Cervantine Echoes in Early Pynchon

[Dave Monroe]

Pynchon," Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society
of America 8.1 (1988), pp. 47-53 ...

... “Low-lands,” written while the novelist was an
undergraduate at Cornell University and first
published in New World Writing 16 (1960), is “an
explicit parody” of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land,
according to Joseph W. Slade. There is, however,
another possible important influence: the writings of
Cervantes, in particular Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Pynchon studied with Vladimir Nabokov at Cornell; in
the second semester of the academic year 1951-1952,
Nabokov delivered his famous Don Quixote lectures at
Harvard. Although Fredson Bowers states that “No
evidence is preserved to show that the Cervantes
lectures were given later at Cornell on Nabokov's
return,” the Russian novelist and critic might well
have included references to the Spanish masterpiece in
his Cornell courses. In any case, Pynchon, whose
writings reveal his voracious reading, has shown an
interest in Hispanic literature throughout his stories
and his novels.
   In this study, I shall discuss the possibility of
the influence, in Nabokov's words the “spiritual
irrigation,” of Cervantes upon the haunting story
written by the twenty-two-year-old Pynchon. The Waste
Land, of course, remains a primary influence.

[...]

As is the case with Don Quixote, the character of
Flange dominates the loose plot; as Pynchon comments,
“his fantasies become increasingly vivid, that's about
all that happens” (Introduction 10). Slade considers
Flange “The traveler of the waste land, a mockery of
the protagonist of Eliot's poem ...” (74). He is also
a most quixotic character.
     Don Quixote, of course, was a bearded man around
fifty years old (“Frisaba la edad de nuestro hidalgo
con los cincuenta años ...”), tall in contrast to his
plump squire, Sancho Panza. Flange is a tall (72) man
showing “the current signs of incipient middle age”
(60); as he leaves his house for the dump, his last
words to his wife are that he will now “grow a beard”
(60). Like Don Quixote, Flange is dominated by a
romantic obsession, not indeed books of chivalry but
the sea, which he transforms into his Dulcinea: “He
had read or heard somewhere in his pre-adolescence
that the sea was a woman, and the metaphor had
enslaved him and largely determined what he became
from that moment” (58-59). Like Don Quixote, Flange
takes refuge in a world of fantasy, fleeing from the
“relentless rationality” (58) of his wife as Alonso
Quijano had fled from the “curate's and the
housekeeper's so-called common sense” (Nabokov 43).
Don Quixote loved the old Spanish ballads and the
books of chivalry; Flange loves Noel Coward songs and
sea-ballads, such as the ballad sung during his navy
days by the Filipino steward Delgado which contains
the lines: “Oh, I fear she will be taken by a Spanish
Gal-la-lee / As she sails by the Low-lands low” (65).
Both men learn through bitter experience that there is
a difference between art and reality. On his deathbed
Don Quixote recants and repudiates his beloved books:
“Ya soy enemigo de Amadís de Gaula ... ya me son
odiosas todas las historias profanas del andante
caballería ...” (II, 74, 1064); Dennis once sang Noel
Coward songs to his new wife, but “Noel Coward songs
often bear little relevance to reality —if Flange
hadn't known this before, he soon found it out ...”
(57).
     One of the most interesting similarities between
the renowned knight of La Mancha and Flange is their
experiencing a mid-life crisis reminiscent of
adolescence....  In his Introduction, Pynchon writes:
“It is no secret nowadays ... that many American
males, even those of middle-aged appearance ... are in
fact, incredible as it sounds, still small boys
inside. Flange is this type of character ...” (10 ).
Like Don Quixote, Flange is incapable of “developing
any real life shared with an adult woman. His solution
is Nerissa .... It looks like I wanted some ambiguity
here about whether or not she was only a creature of
his fantasies” (ibid.

[...]

   Like Don Quixote in the Cave of Montesinos episode
(II, 22-23), Flange descends the dump's ravine to act
out his fantasies. The scene in which Nerissa calls
the sleeping Dennis from the dump's shack into her
private underworld has curious resonances of an
episode of Don Quixote (II, 44) which was a favorite
of Nabokov.  The Knight, during his stay at the ducal
hunting palace, leaves his bed one warm evening to
listen to young Altisidora's feigned love-songs: “...
the grated window, now shut, and the warm Spanish
night that henceforth for three centuries is to become
the breeding place of romantic prose-and-verse in all
languages, and fifty-year-old Quixote fighting one
delusion by means of another delusion —melancholy,
miserable, tempted, excited by little Altisidora's
musical moans” (Nabokov 70). This episode is followed
shortly by the unpleasant episode of the cats which
the mocking Duke and Duchess cause to be released in
their deluded guest's bedchamber (II, 46); it is
particularly interesting, therefore, that Pynchon
describes as follows the moment in which Nerissa calls
to Flange: “... a desolate hour somehow not intended
for human perception, but rather belonging to cats [my
italics], owls and peepers and whatever else make
noises in the night ...  For a full minute there was
nothing, then at last it came. A girl's voice, riding
on the wind” (72). Nerissa calls to the “tall Anglo
with the gold hair and shining teeth”; this
description first causes Flange to exclaim, “That's
me, ain't it”; he then ruefully reflects that such a
description fits his younger self much better than it
fits his current self (72-73); in like manner, Don
Quixote's niece Antonia at one point reminds her uncle
that he cannot be “valiente, siendo viejo ... estando
por la edad agobiado” (II, 6, 579-580).

