col49 2 pt2

[Otto]

Dave Monroe:
> Yet again from J. Kerry Grant, A Companion to The
> Crying of Lot 49 (Athens: U of Georgia P, 1994),
> albeit on Sick Dick and The Volkswagens rather than
> The Paranoids.  Pop music, then ...
>
> "H23.3, B12.3  "I Want to Kiss Your Feet"  The song
> that Mucho is whistling contains in its title an
> allusion to the legend of Saint Narcissus, third
> century bishop of Jerusalem.  Oedipa will learn during
> the performance of The Courier's Tragedy of the death
> of the good Duke of Faggio as a result of his practice
> of kissing the feet of a picture of the saint
> (H65.21n).  This is one of the many embedded pointers
> to the novel's preoccupation with the concept of
> narcissism." (p. 27)
>

With all this "Beatles haircut" (16) and "English accent" (17) a little
later I always took this line (in my book on p. 14) as an reversal of "I
Want to Hold Your Hand," and the way Miles is described as an ironic comment
on the dominance of British pop groups even in the USA in the middle of the
sixties.
The copy is causing copies in the land of its origin. Cause becomes effect
and effect becomes cause.

Otto