The Pioneering Australian Brewery founded by an “Enterprising Rogue and Scoundrel” – James Squire

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Biographical, Local history

Pyrmont Bridge Road in the inner suburb of Camperdown—no small distance from the now pedestrian only Pyrmont Bridge itself—is where you’ll find the brew house of James Squire, reputedly Sydney’s first brewer. It’s current name, Malt Shovel Brewery, is a yesteryear nod to the “Malting Shovel Tavern”, a pub run by the brewery’s namesake and founder James Squire at Kissing Point (present-day Putney on Sydney’s Parramatta River) commencing ca. 1798. Squire (or possibly ‘Squires’) commenced cultivating hops on the riverside location around 1806. Squire is considered to be the first person to brew beer successfully in Australia, although some claim the title on behalf of one John Boston who made corn beer in Sydney in 1796 with the aid of an encyclopaedia. Boston’s Indian corn-based beer “was so successful that he erected at some expense a building proper for the business” (Iltis).

Squire also was particularly successful at it, so much so that he eventually acquired a vast estate that stretched from Parramatta River to a point north of Victoria Road. Squire’s real estate empire wasn’t exactly down to superior business acumen on the brewer’s part…Squire kickstarted his land holdings monopoly by revelling in decidedly unethical behaviour.

But more of that later, first let’s look at the earlier chapter of Squire’s life, the sequence of events that brought him to Britain’s colony at Port Jackson. From his early years in England Squire found himself on the wrong side of the law, arrested for highway robbery which launched him on a path of recidivism. He was subsequently nabbed for pilfering from somebody else’s hen house and managed to escape the noose through transportation to Botany Bay with the 1788 First Fleet. Being transported didn’t cure Squire of his predilection for thievery however. Stealing hops (an illustrious start to brewing immortality!) got him 300 lashes of the ‘Cat’ (150 immediately and another 150 on “lay-buy” when his back was deemed up to it again).

After winning his freedom Squire was granted a small plot of land which with “a little skillful swindling” from other less diligent emancipist-land grantees he managed to grow into an estate in excess of 1,000-acres (the “unethical behaviour” alluded to above).


Squire’s business was the recipient of government incentivisation a few years later when Governor King began encouraging the brewing of beer as a counter to the pernicious trafficking of rum and corruption perpetrated by the colony’s military. King’s largesse bestowed on the “enterprising rogue” included a cow and the title of Australia’s first brewer.

The brewery and Malting Shovel Tavern at Kissing Point was strategically located, roughly equidistant from the colony’s two arms of settlement (Sydney Cove and Parramatta) …very handy for thirsty passing sailors and boat passengers on the river. By 1820 James Squire was producing a weekly output of 49 hogsheads of beer most of the year long (Walsh).

Squire’s wealth did not rest on the brewery concern. Due to the vagaries of the local grain market and the import trade at the time, it rested on a number of diversified interests which included farming and grazing as well as beer making (Walsh).


Interestingly, the James Squire brewing company of today has, rather than playing it down, whole-heartedly embraced the “scoundrel’s’ legendary ill-repute as a marketing ploy. Convict-related names biographically referencing the exploits and misdemeanours of the man himself resound in the label titles of James Squire beers – “One Fifty Lashes”, “The Swindler”, “Broken Shackles”, “Hop Thief”, “Four Wives” (a reference to JS being married four times) and the like.

࿏࿏࿏

Bibliography

G. P. Walsh, ‘Squire, James (1754–1822)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/squire-james-2688/text3759, published first in hardcopy 1967, accessed online 16 March 2021.

Judith Iltis, ‘Boston, John (?–1804)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/boston-john-1804/text2051, published first in hardcopy 1966, accessed online 16 March 2021.

