The Courier's Tragedy

[Dave Monroe]

Seeing as it hasn't been discussed much yet--and I
can't promise to be much help in this regard myself
this morning, but ...--figured I'd at least ask the
question, any particular similarities betwixt The
Courier's Tragedy (Lot 49, Ch. 3, pp. 63-80) and any
actual Jacobean revenge tragedies?  I can't claim to
have done the footwork myself on this, so ... but a
few passing notes along the way nonetheless ...


"'The same kind of kinky thing, you know'" (p. 63)

Without recourse to the OED (and, by the way, yeah,
Oxford English Dictionary, International Phonetic
Alphabet, very good) here (am supposed to have online
acces, but ...), as I recall, "kinky" in the sense of,
I don't know, "fetishistic," "perverse," albeit mildly
so, or whatever enters popular usage ca. this time,
precisely via Brtish pop culture (e.g., The Kinks)
and, perhaps, specifically via "The Avengers," cf.
Honor Blackman and Patrick Macnee's "Kinky Boots"
single (1964), scroll down here for MP3 and Real Audio
files ...

http://members.tripod.com/~avengers_soundpage/

.. and note the B-side, "Let's Keep it Friendly." 
Honor Blackman (Catherine Gale on "The Avengers,"
predecessor to Diana Rigg's Mrs. Peel), of course,
would go on to play kinky aerialist Pussy Galore in
Goldfinger ...

http://www.swinginchicks.com/honor_blackman.htm

Anyway, nice detail on Pynchon's part here, given The
Paranoids' very ca. 1964 Beatlemaniacal Anglophilia
...


"Niccolo leaps to his feet, staring up one of the
radial aisles ...." (p. 73)

Very spiderwebby, very conpiratorial, very paranoid,
no?  Again, very good detail there ...


"...and in marches one Genarro, a complete nonentity,
to proclaim himself interim head of state till the
rightful Duke, Niccolo, can be located." (p. 69)

"Gennaro's costume was grey flannel." (p. 77)

Very organization man, very industrial half of the
military-industrial complex, no?  See, of course,
Sloan Wilson's novel, The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit
(1955), the film adaptation thereof (dir. Nunally
Johnson, 1956), and William Whyte's seminal The
Organization Man (1956) ...

http://eclipse.barnard.columbia.edu/~rg322/Men-Conformity.htm

As well as ...

Melley, Timothy.  Empire of Conspiracy:
   The Culture of Paranoia in Postwar America
   Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2000

Ch. 1, "Bureaucracy and Its Discontents," pp. 47-79
...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0103&msg=586&sort=date

Okay, another one down ...


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