COLGR49: Chapter 1 Summary

[Saioued Al-Zaioued]

In the first chapter we are introduced to Mrs. Oedipa Maas, who will become 
in the upcoming month the infatuation of the males in the list (and perhaps 
the females of that persuasion). We see her stumbling in from a tupperware 
party where the hostess has made the fondue far too alcoholic.

(perhaps a reaction with the tranquilizers Hilarius is giving her? Or is 
Pynchon making it clear that this chick gets drunk on virtually nothing? All 
I know is that fondue can't be that alcoholic)

She learns from a letter that she is named executor of the will of a dead an 
ex-boyfriend called Pierce Inverarity, whose assets are hefty but are also 
extremely tangled. She then gets a mosiac of thoughts ranging from a slammed 
door in a resort in Mexico, a INVERSE sunrise in Cornell (P's alma mater), a 
tune from Bartok's, and a bust of Jay Gould that Inverarity owned.

(Jay Gould (1836-1892) was a corrupt financier who once messed with the gold 
market crippling it for years and made a massive return. If Pierce has a 
bust of Gould it means he is kinda twisted and perhaps even corrupt, or 
atleast wants to convey that image.)

(Inverarity: Think Inverse and Moriarty, I believe Dean Moriarty was the 
character that represented Neal Cassidy in 'On the Road', havent read the 
book since highschool, but I know that Pynchon was a big fan of Kerouac. 
What I remember is that Moriarty was pretty nuts party maniac type, but was 
very poor. So in this sense, Pierce is the inverse since he is really rich, 
and the way he parties seems to be more calculated than getting drunk in a 
ghetto. I do have another theory about names which I will discuss in a later 
post.)

She gets the letter from the firm Warpe, Wistfull, Kubitschek and McMingus 
(This name has to be addressed) and she will get help from a lawyer called 
Metzger. (subliminal message: I want to sleep with Oedipa Maas, Boyd Beaver) 
She goes shopping in Kinneret-Among-The-Pines, prepares dinner and tries to 
think about the time Inverarity must have named her executor, which is about 
a year ago. She remembers a prank style phone call where he kept changing 
characters. We are introduced to Wendell 'Mucho' Maas, her really fragile 
husband who works as a DJ in KCUF(FUCK spelled backwards, slow poke).  Mucho 
has huge emotional scarring from being a used car salesmen. He discusses 
problems he has had with Mr. Funch the program director who instructs him 
that he should change his image from a hip horny DJ to more of a 
brotherly/fatherly figure (thank you heavenly father for not giving Mucho a 
Freudian name).

Wendell & Oedipa go to sleep, and at 3 am Oedipa gets a call from her 
psycho-therapist, a Dr. Hilarius, who is conducting an experiment of giving 
hallucinogins (LSD, shrooms, etc.) to housewives. He has perscribed her 
tranquilizers which she is not taking, and he claims that he has called 
because he felt that she needed to talk to him. She hangs up on him, and has 
trouble sleeping, but still meets up with the family Lawyer, a Mr. Roseman, 
in the morning. They go for lunch, he makes a move on her (plays footsie 
with her hard boots, and asks her to run away with him) she kinda shrugs him 
off, but is intrigued when he suggests that if she takes on the executorship 
she might unravel everything in. The two pages that follow are some of the 
most beautiful in modern literature, and if you are using this as cliff 
notes (damn punks), you should read them. I refuse to say a word on them 
until I fully understand it.

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