‘The Incredible (and True) Story of James Squire’, https://www.jamessquire.com.au/

The Brazilian Empire of the Braganzas: Endgame Emperor, Dom Pedro II’s Rule

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Biographical, Comparative politics, International Relations, Military history, National politics, Regional History

Pedro II’s reign as emperor of Brazil started in the least propitious of circumstances. The first and immediate threat to the longevity of his rule was that he was only five-years-old when he acceded, necessitating a regency in Brazil until he came of age to rule in his own right. The other obstacle was that Brazil was still a fledgling empire wracked by political instability. Civil wars and factionalism plagued the empire, a vast region posing extremely formidable challenges to rule … between 1831 and 1848 there were more than 20 minor revolts including a Muslim slave insurrection and seven major ones (some of these were by secessionist movements). Pedro II had more success in foreign policy, the empire expanded at the expense of neighbours Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay as the result of a series of continental wars. Some early historians saw Dom Pedro’s long reign in Brazil (1831-1889) as prosperous, enlightened and benevolent (he freed his own slaves in 1840) [Martin, Percy Alvin. “Causes of the Collapse of the Brazilian Empire.” The Hispanic American Historical Review 4, no. 1 (1921): 4-48. Accessed December 3, 2020. doi:10.2307/2506083.], certainly the emperor was viewed widely as a unifying force in Brazil for a good two-thirds of his reign.

1870s, on a course for turbulent waters in the empire
From the 1870s onward however the consensus in favour of the rule of Pedro the ‘Unifier’ had started to show signs of fraying. The institutions that formed the three main pillars of the empire’s constitutional monarchical system—the landowning planter class, the Catholic clergy and the armed forces—were all becoming gradually disaffected from the regime, as were the new professional classes.

The landowning elite
Pedro II’s reign came to an end in 1889 with his overthrow. The pretext for the removal of the Brazilian monarchy, according to the conventional thesis, was grievances of the planter oligarchy at the abolition of slavery (The Golden Law, 1888), which Dom Pedro had given his imprimatur to (CH Haring). This view holds that the landowners❋ deserted the monarchy for the republic because they were not compensated properly for their loss of slaves (Martin). This conclusion has been challenged by Graham et al on several grounds: the plantation owners dominated the imperial government of Pedro making them complicit in the decision to abolish slavery (ie, why would they be acting against their own interests?); many slave-owning planters favoured abolition because it brought an end to the mass flight of slave from properties; the succeeding republic government itself did not indemnify planters for their loss of slaves. More concerning than the abolition of slavery to the planters, in Graham’s view, was the introduction of land reform, something they were intent on avoiding at all costs. The planter oligarchs were willing to concede the end of the slave system so long as it forestalled land reform, the linchpin to real change in the society. Siding with the republicans, Graham concedes, was a calculated risk on their part, as there were many radical and reformist abolitionists¤ under the pro-republic umbrella with a very different agenda (national industrialisation) to them, but one they were willing to take⚉ [Hahner ; Graham, Richard. “Landowners and the Overthrow of the Empire.” Luso-Brazilian Review 7, no 2 (1970): 44-56. Accessed December 3, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3512758.]

🔺 Slaves on a fazenda (coffee farm), 1885

The clergy
The conservative Catholic hierarchy were traditional backers of the emperor and the empire in Brazil. But a conflict of state in the 1870s between secularism and ultramontanism (emphasis on the strong central authority of the pope) undermined the relationship. This religious controversy involving the irmandades (brotherhood) drove a rift between the Brazilian clergy and the monarchy [Hahner, June E. “The Brazilian Armed Forces and the Overthrow of the Monarchy: Another Perspective.” The Americas 26, no. 2 (1969): 171-82. Accessed December 3, 2020. doi:10.2307/980297].

The national army
The army had long-standing resentments about its treatment in Brazilian society…its low wages and the lack of a voice in the imperial cabinet were simmering grievances. Understandable then that together with the republicans, they were in the forefront of the coup against the monarchy, the pronunciamento (military revolt) that occurred in 1889. A key and popular figure influencing the younger officer element away from support for the monarchy was Manuel Deodoro da Fonseca (Marechal de campo in the army). Marshal Deodoro assumed the nominal leadership of the successful coup. Swept up in the turmoil of republican agitation, Deodoro, despite being a monarchist, found to his surprise that he had been elected the republic’s first president. The coup has been described as a “barrack room conspiracy” involving a fraction of the military whose “grievances (were) exploited by a small group of determined men bent on the establishment of the Republic” (Martin).

🔺 Allegory depicting Emperor Pedro’s farewell from Brazil (Image: Medium Cool)

Revolution from above
Historians have noted that the 1889 ‘revolution’ that toppled Pedro II was no popular revolution…it was “top-down”, elite-driven with the notable absence of participation from the povo (“the people”) in the process (Martin). In fact the emperor at the time still retained a high level of popularity among the masses who expressed no great enthusiasm to change the status quo of Brazil’s polity.

