Mexico & Germany

[wood jim]

Hollander sez, 

Oedipa checks into a "German-baroque" hotel during a
convention of the "American Deaf-Mute Assembly" (101).
In the room, she barely notices the reproduction of
another painting by Remedios Varo." 

Pynchon, JFK and the CIA: Magic Eye View of THE CRYING
OF LOT 49

Hollander is reading Chapter 5, he is looking at
proper nouns to discover, who/ what/ when? where? why?


I'll take Allegory too. 

America is deaf and mute, and sleeping too it seems,
Zoyd. 

The finger, the F-U, a sign, a spell, not a word,
kinda like Slothrop at the Fr/GR resort. And the
figure in the mirror that haunts her?  Slothrop,
remember, via THEIR solipsistic gravity and HIStory
will begin to both  see his own reflection in
America's-- tragedy, and  lose his identity in it--
comedy.

Does Oed "barely notice" the REPRODUCTION? Or does
Hollander? Hollander is quite good on the German
stuff. 
But he doesn't really say much about the psudo-mexican
or the Mexican. It seems, if we can stick with the
allegorical reading for just a bit longer, the fact
that a REPRODUCTION of a Spanish (in exile)/Mexican
surrealist is hanging in a German-baroque hotel is but
one symbol, symbolic of a larger theme. How did the
Mexican become psedo-mexican, merely a reproduction in
a german-baroque hotel? 

 

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