Benny's Job (2)

[Dave Monroe]

Obviously, anybody's permitted to say anything they
want here.  I just can't seem to make a single
observation about, well, anything, without you having
some sort of problem with it, is all, Mr. jbor sir. 
But you are obviously more familiar with my posts than
I am with yours (my first compliment!), so ...

In the meantime, do note that, by and large, I only
return the favor in defense of my own little readings,
and, occasionally, in support of those of others.  As
opposed to caricatures thereof.  Otherwise, I make use
of whatever I can make us of, say whatever little I
can say in return, and decidedly stay off the attack. 
All of which is obvious as well ...

Now on this issue of what is "in" the text ... well,
again, one of those little revelatory moments for me
was the realization that there's an awful lot of
consternation about problems of succession and the
threat of civil unrest in those Shakespearean
histories and tragedies.  Why is that?

Keep in mind the context of Elizabethan, even
Jacobean, England.  A queen who came to the throne via
a problematic succession of problematic successions,
who herself didn't have an heir, and, indeed, civil
unrest all along the way (culminating some time later
in regicide and civil war).  Nothing explicit about
ERI "within" those texts, but there are traces
nonetheless ...

Interestingly, Hollander as I recall uses that very
example in his paper on The Crying of Lot 49 as well. 
As well as, I recall, the examples of the thinly
veiled allusions to contemporay figures, events, and
problems in Swift's Gulliver's Travels (which was
apparently so potentially incendiary that it was
published anonymously) and Dante's Divine Comedy
(apparently one can discern some of Dante's
contemporaries in the figures in Hell).

Pardon me if this sounds a mere recap of Hollander,
but  I apparently had folowed the same path, to some
extent, before finding he'd already been there first. 
And had had had more time, patience, and ingenuity to
explore it than I ever will.  Which is hardly to say
we're in complete agreement.  Indeed, and, perhaps,
ironically, I've already had much the same argument
with him offlist that I seem to have had here. 
Haven't changed my mind yet.  Or his, but ...

But there is no small consternation about "America"
and its "legacy," not to mention its history in the
Crying of Lot 49, a book so unusual one (meaning me)
again has to ask, why?  What was going on to provoke
it?  And, taking into account when it was written,
when it was published, when it was set, well, it's not
difficult to see that there was indeed no small amount
of consternation about America and its legacy at
large.

Hollander's particular take here, I think, is that
Pynchon sort of took on the role of a stranger in a
familiar land, went into exile in his own nation, and,
a la Swift, commented thereupon through veils rather
more opaque than that of JS's G'sT.  I don't recall
the JFK assassination receiving any undue attention,
but it was only after the fact that I realized it
hadn't received any attention at all elsewhere vis a
vis TCOL49, so ...

Me, I'm not so sure that the commnetary, the satire,
menippean, political, whatever, is all that opaque,
though my understanding of it was and remains not so
neraly as sophisticated as Hollander's.  Ironically,
Hollander's beef with me (oh, yes, I've heard from
him) was that my inclination was to discuss the
various meditations on interpretation therein, rather
than its covert-to-overt political commentaries. 
Remedios Varo vs. Varro, for example.  You can't
please everyone, I guess, but I seem to have the
unique ability to please no one, so ...

Anyway, let's consider Trotsky here.  Why Trotsky,
then?  Why in The Crying of Lot 49?  Why at that
particular time, place?  Of writing?  Of publication? 
In a novel set just a few years earlier than its
later-60s publication, perhaps, understandably, at the
onset of its writing, precisely, say, at the end of
the Kennedy era?  What's the attraction?  How might
trotsky be resonant here, now (or, rather, there,
then)?  and so forth ...

But speaking of Kennedy, who indeed isn't mentioned
explicitly in TCOL49, despite the setting of the book
and the events and apparent concerns therein.  Here's
of course where we differ on the notion of significant
exclusions, jbor.  I--and, in his own way,
Hollander--might well read such glaring exclusions as
significant in the sense of pointing TO said
exclusion.  You--and, in his own way, Terrance--read
them as pointing AWAY from them.  

But much of what I've posted hasn't been esp.
dependent on "glaring exclusions" as it has on the
question of, well, why this or that, esp. given that
this or that is usually pretty unusual, even withing
the admittedly unusual texts at hand.  Alligator
hunting sewer patrols, nomadic mercenary youth gangs,
whatever.

I've no problem with relating such things to the so
called "internal" operations of a text, which might
well strengthen the text as a "whole," whatever that
"whole" might be, but I'm nonetheless compelled to
ask, what provoked this?  Where did this come from? 
What might have been going on?  Esp. in the case of
notably unusual events even in notably unusual texts.

"Ire"?  The only thing that "earns" my "ire" here is
being constantly set upon.  Apparently, making that
redaing in the first place "erant" your ire," so ...
aAlthough restating and restating my case has helped
me clarify it, has strengthened it for me, so ... er,
playlist addition, The Beat, "Two Swords," off I Just
can't Stop It:

   Two swords slashing at each other
   Only sharpen one another
   And in the long run even he's your brother
   And in the long run even ...

... well, never could quite figure out that last bit
there, so ...


--- jbor <jbor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> ----------
> >From: <davidmmonroe at yahoo.com>
> >
> 
> > Now, to the best of my recollection, those are the
> > facts of the case, and, at any rate, all the
> answers
> > to your questions as I understand them are to be
> found
> > "within."
> 
> Except, I guess, to the one about whether one is
> permitted to say that the
> analogy coco = gook is *not* in the text of _V._
> Which is the simple
> interpretation which earnt your ire in the first
> instance here, so ...
> 
> The Playboys seem to be mercenary, unpaid, non-govt
> and somewhat naive, so
> I'm having a hard time fitting them into the
> military-industrial complex
> just at present. And I'm not sure that trying to
> tailor their representation
> to such a shape isn't leading me down a "wrong" path
> (can there be such a
> thing?), *away* from the text so to speak.
> 
> But ... indeed ... the more I think about it the
> more it occurs to me that
> _Lot 49_ might also be construed as an encrypted
> meditation on the
> assassination of Leon Trotsky. Mexico ... the
> Zapatatistas ... and that
> Peter Pinguid incident and Society ... ?
> 
> 
> 


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