Hollander's Varo/Varro

[wood jim]

Hollander says, 

"Pynchon employs allegory and satire; in particular,
he adopts the form of Menippean satire."

But, he says, 

       Pynchon instructs his readers to consider
Menippean Satire as his
    chosen form. At the end of Chapter One of Lot 49
he mentions "the
    beautiful Spanish exile [painter] Remedios Varo."
This is one of the
    unfamiliar names he expects us to pursue if we
want to understand things
    more clearly. It turns out that the standard
library references do not yield
    much information about Varo. There was an
historical Remedios Varo
    whose paintings were reproduced by a Mexican press
(Mexico, DF,
    Ediciones Era, 1966). 

AND 

       Why should Pynchon choose to mention a painting
by this
    particularly obscure painter when there are many
other "Rapunzel"
    paintings that might have served his thematic ends
as well? 

AND 

       The answer is, that in pursuing the strange
name, Varo, we are led to
    a cognate name, one Marcus Terentius Varro (116-27
BC). 


Are we? I don't think so. The painting is not in the
story so that we may 
read Varo as Varro. 


       His leading us from R. Varo to M.T. Varro is a
typical example of
    Pynchon's method for burying key information,
which I term
    misdirection. We are given a real historical name
to check out, Remedios
    Varo, and upon searching for it the name leads us
to a cognate, Marcus
    Terentius Varro, who only happens to have written
150 Menippean
    satires, which is Pynchon's method of alerting us
that he has chosen to
    use the form of the Menippean satire. This
misdirection works by virtue
    of leading us from something in the text to
something outside the text,
    from one name to a cognate of that name, from a
painter to a writer,
    from Varo to Varro to Menippean satire. We shall
see more of
    Pynchon's misdirection shortly. 


If  "misdirection" is a Pynchon method, the example
Hollander provides weakens both of his arguments. That
is,  the argument that P is writing satire, and the
argument that P's method is "misdirection."  

I think Hollander is correct about P's writing a
satire. However, the Varo/Varro example adds nothing
to
the genre argument and it does not serve to explain
what Hollander means by "misdirection."  


What Doug says, that P may have been paranoid is not
what Hollander says. Hollander says P feared for his
life and his fictions reflect this fear. This is a
very strange claim and there is no evidence to support
it. Is P taking a risk when he takes potshots at the
winners? P takes potshots at the government, the
church, Marxism, Capitalism, Science, technology,
christianity, history, reading, paranoia,  every damn
thing under the sun. This is, if Hollander is correct
and P is a satirist, what a satirist is supposed to
do. He holds a mirror up to the world and ridicules
it. The targets of P satire are the targets any
satirist would hit. P hits them. Hits them hard, with
humor and wit and brilliance at times. 

I like  MalignD's suggestion, perhaps, from reading
Eliot or from his interest in drama P got interested
in 
revenge tragedy and this is turn weakened his novel,
at least the characters. Just flipping through my
Hrold Bloom Modern Critical on these plays I'm
begining to understand what CFA is getting at too.
It's all very educational. 

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