Atdtda23: [45.2] The other one, 647

[Michael Bailey]

On 12/5/07, robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:

>          The bus came by and I got on
>          That's when it all began
> http://arts.ucsc.edu/GDead/AGDL/other1.html
>

dude, I have that record!

> but you might consider the Trystero as a metaphor/parody/anachronization
> of the C.I.A.,

ok, so then the CIA unpacks to more than a tool of the imperialists?
These would be a different faction of the CIA than the
Coke-bottle-rapist dudes in Central America, then...

and I'm guessing this would be in the "red" All-American
version, rather than the "blue" liberal-socialist version, of history...
(which oddly enough reverses the red/blue polarity of
a previous generation, red having been socialist-communist,
and blue having implied blue-blood, hereditary (inbred) hierarchy)
or, the yellow versus the blue? (as in "I am Curious" movies?)

or, really, no conflict - CIA screws with minds & bodies...
Trystero could well be a CIA program to troll for suspicious minds,
either to recruit or distract...what was the old joke about the
Communist Party in America had 7,000 members, all CIA and FBI plants?


>          Seeker-characters, with Kit and Cyprian
>          having experiences that might have been
>          better left to Yashmeen.

hmmm - for me, and admittedly all my views keep changing,
  - and this is probably "just, too obvious, too obvious for words"...
but for me, the people to foreground
are the Traverses.

Sure Cyp & Yash get plenty of ink, but it's as adjuncts to
the Traverses.
Sure, Merle & Dally likewise, but it's because they interact with
the ibid.  I still feel most drawn to Merle, but have to admit
in the novel he's not a major-major...

Now that Lew guy, he's the only one I'll really buy as a seeker,
the only one whose shoes I feel put into by the narration
independently of his Traverse connection, which, I'm trying to
think, is it more or less tenuous than his Chums connection?

>
> The crucial Pynchon in all the novels is William Pynchon, co-founder [or
> maybe the only real founder] of Springfield Massachusetts. If you look at the
> events of the life of William Pynchon the one thing that really sticks out is
> how his "The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption. . . ."
>
> http://tinyurl.com/2bbukb

also the diary -- that's something I am going to read, or was
that the same William?  Get a feel for the human interest
("lot of Italians in Sausalito") then grapple with Meritorious?

>     also most of the visible structure around and ahead of them, this having
>     been a national reflex to certain pathologies in high places only death
>     had had the power to cure

again a red & blue version: was pathology cureable only by
death being attributed to those secretaries, or to the more
recently deceased Democratic president?  remember, she
expressed fondness for the secs...was a Young Republican...

>Dee's Hermetic circles, was
> famously burned at the stake.
>

a horrible heretic
who was horribly burned
(Joyce - Portrait?)

> If you go to: http://tinyurl.com/3bmafo on page 320, you will find "Giordano
> Bruno in Prison, a monologue" by Charlotte Stearns Eliot. On page 564
> we will find Giordano Bruno in Prison, Scene II by Charlotte Stearns Eliot.
> Please note that Charlotte Stearns Eliot. is the Mother of T. S. Eliot, author
> of 'The Waste Land', a work referenced in a number of Pynchon's writings,
> but central to The Crying of Lot 49.
>

It's actually quite good. They have her as Charlotte C Eliot...
but that may be her given middle initial as versus using the
maiden name as middle name?

"Repentance!  Ay, what means it?  To return
To ancient errors, quench the fires that burn
Within my soul - the very truth to spurn.
Can I, Giordano Bruno, check the flight
Of thought itself, and turning from the light
Live like the owl in darkness?"

(I became a Bruno fan through reading John Crowley's _Aegypt_ part i,
now being published as _Solitudes_)