Auerbach's take on Adams

Sat Oct 26 09:17:32 CDT 2013

I wholly agree with both of you, Kai and Fiona: Auerbach represents Adams
inappropriately. If someone were to develop his ideas - which for me
contain really quite productive potentials - the "dynamo" should probably
be replaced with some other term.

You're right Kai, it's extremely hard to locate the "idyll" in V. Vheissu
is arguably an anti-idyll which heavily parodies the colonial tradition.
And among the (rare) occasions of resistance in V., the only one written
from a resisting insider's point of view is the literal underground in
besieged Malta - and this resistance (with no "alternative realm" to talk
of) is described in overtly Virginal terms.

On Sat, 26 Oct 2013, Fiona Shnapple 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.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 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.<<
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> -
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> >>
> >> -
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> >>
> >>
> >
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