CoL49 Group reading - The bust & Jay Gould

[Michael Bailey]

I don’t know anybody who has a bust of anybody in their house. Does anybody
here?

Would you call it an affectation?

Schroeder has a bust of Beethoven on his piano. Presumably for inspiration.

The Schroeder character was introduced in 1951 - so this oddity could have
been an inspiration for Pierce’s bust of Jay Gould.


I’m not thinking of the bust of Jay Gould in terms of gnarly symbolism but
just, like, wouldn’t you agree that it might be significant -

“if this is who Pierce admires enough to have a frickin’ bust” in a
position near to the frickin’ marriage bed because he wants, while
sleeping, a-and while copulating, to have the bust nearby -

 (ok, I’ve typed “bust” enough times, it’s starting to sound weird)


I refreshed my memory of Jay Gould in Wikipedia.
Fairly typical robber baron, n’est ça pas?

3 standout tidbits:

- Tried to corner gold, screwed a bunch of people & businesses up for
months, & didn’t even make a net profit after the lawsuits

- Quoted (somewhere) as saying something about “he could hire one half of
the working class to kill the other half”
(https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/10/29/hire-half/?amp=1 someone chased
this down - pretty interesting - sounds like not a very accurate quote


 - mentioned in GR in context of being the partner of Jubilee Jim Fisk in
the “cornering gold caper”;

(From _Gravity’s Rainbow_
“It is gone where the woodbine twineth.” Exactly what Jubilee Jim Fisk told
the Congressional committee investigating his and Jay Gould’s scheme to
corner gold in 1869.)






On Sat, May 4, 2024 at 7:19 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> I learned Putin does not have a bust of Lenin
> In his residence, but of Peter the Great.
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>