Shall I jerk off?

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J. WOOD wrote:

-> Why dressed in Black? 
> What is the connection? To the CT actors?

It is Oedipa who blurs the line between the play w/in the novelette, and, the novelette, surely?

    “I want to see if there is a CONNECTION. I’m curious.”

and later,

    “I went in there to talk about bones and instead we talked about    the Trystero thing”

>I think MalignD is right, we have all 
>manner of possibilities, but Oed is the POV
>from which we conceive them and we can't 
>get outside and look in. 

MalignD’s earlier criticism of Pynchon’s technique: Oedipa being a thinly veiled vehicle for the narrator’s POV, undermines his later assertion that Oedipa’s POV is incapable of furnishing “the reader” with any outside perspective. The flatness, the paucity of characterization begs the reader to connect the dots- “bring something of yourself” to the interpretation. Oedipa is consigned to the printed page- she’s an abstraction- but who’s to blame for her reification? She is like a disembodied POV in search of a character, but first she must learn the rules of association, the syntax of this quirky symbolism, before she can create meaningful constructions. She may as well be a prisoner in a chinese room, but given time and experience: patterns begin to emerge, acronyms to make sense- even more so, apparently, than world she use to take for granted. 

 > 
 >>.... Doesn't
 >>that echo the quintessential Shakespearean rag that
 >>the bard was always humming in the background of his
 >>works, and would later form the resolution of what
 >>would become "existential" in our own ragged
 >>century? 

>Resolution? That Shkespearean Rag, say in 
 >The Waste Land, reduced, bereft of fertility
>wills not to will. 

Yes, well, this was century XXI, no? Like Sweeney to Mrs. Porter- “... the pearls that were his eyes” alas, to the feet of swine.

 >>There's more to the slim volume of her world than
 >>Oedipa is aware of...

>Sophocles, Oed the King. 

Not Rex, but perhaps: OEDIPUS AT COLONUS, the oft excluded middle play of the the trilogy, where, you’ll remember, I’m sure, THE MESSENGER provides the climax, the apotheosis of Oedipus:

    “People of Colonus, the life of Oedipus has ended! and there is much to tell of all that happened there..” (From memory)

You may or may not find that work of interest, but rest assured that the death and deification of Oedipus- typical of Greek tragedy- take place OFF STAGE, but are yet vividly brought to life- to the oohs and ahhs of the chorus- by the dramatic re-telling of a messenger, clad, in most productions, all in white.

Wharfinger has apparently decided to focus his play on the tragic role of a messenger. Driblette has brought this “up to date” by bringing the messenger’s murder into full view of the audience, thus, obviating the need for a second messenger to re-tell the action. The audience, then, and Oedipa in particular, effectively become the chorus, and provide a context beyond the literal text, which, as Driblette makes clear, is merely an abstraction. He gives himself credit for mediating this process by the art of his direction, but remember, it was one of The Paranoid’s chicks that suggested the possibility of a connection between “the bones” of the play and the lagoon.

So the “connection” is the hidden structure within- the legacy we all share that allows us to recognize (or consciously deny) our kinship.

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