Auerbach's take on Adams

[Heikki Raudaskoski]

I wrote in an earlier message today:

"I didn't understand Auerbach's concept of the idyll as a reformulation of
the Virgin (it's very possible that I didn't read the essay carefully...).

I perceived it more as a dynamo-resisting 'alternative realm', or even
'pastoral' in some post-Empsonian sense."


And as I now revisited Auerbach's essay, it does seem that I was close,
after all. It does also seem that A. takes dynamo from Adams somewhat
lopsidedly, leaving the Virgin out of his "general theory of Pynchon".

"The dynamo is the *locus classicus* of a conspiracy theory. In Henry
Adams's usage, heavily influential to Mr. Pynchon, the dynamo steamrolls
freedom and individuality while trying to establish its tyranny of order.
For Adams, the dynamo looked to be winning. For Mr. Pynchon, every dynamo
ultimately fails - it is no match for a Decoherence Event [for Auerbach,
the third crucial motif in Pynchon's novels, HR] - but each does plenty
of damage in the process."

The idyll is something of a reaction to the dynamo:

"Our explanations for the world, paranoid or not, are what stop us from
being anti-paranoid 'zombies'. But beyond paranoia proper, anti-paranoia
also produces a second and more humane response, which is the faith in a
safe haven, a space that resists the dynamo's control and attempts to
embrace the wretched of the earth. Mr. Pynchon does not believe in the
*reality* of such spaces, but he believes in the therapeutic worth of the
*ideas* of such spaces."

What Pynchon believes remains a matter of dispute, IMO. (And does
DeepArcher, for Auerbach the idyll in BE, really attempt 'to embrace
the wretched of the earth' in the novel?) However, I dig Auerbach's
overall schema.


On Fri, 25 Oct 2013, Mark Kohut wrote:

> I don't, without rereading and thinking about Auerbach's review, see much to the Virgin/dynamo/idyll stuff
> in BE....and if he gets Virgin wrong, why follow the metaphoric use?
>
>
>
> On Friday, October 25, 2013 6:39 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>
>
> 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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