COL49 _Courier's Tragedy_

[jbor]

on 8/16/01 9:56 AM, MalignD at aol.com at MalignD at aol.com wrote:

> <<There seems to be little in Hamlet, for instance, that Bill didn't borrow
> from Kyd.>>
> 
> Other than quality, brilliance, genius, poetry, modern characterization;
> arguably, the largest, most complex character in the history of literature ...
> 

And, of course the motif of the play within the play (within ... ), that
subversion of the expected separation of "outside" and "inside" the text,
which someone like Tom Stoppard has so much fun with in _Rosencrantz and
Guidenstern Are Dead_. Part of the point there being that Shakespeare had
*already* imbedded that ("postmodern") subversion in the original. Though
not discounting the archaeology of tragedy which has been recounted here --
and Tourneur's play is really the most violent of the lot, which is why I
think it's the direct antecedent, but I also think that there's probably a
"composite" thing going on with _The Courier's Tragedy_ as well (by the way,
Pynchon's neo-Shakespearean dramatic verse is pretty darn good) -- I think
that Theatre of the Absurd and Beckett's _Godot_ are closer to what Pynchon
is up to in his pastiche of Jacobean revenge drama in _Lot 49_.

The first mention of the play is by one of the Paranoid chicks: "You know,
blokes," she begins wryly, "this all has a most bizarre resemblance to that
ill, ill Jacobean revenge play we went to last week." (42.25) And then,
getting progressively stoned, the Paranoids and their girls retell the
story, "related near to unintelligible by eight memories unlooping
progressively into regions as strange to map as their rising coils and
clouds of pot smoke," (43) which is a nice image, and a larger metaphor of
Oedipa's search for meaning in this text, and of the quest for meaning in
any text, I think. The endless repetitions, the reflections and echoes (like
those Lissajous figures), the intrusions on the reader's space, the ultimate
meaninglessness: these features and themes predominate here as they do in
Beckett & co.

"This is real," chattered Di Presso, "come on." (38.19)

But is it? The story of the GIs and the lake and the bones and the Mafia
(and, by the way, it's the Cosa Nostra who are analogised in Wharfinger's
play, not the C.I.A.) are the "real" events echoed in the Jacobean play, and
in which Oedipa is now embroiled. But the levels of "reality" and "fiction"
continually shift: the "real" events and their interconnections might be
some elaborate hoax or part of Oedipa's paranoid fantasy; while the
"fictional" events of the play appear to have a basis in history (both
inside the novel and in the reader's world as well.) So, neither Oedipa nor
the reader is ever quite able to discriminate the "real" from the "not-real"
in the text.

Back to the Theatre of the Absurd. There's Jesus Arrabal later on, another
character ominously pulling various of the plot strings -- perhaps -- and
whose surname, using the Hollander method, leads us to Fernando Arrabal, the
renowned playwright. Arrabal's earliest works are 'Le cemetiere des
voitures' (1958, trans as 'The Car Cemetery'), where life is seen as a used
car dump, and the play 'Pique-nique en campagne' (1959: 'Picnic on the
Battlefield'), in which the "characters display the savage innocence of
children in a dream world in which understanding and communication give way
to magic and ceremonial". I can't see Varo --> Varro either but Arrabal -->
Arrabal does seem to provide more fertile ground:

http://www.arrabal.org/

    In 1962 Fernando Arrabal founds the "Panic Movement" together with
    Roland Topor and Alexandro Jodorowsky. "Panic" comes from the God Pan,
    the All. The "Panic" man was a man of total refusal, refusal of all
    danger, he did not expose himself and did not die a hero's death.

    Although he is one of the most "controversial" writers, he has received
    many international prizes and distinctions. His work has been translated
    in most languages (he is notably one of the French speaking authors that
    is the most translated in Europe). The sun never sets on his plays among
    the most performed in the world.

    His multiple activities are also expressed in the plastic arts. He has
    been exploring these through a profusion of sculptures, paintings,
    collages, drawings, of which many exhibitions and retrospectives have
    been held in galleries and museums in different countries.

    "Merrily playful, rebellious and unconventional, Arrabal's work is the
    syndrome of our century of barbed wires and camps. : a way to keep in
    reprieve". (Dictionary of French language literatures).

    When he is not travelling all over all the continents to give lectures,
    to attend performances of his plays, "to take note" of the world's state
    and to defend human rights where they are flouted, Fernando Arrabal
    lives and works in Paris.

best