Norfolk Island’s Auxiliary Settlement: Penal Origins and Pitcairn Continuities

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Local history, Regional History

Just five weeks after the First Fleet led by Captain Arthur Phillip arrived in Port Jackson in 1788, Lieutenant Philip Gidley King was despatched to Norfolk Island 1,673 km north-east of Sydney to establish an ancillary settlement of convicts and free settlers※. The British, recognising the island’s strategic importance in the western Pacific and the need to keep it out of French hands, had a further, practical motive for colonising Norfolk Island. Captain James Cook on his 1774 Pacific voyage identified the island’s (Norfolk Island) pines and (New Zealand) flax plant as invaluable materials for the construction of masts and sails. As it turned out they weren’t, being too brittle for this purpose, although the island’s soil proved good for agriculture and farming (in the early settlement days Norfolk served as Sydney’s ”food bowl”) [Robert Macklin, Hamilton Hume, Our Greatest Explorer, (2019); ‘History’, (Norfolk Island National Park), www.parksaustralia.gov.au].

≜ Norfolk Is penal settlement, ca.1790 (Geo. Raper) (State Lib. of NSW)

From the early days of settlement the convicts made an unsuccessful attempt to depose King. In 1800 Rum Corps officer Joseph Foveaux was made commandant of Norfolk Island, and he successfully but ruthlessly suppressed a new insurrection in 1801 by United Irish prisoners. Foveaux summarily executed some of the convicts without due legal process and courted controversy for his practice of selling female prisoners to settlers. However overall he was commended by the authorities for the advancement of public works on the island under his administration [B. H. Fletcher, ‘Foveaux, Joseph (1767–1846)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/foveaux-joseph-2062/text2567, published first in hardcopy 1966, accessed online 30 December 2020].

(Image: www.lonelyplanet.com)

Abandonment and penal rebirth
Settlement on Norfolk Island went in fits and starts. In 1814 it was abandoned altogether◕ due to a combination of factors – a poor harbour made for perilous landing sites; isolation and remoteness; too costly to maintain; diminished necessity (Sydney had achieved self-sufficiency in food) [‘Looking at History’, 14-Aug-2015, wwwrichardjohnbrblogspotcom]. In 1825 the island was resettled again as a penal colony. This was the beginning of Norfolk’s darkest chapter of its history. The British determined that the reestablished penal colony would be home to the worst case prisoners. Norfolk Island’s second penitentiary has been described as a “planned hell”, with a series of convict uprisings and escape attempts a recurring feature (eg, the 1846 “Cooking Pot” rebellion resulted in its 12 leaders being executed for the murder of four minor officials [Burridge, K. (2013). Review of Mühlhäusler, Peter, and Joshua Nash, Norfolk Island: History, people, environment, language. Oceanic Linguistics, 52(2).] (see Postscript for a different perspective on the question of the penitentiary’s severity).

In the wake of the Bounty
By 1855, with transportation to New South Wales ended, there was only eleven residents left on Norfolk Island (the colony’s remaining 119 convicts had already been relocated to the draconian Van Diemen’s Land prison system). The following year the island was turned over to (194) descendants of the Pitcairn Island mutineers and their Tahitian families. Each was entitled to 50-acre grant of land on Norfolk. Some of the new settlers returned to Pitcairn within ten years but many who stayed pursued their traditional vocations of farming and whaling❂.

(Photo: Getty Images/Lonely Planet)

By the late 19th century the settlers on NI were engaged in a range of industries – forestry, cattle and the growth of export crops (lemon, passionfruit, banana). Changes in land use altered the ecosystem of Norfolk Island. The intensive agricultural use, the clearing of native land, saw the original subtropical rainforest give way to a pastoral landscape of rolling green hills encircled by rocky outcrops (‘Norfolk Island NP’).

