CIA

[Dave Monroe]

Here we go again ...

"'You remember everything,' Oedipa said, 'Jesus; even
tourists.  How is your CIA?'  Standing not for the
agency you think, but for a clandestine Mexican outfit
known as the Conjuracion de los Insurgentes
Anarquistas, traceable back to the time of the Flores
Magnon brothers and later briefly allied with Zapata."
(Lot 49, Ch. 5, p. 119)

Whether or not Jesus Arrabal's CIA "stand[s] not for
the agency you think," "you" think it nonetheless, or
"you" cannot claim that the Central Intelligence
Agency is "not in the story" in the first place, not
in good faith, not unless "you" are completely
ignorant of the Agency, in which case that line should
probably cause just enough puzzlement to incite "you"
to find out, just what were "you" expected to have
been thinking of, anyway?  But it's not likely anyone
redaing the novel, much less anyone who has gotten
that far, much less anyone on this list, is going to
have to go to that much trouble, "CIA" having as
instantly as thought called forth "Central
Intelligence Agency" anyway, so ... 

So, well, again, despite the disclaimer that
follows--which is fairly dependent on knowledge of the
U.S. Agency for any humor and/or interest it might
otherwise hold here anyway--"you" are going to have to
go through some pretty elaborate acrobatics, or be
just plain not up on your "current"--in the sense of,
the last half century--events, not to read "CIA" =
"Central Intelligence Agency," no matter how
fleetingly, there.  And words, phrases, acronyms and
abbreviations, even, trailing their histories along
with them, well, that trace will linger nonetheless
...

Note that, for example, Oedipus is even less "present"
in the text, not even evoked in order ostensibly to be
dismissed.  And so forth ...


--- wood jim <jim33wood at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Richard Fiero:
> 
> "And no, the CIA is not in the story unless it wants
> to be."
> 
> It's not in the story because P didn't put it in the
> story. If he did, this book is not only weak and
> sketchy, parts of it are either missing or have been
> written with invisable ink. 8-)

By the way, MalignD, never really quite made it to
grad school, myself.  Rotting away outside the ivory
tower.   And most of this seems so commonsensical to
me, elaborating on it is like defining the word "set."
 It generally doesn't need to be done, "self-evident"
or whatever, but once you get started, you start to
realize just all that's packed in there, and soon ...

But one thing I'm not concerned with is, is TCOL49 a
"good" novel, a "good" Pynchon novel, whatever.  But I
do think that the elements you see as its failings are
failings only if reading for a certain type of ending,
teleologically, as if the novel SHOULD lead to THIS,
but INSTEAD leads to, well ... 

Well, I think I'm trying to come to grips with the
same elements, is all, but in a way that does not see
them as flaws, but, rather, as integral to what might
well be the novel's "message." I think you miught have
made a similar reevaluation of GR with your rereading
of Slothrop's disappearance, which is a reading I have
trouble with because of my own assumptions about how
that novel works, should work, might work, whatever
...

Anyway, am not trying to stage a conflict.  Anything
but.  I think I was once--and might still be--looking
for the same things, but, failing to find them, I'm
trying to see how the novel might work to some
satifsfaction nonetheless.  Which is perhaps kinda
sorta my claim about the position Oedipa is in as
well,  awaiting that "crying" and throughout the novel ...

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