The Braganza monarchy, hardly a robust long-term bet
With the health of the ageing Dom Pedro increasingly a matter of concern, the viability of Brazil’s monarchy came under scrutiny. For the military the emperor was not a good role model, Pedro’s own pacifist inclinations did not gel well with the army’s martial spirit. The issue of succession was also a vexed one…Princess Isabel who deputised several times when Dom Pedro was called away to Europe was thought of as a weak heir to the crown. She did not enjoy a positive public perception and Pedro’s transparent failure to exhibit confidence in her did little to bolster her standing, contributing to a further erosion of support for the monarchy [Eakin, M. (2002). Expanding the Boundaries of Imperial Brazil. Latin American Research Review, 37(3), 260-268. Retrieved December 3, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1512527]. The Brazilian monarchical state has been characterised as a kind of monarchy-lite which contributed to its lack of longevity – viz it failed to forge an hereditary aristocracy with political privileges, its titles mere honorifics not bestowing social privilege in Brazilian society. So that, by 1889, the empire had been reduced to a “hollow shell” ready to collapse (Martin).

A loose-knit empire?
One perspective of the 19th century empire focuses on the sparseness and size of Brazil’s territorial expanse. Depreciating its status as an ‘empire’, this view depicts it as being in reality comprising something more like a “loose authority over a series of population clusters (stretching) from the mouth of the Amazon to the Río Grande do Sul” (Eakin). The lack of imperial unification, according to another view of the course of its history, surfaced as an ongoing struggle between the periphery (local politics) and the centre (national government), resulting in the weakening of the fabric of the polity [Judy Bieber, cited in Eakin].

Landless and disenfranchised
Other issues in addition white-anted the legitimacy of Dom Pedro’s regime, notably the shrinking of the franchise. By 1881 the number of Brazilians eligible to vote had dropped alarmingly – less than 15% of what it had been just seven years earlier in 1874. And this trend was not corrected by the succeeding republic regime, portending a problematic future for Brazilian harmony because with the new republic came a rapid boost in immigration [‘The Old or First Republic, 1889-1930’, (Country Studies), www.countrystudies.us].

The cards in Brazil were always stacked in favour of the landed elite, an imbalance set in virtual perpetuity after the 1850 Land Law which restricted the number of Brazilians who could be landowners (condemning the vast majority to a sharecropper existence). The law concentrated land in fewer hands, ie, that of the planters, while creating a ready, surplus pool of labour for the plantations [Emília Viotti da Costa, The Brazilian Empire: Myths and Histories (2000)].

Structural seeds of the empire’s eclipse
One theory locates Brazil’s imperial demise squarely in a failure to implement reform. The younger Pedro’s empire, projecting a rhetoric of liberalism which masked an anti-democratic nature, remained to the end unwilling to reform itself. The planter elite, with oligopolistic economic control and sway over the political sphere, maintained a rigid traditional structure of production—comprising latifúndios (large landholdings), slavery and the export of tropical productions (sugar, tobacco, coffee)—while stifling reform initiatives and opposing industrialisation [McCann, Frank D. The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 18, no. 3, 1988, pp. 576–578. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/203948. Accessed 3 Dec. 2020]. Another criticism of the monarchical government concerns its economic performance. Detractors point to the regime’s failure to take the opportunities afforded by the world boom in trade after 1880, a consequence of which was that powerful provincial interests opted for a federal system [‘The Brazilian Federal State in the Old Republic (1889-1930): Did Regime Change Make a Difference?’, (Joseph L. Love), Lemann Institute of Brazilian Studies, University of Illinois, www.avalon.utadeo.edu.co/]

Primeira República, “King Coffee” and industrial development
Initially the political ascendency in the First Republic lay with the urban-based military. However within a few years the government complexion was changed. The ‘Paulistas’, a São Paulo civilian cliche of landowners, elbowed the ineffectual Deodora aside. Exploiting differences between the army and the navy, the landowning elite then edged the remaining uniformed ministers out of the cabinet [Hahner], consolidating the “hegemonic leadership” of monolithic Paulista coffee planters in the republic✪.The First (or Old) Republic (1889-1930) was marked by uneven, stop-start spurts of industrialisation together with high level production of coffee for export. The Old Republic ended with another coup by a military junta in 1930 which in turn led to the Vargas dictatorship [Font; Graham].

