COLGR49: Chapter 1 Summary - Thoughts

[Tim Strzechowski]

A few thoughts:

Saioued Al-Zaioued wrote:

> (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)

Although I'm not a fondue connoisseur, I've always been under the impression
it's nothing more than cooking oil for dipping and broiling chunks of meat (and
there's a chocolate version of fondue, I believe).  I don't read this as a
foreshadowing of the Dr Hilarius meds, but I do get a sense of Pynchon trying to
characterize Oedipa as a "typical" suburban American housewife of the era, and
immediately facing her with the disconcerting task of executrix.  If anything,
it seems the use of Tupperware and fondue serve to reinforce Oedipa's "normalcy"
and to jarr the reader when Pierce's will (and Oedipa's subsequent role) are
introduced.

> 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).

Interestingly, Mucho is several times noted for his "sensitivity" and being
"impressionable" and "thin-skinned," much as Sophocles's Oedipus characterizes
himself to the people of Thebes while seeking the reason for his people's
suffering.  Yet Mucho's sensitivity affects his job performance to the point
where "it was horrible.  Endless, convoluted incest" (Harper Perennial, p. 14).
Oedipus states:

"Poor children!  you may be sure I know
All that you longed for in your soming here.
I know that you are deathly sick; and yet,
Sick as you are, not one is as sick as I.
Each of you suffers in himself alone
His anguish, not another's; but my spirit
Groans for the city, for myself, for you."   (prologue)


> 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.

There are a few references to three's in this chapter.  Oedipa recalls that
Pierce's last long-distance phone call came at "three or so one morning" (p.
11), we learn that "Mucho shaved his upper lip every morning three times with,
three times against the grain to remove any remotest breath of a moustache" (p.
13), and of the course the three-in-the-morning phone call from Dr Hilarius (is
there a reason why Pynchon does not put a period after the Dr abbreviation?  Or
is it just my edition?).

Additionally, let's not forget to note the Uncle Sam hallucination that Oedipa
has, which contains our first mention of the American Postal Service itself:

"Hanging in the air over her bed she now beheld the well-known portrait of Uncle
that appears in front of all our post offices, his eyes gleaming unhealthily,
his sunken yellow cheeks most violently rouged, his finger pointing between her
eyes.  I want you" (p. 17).

Between the Tupperware and fondue, the negative feelings surrounding Mucho's car
sales and DJ jobs, the above description of Uncle Sam, the reference to Jay
Gould you pointed out, and a variety of other subtlies in this chapter, I see a
strong indictment against America (in many different ways and degrees) emerging
in the novel.