[...]

Don Quixote chooses to wander the roads of Spain in
the company of his peasant squire to free
galley-slaves (I, 12) who have broken their contract
with society. Flange is also a basically “sympathetic
character” (Introduction 9), but he too chooses to
consort with garbagemen, dump-keepers and gypsies; to
spend all day drinking cheap wine and listening to
Vivaldi on the stereo instead of going off to his law
office. Like Don Quixote, Flange seeks to be a
“redeemer” (Slade 73), a frequent figure in Pynchon's
fiction; unlike Don Quixote, he ends as “a miserable
messiah” (Slade 75), because Pynchon leaves him lost
in his fantasies....

[...]

... there are other echoes of the great novel and of
other writings of Cervantes as well. Pig Bodine, a
favorite Pynchon character, is a sort of grotesque
version of Sancho Panza, “squat and leering” (60) in
contrast to his tall, well-educated officer friend
Flange. Dennis's depressingly rational wife Cindy
reacts to Pig's inopportune appearance at her door
exactly as did the niece and housekeeper when Sancho
calls on Don Quixote near the beginning of Part II:
“‘No,’ she wailed, ‘You ugly bastard ... Oh, no,’
Cindy said, barring the door” (69)— “... ellas le
defendían la puerta: ¿Qué quiere este mostrenco en
esta casa?” (II, 2, 552-553). Don Quixote is not the
only madman in Cervantes's works; the Licenciado
Vidriera, from the Exemplary Novel of the same name,
may be an antecedent of Geronimo Diaz, Flange's
“crazed and boozy wetback analyst” (57); the first of
several delightfully loony medical men in Pynchon's
writings, Diaz suffers from a “wonderful, random sort
of Although the character of Flange is the element of
“Low-lands” most reminiscent of Don Quixote, there are
other echoes of the great novel and of other writings
of Cervantes as well. Pig Bodine, a favorite Pynchon
character, is a sort of grotesque version of Sancho
Panza, “squat and leering” (60) in contrast to his
tall, well-educated officer friend Flange. Dennis's
depressingly rational wife Cindy reacts to Pig's
inopportune appearance at her door exactly as did the
niece and housekeeper when Sancho calls on Don Quixote
near the beginning of Part II: “‘No,’ she wailed, ‘You
ugly bastard . . . Oh, no,’ Cindy said, barring the
door” (69)— “. . . ellas le defendían la puerta: ¿Qué
quiere este mostrenco en esta casa?” (II, 2, 552-553).
Don Quixote is not the only madman in Cervantes's
works; the Licenciado Vidriera, from the Exemplary
Novel of the same name, may be an antecedent of
Geronimo Diaz, Flange's “crazed and boozy wetback
analyst” (57); the first of several delightfully loony
medical men in Pynchon's writings, Diaz suffers from a
“wonderful, random sort of madness which . . . was
about all [Flange] had to keep him going” (58); when
Vidriera regains his sanity, he is ignored by the
courtiers who had gleefully patronized him in his
modish lunacy.
   Early in Part I, having just set out on his
journey, Don Quixote sees some windmills which to him
resemble giants (I, 8); as they turn into the dump,
Flange and his friends pass an incinerator “which
looked like a Mexican hacienda” (63). When Sancho
finally receives his land-locked “island” from the
jesting ducal pair, he governs it with surprising
discretion (II, 44-54); to Flange, the dump seems like
“an island or enclave in the dreary country around it,
a discrete kingdom with Bolingroke [the black
dump-keeper] as its uncontested ruler” (67). Towards
the end of Part II, Don Quixote and Sancho visit
Barcelona, where they view the sea for the first time:
“vieron el mar, hasta entonces dellos no visto” (II,
61, 986); Pig tells a sea-story “about how he and a
sonarman named Feeny had stolen a horsedrawn taxi in
Barcelona” (68). Don Quixote attributes emerald-green
eyes to his peerless lady Dulcinea: “y a lo que yo
creo, los [ojos] de Dulcinea deben ser de verdes
esmeraldas” (II, 11, 611). Pynchon gives us a last
glimpse of Nerissa: “She looked up gravely. Whitecaps
danced across her eyes; sea creatures, he knew, would
be cruising about in the submarine green of her heart”
(77).
   The emerald-green eyes of Dulcinea call to mind
still another green-eyed Cervantes heroine, Preciosa
of the Exemplary Novel “La gitanilla.” It is tempting
to speculate upon the possible influence of Preciosa
upon Nerissa, who —at “roughly three and a half feet”
(74)— can surely be considered a gitanilla....
“Low-lands” does share with “La gitanilla” a
pronounced fairy tale atmosphere. It is interesting to
recall that Nabokov considers Don Quixote also one of
the “fairy tales” without which “the world would not
be real” (1).
     For Nabokov, Shakespeare and Cervantes are equals
in “the matter of influence, of spiritual irrigation”
(8). The eternal waters of Cervantes's writings may
well have irrigated Thomas Pynchon's early story
“Low-lands.”

http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~cervantes/csa/artics88/holdswor.htm

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