Raintree County II 1-16-21

 Now, I would not have known the phrase mock heroic without the education I put myself to while imprisoned. Could be my 30-year-old self might not have understood what he read [the 15-year-old had not] in Raintree County.

By a single bound, riding the white horse of Eros, he had achieved the summit of the Platonic forms, the shrine of Justice on the Court House square.

p. 832

Yes, that makes more sense in context [and less like overblown, purple prose], but I say it is mock heroic because John W. Shawnessy is an epic poet whose epic is always aborning. Because other than winning a foot race, he achieves no greater status than Civil War corporal and county school teacher. He seems most admired for achievements not yet achieved. The heft as well as how Lockridge treats his hero makes me think of a more sedate Thomas Pynchon. The sedateness, I think, coming from Lockridge writing in a quasi-Victorian style (the novel is set on July 4, 1892).

Another example:

Americans, the external children of humanity! Rootless wanderers, creators of new cities, conquerors of deserts and forests, voyagers on rivers, migrants to westward, they kept eternally in their heats in the fact r fiction of the childhood home.

p. 577

sch

[Continued tomorrow.]