Río de Janeiro, 1889 🔺

Endnote: The anomalous Brazilian empire of the 19th century
During its 60-plus years of existence Brazil’s empire stood out among the post-colonial states of 19th century Central and South America as the single viable monarchy in a sea of republicanism. Briefly on two occasions it was joined by México, also a constitutional monarchy but one that didn’t truly take root. On the second occasion the fated Emperor Maximilian—who was Pedro II’s first cousin—tried to forge an imperial network of sorts with Brazil.

🔺 Confederados of Americana, Brazil (Photo: Business Insider)

PostScript: Confederados in Brazil
After the South’s defeat in the American Civil War, Pedro II, wanting to cultivate cotton in the empire, invited Southerners to settle in Brazil which still practiced slavery (others went to México or to other Latin American states, even to Egypt). Estimates of between 10 and 20 thousand took up Dom Pedro’s offer, settling mainly in São Paulo. Most of these Confederados found the hardships too challenging and returned home after Reconstruction, some however stayed on in Brazil with their descendants still living in places like the city in São Paulo named Americana [‘The Confederacy Made Its Last Stand in Brazil’, (Jesse Greenspan), History, upd. 22-Jun-2020, www.history.com].

⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯ ⎯

❋ a dominant force in Brazilian economics and society which had benefitted from the 1850 Brazilian land law which restricted the number of landowners

¤ such as Joaquim Nabuco

⚉ the planter elite decided in the end that a governo federal system would better protect their land monopolisation than the empire could (Graham)

✪ coffee from Minas Gerais, Río de Janeiro and especially São Paulo plantations were the mainstay of the Brazilian economy (Font)

Recluse Deuces: Salinger and Pynchon, Two Modern Literary Outliers, Part II – TR Pynchon Jr

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Biographical, Comparative politics, Creative Writing, Literary & Linguistics, Politics, Popular Culture

The second in our brace of reclusive authors of American fiction is Thomas Pynchon (see preceding blog on JD Salinger). Long Island-born Pynchon came to the full-time vocation of fiction-writing via short stints in the navy and for Boeing as a technical aide. By the time Pynchon writes his first novel, V. in 1963, he is domiciled in México City, and the persona of Pynchon as an “Invisible Man of Letters” has already started to take root. 

PYNCHON

If there were slim pickings for inquisitive fans of JD Salinger wanting more biographical information about their reclusive ‘fave’ writer, then comparatively there’s an absolute famine when it comes to the lack of ‘goss’ on Thomas Pynchon! Pynchon has managed to weave an airtight web of mystery around his personal life – no interviews, no attendance of literary prize awards, no memoirs, no hobnobbing with fellow celebrities at ‘A’ list gatherings, no teaching post in academia. In Pynchon’s (loosely) historically-based novel Mason & Dixon one of the characters is castigated for “the least tolerable of Offences … the Crime they styl’d ‘Anonymity’” – the very state of existence that Pynchon craves. The reclusive and ubër-private New Yorker differs from the equally reclusive Salinger in not having had to suffer the ignominy of family ‘betrayal’ as Salinger was subjected to. Pynchon’s family (agent/wife, son, brother and sister) and friends have all closed ranks, drawing down the cone of silence on the subject of the famous recluse＊.

Pynchon belongs to the “why make it simple, when you can make it complicated” school of communication. His books, popularly subsumed under the label ‘postmodern’ are typically characterised by over-elaborate and often open-ended plots, dense and hard to follow, labyrinthine sentences (Mason & Dixon meanders a full 122 words before it reaches its first full stop!) Pynchon offers up a mixed grill of cultural references to sex, drug culture, science and tech stuff, historical information and comic-book fantasy (with a raft of quirky and zany characters), etc. Beginning with The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), the first of Pynchon’s “Californian trilogy” novels, the author turns a critical eye on the counterculture…although Pynchon evinces a consonance with its core values and communitarian ideals he voices a concern that the American counterculture may be an accessory of the dominant culture rather than a genuine reaction to it [‘American Modernity and Counterculture’, (The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon), www.litcharts .org]. In ‘Lot 49’ protagonist Oedipa Maas accidentally stumbles into Trystero, a shadowy world of convoluted conspiracies, unearthing a centuries-old conflict between rival mail distribution companies.

