After Tragedy: The Thomas Pynchon Scratchpad

[Mark Kohut]

I think this is brilliant...thanks.

On 12/27/06, robinlandseadel at comcast.net <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
wrote:
>
> 'Tristero is a reference to the philosopher's stone, via
> Hermes Trismegistus, and the allegory of that stone,
> capable of turning lead into gold, is the allegory for
> Pynchon of the possibilities of metaphor,  'another
> set of possibilities to replace those that had conditioned
> the land to accept any San Narciso among its most
> tender flesh without a reflex or a cry.'
>
> I figured that "Tristero" pointed to much older
> magical principles, but the linkage to the
> Philosopher's Stone leads us back to the birth
> of Alchemy. Note Webb's entrance in AtD:
>
> "Couldn't help smellin what you're cookin in here.
> Back over the ridgeline and across the creek, 's
> a matter of fact. It's 'at there nitro, ain't it?"
>
> That conversation is re-directed (perhaps it's more
> accurate to say that Merle attempts to redirect the
> conversation) to alchemy in the most traditional
> and historical senses. Webb, of course, can't stop
> talking about blowin' shit up and plotwise, the book
> is on its merry way.  But note how quickly Pynchon
> gets old fashioned Alchemy and old fashioned
> Anarchism on the same page? And where? And
> who's talking when it happens?
>
> Vineland, of course, links up with COL49 with the
> renascent Mucho Maas (temporarily Count Drugula)
> and Jesse Traverse is in both Vineland and AtD.
> But it looks like the Philosopher's Stone (and the
> Tristerrian "Anti-Stone) links up COL49 and
> AtD in an even bigger way, what with the CoC
> book series, replicated in ubiquity in our own
> time by J. K. Rowling's Literary Juggernaut;
> the first book (in its first incarnation across the
> pond) in that series has "Philosopher's Stone"
> in the title. I'd call that a big link.
> -------------- Original message ----------------------
> From: "Ya Sam" <takoitov at hotmail.com>
> >
> > "In this post, I grapple with my own search for a successor to a rather
> > embarrassing interest in Tom Robbins, Jack Kerouac, and Henry
> > Miller—somebody who could complement the problematic works of Hermann
> Hesse.
> > I am also trying to describe an alternative to the modernist tragedians,
> > including F. Scott Fitzgerald and J. D. Salinger." ...
> >
> > Read the whole thing here
> >
> >
>
> http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/after_tragedy_the_thomas_pynchon_scratc
> > hpad/#When:09:50:00Z
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
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>
>


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