Pynchon illustrated [Final 49]

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

         Dave Monroe:
         "She heard a lock snap shut; the sound echoed a
         moment." (Lot 49, Ch. 6, p. 183)

         Not only another echo (an echo of Echo ...), but also 
         some justification for paranoia here.  No exit ...

         If the tower is everywhere and the knight of deliverance 
         no proof against its magic, what else?
         COL49, 12

What makes Against the Day different [in this particular case] is that our 
Knight is a Basnight, so the psychical detective has what Orson Welles 
[via the speaking voices that Orson the Magnificent commands from his 
actors while working his own personal brand of magic] would call an edge, 
[said actor recites a long list of routes to pugilistic succession, not always 
infusing his speech with the spirit of universal brotherly love] [said sequence 
appears early on in "Lady From Shanghai"]. Basnight's edge is, having a 
touch of background in the occult arts, he develops a wider range of 
possibilities, greater bandwidth in his overall detection skills. So the ghost 
of Webb Traverse works in wondrous ways, eh? After all, it's Basnight who
delivers Webb's karmic re-balancing.

         "Passerine spread his arms in a gesture that seemed to
         belong to the priesthood of some remote culture;
         perhaps to a descending angel." (Lot 49, Ch. 6, p.
         183)

         http://www.shepherd.wvnet.edu/englweb/artworks/A20.jpg

         "Watson points out that the 'descending angel' image
         is more closely linked with the idea of Annunciation
         than with that of Pentecost: 'The implied visitation
         of the Holy Ghost might refer to his descent to
         impregnate Mary rather than to his descent to plant
         new speech in the Disciples.  If we accept the notion
         that Oedipa will, to her own shock, turn out to be the
         Tristero bidder, the the possibilities are not
         mutually exclusive.  Oedipa's gestation of a new,
         Tristero self, the Annunciation of the meaning of that
         pregnancy, and her Pentecostal moment of finding
         unexpected foreign speech on her tongue, all culmiante
         together when Oedipa finds herself bidding for the
         Tristero' (69)." (Grant, p. 141)

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/klein/204/ANNUNCIATION.jpg

Robin points out that Pynchon never passes up a chance to make the ghost 
of a character become an actor in the plots of his novels. By drawing on a 
wide range of Occult/Magical/Metaphysical/Religious references, making 
a primordial layer of spiritual sludge not at all unlike "Finnigans Wake" [as 
much a collection of invocations as anything else], Pynchon deliberately 
creates worlds where the dead walk among us, sometimes seemingly more 
present than others, sometimes in the form of Radiant Angels, and 
sometimes, not so radiant, sometimes opposite. More often than not, what
Pynchon is evoking is a ghost or some variation thereof, such as the 
angelic Rebekah. Then you have nauseatingly unquiet spirits, such as 
Brigidier Pudding. I can't remember a ghost from V.*, but I've never taken to 
that book, try as I might. But there's Pierce in The Crying of Lot 49, Pudding 
[but, above all, Richard Farina] in Gravity's Rainbow, Weed Atman in Vineland, 
Rebekah in Mason & Dixon and Webb Traverse. Thing is, as far as I can tell,
Webb Traverse is the most active of Pynchon's "absent characters". I might 
add that the voice of Webb reminds me one whole hell of a lot of the voice of 
E. B. Schnaubelt [or more likely, John Ross' mode of communicating with the 
dead] in "Murdered By Capitalism."

Robin also points out tthat the most likely bidder for Tristero, is Gengis 
Cohen, after all the name alone makes him related to the Grand Cohen, 
nicht whar? And he is the only person in the room who knows her. And he
provided Oedipa with a lot of info concerning these stamps, didn't he?


         And, finally (?) ...

         "The auctioneer cleared his throat.  Oedipa settled
         back, to await the crying of Lot 49." (Lot 49, Ch. 6, p. 183)

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?MfcISAPICommand=GetResult&ht=1&SortProp
erty=MetaEndSort&query=lot+49

         The apex of prayer is the origin of repentance (teshuvah--
         "return" to God). Repentance itself is the healing power of 
         the soul. All illness and disease derive from a spiritual state 
         of "lack" or "emptiness." In Kabbalah, the word "sick" 
         (choleh), whose numerical value is 49, indicates that the 
         sick person lacks the fiftieth gate of understanding. Thus, 
         "to heal" is "to fill" or "to complete" one's consciousness
          with the fiftieth gate of understanding.

http://www.inner.org/healing/healing18.htm

49 is the number just before revealing, the Pentacost [50]

          . . . .Since the Feast of Pentacost 
          takes place 50 days after Passover. . . .

this is a pull quote from:

http://www.eldrbarry.net/vbs/4/actslsn1.htm

. . . .which makes claim of representing the beliefs of Presbyterians. 
Note as well, that Pynchon knowingly plays with the fact of April 1 
being the date for Easter Sunday in 1945, thus playing the Fool card 
and a panoply of False Messiahs for all it's worth.

*. . . .but looking at it for a moment, I recall Stencil's quest for V, 
not so sure about her, her temporal relation to the the later story line.