SLPAD - 35 - the end of the intro

[Mark Kohut]

The Henry Adams remark is not a quote, it is a terrific true joke....so to
speak.

His autobiography is entitled The Education of Henry Adams, of course, and
it is unusual/weird/
neurotic in this way. This well-educated American elitist, active in the
highest corridors of power, of course,
whines this whole memoir that he was not prepared for anything; that his
education and experience never helped
him in whatever he did---had to do next. Basically, that America did not
prepare him for its constant changes, constant
growth pains, and by the identification of we readers, prepared none of us.

Hence, education keeps going on forever.

PS. Although he seemed to 'succeed' , be useful and helpful and
important in everything he did. Including self-publishing
this crazy masterpiece of an American life...

PPS: this feeling of delta--t, constant change, led him to half of his
important dualistic metaphor, the Virgin and the Dynamo.
(the Virgin came from his love of the lost world of medieval
Catholicism--see his other famous book-- in which everything was so
existentially explained that no more education was ever necessary, so to
say. )

On Wed, Mar 29, 2023 at 4:16 AM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

> The Frank Zappa quote is from the liner notes of “Ruben and the Jets.”
>
> This is an album of greasy love songs & cretin simplicity. We made it
> because we really like this kind of music (just a bunch of old men with
> rock & roll clothes sitting around the studio, mumbling about the good old
> days). Ten years from now you’ll be sitting around with your friends
> someplace doing the same thing if there’s anything left to sit on.
>
> https://youtu.be/xX2wOtQMAIQ
>
>
> (My favorite? eh, they’re all pretty good)
>
>
> Henry Adams on Education - nope, can’t find that exact quote.
>
>
>
> Most likely, much of my feeling for this last story can be traced to
> ordinary nostalgia
>                for this time in my life, for the writer who seemed then to
> be emerging, with his
>                bad habits, dumb theories and occasional moments of
> productive silence in which he
>                may have begun to get a glimpse of how it was done. What is
> most appealing about young
>                folks, after all, is the changes, not the still photograph
> of finished character but
>                the movie, the soul in flux. Maybe this small attachment to
> my past is only another
>                case of what Frank Zappa calls a bunch of old guys sitting
> around playing rock ’n’
>                roll. But as we all know, rock ’n’ roll will never die, and
> education too, as Henry
>                Adams always sez, keeps going on forever.
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>