AtDTDA (8): The Wasteland 209

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

This is mostly a re-posting of earlier materials, relevant to where we are in 
the text right now.            

             Tore Rye Andersen:
             The many ambiguities of GR can't be resolved 
             into any ultimate truth, but I'd argue that there 
             are many local "truths" in the novel; many local 
             stable patterns that function as some sort of 
             signposts as we navigate our way through the 
             wilderness of the text.

I present the following excerpt as an example of "Local" references, local 
truths:

          "Well, we're no longer a low-rent as people remember us here 
         either Zoyd, in fact since George Lucas and all his crew came and 
         went there's been a real change of consciousness."
    
               "Yep, I noticed . . . say, you want to draw me a, just a 
         lady's-sized beer there . . . you know I still haven't even got 
         around to that picture?"
     
              They were talking about Return of the Jedi (1983), parts of which 
         had been filmed in the area and in Buster's view changed life there 
         forever. He put his massive elbows on about the only thing in here 
         that hadn't been replaced, the original bar, carved back at the turn 
         of the century from one giant redwood log. "But underneath, we're, 
         still just country fellas."

              "From the looks of your parking lot, the country must be Germany."
         Vineland, pg 7

Judging from Tore's comments and the preceeding, I'd say we're headed for the 
wastelands just about right now:

         It was well up into Utah. The country was so red that 
         the sagebrush appeared to float above it as in a 
         steropticon view, almost colorless, pale as cloud, 
         luminous day and night. Out as far as Reef could see, 
         the desert floor was populated by pillars of rock, worn 
         over centuries by the unrelenting winds to a kind of 
         post-godhead, as if once long ago having possessed 
         limbs that they could move, heads they could tilt and 
         swivel to watch you ride past, faces so sensitive they 
         reacted to each change of weather, each act of 
         preditation around them, however small, these 
         once-watchful beings, now past face, past gesture, 
         standing refined at last to simple vertical attendance.

         "Don't mean they're not alive, o'course," opined somebody 
         in a saloon on the way there.

         "You think they're alive?"

         "Been out there at night?"

         "Not if I could help it."

         AtD 209

One of the Local Truths to be found all throughout AtD are these looks 
backwards, sometimes to the follies of youth. 

Jeshimon, here we come.

         Jeshimon
         Meaning: the waste

         probably some high waste land to the south of the 
         Dead Sea (Num. 21:20; 23:28; 1 Sam. 23:19, 24); 
         or rather not a proper name at all, but simply 
         "the waste" or "wilderness," the district on which 
         the plateau of Ziph (q.v.) looks down

http://www.christiananswers.net/dictionary/jeshimon.html

         I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
           What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
         Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, 
         You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
         A  heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
         And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
         And the dry stone no sound of water.  Only
         There is shadow under this red rock,
         (Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
         And I will show you something different from either
         Your shadow at morning striding behind you
         Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
         I will show you fear in a handful of dust. . . .

http://eliotswasteland.tripod.com/

There is that line in "The Waste Land". . . .

         There is shadow under this red rock,
         (Come in under the shadow of this red rock)

. . . .and then (from ATD):

         It was well up into Utah. The country was so red that 
         the sagebrush appeared to float above it as in a 
         steropticon view, almost colorless, pale as cloud, 
         luminous day and night. 

Of course, there is mention of T.S. Eliot---probably in reference to "The Waste 
Land---in Pynchon's "Morality and Mercy in Vienna":

         Whether it was the booze they had brought along or the fact 
         that Grossmann had just finished reading not only Santayana's 
         The Last Puritan but also a considerable amount of T. S. Eliot. . . .

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

         And then there's:

         "The Small Rain" was my first published story. . . .   
         . . . .Apparently I felt I had to put on a whole extra overlay 
         of rain images and references to "The Waste Land" and a 
         Farewell to Arms. I was operating on the motto "Make it 
         literary," a piece of bad advice I made up all by myself 
         and then took."
         Slow Learner, 4

Obviously, Pynchon had "The Waste Land" on his mind for much of his youth. 
The imagery invoked in describing Jeshimon makes me consider even more 
chains of reference arising out of W.A.S.T.E, and all that W.A.S.T.E. implies:

         Continuing with her obsession to track Pierce's estate, 
         Oedipa traveled to a senior citizens home that Pierce 
         had constructed. The one man who spoke to her was 
         ninety-one and told her about his grandfather at the 
         same age. His grandfather had ridden for the Pony 
         Express. Oedipa asked if he ever fought off marauders 
         and the old man answered that his grandfather loved 
         killing Indians and Indians who weren't Indians. These 
         pretend Indians wore a black feather and rode at night. 
         To remember their Spanish name, the old man took 
         out a ring his grandfather had cut off the finger of a 
         marauder. The ring contained the WASTE symbol. 
         Oedipa again tracked down Fallopian, telling him of 
         the marker and the old man's ring. He thought it was 
         a correlation but one too difficult to decipher.

         The next connection came from a philatelist, 
         Genghis Cohen. . . .

http://www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/titles/crying/section5.html

Of course, we meet the Grand Cohen in about 10 pages. . . .