COL49 _Courier's Tragedy_

[Dave Monroe]

Well, despite Beckett and Pynchon being the only two
lit'rary types I've ever gone to any real trouble
over, I've not much considered just why that might be,
but ...

--- MalignD at aol.com wrote:
> It's possible we're quibbling around what exactly is
> and is not "absurd" or "absurdist."

Much like quibbling over "modern(is(m/t))" and
"postmodern(is(m/t))" here?  Can, of course, be quite
productive heuristically, but can also be a
distraction, beside the point ...  

Again, do note that "The Theater of the Absurd" is
essentially, nominally a creation more of Martin
Esslin than a "movement" or "genre" or whatever within
which playwrights consciously worked ...

But, of course, unconsciously or otherwise, any and
everyone involved was responding to a certain context,
no?  The Holocaust, the gulag, the Bomb, the Cold War,
technology, capitalism, Communism, et al.  And therein
one certainly must situate Pynchon as well ...

> That aside, you write:
> 
> <<There is a constantly-unfulfilled promise of some
> "transcendent" meaning in _Godot_ too ...>>
> 
> I think that's incorrect.  There is the hopeless
> belief in such a promise, quite a different thing.
> A promise implies a promiser and there is none.

Now here's where I wish I had recourse to my library
o' deconstruction, but ... but I think one might argue
an implicit "promise" betwixt author and reader here. 
Indeed, one seems to be assumed here ...
 
> <<There is an over-accumulation of signs in _Lot49_,
> an excess of pattern, "revelations which now seemed
> to come crowding in exponentially" (56.4), all of
> which results in exactly the same chaotic absence
> of meaning. >>
> 
> But we don't know if that's true, do we, that the
> result is a chaotic absence of meaning.  The
> accumulation of signs might point to an historical
> Trystero.  In fact, one of the imperfections of the
> book (in my opinion) is that the meaninglessness is
> shifted at the end entirely onto the reader.  For
> all we know, everything comes clear for Oedipa five
> minutes after the book's end, with the crying of lot
> 49 and the appearance of the bidders.  Her situation

> might not be absurd at all; rather, she simply has
> lacked necessary facts.

See what I mean?  This alleged "imperfection" might
well be read as a disappointment brought about by the
alleged reneging on some, if not necessarily implied
(though not necessarily NOT implied), perceived, at
least, promise, on the author's, on the text's part
...  

But the question is, is any such promise--of
"revelation," of the "arrival," a la Godot, of
meaning--implied, much less explicitly made?  Or,
perhaps, has Pynchon, has the text, indeed reneged on
such a "promise" at all?  Depends ...

Think not only Oedipus, but also E.A. Poe, "The
Purloined Letter."  Blindness and insight, if you will
(or even if you won't) ...

What if that "over-accumulation of signs,"
"revelations" blinds a young Republican "unfit perhps
for marches and sit-ins" (p. 104) to, say, poverty,
loneliness, alcoholism, racism, anti-semitism,
homophobia, social unrest, political extremism,
political intrigue, the military-industrial complex,
military adventurism (Vietnam IS explicitly mentioned,
p. 108), et al., hidden in plain sight?  

Again, that "legacy," that "inheritance."  "This is
America, you live in it, you let it happen.  Let it
unfurl" (and note the flag[-waving] imagery there). 
Point is, is Oedipa missing both trees and forest here
...


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