Names in AtD - Frank

[Matthew Cissell]

Howsat? Trying running that through some kind of filter first. If anyone else can make sense of it let me know.

ciao
mc otis

ps. Querida Alicia, espero que lo pases bien en Brazil. Me gustaría volver a Salvador de Bahia, que recuerdos.




________________________________
 From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Wednesday, May 8, 2013 12:46 AM
Subject: Re: Names in AtD - Frank
 


Names, like frank Norris's first name isn't frank, and j frank Norris, John frank Norris, his first name isn't Benjamin, frank Norris's first name, but the two could go together to make pynchon's frank. Like dynamite and all that.....

On Monday, May 6, 2013, alice wellintown  wrote:

Ah, Matt C is juss joshing wit us. You ever heard of that novel or that author? I sure as hell aint never heard of him or it. Frank Norris, man. Now don't tell me that you aint heard of Norris. 
>
>
>
>On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 3:07 PM, Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
>I think MC answered his own question -   "…. then there is Frank, a very common name."     Frank is just a totally common name back then - and he was the common guy amongst the western Traverses and  Fresnos and Kindreds.  He didn't go east like Kit or become a card-shark like Reef.    Frank is the one who has a goodly chunk of the Western episodes - the cowboy good-guy who avenges Webb's death and sticks around the southwest from Denver to central Mexico.
>>
>>Bekah
>>who feels a reread coming on -  (LOVE that book)
>>
>>
>>On May 6, 2013, at 2:58 AM, Ruth Flatscher <ruflatsch at gmail.com> wrote:
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>>> well, Frank actually does have a very literal meaning, too... at least in English.
>>> Haven't got around AtD yet, so I don't know whether it fits the character or has a rather sarcastic effect.
>>> cheers,
>>> R
>>>
>>> ps - btw, PKDick also has a protagonist named Frank in "The Man in the High Castle"...
>>>
>>>
>>> On 6 May 2013 11:50, Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es> wrote:
>>> 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
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Mag. Ruth Flatscher
>>> Department of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, University of Vienna
>>> Institute of Botany, University of Innsbruck
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>>
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