Auerbach's take on Adams

[Fiona Shnapple]

I like his overall schema too, but his take on Adams is not
appropriate.  You cannot make the distinction dynamo vs. idyll in an
Pynchon essay without evoking Adams' original one of dynamo vs.
Virgin. But who reads Adams today? So most readers of Auerbach's essay
will think that he came on his distinction without any inspiration.
That it simply fell from the sky. Auerbach also misrepresents Adams
insofar as he seems to file him under conspiracy theory. Actually "The
Education Of Henry Adams" is, despite its occasional antisemitism, not
a conspiracy theory.

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While I love the Auerbach essay, I  agree that Auerback either did not
read Adams,  misread Adams, or, more likely, failed to make
appropriate or judicious use of Adams.

There is an obvious flaw in in these sentences:

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.

This is simply false. Adams never argues that the Dynamo is a force of
tyranny that strips freedom or individuality. Some of Pynchon's
characters extend Adams to make these arguments, but they are the
conspiracy makers that Auerbach examines, not Adams, and I would
argue, not Pynchon.



For Adams, the dynamo looked to be winning. For Mr. Pynchon, every
dynamo ultimately fails—it is no match for a Decoherence Event—but
each does plenty of damage in the process.

For Adams the Dynamo has won. But what it is, as moral force, its
multiplying mysterious force, Adams can not say. He suggests that it
is anarchistic.


Pynchon's use of Adams continues and is, by far the most important
influence in his library still.



On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 5:45 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
<lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>
> I like his overall schema too, but his take on Adams is not appropriate.
> You cannot make the distinction dynamo vs. idyll in an Pynchon essay without
> evoking Adams' original one of dynamo vs. Virgin. But who reads Adams today?
> So most readers of Auerbach's essay will think that he came on his
> distinction without any inspiration. That it simply fell from the sky.
> Auerbach also misrepresents Adams insofar as he seems to file him under
> conspiracy theory. Actually "The Education Of Henry Adams" is, despite its
> occasional antisemitism, not a conspiracy theory.
>
> When I think about a possible reason for the fact that Auerbach does not
> deal with Adams properly, it occurs to me that the necessary debate would
> perhaps damage his whole model. Adams is - just like "Road Runner", or
> Thelonious Monk - a major influence on Pynchon. So it's a little silly when
> Auerbach says that Adams' usage of the concept 'dynamo' was "heavily
> influential to Mr. Pynchon". The influence was never restricted to that
> term. In the end of the "Slow Learner" intro Pynchon speaks of Adams in a
> way that makes his primary indebtedness clear.  And where's the idyll in
> "V"? I don't see this. What I see instead is that the spectrum of possible
> meanings of V contains also Venus and the Virgin. Actually the connecting of
> Venus and Virgin in chapter XXV of "The Education Of Henry Adams" might have
> been an inspiration for the whole idea to focus on the quest for a female
> entity named V.
>
> The complex relation of Pynchon and Adams needs closer examination than
> Auerbach delivers.
>
>
>
> On 25.10.2013 23:05, Heikki Raudaskoski wrote:
>>
>> 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.<<
>>>
>>>
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l /http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l /http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
>>
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
-
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