CoL49 Group reading - The bust & Jay Gould

[Michael Bailey]

If I were a more motivated writer I’d have a bust of Pynchon - but, over or
on my desk

Learned the hard way about Damocles things over the bed with a bulletin
board years ago

Is there a bust of Pynchon available?

No, not that I could find - there’s a nice one of Dylan Thomas, tho’

https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=31442984478&com_cvv=d30042528f072ba8a22b19c81250437cd47a2f30330f0ed03551c4efdaf3409e




On Thu, May 9, 2024 at 11:20 PM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> 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
>>
>