Political Pynchon?
A central motif that comes through in Pynchon’s novels is a distrust bordering on paranoia of government agencies and private corporations. In Gravity’s Rainbow he expresses deep suspicions about the motives of the military/industrial complex. But Pynchon seems also to distrust the established political left in its empirical authoritarian form. Instead, his natural orientation and sympathies seem to be towards the anarchists and the preterites (ie, those controlled by the elite). One scholar notes that anarchists or allusions to them are present in all of the Pynchon books … anarchism, Pynchon seems to suggest, might be the best non-authoritarian and non-hierarchical social configuration for the future [‘Riding the Interface: An Anarchist Reading of Gravity’s Rainbow’, (Graham Benton), www.pynchonnotes.openlibhums.org]. Politics also run through Pynchon’s next, Vineland (1990), a novel which some dismissively dispatched as “Pynchon-Lite”. Vineland is an absurdist fable— punctuated with numerous references to drugs, 1960s music and TV pop culture, especially Star Wars—through which Pynchon provides a commentary on several key issues of the Eighties (the culture war debates, reading, television and mass communications). Set against the backdrop of the Republican Party’s re-election in 1984, Pynchon also takes a hefty swipe at American politics in the age of Reaganomics with a warning to America about “encroaching fascism” [Meinel, Tobias. “A Deculturated Pynchon? Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland” and Reading in the Age of Television.” Amerikastudien / American Studies 58, no. 3 (2013): 451-64. Accessed November 26, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43485900].

❝ Then again, it’s the whole Reagan program, isn’t it—dismantle the New Deal, reverse the effects of World War II, restore fascism at home and around the world, flee into the past, can’t you feel it, all the dangerous childish stupidity—I don’t like the way it came out … someday, with the right man in the White House, there will be a Department of Jesus.❞

~ Thomas Pynchon, Vineland

While resolutely keeping his guard up Pynchon maintains control of his universe by choosing when and what of himself he gives up to the world at large. Famously Pynchon has appeared (in animated form) on two episodes of The Simpsons, having dictated the terms of his guest spot (clear sign that the couch-surfing literary hermit is up on mainstream pop culture※). Obviously the idea of the Simpsons gig tickled his humerus wildly, as he is shown(sic) wearing a paper bag on his head and gets to say that he loves Marge Simpson’s book “almost as much as he loves cameras”.

The “no selfies” author  
Tom Pynchon has been incredibly successful over many decades, especially living in a metropolis of over eight million people, in scrupulously avoiding the lenses of the ubiquitous paparazzi. Until very recently there was virtually no new photos of the reclusive writer floating round⍟. Media outlets when running a story on Pynchon almost invariably fall back on the one or two photos taken during his navy days (when Pynchon was aged around 19/20!). Pynchon’s legendary antipathy to having his photo taken has been explained away as  self-consciousness about his protruding buck teeth (something that an early trip to the dentist could surely have helped with). Whether this explanation holds water or not is of course, like everything else, a topic Pynchon is deafeningly silent on. On the issue of Pynchon hermetically sealing himself off from the world, a more plausible speculation is that it may be a reflection of Pynchon’s disapproval of the modern trend of writers embracing, even rejoicing, in the role of being celebrities, eg, Norman Mailer and Truman Capote et al [‘Thomas Pynchon Returns to New York, Where He’s Always Been’, (J.K. Trotter), The Atlantic, 17-Jun-2013, www.theatlantic.com].

A method in the madness?  
The lengths Pynchon will go to avoid being photographed have a paranoia-like tinge to them, and some are legendary. Once in México during the Early Sixties V. period, when surprised by a random photographer, Pynchon apparently jumped straight out of his apartment window to escape being snapped [‘Hiding in Plain Sight: On the unobservable Thomas Pynchon’, (Alex Gilvarry), Topic, Issue No. 04, October 2027, www.topic.com]. The failure to pin down the identity of a famous but reclusive novelist contributes to the creation of myths … the enigma of an “invisible literary man” exudes more intrigue. Pynchon would understand that having a mystique about him, another layer of interest for his ‘gonzo’ fan base to engage with, would have a bonus marketable spin-off for the author’s sales [‘Meet Your Neighbor, Thomas Pynchon’, (Nancy Jo Sales), New York, 27-Jun-2008, www.nymag.com].