Norfolk Island, inching towards autonomy and self-rule
After Australia achieved federation Norfolk Island was administered as an external territory, control alternating between the Australian Commonwealth and NSW. During WWII an Allied airfield was constructed on the island, testimony to its strategic importance in the Pacific theatre of the war. In 1979 Norfolk Island was granted limited self-government by Australia. A constant theme for Norfolk Island throughout its post-war history—perhaps even existing from the initial Australian takeover before WWI—has been the tensions and ambiguities resulting from a search for identity…the NI community is aware of the constant shadow of Australian governance over it and yet it also sensing in its distinctive Pacific Island nature a yearning for self-rule and independence (Burridge). In 2015 Canberra delivered a body blow to the autonomous aspirations of locals when, on the back of an NI economic decline due to the GFC and diminished tourism, it rescinded the Island’s self-government [‘Norfolk Island broke, set to be stripped of self rule’, (Nine News), 19-Mar-2015, www.9news.com.au].

(Image: www.mapsland.com)

Endnote: The period since the transportation of convicts to NI ended has been marked by an absence of violent crime. However early in the 21st century the tranquility was punctured by not one but two murders in the peaceful island community. In 2002 a young woman (an Australian mainlander working in NI) was murdered in mysterious circumstances. Two year after this, the NI government’s deputy chief minister was fatally shot in Kingston the NI capital…the murder had a family rather than a political motive and was not connected to the earlier homicide [New Zealand Herald, 20-Jul-2004].

≜ NI’s old and newer prisons with the iconic Norfolk Is Pines in the background (Source: www.aucklandmuseum.com)

Postscript: Norfolk Island, a “punitive hell” for incorrigibles or an overstated case?  
The conventional view of Norfolk Island as a penitentiary by the mid-19th century is that it “was the most notorious penal station in the English-speaking world and represented all that was bad about the convict system”⚃ (eg, convicts universally brutalised by sadistic gaolers). The colonial secretary in London directed Governor Brisbane in NSW in 1825 to send “the worst description of convicts” to Norfolk, (those) “excluded from all hope of return”. The characterisation of the NI penal colony as “hell-on-earth” is myth not fact according to historian Tim Causer who demurs from the consensus opinion. He argues that the NI inmates were not predominantly of the worst kind, not recidivists, not “doubly-convicted capital respites”, as widely stated. Using the available data Causer shows a contrary picture: over 2,400 of the convicts were first offenders who came directly from Britain and Ireland; nearly 70% sent to NI were sentenced for non-violent crimes (against property) (“‘The worst types of sub-human beings’? The myth and reality of the convicts of the Norfolk Island penal settlement, 1825-1855”, (Tim Causer), March 2011, www.researchgate.net].

__________________________________________
※ the original inhabitants of Norfolk Island were Polynesian seafarers (14th-15th century) who journeyed there from the Kermadec Islands or the North Island of New Zealand

◕ and replaced as a penal destination by Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania)

❂ roughly half of the present NI population of 1,800 are descended from Pitcairners

⚃ at the time NI penitentiary was universally synonymous with criminality and perversion, even alluded to by Charles Dickens in Hard Times. NI was widely considered equal to or worst than the barbaric penal colony at Macquarie Harbour (Tasmania)

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)

The Brazilian Empire of the Braganzas: Founder-Emperor, Dom Pedro I’s Rule

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

Brazil at the start of the 19th century was the jewel in the imperial crown of Portugal, the kingdom’s largest and richest colony. In 1808 Napoleonic aggression had taken the European-wide war to the Iberian Peninsula. An inadvertent consequence of the invasion set Brazil on the path to independence. Portuguese prince regent, the future João VI (or John VI), not wanting to emulate the Spanish royals’ circumstance (incarcerated in a French Prison at Emperor Napoleon’s pleasure) fled Portugal for Brazil, reestablishing the Portuguese royal court in Río de Janeiro.

Dom Pedro o Libertador, an empire of his own

João returned to Lisbon as king of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves on the wave of the Liberal ‘Revolution’ (1820), leaving son Pedro as regent to rule Brazil in his stead. Unfortunately for him Pedro had his own plans, defying his father and the Portuguese motherland, he split Brazil off from Portugal. In a famous “I am staying” speech (Dia do Pico), Pedro rebuffed the demands of the Cortes (parliament) in Lisbon that he yield. Pedro’s timing was good, his move won the backing of the Brazilian landed class. [‘Pedro I and Pedro II‘, (Brazil: Five Centuries of Change), www.library.brown.edu]. Militarily, he met only limited resistance from Portuguese loyalists to his revolt. Aided by skilful leadership of the Brazilian fleet by ace navy admiral, the Scot mercenary Lord (Thomas) Cochrane, Pedro triumphed over his opponents with a relatively small amount of bloodshed, declaring himself emperor of Brazil in late 1822 and receiving the title of “Perpetual-Defender of Brazil”.

