Ratfucker

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

          Dave Monroe:
          "Looking back on the novel from the perspective 
          of its finale, it could almost be viewed as a New 
          Deal novel, concerned with gathering back into 
          the American fold a 'third world' previosuly excluded...."
          (pp. 149-50)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0109&msg=59165

That is, from the perspective of the railroad tracks. Looking back from the
end of the book, it looks like armageddon:

          She heard a lock snap shut; the sound echoed a moment. 
          Passerine spread his arms in a gesture that seemed to 
          belong to the priesthood of some remote culture; perhaps 
          to a descending angel. The auctioneer cleared his throat. 
          Oedipa settled back, to await the crying of lot 49.

At the start, there is:

          Oedipa stood in the living room, stared at by the greenish 
          dead eye of the TV tube, spoke the name of God, tried to 
          feel as drunk as possible.

Halfway in it's homemade dandelion wine with Gengis Cohen and:

          She could, at this stage of things, recognize signals like that, 
          as the epileptic is said to an odor, color, pure piercing grace 
          note announcing his seizure. Afterward it is only this signal, 
          really dross, this secular announcement, and never what is 
          revealed during the attack, that he remembers. Oedipa 
          wondered whether, at the end of this (if it were supposed 
          to end), she too might not be left with only compiled 
          memories of clues, announcements, intimations, but 
          never the central truth itself, which must somehow each 
          time be too bright for her memory to hold; which must 
          always blaze out, destroying its own message irreversibly, 
          leaving an overexposed blank when the ordinary world 
          came back. In the space of a sip of dandelion wine it came 
          to her that she would never know how many times such a 
          seizure may already have visited, or how to grasp it should 
          it visit again. Perhaps even in this last second but there 
          was no way to tell. She glanced down the corridor of 
          Cohen's rooms in the rain and saw, for the very first time, 
          how far it might be possible to get lost in this. pp76

1/4 of the way in it's:

          THINGS then did not delay in turning curious. If one object 
          behind her discovery of what she was to label the Tristero 
          System or often only The Tristero (as if it might be something's 
          secret title) were to bring to an end her encapsulation in her 
          tower, then that night's infidelity with Metzger would logically 
          be the starting point for it; logically. That's what would come 
          to haunt her most, perhaps: the way it fitted, logically, together. 
          As if (as she'd guessed that first minute in San Narciso) there 
          were revelation in progress all around her. 31/32

3/4:

          Next day, after twelve hours of sleep and no dreams to speak of, 
          Oedipa checked out of the hotel and drove down the peninsula to 
          Kinneret. She had decided on route, with time to think about the 
          day preceding, to go see Dr Hilarius her shrink, and tell him all. 
          She might well be in the cold and sweatless meathooks of a 
          psychosis. With her own eyes she had verified a WASTE system: 
          seen two WASTE postmen, a WASTE mailbox, WASTE stamps, 
          WASTE cancellations. And the image of the muted post horn all 
          but saturating the Bay Area. Yet she wanted it all to be fantasy
          some clear result of her several wounds, needs, dark doubles. 
          She wanted Hilarius to tell her she was some kind of a nut and 
          needed a rest, and that there was no Trystero. She also wanted 
          to know why the chance of its being real should menace her so. 
          107

>From most other perspectives, there are clear spiritual/religious aspects of
Tristero, or at least "Tristero"'s effect on Oedipa's imagination . Just before 
the previous passage there's another sort of "Anarchist Miracle":

          . . . .But how long, Oedipa thought, could it go on before collisions 
          became a serious hindrance? There would have to be collisions. 
          The only alternative was some unthinkable order of music, many 
          rhythms, all keys at once, a choreography in which each couple 
          meshed easy, predestined. Something they all heard with an 
          extra sense atrophied in herself. She followed her partner's lead, 
          limp in the young mute's clasp, waiting for the collisions to begin. 
          But none came. She was danced for half an hour before, by 
          mysterious consensus, everybody took a break, without having 
          felt any touch but the touch of her partner. Jesus Arrabal would 
          have called it an anarchist miracle. Oedipa, with no name for it, 
          was only demoralized. She curtsied and fled. 106/107

". . . .a descending angel. . . .spoke the name of God. . . .clues, 
announcements, intimations, but never the central truth itself, 
which must somehow each time be too bright for her memory 
to hold. . . .As if (as she'd guessed that first minute in San 
Narciso) there were revelation in progress all around her. . . .
She wanted Hilarius to tell her she was some kind of a nut 
and needed a rest, and that there was no Trystero. She also 
wanted to know why the chance of its being real should 
menace her so. . . .Jesus Arrabal would have called it an 
anarchist miracle. Oedipa, with no name for it, was only 
demoralized. She curtsied and fled. . . ."

Everything about Tristero reeks of apostasy, of unauthorized religious 
sects and the intrusion of another world into this one. Look deep into 
Pan's Labyrinth for the long standing alliances between the unlanded 
and the local healers. Remember the posthorn on Jesus Arrabal's copy 
of Regeneracion?