Pynchon Inc personnel: the ministry of silly names  
Pynchon novels are typically peopled by a vast array of characters. In Gravity’s Rainbow, Pychon rolls out no fewer than 400 named characters in 760 pages (most with fleeting walk-on, walk-off parts). Pynchon also revels in preposterous nomenclature, inventing lots of outrageous puns like Joaquin Stick, Benny Profane and the Marquis de Sod (a Californian lawn-care specialist!), and an inexhaustible supply of downright silly names – including McClintic Sphere, Tyrone Slothrop, Rachel Owlglass, Weed Atman, Yashmeen Halfcourt, Mike Fallopian, Scarsdale Vipe, Doc Sportello, Rev. Wicks Cherrycoke and Pig Bodine. Needless to say from the jokey nature of this Pynchon nomen-sampler that fleshing out a character’s depths is not really the New Yorker’s bag [‘Gravity’s Rainbow’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

An orgy of exegesis: Conspiracy la-la land
As someone with a lofty literary profile in the US and beyond (regularly mentioned in the mix of annual Nobel Prize contenders), the utter paucity of biographical information on Pynchon has given rise to some pretty wild speculation about who he really is? Outré theories abound on the internet about the novelist’s identity, one of the most persistent is that Thomas Pynchon is really JD Salinger! Presumably the germ of this notion was the commonalities between the two, both perceived as hermits with a pathological allergy to attention, and each shared a fierce insistence on their personal privacy. But what gave added weight to the imaginative coupling in people’s minds was Salinger’s early removal from the public gaze and the supposed drying up of his literary output as evidenced by the complete cessation of his published work post-1965. This baseless ‘theory’ holds that Salinger invented “Thomas Pynchon” as an “elaborate authorial personality” to hide behind (Trotter). Even more ludicrous was the allegation that Pynchon was in fact the Unabomber! Another speculation has him as an airline pilot in real life (motivated by Howard Hughes adulation perhaps?). Other theories, rather predictably, conclude that Pynchon has to be a drug smuggler or a CIA agent (“its all there in the stories!”) [‘Authors reveal their Thomas Pynchon conspiracy theories’, Bookish, 03-Oct-2013, www.usatoday.com]. And so it goes, with more and even crazier notions. There’s something very apt that so many loopy conspiracy theories circulate about the identity of an author whose fiction is littered with accounts of loopy conspiracy theories✫.

Footnote: Lost in Pynchon  
Given my own often bewildered reaction to much of the fiction of Pynchon, and the palpable frustration that I see exhibited by others seeking despairingly to decode Tom Pynchon’s idiosyncratically personal brand of hieroglyphics◪, I often wonder why so many of us punters keep making the self-flagellating effort…I’m reminded of the cynic’s definition of a classic book, “something that everyone wants to have read but nobody wants to read” (Mark Twain, who else?). Echoing this is one critic’s pithy summation of Gravity’s Rainbow, Pynchon’s most praised book, as the “least-read-must-read” book in American history (Sales). For the marginalised multitude denied enlightenment there is some comfort in mockery. The title of Pychon’s 2009 “Po-Mo” take on the ‘gumshoe’ novel, Inherent Vice⍉, offers a pyrrhic get-square (Incoherent Vice) [‘Incoherent Vice’, (Sam Anderson), New York, 31-Jul-2009, www.nymag.com]. 

PostScript: Absurdist and a Fabulist?
Pynchon is a black belt when it comes to telling the “shaggy-dog” story. Early critics described his novels V. and Gravity’s Rainbow as “high-caliber shaggy dog stories, full of digressions and possibly pointless details converging to a climax that revolves little” [‘Thomas Pynchon: A Primer’, (Jack Joslin), 25-Apr-2012, www.litreactor.com]. This description also applies to the later Mason & Dixon, a long rambling tale full of rollicking in taverns and absurdly inconsequential humour. Pynchon concocts a mixture of fact and fiction, the actual historical personages of Mason and Dixon blended into the “obvious lies, rumours and outright fantasies of their travels” while surveying the boundaries of colonial North America [Thomas Pynchon: Novels & Concept.” Study.com, 25 June 2013, study.com/academy/lesson/thomas-pynchon-novels-lesson-quiz.html]. This shaggy dog, picturesque style of Pynchon brings to mind Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy but also reminds me of Peter Carey (especially Illywhacker) and John Barth who write in a Fabulist/Magic Realism vein.

