CoL 49 Pynchonwiki

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

          Mike Beiderbecke:
          Well,
          To quibble just a bit, if you are going to mention that 
          'crying' is how auctioneers sell things, you should also 
          add that a 'lot' is the batch of things they are selling 
          at one particular time, and that they are numbered. 

You will be glad to know that I amplified on that, as per your instructions.. I 
also mentioned the 'Biblical Lot', ya know--sodom, gomorrah, usw. . . .

          Then go on to emotions, acreage, and numerology.It is a 
          phrase after all. The auctioning of the things in a batch number. 
          And while a case might be made, I can't see really see it as 
          referring to the weeping about land the day before Pentecost.
          Nag nag nag,

. . . .Ah, but that isn't even close to the punchline. Stearns, as in the 
Puritan Stearns of Salem, Ma., as in Pynchon v. Stearns, as in 
Thomas Stearns Eliot, as in 'The Waste Land'

Here's a reposting of something I cooked up yesterday:

          "The Small Rain" was my first publshed story. A friend 
          who'd been away in the army the same two years I'd 
          been in the navy supplied the details. The hurricane 
          really happened, and my friend's Signal Corps 
          detachment had the mission described in the story.
          Most of what I dislike about my writing is present 
          here in embryo, as well as in more advanced forms. 
          I failed to recognize, just for openers, that the main 
          character's problem was real and interesting enough 
          to generate a story on its own. 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, pg. 4

        '. . . .The next story I wrote was "The Crying of Lot 49,"
          which was marketed as a "novel." and in which I seem to 
          have forgotten most of what I thought I'd learned up until then.
          Slow Learner, pg. 22

. . . .that is to say, an extra helping of 'Make it Literary' [me, I like the 
effect, call me callow], in particular the generation of a web of references 
that lean as heavily as possible on the poem, concept and reality of
'The Waste Land,' and how that became our collective inheritance.
There's a Jeremaid lurking in that lot of stamps, another sermon on 
what we lost. That 'Intricate Puzzle with a decidedly European flavor'
is a puzzle that centers on "The Waste Land' and more than a little
bit of family history. Posponed Revelation floats over the final mix-down of 
the novel like Roky Erickson's voice in 'You're Gonna Miss Me'.