Ch 28 In which George Washington and his happy negro smoke dope with Mason and Dixon

[ish mailian]

Yes, GW, who, as I noted, kept very good records and ledgers, is
famous or infamous for growing his wealth through land speculation.

This is well known and well documented.

The history of land speculation in America and the bubbles  and the
banking and financial crisis they caused has been the subject of a
pile of fiction in America.
Pynchon has added to this  pile.

And it should not surprise us that Pynchon has included a satirical
scene on GW's interest in land in a novel that is, in part, anyway,
about the great American land grab.

Pynchon is well known for his research of real estate, wealth, and
corruption in America.

>From what he calls his apprentice's effort, "The Secret Integration",
Pynchon has
examined how land wealth in America was built on racist ideology and
war, exploitative international trade,
surveyance and cartography, and in cheap labor, including slave labor.

A member of the Pyncheon family, the haunted subject of one of the
most famous land grab novels in the American cannon, Pynchon's work
can be said to fit, in part anyway,
the Gothic tradition, where land is haunted by the victims of real
estate wealth.

In his famous Watts essay, Pynchon, like Richard Wright, who, in his
famous _Native Son_ makes ghosts of white people, makes ghosts of
planes that fly over the Watts residents. The same planes Bigger, the
protagonist of Wright's "protest novel" sees at the start of the
novel.

As Oedipa slowly realized, the MIC was a real estate enterprise that
set up its productions, as the airport was set up, and as the highways
were set up, to give the "little man" a false sense of power or white
privilege and to give the Man authority and to keep itself protected
by the towers.


On Thu, Apr 5, 2018 at 7:51 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> One way and another George made a lot of money:This is  the Wall St.’s  Journal’s list of the richest U.S. presidents:
>
> 1. George Washington, first president from 1789 to 1797
> -- Net worth: $525 million In office
> His Virginia plantation, Mount Vernon, consisted of five separate farms on 8,000 acres of prime farmland, run by more than 300 slaves. His wife, Martha Washington, inherited significant property from her father. Washington made well more than subsequent presidents: his salary was 2% of the total U.S. budget in 1789. ( only JFK was richer)
>
> The following quote is from this article
> How Did Washington Make His Millions?  by Andrew G. Gardner  in an online journal sponsored by The Colonial Williamsberg foundation.
> "Most of this wealth can be traced to Washington’s success as a land speculator, an enterprise that grew out of his early career as land surveyor. “
> http://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/winter13/washington.cfm <http://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/winter13/washington.cfm>
>
>>>
>>> Though farm land has proved a better investment than improved
>>> properties, property investment has,generally disappointed.
>>>
>>> A good article on this, though not directly applicable to Washington,
>>> here-----> from  ROBERT J. SHILLER is Sterling Professor of Economics
>>> at Yale.
>>>
>>> Why Land and Homes Actually Tend to Be Disappointing Investments
>>>
>>> https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/17/upshot/why-land-may-not-
>>> be-the-smartest-place-to-put-your-nest-egg.html
>>> --
>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l