Auerbach's take on Adams

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

The problem I have with this is his understanding of "Virgin" as 
"idyll". I just reread chapter XXV of "The Education Of Henry Adams" and 
I don't think that Adams would accept "idyll" as a reformulation. 
"Symbol or energy, the Virgin had acted as the greatest force in the 
Western world ever felt, and had drawn man's activities to herself more 
strongly than any other power, natural or supernatural, had ever done 
(...)". Sounds not like "idyll", does it? Sure, Auerbach is writing 
about Pynchon, but he reformulates Adams' distinction as if there was no 
problem, as if his "idyll" was not just some decaffeinated version of 
Adams' "Virgin". Also not sure that "idyll" is what Pynchon's 
counternarratives are about.

>> However, I'm thinking of the dynamo/idyll motifs introduced by Auerbach in
his savvy review of BE. According to Auerbach, Deseret/hashslingrz make
the dynamo and DeepArcher the idyll in BE. Compared to BE, the preterite
are much more involved in the tension between the corresponding dynamo and
idyll motifs in, say, TCoL49 or GR, IMO. Auerbach does not explicate them
but I'd say that in TCol49, these motifs are Inverarity's will/W.A.S.T.E.,
and in GR, the Rocket/the Zone.<<


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