Metzger

[GSchmundt Thomas]

Here's a piece of Pynchonalia that I came across recently.

As you will remember, Metzger is Oedipa Maas' co-executor and lover in
Pynchon's  _Lot 49_. His name seems to have more than just incidental meaning
(German "butcher") - in a novel whose characters sport names from Manny di
Presso to Mike Fallopian --  and actually tie in topically with the history
of postal systems. Carl H. Scheele's _A Short History of the Mail Service_
(1970) lists a medieval "Metzger post" among the precursors of modern post
systems. Apparently, butchers who traveled a lot also served an ancillary
function as couriers or messengers, mostly for members of their own guild
but also for people who would pay them (cf. Scheele 20; _Encyclopedia
Britannica_ under post--history). Metzger's name thus functions as a kind
of ironical allusion (like Mr. Thoth's, derived from that of the Egyptian
god of scribes) to the history of the mails, adding intertextual color to
Pynchon's re-imagination of postal history (Tristero etc.) as "parable of
power"(_Lot 49_ 54).

Enjoy, and a happy new year (but it's February already...!),
GST  
-- 
G. Schmundt-Thomas
Northwestern University, Evanston/Ill.
gst at casbah.acns.nwu.edu