————————————————-—————–

＊ the scarcity of biographical material on Pynchon doesn’t stop the “Pynchon-curious” from trawling through the texts to turn up whatever “auto-fiction” they can find…the protagonist of V., Benny Profane, “a schlemihi and human yo-yo” is ex-navy, just like his creator.

※ Pynchon, and for that matter, JD Salinger in his time, would undoubtedly have no trouble writing a treatise on daytime television had either wished to do so

 ⍟ even the photos supposed taken of the septuagenarian/octogenarian Pynchon out shopping can’t be confirmed as being genuinely of him

✫ Pynchon once famously said “every weirdo in the world is on my wavelength” 

◪ one reviewer likened Pynchon’s cryptic first novel V. to a Hieronymus Bosch triptych  

⍉  thus far the only Thomas Pynchon novel to make it to the silver screen

Recluse Deuces: Salinger and Pynchon, Two Modern Literary Outliers, Part I – JD Salinger

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Biographical, Creative Writing, Literary & Linguistics, Popular Culture

In the contemporary world of fiction-writing and publishing, maximising one’s media exposure in such a highly competitive market is considered essential for commercial success in the industry. A regime of TV talk shows, book tour circuits, getting your face out there, meeting and greeting the fans, is what authors do, its their bread and butter.

Two American novelists whose careers have followed an altogether different trajectory are JD Salinger and Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Junior. As modern writers of fiction, what Salinger and Pynchon have in common are a seemingly reclusive nature, or at the very least a pronounced aversion to publicity, or if you prefer to look at the obverse side, a fanatical even pathological commitment to guarding one’s own privacy from prying eyes.

SALINGER

❛What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.❜※

~ JD Salinger, Catcher in the Rye

 ꧁꧂  ꧁꧂  ꧁꧂

The ‘Catcher’: the unbearable heaviness of fame
JD (Jerome David, but went by the name of Jerry) Salinger had a remarkably slim output for a literary career that spanned over half a century. Between 1965 and his death in 2010 Salinger published nothing at all, although he continued to write in this time, prolifically it seems⚀. 1951 was the seminal year for Salinger with the dazzling success of his debut novel, Catcher in the Rye…the story of teenager Holden Caulfield struck a profound chord with American adolescence, articulating a sense of angst and alienation from adult (mainstream) society. The ensuing torrent of fame, the intense media and fan preoccupation with the book and in its author, drove Salinger to ground, relocating for good to a rural retreat in Cornish, New Hampshire.

Salinger, in the words of the New York Times, “elevating privacy to an art form”, bunkered down, refused interviews, and clammed up about his personal life and past – leaving the press and other interested parties to try to piece together the autobiographical parts of the novelist’s existence. Some observers have speculated that Salinger experienced some sort of identity crisis or nervous breakdown after ‘Catcher’, that triggered his publicity-shyness. As a result of Catcher in the Rye’s impact Salinger thereafter set a determined course to studiously avoid future publication, including no follow-up novel to capitalise on the success✧. Eventually a handful of shorter works were published, the most significance of which was his 1961 novella/short story collection Franny and Zooey (adventures of the Glass family). On the dust jacket of that book Salinger wrote, “a writer’s feelings of anonymity-obscurity are the second most valuable property on loan to him during his working years”… elsewhere he has spoken of “the joys of not publishing” [‘Salinger, Pynchon & Co.: When writers are recluses’, (Scott Timberg), LA Times, 02-Sep-2007, www.latimes.com].

Salinger troppo bizarro
While Salinger kept schtum over the years, striving vigilantly to fend off unwanted attention, others within the author’s family and associates provided personal insights to whet the biography-starved appetites of the public. Both Salinger’s former live-in lover Joyce Maynard (who at 18 shacked up with the 50-something literary recluse in the New Hampshire hideaway) and the author’s own daughter Margaret wrote their own “tell-all”, unfavourable memoirs of Salinger (eg, “a scowling martinet who drank his own urine and clung to outmoded racial stereotypes drawn from old Hollywood movies”)¤ [Robert Schnakenberg, Secret Lives of Great Authors, (2008)]. Margaret’s hatchet-job on Dad provoked a sibling feud as Salinger’s son Matt (an occasional actor) rushed to his defence dissing Margaret’s memoir, Dream Catcher, as mere “gothic tales of our supposed childhood” [‘The odd life of Catcher in the Rye author JD Salinger’, (Martin Chilton), Independent, 01-Jan-2019, www.independent.co.uk].

