Our Founding Fathers

The founding fathers: all those who helped establish the new Constitution of the United States in 1787. Pierce, a character from Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, “owned a large block of the shares [of the Galactronics Division of Yoyodyne Inc.], [and] had been somehow involved in negotiating an understanding with the country tax assessor to lure Yoyodine here [to San Narcisco] in the first place” (15). According to Pierce “it was part, he explained, of being a founding father”(15). Is Pynchon saying that corruption is a requirement for being a founding father? Is he somehow insinuating that America’s founding fathers were themselves corrupt?

We know through documented history that the Constitutional Convention of 1787 contained aristocratic participants who’s main purpose for redefining the laws of the time was purely economical. With this background, we know that Pynchon’s satirical target for this historical reference are the multinational giants which are controlled by wealthy minorities who exploit the poor majority. An epitome of this is McDonalds, which advertises super-low prices which are “beneficial” to the public, while lowering the health standards of the production and preparation of the food. The products are so mass produced that the care for each unit has been lost to the temptations of low-cost products.