col49 2 pt2

[Dave Monroe]

You know, J. Kerry Grant's Companion to The Crying of
Lot 49 (Athens: U of Ga P, 1994) seems far more
adequate to the task than does his C2V.  And at least
here he has the excuse of having preceded Hollander's
Lot 49/JFK essay, which is a fine supplement (and
perhaps even in that Derridean sense ...) to JKG. 
Once again ...

"H23.7, B12.6  San Narciso  As Palmieri points out,
the name of teh city that Pierce has created invokes
anumber of subtexts, 'late classical, Christian and
Freudian' (985).  Ovid's account of the story of
Narcissus and Echo, the church historian Eusebius's
retelling of the miracles associated with Saint
Narcissus, and Freud's essay 'On Narcissism' offer
'competing paradigms' within or against which
Pynchon's own manipulation of symbolic possibilities
can be read (987).
   "Schaub and Abernathy ass Marshall McLuhan to Ovid
in their analyses of Pynchon's use of the Marcissus
myth.  Both quote McLuhan's association of the word
'narcissus' with 'narcosis,' or numbness.  'The youth
Narcissus mistook his own reflection in the water for
another person.  This extension of himself by mirror
numbed his perceptions until he became the
servomechanism of his own extended or repeated image. 
The nymph Echo tried to win his love with fragments of
his own speech, but in vain.  He was numb.  He adapted
to his extension of himself and had become a closed
system' (McLuhan in Abernathy 28)."

And so forth.  Citing ...

Abernathy, Peter.  "Entropy in Pynchon's The Crying
   of Lot 49."  Critique 14, No. 2 (1972): 18-33.

Palmieri, Frank.  "Neither Literally nor as
   Metaphor: Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and the
   Structure of Scientific Revolutions."  ELH 54
   (1987): 979-99.

Schaub, Thomas.  Pynchon: The Voice of Ambiguity.
   Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1981.

Again, any and all possible connections.  "That phone
line could have pointed in any direction, been any
length" ...

--- cj hurtt <cj6 at casco.net> wrote:
> 
> The city itself is likened to a junky. She, a single
> melted crystal of urban horse.

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