VLVL "the old Yurok story" (379-80)

[jbor]

umberto 
> The matter of bones smells of good ol' granpa' Eliot, with a
> reference to "Death by Water" (WL 4). These postmodernist always get
> back to the best modernist.
>
> The Styx may also refer to a poem the Old Possum liked so much, that
> is, the Divine Comedy.

The Egyptian Book of the Dead? The Epic of Gilgamesh?

But I don't think that a narrow Eurocentric reading is actually warranted in
the context of (what I assume is) a faithful retelling of an authentic
Indigenous North American myth. (The River Styx isn't mentioned in Pynchon's
text, by the way.)

best