Pynchon's endings

[Daniel Harper]

On Thursday 08 March 2007 02:58, you wrote:
> Daniel Harper wrote:
> >While the "meaning" of Lot 49 is buried in the meaning of Trystero, etc.,
> > I think it's entirely >possible to read the novel as a series of set
> > pieces without any real overall meaning. And the book >is meaningful and
> > wonderful even on those terms.
> >
> >1.) The Oedipa/Metzger meeting/love affair from chapter two. It's an
> >amazing sequence [...]. By the end of the chapter the reader feels shaken,
> >with huge volumes of plot that might fill a lesser novel to the brim
> >whizzing past. And it has very little to do with the "meaning" of the
> > novel -- it exists almost just to introduce and ancillary character.
>
> Welcome aboard, Daniel!
>

Thanks a lot. Looks like a nice place to hang out and put up my feet.

> You're certainly right that the seduction scene from chapter two is a
> fabulous set piece, and plotwise it doesn't do much else than introduce
> Metzger, as you point out, but I still think that this chapter has very
> much to do with the "meaning" of the novel. While functioning perfectly
> well is an independent set piece, the scene is knitted closely into the
> complex symbolic network of Lot 49, where much of the novel's meaning is to
> be found.

Sorry, I was unclear -- my point was more that it is _possible_ to simply read 
the story on a surface level and still enjoy the book. Many authors whose 
goal it is to create such multilayered symbolic systems tend to place that so 
far into the forefront of the novel that it's impossible to read the novel 
simply as a novel. Pynchon, despite his length and complexity, always seems 
to be "fun" to read. (For appropriate values of "fun", I suppose.)

> When Oedipa puts on all her clothes in preparation for a brisk game of
> Strip Botticelli, on one level she's just a funny "beach ball with feet",
> but on another, symbolic, level all these clothes tie into the description
> from chapter 1 of Oedipa as "insulated" and "buffered." Her existence in
> Kinneret-Among-The-Pines is a lonely, isolated one, and as she recalls
> seeing the picture by Remedios Varo she wishes that someone would come and
> liberate her from her imprisonment in the tower of the suburbs, from her
> buffered/insulated life (Oedipa is even so insulated that she doesn't feel
> it as Roseman tries to play footsie with her under the table - as a
> contrast to Oedipa, we hear that Mucho is "thin-skinned").

This may be old hat to you pros, but I wanted to mention another bit of the 
Roseman-under-the-table bit. (From page 10 of my edition):

"They went to lunch. Roseman tried to play footsie with her under the table. 
She was wearing boots, and couldn't feel much of anything. So, insulated, she 
decided not to make any fuss."

I had forgotten about the "insulated" bit, which I agree fits in with Oedipa's 
overall isolation. I remembered this bit more as a "everyone wants to have 
sex with Oedipa" moment, and the later sequece with Metzger is fulfillment of 
that. It's interesting that the word "insulated" is itself separated from the 
rest of the sentence by commas -- it scans better to me without the first 
one. "So insulated..." etc. 

But overall I saw this line as a bit of Pynchon's love of the underdog coming 
through here; Oedipa, being a woman on the bottom of the social stature, 
basically puts up with all sorts of shit and has to pick and choose which 
battles she fights. Since she can't really feel Roseman playing footsie with 
her, she decides not to make a fuss and just eats her lunch. A small little 
character moment that helps to reveal how Pynchon feels about feminism, I 
think.

> The game of Strip Botticelli (which ties into an extended metaphor of
> "stripping") constitutes a metaphorical removal of some of the insulation
> that separates her from the reality around her. Her isolation, her
> solipsistic little system, is gradually broken, which becomes even clearer
> when the mirror in the bathroom (one of many mirrors in the novel) breaks:
> Oedipa can't see her own reflection anymore, so she has to face the world.
> The whole scene, BTW, takes place in Echo Courts: Echo was the nymph who
> tried to break into the solipsistic little system of Narcissus' love for
> himself, by throwing fragments of his speech back at him.
> .....and one could continue (with a discussion of the flying can of hair
> spray as an example of entropy in action, with the eerie blurring of
> reality/fiction that takes place as Oedipa and Metzger watch Cashiered
> ("Wasn't I there?"), with Oedipa's burgeoning paranoia, with the beginning
> focus on "indeterminate sex" (as in gender), with the prefiguring of the
> novel's own anticlimactic ending, etc. etc.). Most of Pynchon's set pieces
> are extremely enjoyable in themselves, but most of them are also part of a
> "gigantic net" (like the one the midget submarine has to slip through) of
> complex interconnections which carry very much meaning indeed.
>

Indeed. I'll definitely have to go back and re-read that sequence again soon.

> Happy reading! With Gravity's Rainbow ahead of you, the best is yet to
> come.
>

Would most of you agree that Rainbow is the best of the best? As I said 
before, I'm intentionally saving it for last for that very reason. 

-- 
No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.
--Daniel Harper

(PS Is my .sig a bit on-the-nose for this group? It's my general purpose 
signature line for now, but I'd hate to be "that guy". Heh.)