VV(11): Flies

[Dave Monroe]

"swatting at flies" (V., Ch. 8, Sec. 1, p. 213)

Can't help but think here of Jean-Paul Sartre's (and we know via, of all
people, Pig Bodine, that Pynchon is familiar with J-P Sartre, see p.
130) first stage play, Les Mouches  (The Flies), an allegory of the
German occupation first staged, astonishingly, in occupied Paris in
1943.  Like T.S. Eliot's The Family Reunion, Sartre's play is based on
Aeschylus' Oresteia, with Sartre's flies as Aeschylus' Eumenides
(Furies).  Note that the play involves the return of Orestes (hence,
Oresteia) to his homeland, Argos ...

As I noted some time back here, V.--indeed, those Pynchonian texts as a
whole--seem nigh unto born under the sign of the element, argon, and its
cognates.  Argon (Ar), is not only an inert gas, but its very name means
"inert," "lazy," "Gk, neut. of argos idle, lazy, f. a- + ergon work; fr.
its relative inertness," "a colorless odorless gaseous element found in
the air and in volcanic gases and used esp. as a filler for electric
bulbs and electron tubes" (utilizing Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary
here) ...

Cf. "argonaut," "an adventurer engaged in a quest," but note also of
course the specifically naval reference, not only that "naut" ("naught,"
"knot"; "naughty," "knotty," "knotting") but specifically the good ship
Argo.  Recall the quest of its crew, those eponymous Argonauts, for the
Golden Fleece, cf. the golden screw (which alludes to that fleece a
couple of different ways there, now that I think of it
...) @  pp. 39-40 ...

But note also argot, "an often more or less secret vocabulary and idiom
peculiar to a particular group."   Or, via argent, "archaic: the metal
silver," to argentine, and, thus, The Argentine, Argentina, which, like
the inert, the lazy, electric bulbs, electron tubes, adventurers,
quests, golden objects thereof, secret vocabularies, idioms, particular,
not to mention peculiar, groups, has, as you've emphasized here, no
small place in Pynchon's  particular, peculiar idiom, secret vocabulary
as well.  And I'm still on the first sentence here ...

Hm.  "Park," "swatting," "flies," "April"--'tis the (baseball) season
...