SLSL "TSR" frogs = death?

[pynchonoid]

I guess I just don't get this insistence on  either/or
dichotomies when it comes to Pynchon's texts -- in the
present instance it seems to be necessary, for some of
the folks in this discussion at least, that the frogs
symbolize death and nothing but.  But frogs are alive,
that's the irony, that a creature so green and alive
should also be associated with people journeying to
the land of the dead. 

In Aristophanes' play, not to put too fine a point on
it, the frog chorus doesn't announce a death, but
instead Dionysius' journey to bring Euripides back
from the dead:


"In Frogs (405 BC; Greek Batrachoi ) Dionysus, the god
of drama, is concerned about the poor quality of
present-day tragedy in Athens now that his recent
favourite, Euripides, is dead. Dionysus disguises
himself as the hero Heracles and goes down to Hades to
bring Euripides back to the land of the living. As the
result, however, of a competition arranged between
Euripides and his great predecessor, Aeschylus,
Dionysus is won over to the latter's cause and returns
to earth with Aeschylus, instead, as the one more
likely to help Athens in its troubles."
"Aristophanes" Encyclopædia Britannica
<http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=117656>
[Accessed December 2, 2002]. 


I think with the reference to The Frogs, Pynchon's
flipping the mid-20th century existential gloom and
doom about the finality of death and Nature = death 
on their heads, pointing to the ancient concept of a
cycle of life that includes death and transformation,
the eternal return that P returns to in his later
works, notably GR.  He spends a lot of time and makes
a great effort in his works, imo, beginning with
"TSR", to show the bad shit that flows from the
insistence on the split between conscious Man and
material Nature, in a series of works that return,
again and again, to the notion of the Earth itself as
a living being.

Does Buttercup bring Levine back from the dead?  I
don't think so.  I don't think anybody can.

I also think, in addition to making a serious (perhaps
overly so) literary move with the reference to Greek
myth and literature in the story's climax, Pynchon may
also be making  fun of Lardass and his Swamp Wench by
comparing them to these figures of Greek literature.  

Pynchon might also be having fun with the plot line of
The Frogs, offering oblique commentary on  "the poor
quality of present-day" literature, specifically,
Hemingway. 


http://www.cigarfamily.com/our_cigars_hemingway.html
The
ARTURO FUENTE HEMINGWAY
cigar story as told by Carlos Fuente Jr.

caricature, sans cigar, but in the midst of death: 
http://www.npg.si.edu/img2/hemingway/cova.gif

with dead leopard:
http://www.npg.si.edu/img2/hemingway/leopard.jpg

going native:
http://www.npg.si.edu/img2/hemingway/desk.jpg
"This picture resonates with a stolid serenity that
belies the erratic behavior that sometimes
characterized Hemingway on his 1953 safari. Drinking
heavily, he took up with a native girl under the eyes
of his own wife; he shaved his head in the name of
"going native"; and, dyeing his clothes a rusty color
to match the hue favored among the local Masai people,
he went hunting with a spear."



-Doug


somebody:
> In that play, he brood of frogs of birth and death
> sing from the depths of their croaking chorus throat
> to the rowers coveyed to Hades on  Charon's ferry
> boat. 



=====
<http://www.pynchonoid.blogspot.com/>

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