Tesla & P's Lightening-Rod Salesmen

[Michael Bailey]

So you're saying that Merle harks  back to Melville's lightning rod
salesperson as that character does to Ben Franklin ...

The same sort of enterprise and energy applied by Franklin in his milieu
vaulted him into political prominence as well as scientific fame

By Melville's time the barriers to entry were higher and the skepticism
faced by LRSs was greater as recorded in the tale --

Franklin btw was an early proponent of vaccination as well,  wasn't he...

Whereas by Merle's time inventive enthusiasm had to face ownership of ideas
by unimaginative plutes - like Merle's friend who invented the under-sand
suits but had to sell them to the Chums on the sly because Vibe or somebody
owned the patents...

And political activity doesn't feature in Merle's day planner at all ...
much harder to be a polymath when there's so much math...in the expanding
universe the dots on the balloon get farther apart
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20130622/4f449e13/attachment.html>