          . . . .So her eyes did fall presently onto an ancient rolled copy 
          of the anarcho-syndicalist paper Regeneracion. The date was 
          1904 and there was no stamp next to the cancellation, only the 
          handstruck image of the post horn. 

          "They arrive," said Arrabal. "Have they been in the mails that long? 
          Has my name been substituted for that of a member who's died? 
          Has it really taken sixty years? Is it a reprint? Idle questions, I am 
          a footsoldier. The higher levels have their reasons." She carried 
          this thought back out into the night with her. 98

Note as well the citation in GR of Rilke's Angelic Hierarchies, the frequent use 
of specifically religious/spiritual language and metaphors---one of the true 
inheritances of America were all the religious exiles. Of course, COL 49 is full 
of exiles---the disinherited. And the folks on the wrong side of the tracks are 
disinherited, alright. But there's more to it than that.

          mikebailey:
          oh, I thought you were addressing me!

"Ahem!!!' [clearing throat, audibly.] Guess it's time to change the 
name of this thread, as far as it been Roving so far away from the 
original topick overheated and political. . . .

          MB:
          Why would anyone want to model themselves
          on Mark Hanna!? and craft a Presidency based
          on McKinley's, which kicked off more imperialism
          than you can shake a stick at?

'Cause he's a Commedia dell'Arte villain from a Jay Ward cartoon?

          mikebailey:
          "Duffy" Duyfhuizen produces the Pynchon Notes.
          He seems to be a regular guy...put a nice note
          in with the set I ordered.

          I find myself in agreement with you [Richard Fiero], 
          at least to the point of not immediately thinking 
          "anarchist" when I think of "Tristero".

Tristero is one of many natural responses to an oppressive and Fascistic
system of centralized government control. Tristero [or that collection of 
phalatilic nightmares and parodies that Pierce and Lord Overlunch collect] 
playfully [and sometimes not so playfully] undermine central systems of 
control.

          I think of them more as an opposition party
          (definitely not a "loyal opposition") 
          but they aren't incompatible with anarchy --
          anarchist opportunists could certainly use the
          W.A.S.T.E. network to communicate and propagandize,
          for one thing, and the program of the Tristero
          to disrupt "establishment" communications could
          be appealing to anarchists.

The mission of the Tristero to disrupt "establishment" communications 
is anarchist. Of course, it could be undermined seven ways from 
Sunday from any number and sort of agency and doubtless is. 
But monkey-wrenching government control of the transmission of 
messages is inherently anarchistic.

          at the risk of stating my views and calling them Pynchon's...

. . . .you know, there's a lot to be said for a purely "surface" readings of 
Pynchon. If nothing else, there is the possibility that the most obvious
surface meaning is very much to the point, even if later that P.O.V. is
destabilized, undercut or somehow rendered ridiculous. But if TRP toys 
with our assumptions all the time, remember that it's central to his purpose. 

          I think that in Lot 49 particularly, 
          Pynchon begins with the picture of discontent and
          malaise that are a very natural reaction to the ills of the
          world, and to the abuses perpetrated by the dominant culture...

. . . .KCUF, "Hitler" Hilarius and Gengis Cohen, to name three. . . .

          ...and through fiction he's able to succinctly show
          these ills and also sift through various possible responses
          not ignoring their appeal, while at the same time - (seems to me) 
          - subtly winnowing out the violent, the
          unreasonable, and focusing on the possibilities 
          for an intelligent person to find out more and to 
          play a responsible role in setting the world right...

I'm not so sure. Among other things, Oedipa's quest leads to a kind 
of madness, Slothrop's leads to having all his assumptions inverted. 
I guess it's that word "responsible". II'd favor terms like"karmic role", 
or "natural law, natural justice". Sometimes TRP's characters do good 
without really intending to. 

          I think he's not against leadership via merit,
          but against an entrenched power elite with all its
          attendant abuses...

          now if you're asking for page references where he says
          all that, I'll get back to you...

As far as I can tell, the point isn't what OBA favors or disdains, it's a 
question of what he chooses to depict in his  writing. More often than not, 
he's dramatizing forces in opposition to the central cultural paradigm---
those freaks who are deliberately working against the grain. Perhaps it 
helps to render his vision of the "Big Machine" in starker contrast.

          Richard Fiero:
          robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:

                    "The Exact Degree of Fictitiousness":
                    Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day

                    Bernard Duyfhuizen

                    In a novel so devoted to anarchist activities, the reader
                    might also expect to encounter the Tristero . . .

          I know he's some kind of big shot but where is there any evidence
          that the Tristero has any anarchist qualities?

See above.

                    The spat between Ewball Oust and his stamp-collecting father 
                    also suggest the Tristero's presence in Against the Day. . .

          Is that the same error that the rich and pampered kid Ewball makes?

Trust-fund radical? Sure! But, also there's that opportunity for that horrid 
Oedipal scene, face it---OBA will do anything for a really awful pun. Besides 
which---Ewball's Eyeballs must be mighty keen, check out that sharp-shooting 
that sends Frank off to brujo-land. The guy can't be all that bad. . . .