Names in AtD - Frank

[Lemuel Underwing]

I can dig that Frank is close to Pynchon but it seems to me Pynchon himself
is deeply intermixed with his novels that it can be hard to delineate where
P. begins and his Golem begins.


Man, I still struggle sorting out the Traverse children, in the process of
rereading AtD... it could be that Frank represents P.'s admiration of The
Badass (mentioned in the Luddite Paper and what what's-her-name who had an
affair with him came here and talked about a little bit back in the 90s,--
how he writes how he Wishes he was sometimes more than how he actually Is..)


On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 4:33 AM, Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es> wrote:

> That things can be that simple doesn't mean they are. When people say "I
> jes doan like it, it's that simple" it is not that simple because taste and
> preference are anything if simple matters.
>
> There is a prominent P-lister who refers to TP as Grovey (protagonist from
> The Secret Integration) and this seems to me very accurate, not that I
> think TSI is biographical or that TP veils himself with characters but it
> has a lot to support it.
>
> I see the character of Kit as having a social trajectory closer to TP's,
> although to really draw that out would require far too much for it to be
> presented here on the list. It will end up as a monograph at best.
>
> ciao
> mc otis
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Phillip Greenlief <pgsaxo at pacbell.net>
> To: Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es>
> Sent: Monday, May 6, 2013 7:54 PM
> Subject: Re: Names in AtD - Frank
>
>
>
> of all the characters in AtD, frank seems the most likely to resemble
> pynchon. frank allows thomas to be frank.
> yes, things can be that simple sometimes ... or it's very possible that it
> is meeeeee that is simple.
>
>  Phillip Greenlief
> 1075 Aileen Street Apt B
> Oakland, CA 94608
> 510-501-7110
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es>
> To: "pynchon-l at waste.org" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Mon, May 6, 2013 2:50:33 AM
> Subject: Names in AtD - Frank
>
> We know that the names that TP uses are anything but inconsequential, they
> point to something if only we take the time to think about what. In AtD
> most of the Traverses have names that are less than common and would seem
> to have some greater value than a mere label for a character (Webb, Lake,
> Reef, etc) but then there is Frank, a very common name. Why?
>
> I can't claim to have THE answer but I have an idea. First, we know that
> the book is composed in large part by drawing on a wide range of genres
> (what have been deemed "narrative clusters") and that these literary echoes
> are important for the book. Clearly one theme is the working class family
> and the social literature it belongs to.
> So I looked at Raymond Williams' Writing in Society, specifically The
> Ragged Arsed Philanthropists. It's about the novel The Ragged Trousered
> Philanthropists, written by an Irishman and rejected by publishers for its
> ideological content, whose protagonist is
> named... you guessed it, Frank.
>
> Does anybody want to add to this? Any other ideas for the name Frank?
>
>
> ciao
> mc otis
>
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