antw. Re: VLVL2 (1): Man and Dog

[Bandwraith at aol.com]

In a message dated 7/11/03 6:48:59 AM, lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de writes:

<<  yes, i think it's kamikaze takeshi. makes perfectly sense, and then there 

  would, on pynchon's side, have been other japanese names (like kenzaburo or 

  yasushi) to avoid this identification. if you - and be it just for the 
moment 

  - take takeshi to be the dog with the two days, the whole composition 
becomes 

  far more complex. at least this is the case for me --

 >>

But then there is the Mucho Maas and the COL 49 links. Actually,
I was wondering if a case mightn't be made for Oedipa's entire
adventure to have all been Mucho's hallucination on acid. It's the
way I would end my screenplay of Lot 49- a fade of Mucho listening
to the B side of some demo- a surfer/acid group featuring 
Meter and Zoyd on bass & keyboards, and opening with a cut called
"Windowpane." The chorus:

        One opal cloudlet
        in an opal form
      reflects the rainbow
       of a thunderstorm

     Which in distant valley
        has been staged
         For we are most
         artistically caged...

Ignoring the Yeatsian allusion, here, for a moment, if we 
consider Wendall as analogous to a tightly wound coil by 
which current can either be measured or induced- 
depending on point of view- then Oedipa's schtick is
analogous to a conductor around which he is wrapped.
She does her thing and he does his- polyphony. But doesn't
this imply that Pynchon is suggesting that polyphony is 
even MORE determined than harmony? At some point, in
the history of musical evolution, it became even more arduous
to avoid the seduction of the harmonic, than to remain
separate but conjoined- i.e., part of the same composition
yet whole-y oblivious to it, or, polyphonic. Joseph's coat 
became Newton's prism scripted for an ideal audience.

The future became the present. The waxwing slain.

Oedipa, alas, like Clementine and Ophelia before her, is
forever en-caged in the uncertainty of her artistically
envisioned world, while Mucho, seemingly lost in the 
ragged periphery of a full-blown hallucination, is granted
ink by his god, and lives to see the orange sunshine of 
another day. Rock on, Mucho.

respectfully