websites

[Dave Monroe]

"She came downslope from Wheeler Hall, through Sather
Gate into a plaza teeming with corduroy, denim, bare
legs, blonde hair, hornrims, bicycle spokes in teh
sun, bookbags, swaying card atbles, long paper
petitions dangling to earth, posters for undcipherable
FSM's, YAF's, VDC's ..." (Lot 49, Ch. 5, p. 103)

Well, I got it, but it's also my tactic as well, I
suppose, minus the (presumably) explanatory quote, so
... 

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/BANC/FSM/about.html

http://www.newswise.com/articles/1999/10/KLATCH.UCD.html

http://lists.village.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Exhibits/Track16/resist.html

FSM = Free Speech Movement
YAF = Young Americans for Freedom
VDC = Vietnam Day Committee

And I've really got to thank you for that last one,
T-t-t-t-er, jim, as I know someone with an October
16th birthday who'll be delighted with that poster
(and maybe even with THIS poster as a result?). 
Anyway, very helpful annotations all around ...

But what particularly interests me here is their
"indecipherability" on Oedipa's part.  To continue ...

"She moved through it carrying her fat book,
attracted, unsure, a stranger, wanting to feel
relevant but knowing how much of a earch among
alternate universes it would take.  For she had
undergone her own educating at a time of nerves,
blandness and retreat among not only her fellow
students but also most of the visible structure around
and ahead of them, thi having been a national reflex
to certain pathologies in high places only death had
the power to cure, and this Berkeley was like no
somnolent Siwash out of her own past at all, but more
akin to those Far Eastern or Latin American
universities you read about, those autonomous media
where teh most beloved of folklores may be brought
into doubt, cataclysmic of dissents voiced, suicidal
of commitments chosen--the sort that bring governments
down." (Lot 49, Ch. 5, pp. 103-4)

An curious about "invisible" vs. "visible"
"structures" here, of course, as well as Siwash ...

http://www.robirda.com/siwash.html

http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~pjohnson/5siwash.html

And then ...

http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/London/Writings/GodFathers/siwash.html

As well as those possibly Philip K. Dickean "alternate
universes" ...

"Where were Secretaries James and Foster and Senator
Joseph, those dear daft numina who' mothered over
Oedipa's so temperate"--vs. hothouse?--"youth?"
(ibid.)

A "Young republican," indeed, and, of course, Mr.
Hollander has a little something to say about Messrs.
Forrstal, Dulles an McCarthy, but before I type that
up (if I get a chance today, but I'll make the time
soon) ...

"In another world.  Along another pattern of track,
another string of decisions taken, switches closed,
the faceless pointsmen"--!--"who'd thrown them now all
..." (p. 104)

And there'll be much to say about the allohistorical,
the subjunctive, when we get to Mason & Dixon (and who
suggested a while back that GR presented an alternate
WWII? Very intriguing ...).  But to continue ...

"Among them they had managed to turn young Oedipa into
a rare creature indeed, unfit perhaps for marches and
sit-ins, but just a whiz at pursuing strange words in
Jacobean texts." (ibid.)

But not such a whiz at deciphering abbreviations,
apparently.  Too difficult to read signs, banners,
leaflets, pamphlets, newspapers?  To simply just ask? 
This is what I'm getting at in re: Oedipa's "Oedipal,"
not to mention depoliticized ("unfit for ...')
blindness ...

--- MalignD at aol.com wrote:
> <<Why did I post the websites? These are, scraps
> really, just a few  notes.  The websites pertain to
> the novel (to Chapter 5 of CL49) we are currently 
> reading. That's one  point. >>
> 
> That's all fine, but it would help--help me,
> anyway--if I had some explanation of their relevance
> or reason why I should pursue them.

And, in response to MalignD's response to me elsewhere
(for which also see above), I don't recall making any
claims for any similarities betwixt Pale Fire and The
Crying of Lot 49 ("Nabakovian clues").  My point
rather has been that perhaps everything Oedipa (and,
consequently, "we," as readers) might well find that
she has been attempting to decipher, discover,
uncover, whatever, has already largely been revealed,
on, at, whatever, the so-called "surface" of the text,
not to mention at its interface with, in its context
of, mid-1960s America.  Which was, thanks to jim (or
would you prefer wood?), only a click and perhaps some
scrolling away for us.  A certain irony, then, in yr
protstatin, Mr. MalignD (who I hope will not feel so
by my pouinting this out) ...



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