Chapter V: There are millions of stories...

[Dave Monroe]

Good points all round, jw, rj, not in the least that
articulation back to "Bartleby the Scrivener," but I
think the ultimate point here is, "The" Tristero is
politically (among many other considerations)
multivalent, to say the least ...  

>From N. Katherine Hayles, "'A Metaphor of God Knew How
Many Parts': The Engine that Drives The Crying of Lot
49," New Essays on The Crying of Lot 49, ed. Patrick
O'Donnell (New York: Cambridge UP, 19991), pp. 97-126
...

"Thus the values assigned to the Tristero keep
changing--sometimes menacing, sometimes comforting;
somtimes metaphysical abstraction, somethimes
historical conspiracy; sometimes illusory, sometimes
real." (p. 121)

Hayles goes on to claim that "Underlying these
uncertainties is the profoundly ambiguous relationship
of the text to its own language" (ibid.), and I do not
disagree, but ... but Hayles certainly put it more
succinctly than I would, that's for sure, so ...

--- wood jim <jim33wood at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> > This for me is perhaps the most vivid
> > encapsulation of what "the Trystero" is meant to
> > represent. I can see in this "calculated
> > withdrawal" a reflection of Gandhi's passive
> > resistance, conscientious objectors to
> > enlistment in the U.S. forces to serve in Vietnam.
> > Most of all I can see a celebrated author who has
> > chosen to abjure "the life  of the Republic, ...
> > its machinery," whose "withdrawal" is his "own,
> > unpublicized, private."
> > 
> > Bartleby: "I would prefer not to."
>  
> There is clearly an  ambivalence toward withdrawal
> or a calulated "I prefer not to." This is a
poilitcs,
> that is another side  of the same coin,  that is, it
> is also in love with its own Death. So, for example,
> the executive, replaced by the IBM, doesn't simply 
> withdraw. From  a wire photo, he gets  the
> Religious/Political act of protest. An act  by a
> monk and  makes a mockery of it. And in act of
> suicide he receives a sign (not a religious sign)
> and he decides that his problem is love. He decides
> that he finished with love (charity) and community.
> What is the guy in the bar doing there anyway? Is he
> a tourist or a voyeur? He's not looking for love. He
> doesn't swing in any direction. Oed in this scene
> remind me of Bartleby more than the withdrawn IA.

One might note here as well both Pynchon's own
withdrawal from public life and the fact that he
nonetheless lent his name to at least one antiwar
petition (an open letter to The New York Times, I
believe, though my quick route to taht was, I believe,
through the late, lamented Pynchonfiles, Requiescat in
Pace).  But speaking of the Inamorati Anonymous ...

Main Entry: tryst 
Pronunciation: 'trist, esp British 'trIst
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French triste
watch post, probably of Scandinavian origin; akin to
Old Norse traust trust
Date: 14th century
1 : an agreement (as between lovers) to meet
2 : an appointed meeting or meeting place

http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary 

Interesting and perhaps etymological contradictory
that they'd communicate via The Trystero, no?  Again,
that multivalency ...

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