Subtle Clues

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

Don't know about you, but I always wonder what sort of person 
Our Beloved Author is, every now and then finding directions and 
bandwidth in Pynchon's little blurbs, mostly for other people's books. 
Here's one from a more or less complete review:

            Melancholy. As any Elizabethan could tell you if they 
            all weren't dead, melancholy is a far richer and more 
            complex ailment than simple depression.

            Donald Barthelme, The Teachings of Don B., 1992.

What this tells me is that TRP probably knows a lot more about the 
Elizabethans than he's seen need to explicate in his fictions. You'll 
find plenty concerning the humor melancolick in the works of 
Shakespeare, Ben Johnson and Robert Burton:

http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~rlblair/burton.html

http://www.herreros.com.ar/melanco/anatomy.htm

And then there's Robert Johnson:

http://www.britannica.com/shakespeare/article-9403977

Of course, there's always "The Courier's Tragedy": that Roadrunner 
cartoon in blank verse, a parody of a sort that requires a bit more 
than mere passing acquaintance with Jacobean versification, and 
some of O.B.A.'s other interests also come to a kind of culmination in 
this era of green sleeves and high collars. In any case, awareness of 
that melancholy specific to the Elizabethan and Jacobian eras---
beautifully expressed in the work of John Dowland, by the way
---pervades the whole notion of the Trystero.

http://www.laymusic.org/music/dowland/flow/score.pdf

http://www.hoasm.org/IVM/Dowland.html

            "Our thanks to you and to Marianne Wiggins for recalling 
            those of us who write to our duty as heretics, for reminding 
            us again that power is as much our sworn enemy as 
            unreason, for making us all look braver, wiser, more useful 
            than we often think we are. We pray for your continuing 
            good health, safety and lightness of spirit."

            From "Words for Salman Rushdie," NYTBR, March 12, 1989, p. 29

"Our duty as heretics" establishes, at least in a small but significant way, 
where Pynchon places himself in the religious sphere. He is not of the 
elect, he is of the preterite. Little glimpses into the Pynchon family saga 
shows us purely heretical activities pervading the history of TRP's clan. 
In this blurb, Pynchon claims allegiance with Rushdie, specifically in 
reference to "The Satanic Verses", a work just dripping with heresy most 
black and foul. The potential of even more burning times was once again 
invoked by Rushdie's brilliant, wicked book. O.B.A.'s heresies encompass
frequent and enthusiastic citation and use of materials from A.E. Waite in
his massive and encyclopedic satires, you go figure.

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/uncollected/