Winthrop Tremaine

[Terrance]

Thank you John Bailey.  

Waiting for an EMPIRE? 


Mary Allen sees Oedipa fighting madness throughout Lot 49.
Besides any
Tristero-induced paranoia, beneath Oedipa's frustrating
life--particularly the
incapacity of the men around her for real human love--lurks
an underlying
hysteria. Indeed, an exploration of the novel's sexual
dynamics may bring
together certain elements of the labyrinth and language play
already limned.
Oedipa is decidedly a woman among men in this text. Only two
other women
are specifically named, and Oedipa's own identity blurs at
times. She is
alternately Margo (Inverarity's Lamont Cranston sidekick),
Oed (a de-, or
perhaps resexed Oedipus), Rapunzel (a captive maiden), a
heroin(e) (at
one point imagining herself as some single melted crystal of
urban horse), a
nymph (at Echo Courts), Arnold Snarb (at The Greek Way),
Mrs. Edna
Mosh (Mucho's pre-rendering of her name for the airwaves),
and Grace
Bortz (when she feels pregnant). Men provide the clues
during her
investigation of an alternate mail (male?) system, and the
first man's name in
the book (Pierce) points toward potential male sexual
domination. Yet several
other men--Fallopian, Koteks, Emory Bortz--bear named that
link them to
distinctly female systems. Lot 49 thus compels us to ask
whether the alternate mail system is in fact a female one
(an other system) or just another (male) system. 


William Gleason, The Postmodern Labyrinths of Lot 49, in
Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Vol. XXXIV, No.
2, Winter, 1993, pp. 83-99

Gnostic Pynchon? Again, Eddins benefits from his
predecessors--Medelson's sacred and profane, Tanner's
Manichaean binary, Schaub's postmodernist parable of
perception, Wilde's parodic subversion. He spends nearly the
entire Chapter on the Scurvhamites. 

More on this later, 

In the mean time, M&D is on my mind, and here in the last
chapter of CL49 P mentions Milton. 

http://www-personal.k-state.edu/~lyman/english233/Milton-Massacre.htm

If anyone can locate a copy of Richard Hooker's Preface to
Ecclesiastical Polity and also Hobbes on the subject, it
would most appreciated. 

Also see Eric Voegelin, Modernity Without Restraint, from
the collected works, Volume 5.

Note that P, after introducing both St. Francis (Dux) and
Joachim as History in V., now  continues in the Third
Empire, for some it is what they wait for (Sacred), for
others, it is THEIR EMPIRE.  

Hysteria, Hysterical, [From Latin hystericus, hysterical,
from Greek husterikos, from hustera, womb (from the former
idea that disturbances in the womb caused hysteria), just
hilarious, Oediapa full of nothing, NADA. Thanks you Dave
Monroe, I enjoyed that Hemmingway, gave me tremors, sailor,
suicide, and not the after the Our Father and the Hail Mary
there is no Glory Be--Holy Ghost. Remember H's state at the
time and he was a Roman Catholic at this time in his life. 




John Bailey wrote:
> 
> Not to mention the mail. Are there any hints here of what
> sort of mail we're talking about? Is this government
> surplus guy using W.A.S.T.E.? I'm guessing not...which
> would be significant in itself. Though of course, as
> exemplified in the Alameda County Death Cult bit, there's
> no reason to assume an unwavering sympathy with all WASTE
> users, underdogs though they many be.