(Source: Bibliothèque National)

Pedro, despite benefiting from the able chief-ministership of José Bonifácio, soon found his imperial state on a rocky footing, embroiled in a local war with the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata. In the conflict, Brazil’s southern Cisplatine province, encouraged by the Argentines, broke away from the empire, eventually re-forming as the independent republic of Uruguay (both Brazil and Argentina during this period harboured designs on the territory of Uruguay). On João VI’s death in 1826 Pedro I became king of both Portugal and Brazil, but immediately abdicated the Portuguese throne in favour of his daughter Maria II [‘Biography of Dom Pedro I, First Emperor of Brazil’, (Christopher Minster), ThoughtCo., Upd.15-May-2019, www.thoughtco.com]

Politics within the ruling House of Braganza in this time were turbulent, both in Portugal and Brazil. The king’s younger brother Miguel (“o Usurpador”) usurped the throne of the under-aged Maria, causing Pedro I to also abdicate the Brazilian throne and return to Europe to try to restore the crown to his daughter Maria. Pedro’s five-year-old son, Pedro II, succeeded him in a minority as the new emperor of Brazil in 1831. In Portugal Dom Pedro gathered an army and engaged in what was effectively a civil war between liberals and conservatives who were seeking a return to the rule of absolutism. The war spread into Spain merging into the larger First Carlist War, a war of succession to determine who would assume the Spanish throne. The Portuguese conflict was decided in favour of Dom Pedro and the liberals, but not long after in 1834 Pedro I died of TB.

A whiff of Lusophobia in the Brazilian air

Pedro I’s abdication of the Brazilian throne provoked a brief outbreak of Lusophobia (hatred of the Portuguese) in Brazil. Triggered by perceptions that Lisbon harboured designs to restore Brazil by force to its colonial empire, some Brazilians in a frenzy randomly attacked Portuguese property and killed a number of Portuguese-born residents [‘In the Shadow of Independence: Portugal, Brazil, and Their Mutual Influence after the End of Empire (late 1820s-early 1840s’, (Gabriel Paquette), e-Journal of Portuguese History, versão On-line ISSN 1645-6432, vol.11, no. 2 Porto 2013].

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 his the similarly publicity-shy 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 ‘fave’ reclusive writer, then comparatively there’s an absolute famine when it comes to the lack of ‘goss’ on Thomas Ruggles 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＊.

‘Mason & Dixon’

Pynchon very much belongs to the “why make it simple, when you can make it complicated” school of literary communication. His books, popularly subsumed under the labels ‘postmodern’ and metafiction 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 on page 2!) Pynchon offers up a mixed grill of cultural references to sex, drug culture, science and tech stuff, historical info 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

Guesting on ‘The Simpsons’

While resolutely keeping his guard up Pynchon maintains control of his world 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 (a clear sign that the couch-surfing literary hermit is up on mainstream pop culture※), having dictated the terms of his guest spot. 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”.

Navy Tom

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 fairly 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 or 20!). Pynchon’s legendary antipathy to having his photo taken has been explained away as  self-consciousness about his protruding buck teeth (something that a sequence of sessions in the dentist’s chair early on could surely have fixed). 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].

Zoyd, Frenesi, Prairie, etc

Pynchon Inc personnel: the ministry of silly names  
Pynchon novels are typically peopled by a vast array of (usually odd) 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 multi-layered 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 scores a mention 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 the 2009 “Po-Mo” take on TRP’s ‘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 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 more contemporaneously it reminds me of Peter Carey (especially Illywhacker) and John Barth (The Sot-Weed Factor, Giles Goat-Boy) who both 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