But What Happened to the Partridge?

There are a slew of historical landmarks in Manhattan, commemorating everything from presidents to punks. But one of my favorites has to be the plaque that signifies "Pear Tree Corner" on an unassuming little streetcorner on the Lower East Side.

In 1647, former New Amsterdam governor Peter Stuyvesant (sometimes known as "Pegleg Pete" after losing a leg in a sea battle with Spain over the island of Saint Martin) returned from a voyage to Holland with, of all things, a pear tree in his cargo. He affectionately planted this tree on his 62-acre estate, at what is now the northeast corner of East 13th Street and Third Avenue. The tree was fruitful for over two centuries as the landscape around it gradually transformed from farmland to city block, until one fateful day in 1857 when a horrendous horse-drawn carriage pile-up effectively sent it to that Great Garden in the sky.

By that time a small apothecary had opened on the corner, supplying medicinal herbs to the inhabitants of what was coming to be called the Lower East Side. Over the years the Brunswick Apotheke, as it was once called, evolved into Kiehl's Pharmacy.

In 1890, in an effort to preserve the memory of Dutch presence in Manhattan, the Holland Society affixed a plaque to the wall of the pharmacy, marking the spot where the tree had stood. Unfortunately the building fell into disrepair over the years, and in 1958 Kiehl's Pharmacy relocated up the street to more modern digs. The original building was slated for demolition and the plaque wound up at St Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, where Stuyvesant had been interred, since no one else seemed to want it.

But the story doesn't end there. A half-century later, with a sudden rekindling of interest in its roots, Kiehl's returned to its original, newly renovated location at Pear Tree Corner and promptly demanded the now quite weatherbeaten plaque be restored. Following a brief proprietary tug-of-war, mark and marker have now been reunited. See for yourself.

Pirates of Pynchon

I finally nabbed a copy of the new Pynchon novel. The man is pretty high up on my list of favorite writers ever (mostly due to the luminous Gravity's Rainbow), so I've been looking forward to plowing through the new one ever since reading Pynchon's very own penned blurb from Amazon. The Gilded Age, anarchists, World's Columbian Exposition, Nikola Tesla, Groucho Marx - all gathered in one Herculean tome. What's not to like?

I've noticed that nearly all the book reviews refer to the supposed "difficulty" of Pynchon's prose and the need to "decode" the text. Am I missing something here? Granted, Mason & Dixon was difficult to pick up, mostly due to the antiquated syntax (and physical weight). But Crying of Lot 49 and Vineland were not what I would term difficult reading. Even Gravity's Rainbow, which is pretty thematically challenging, is nowhere near on a par with, say, Finnegans Wake. So far in Against the Day I've encountered a boy's adventure yarn, a pulp detective story, a western, and a bit of Jules Verne-esque flight of fancy. Pynchon is a pretty smart fellow and his references are far and wide, but it's not all that different from when Family Guy references a scene from, say, mid-seventies Electric Company. Pynchon brings in events like the Michelson-Morley experiment with aether, which I vaguely remembered from a history class long ago. Things like that should not be so obscure as to stump book reviewers. Maybe the problem lies more in our standards of education. [Or more likely book reviewers don't want to spend the time on a 1,100 page novel when there's more cash involved in chugging through four 400 pagers.] Sure, there are plenty of mysteries to unravel for the unraveling-inclined, but it's also just a ripping good yarn. Reading Pynchon, to me, is reminiscent of teaching Einstein through Road Runner cartoons. A highly educational slapstick chase sequence. And how anyone could not relish a romp through Pynchon's universe is beyond me.

Then you have those who blame him for being large in scope. The canvas of his novels is a sprawling widescreen epic - that's what he does. It's a bit like blaming Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights for not being Van Gogh's Sunflower. Many reviewers complain that they wish Against the Day had been smaller and the storyline more concise. Again, like griping that Bosch's canvas is too busy and he should have concentrated on only a few of the figures. Finding fault with Pynchon for not being Agatha Christie is just irrelevant. And faulting ambition is just bad all round.

I tried reading Vineland and couldn't get into it for a number of reasons. But at least I took the book on its own terms instead of accusing it of not being a cookbook.

Anyhow, there's an Against the Day group read going on over at The Chumps of Choice, spearheaded by the esteemed Neddie Jingo. Worth investigating.