Not really P, but of his time, of his places

[Mark Kohut]

because Pynchon writes his American novels with the Civil War
as the Unsaid and since AtD starts in his favorite world-historical
period---late 1800s--I decided to get and perhaps read all
of the new Oxford History title on the Reconstruction era: A Republic If
You Can Keep It.

I love this guy's writing. Incisively perfect, nuanced and rich yet...
original. The selection of the most
telling details re events....Lincoln's train ride and funeral. The Puritan
religiosity
preferring he be declared dead NOT in a scandalous place like the theater
on Good Friday, for example.  More. He knows as verbal fabric Gaddis's,
Pynchon's, Roth's
Puritans and the Protestant America ethos.

Sees America as the Midwest in this era; home as a societal metaphor (I may
send
a great two paragraphs on the American homespun ideal---in Springfield,
Illinois as
example and template.)

But, the original metaphor which strikes me as almost Pynchonian, or
otherwise
interestingly Gothic is this:

Sez America, when the Civil War ends, was, in the mind of the country. like
two twins:
One was, once again like at the beginning, what the optimists thought it
might be now that slavery
was defeated and the South had to be part of the Union again; the other,
the ugly reality twin
who survived instead.

Iceland Spar is not good enough here.
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