ATDDTA(10) Paging Dana Medoro [269:15-19]

[Bryan Snyder]

The four compass directions are also a big theme in GR... but I think the
themes laid out below map onto Against the Day perfectly and I think Lake's
laying on the compass has significance too.

>From Hume's "Pynchon's Mythography":

"we find values associated with the points on the compass.  Pynchon's
symbolism is not exact, and he allows values from adjacent compass
direction's to overlap, so one can better talk of tendencies than strict
associations, but these tendencies are strong enough to make them
significant in his cosmos."

"The most obvious values are linked with the South and make it the region
where barriers break down and openness is, or rather was, possible.
European colonial powers, moving into warmer climes, found escape from the
regulations and inhibitions of their own rigid cultures... (Hume then quotes
from the GR passage on ~ pg317 "Colonies are the outhouses of the European
soul, where a fellow can let his pants down... " and I'll point to
Weissmann's first "encounters" with Enzian which also occurred in Africa...
the richness of the Hereos culture etc... also in V.)  

"The Argentine pampas and German southwest Africa are Pynchon's two
Souths... Italy enjoys a less flamboyant but parallel function in V...."

>From GR:  "for danger and enterprise they you West, for visions, East" (~pg
706)

In GR's "East": The Kirghiz Steppes and The Kirghiz Light, Kurt Mondaugen
has his spiritual breakthrough in the Kalahari Desert (quoting Hume again)
"south with respect of Europe... Lyle Bland achieves his breakthroughs in
Boston (the American East)"

"To the west we find America and with America the American West, the
stomping ground of Crutchfield, and the "edge of the world" to Blicero...
But West, for Pynchon, means the Western world in general...(and their order
of) analysis and death.

"The North with its polar cold and whiteness, Pynchon links to death,
rigidity and entropy... the Hereo land of death.. the direction the Rocket
00000 is fired... If the South is or was in some sense open and the North
closed and rigid, European civilization has occupied an interface between
the two possibilities but has not found a satisfactory balance between the
forces.  The Zone is roughly centered by these directional vectors.  It is
the eye of the storm"

Anyway... like I said I think the direction theme applies well over the
Against the Day American and European maps, and of course in Against the Day
there would be two whole maps... one world bisected and both histories going
along side by side only different. Very true in real life, I think.  

Back to the point of thread...

With Lake, the American bomber's daughter (certainly Pynchon sides with the
Webb Traverses of the world, so wouldn't Lake be Pynchon's real American
farmer's daughter... the daughter of the anarchist and only one of two main
fathers in the book) her being laid out right on the compass map and double
teamed by her father's murders would make, in my opinion, her this novel's
Gottfried.  I reads this tone of a sacrificial lay out... even the "Blood
red dirt" gives off this sacrifice vibe.

B



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Keith
Sent: Saturday, May 26, 2007 2:47 PM
To: Pynchon List
Subject: ATDDTA(10) Paging Dana Medoro [269:15-19]

They took her down to the Four Corners and put her so one of her  
knees was in Utah, one in Colorado, one elbow in Arizona and the  
other in New Mexico---with the point of intersection exactly above  
the mythical crosshairs itself. Then rotated her all four ways. Her  
small features pressed into the dirt, the blood-red dirt. [269:15-19]

"Working from the premise that the Puritan construction of America as  
a return to Eden endures into American literature of the 20th  
century, Medoro focuses on the rhetoric of cyclical regeneration,  
blood, and damnation that accompanies this construction. She argues  
that a semiotics of menstruation infuses this rhetoric and informs  
the figuration of a feminine America in the nation's literary  
tradition: America, as a New World Eden, is haunted not only by the  
Fall, but also by the "Curse of Eve." Placing Thomas Pynchon, William  
Faulkner, and Toni Morrison within this tradition, this book  
demonstrates that their novels link variations on the figure of the  
menstruating woman both to the bloody history of the United States  
and to a vision of the nation's redemptive promise." http:// 
www.greenwood.com/catalog/GM2059.aspx

Also:

Another key feature of the Native American spiritual outlook is found  
in the powers ascribed to the Four Directions, which occur either  
literally or in symbolic form throughout the stories. These are often  
represented by particular colours, or by animals.

The Four Directions have to be in balance for all to be well with the  
world, and often a central point of balance is identified as a fifth  
direction; for example, four brothers represent the outer directions,  
and their sister the centre.

Watch the wheel rotate here:
http://www.mythsdreamssymbols.com/nativeamerican.html









http://users.ap.net/~chenae/spirit.html