Undergrounds

[LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu]

Ted Samsel comments:
"Only one (1) underground system?



Ha ha. How droll!
 
(I lost count of them a few years back....) (;-)"


Whether speaking of "real" undergrounds or Pynchon's, Ted's put his finger on 
it.  In COL49 and GR, there are numerous undergrounds of one kind or another.
The problem for Oedipa is whether all these undergrounds are linked in one
way or another (and what the implications of that linkage might be).  What
if they *are* all manifestations of the Tristero, a-and what if the Tristero
itself is an incredibly convoluted and insidious plot by Pierce Inverarity?
In GR, the undergrounds proliferate like mad within the Zone, but the 
implication is that the Zone itself is a "window" of limited time span that 
will expire when the States reassert their own priorities and the chances
offered by all these systems will dwindle, if not expire.  The Counterforce
tries to offer a way for many, if not all, of these undergrounds to continue
but their very process of routinization necessitates their own self-extinction.
Still, there are those possibilities . . . 


Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)