On "Slothrop's" family lineage, which Ruggles clearly wants to establish early on, there's a good summary of the real Pynchon familty tree in the article "Pynchon's Politics" by Charles Hollander: https://pynchonnotes.openlibhums.org/article/id/2395/ . I'm sure everyone knows that Willian Pynchon was a founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, and also founded Roxbury and Springfield. The family house is discussed at length by Hawthorne both in The Scarlett Letter (I think) and the House of Seven Gables (I think -- maybe it's just one of the two)?
Where it gets fun is that Pynchon & Co. was a major American stock brokerage firm in the 1920s, led by George M Pynchon, who bankrupted himself and the whole family on Black Thursday, October 24 1929. The bad investment was a film company, Fox Film and General Theaters, in which they were co-investors with Chase Securities Corporation & Chase Bank. Upton Sinclair wrote a whole book about the Fox Films Affair, "Upton Sinclair Presents William Fox" (1933), https://archive.org/details/uptonsinclairpre017746mbp.
By April 1931 the firm was suspended from the New York Stock Exchange, and the estate of George M Pynchon was sold at public auction. George M Pynchon killed himself in 1940, three years after our Thomas Ruggles was born in 1937.
Then, I can't tell if this is related to the stockbrokerage, but: "One Mrs Helen Delany Pynchon made news in 1931, saved from a jail term by the beneficence of her former employer, mining engineer Raymond Brooks, when she was convicted of robbing him of $45,000" <--I need to research that.
His father, Thomas Sr. (our author is actually Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr.), was apparently not on George's side of the family and didn't have much to do with the Fox Film scandal--though they were related--but the whole family name had been tainted, and the family found itself somewhat estranged from the east coast elites they had been associated with for hundreds of years. Thomas Sr. was an industrial surveyor and engineer, and was Supt. of Highways for the town of Oyster Bay, where his son, went to high school. This would keep him in close enough to the elites of the Hamptons, but still separate...
All that to say, Yes, Slothrop Is America, but also he is one who is nonetheless out of favor with his own country. He is self-aware of his Americanness, but alienated by it after a long family history of complicity & hucksterism.
I'd like to toast Tantivy Mucker-Maffick. He's a good bloke and very sociable.
The whole family was bankrupted and under a cloud of scandal, a cloud that was still very present when our Thomas Ruggles Pynchon was born in 1937. O
On "Slothrop's" family lineage, which Ruggles clearly wants to establish early on, there's a good summary of the real Pynchon familty tree in the article "Pynchon's Politics" by Charles Hollander: https://pynchonnotes.openlibhums.org/article/id/2395/ . I'm sure everyone knows that Willian Pynchon was a founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, and also founded Roxbury and Springfield. The family house is discussed at length by Hawthorne both in The Scarlett Letter (I think) and the House of Seven Gables (I think -- maybe it's just one of the two)?
Where it gets fun is that Pynchon & Co. was a major American stock brokerage firm in the 1920s, led by George M Pynchon, who bankrupted himself and the whole family on Black Thursday, October 24 1929. The bad investment was a film company, Fox Film and General Theaters, in which they were co-investors with Chase Securities Corporation & Chase Bank. Upton Sinclair wrote a whole book about the Fox Films Affair, "Upton Sinclair Presents William Fox" (1933), https://archive.org/details/uptonsinclairpre017746mbp.
By April 1931 the firm was suspended from the New York Stock Exchange, and the estate of George M Pynchon was sold at public auction. George M Pynchon killed himself in 1940, three years after our Thomas Ruggles was born in 1937.
Then, I can't tell if this is related to the stockbrokerage, but: "One Mrs Helen Delany Pynchon made news in 1931, saved from a jail term by the beneficence of her former employer, mining engineer Raymond Brooks, when she was convicted of robbing him of $45,000" <--I need to research that.
His father, Thomas Sr. (our author is actually Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr.), was apparently not on George's side of the family and didn't have much to do with the Fox Film scandal--though they were related--but the whole family name had been tainted, and the family found itself somewhat estranged from the east coast elites they had been associated with for hundreds of years. Thomas Sr. was an industrial surveyor and engineer, and was Supt. of Highways for the town of Oyster Bay, where his son, went to high school. This would keep him in close enough to the elites of the Hamptons, but still separate...
All that to say, Yes, Slothrop Is America, but also he is one who is nonetheless out of favor with his own country. He is self-aware of his Americanness, but alienated by it after a long family history of complicity & hucksterism.
I'd like to toast Tantivy Mucker-Maffick. He's a good bloke and very sociable.
The whole family was bankrupted and under a cloud of scandal, a cloud that was still very present when our Thomas Ruggles Pynchon was born in 1937. O