(Photo: AP)

Catcher in the Rye has consistently charted as a best-seller✪, but its critical reception has been controversial and reviews mixed. Some critics of the novel, taking a highbrow view (Joan Didion, George Steiner) have deemed it too pessimistic in its message, too obscene, sincere admittedly, but nonetheless mawkish. Other readers, more low-key in their response, have wondered what all the fuss was about [‘J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, Aging Gracelessly’, (Jonathan Yardley), The Washington Post, 19-Oct-2004, www.washingtonpost.com]. The ever-acerbic Gore Vidal questioned whether “Salinger’s enigmatic exile lent his work a seriousness it didn’t deserve” (Chilton). Salinger biographers Shields and Salerno saw ‘Catcher’ less as a coming-of-age story than allegorically as a “disguised war novel”◘ [‘Book Introduction to Salinger’, American Masters, 24-Dec-2013, www.pbs.org/].

A manifesto for the criminally unhinged
A notorious side-effect of the public’s (or sections of it’s) infatuation with Catcher in the Rye is that it has been the motivational vade mecum of choice for some assassins (or would-be assassins) of celebrities. The novel had an inspirational role in the (separate) shootings of John Lennon and Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s. Mark David Chapman (who murdered Lennon) and John Hinckley Jr (who shot Reagan) both over-identified with Holden Caulfield to the point of being delusional and both were found to be in possession of a copy of ‘Catcher’ at the times of their crime.

PostScript: How reclusive are these literary hermits?
Salinger and Pynchon et al have been described as “recursively reclusive”, and this seems to be the majority opinion among fervent Salinger and Pynchon-watchers [‘The People Behind the Pen – T. Pynchon, J.D. Salinger and J.R.R. Tolkien’, Cision, 25-Sep-2015, www.prweb.com/]. But this view has been challenged – in Thomas Pynchon’s case, by himself! In 1997 Pynchon told CNN (by phone) that he believed that ‘recluse’ was “a code word generated by journalists … meaning, ‘doesn’t like to talk to reporters’” – the “media-shy recluse as an invention of the media” [“The endangered literary ‘recluse’”, (Brian Joseph Davis), The Globe and Mail, 07-Aug-2009, www.theglobeandmail.com]. But if Pynchon—dubbed by the US media as the “Invisible Man”—is a recluse and a hermit, he’s one who is hiding in plain sight, having lived for about 30 years in the same apartment (the precise address can be openly accessed by a simple online search) in the dense metropolis of New York City!

In regard to Salinger, Shields and Salerno contend that he was never actually a recluse – their evidence? While in Cornish, NH, he travelled, he had friends, family, relationships, he consumed the popular culture of his day, he expressed political opinions (not necessarily positive ones…Reagan was “the outgoing dummy” and George HW Bush was “the incoming dummy”)(Chilton). Another biographer, Paul Alexander, asserts that Salinger played up the role of loner, that he was originally quite a keen socialiser when he lived in NYC…and in “another life” in his youthful pre-literary career, ‘Jerry’ had been “entertainment director” for a cruise liner, making the fun happen for 1,500 passengers on MS Kungsholm! As has been noted, Salinger and Pynchon (and Harper Lee and others) are “not recluses in the true sense of the word … they simply have different ways of being public figures” (Davis).

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※ Salinger’s words proved incredibly prescient in light of his own literary career

⚀ in 2019 Salinger’s son indicated that the family will release much of his father’s large body of unpublished work

✧  from the 1950s on Salinger also refused all offers to sell the film rights to ‘Catcher’, backing it up with a ready willingness to sue in any instance of unauthorised use of his creations

¤ other allegations of ‘oddball’ behaviour directed at Salinger include his practice of glossolalia, his use of an orgasmatron, his dabbling in Scientology (and Vedantaism) and embrace of extreme homeopathy (Schnakenberg)

✪ to date the novel has sold somewhere in the vicinity of 70 million copies worldwide

◘ Salinger was a WWII veteran (active in D-Day, Dachau), had PTSD; postwar he was “perpetually in search of a spiritual cure for his damaged psyche” (Shields & Salerno)