’s newspapers, the new man seemed close at hand,
> > for the old one had plainly reached the end of his strength, and his
> > failure had become catastrophic. Every one saw it, and every municipal
> > election shrieked chaos. A traveller in the highways of history looked
> > out of the club window on the turmoil of Fifth Avenue, and felt
> > himself in Rome, under Diocletian, witnessing the anarchy, conscious
> > of the compulsion, eager for the solution, but unable to conceive
> > whence the next impulse was to come or how it was to act. The
> > two-thousand-years failure of Christianity roared upward from
> > Broadway, and no Constantine the Great was in sight.
> >
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > In that, or any other case, a nineteenth-century education was as
> > useless or misleading as an eighteenth-century education had been to
> > the child of 1838; but Adams had a better reason for holding his
> > tongue. For his dynamic theory of history he cared no more than for
> > the kinetic theory of gas; but, if it were an approach to measurement
> > of motion, it would verify or disprove itself within thirty years. At
> > the calculated acceleration, the head of the meteor-stream must very
> > soon pass perihelion. Therefore, dispute was idle, discussion was
> > futile, and silence, next to good-temper, was the mark of sense. If
> > the acceleration, measured by the development and economy of forces,
> > were to continue at its rate since 1800, the mathematician of 1950
> > should be able to plot the past and future orbit of the human race as
> > accurately as that of the November meteoroids.
>
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