Will's Students- Borenstei

[WillL at fieldschool.com]

Date	5/16/96
Subject	Will's Students-  Borenstei
>From	WillL
To	Pynchon List, Wallace List

Will's Students:  Borenstein
Dispatch # 4 from Washington DC's Field School.  Sylvia Borenstein wonders about
the paranoid effect of reading "Lot 49" just weeks before the "coincidence" of
"Leviathan" and the Unabomber.

-- Will Layman

*********

"The  Crying of Lot 49" discusses the subject of paranoia in heavy detail.  In
my contemporary literature class we have discussed what paranoia means.  Not
only is it a severe mental disorder where the victim cannot trust anyone because
he believes everyone is against him, but it is also the mark of a person with a
large ego.  Isn't it rather bold for a person to believe that an entire
government would try to attack them because they figured out that their
street-lights form a pattern of  sausage links?  If we look at paranoia in that
regard and of course on a much smaller scale, we could all be a little paranoid
at times.  We may not think the CIA is plotting to get us but you must admit
that sometimes you'll think that there forces that are reading your mind to make
your life easier.  For example last year I took a modern European History class
and we spent a large portion of the year studying the Holocaust.  Tell me if it
was coincidence or not that the same year I decide to take this class it is also
the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the death camps.  So I was able to
further my knowledge of this turbulent time period through magazine articles and
documentaries.  Now I am wondering if it's convenient coincidence or if I am
paranoid in thinking that while I am reading Paul Auster's "Leviathan"  (which
is about a man who bombs public areas that have replicas of the statue of
liberty)  the Unabomber (a man who bombed certain designated people and areas)
is caught.  It seems like Thomas Pychon's novel has heightened my paranoia, and
I believe there is a connection and I believe that there was a reason that I
read "Leviathan" while all of the Unabomber mess has occurred.  It is a way for
me to see beyond the crazed look in Ted Kaczinki's eyes. I think that
"Leviathan" has shown me that it is possible for him to be human.

-- Sylvia Borenstein