History as narcissism

[wood jim]

I. Solipsism

Solipsism is History in GR. It is the insane
commitment to self that is the end of the narcissistic
convolution of consciousness which is readily apparent
in CL49.

Sorry, but that GR is so rude: 

Solipsism stresses the relative unreality of whatever
is outside oneself and is expressed as sadism,
impersonation in the form of pornography, and
voyeurism through the use of drugs and dream.
Gravity, which symbolically causes the implosion of
personality and serves the 
romance of extinction through the Rocket, and the
film's reality-blurring re-cycling of images are also
evidence of solipsism. History, by becoming completely
subject to manipulation and prediction, becomes
narcissism transacted through time.
Ready symbols for history are chain and cycle and
symbols associated with the Rocket, like Brenschluss,
the Zero, and the point.  Plots comprising conspiracy,
control, and bureaucracy are expressions on
the level of character action of Their activity.


II Sacred & Profane

As in CL49 the different attitudes toward
words are important, as is the use of names.
Magical causation and the relationship of myth and
deity are also important. Paranoia finds its greatest
expression in this book as an ironically apt reaction
to conspiracy and randomness.



III Narrative

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Godel.html

Can the narrator both show and tell her journey? 

 The narrator respects a structural and semantic
limitation which demands that he/she cannot both tell
and show the fiction in CL49 and step outside of the
of it and comment on it. This limitation, ironically,
allows the narrator, and the reader, too, to "keep it
bouncing, " as Pierce Inverarity sez. Pierce 
Inverarity, his name could also mean "to pierce" the
"untruth," and, perhaps  signals his peculiar
relationship to events in the book and his will  play
a role in this book not unlike that played by Stencil
in V. The hierarchical structure of CL49 is somewhat
similar to that of V. 

Inverarity is a mediator between Oedipa and the other
characters and The Tristero. 

The
Tristero-------------------------------------Oedipa 
\
 \
  \ 
   \
    \
     \
      \
       \
        \
         \
		


                	Inverarity





 Edward Mendelson writes in his essay, "The Sacred,
the Profane, and The Crying Of Lot 49," that Oedipa's
name "refers back to the Sophoclean oedipus who begins
his search for the solution of a problem (a problem,
like Oedipa's, involving a dead man) as an almost
detached observer, only to discover how deeply he is
implicated in what he finds."  Oedipa will discover in
her travels just how what, too, implicates her she
discovers about Inverarity, the supposed Tristero, and
America.
The Maijstral-Hod marriage problem, which is, resolved
in V. finds its opposite in the dissolution of the
Maas marriage. Inverarity's naming Oedipa as executrix
creates the only sustained, if peculiar, relationship
in the book. But it is enigmatic and ironic for Oedipa
because it is unclear whether she has been named
executrix because of love or revenge.

Oedipa acts in Pierce's name to manage his legacy.
While it is clear in V. that V. exists, even though
her exact nature may be uncertain, it is not clear
that The
Tristero actually exists. The Tristero virtually
exists for Oedipa in the sense that her questioning
its existence gives it presence. 

In CL49, the expression of paranoia is a way to cope
with supposed conspiracy and randomness  while the
theme of inheritance and disinheritance is linked to
the role of the mysterious and ubiqui tous mediator,
Pierce Inverarity, whose will Oedipa must
execute. Oedipa's doing so brings her in contact with
The Tristero, the mysterious virtual reality structure
in the book which implies new meanings of legacy and
America. The Tristero ' s existence is virtual in the
sense that, whether real or unreal, The Tristero is
able to influence character's choices and actions. 




V Doubles and Gothic in William Blake: 

G.R. Thompson designates the "high Gothic . . . [as]
the
embodiment of demonic-quest-romance, in which a
lonely, self-divided hero
embarks on insane pursuit of the Absolute . . .
[which] is metaphysical,
mythic, and religious, defining the hero's dark or
equivocal relationship to the
universe" (2). Thus, Thompson here identifies the
three most common archetypal
Gothic motifs which assume various forms in
literature: narcissism or
self-isolation, the Doppelganger (a doubled or divided
self), and the quest. The alienated
protagonist usually rejects some aspect of society,
and his "insane pursuit" implies
that he, too, will be somehow rejected.

IV Brown 


Brown twists Freud out of conflict,  we should not do
the same with TRP. Why? Well, if we read Brown's
views of secular humanism (following Plato and
Descartes off the cliff) we recognize that TRP's
agrees with Brown on the one hand,  but what of  the
alternative Brown suggests-his way out and so forth?
This 
alternative --the Romantics and heretical mystics,
sages of all ages, is the target of TRP's harshest
satires. Sorry this is so jumbled, just  my opinion,
but as I read Brown's brilliant loosening of Freud's 
knots, as he unravels Freud's Narcissus with
Nietzsche's Zarathustra and Blake, Spinoza, and so
forth, I can't help but feel that TRP knotted them
back up. TRP,much as he may have experienced some 
fraternal feelings towards Brown, remained, at least
when Gravity's R was written, locked in 
a struggle with the Father--Freud.


Wood & "Associates" & Zvi & Sons

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