SLPAD - 35 - the end of the intro

[Mark Kohut]

Pynchon's signature phrase, "as X...always sez" is double funny about his
self-perceived always-inferior education.

On Wed, Mar 29, 2023 at 5:16 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>>
>