The CoC honouring/Atdtda[20] 548.16: Melancholy - or what else?

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

     Michel:
     However, there are the 'timbres fictifs' on 548.9, or fake stamps
     with the General's 'likeness'.  Pynchon and fake stamps?  Hmm.
 
     Cometman: 
     now that would be a pink tab, n'est ce pas?

You betcha! This page has all sorts of Tristerian implications. The 
Chums/Chumps are Ordered to this memorial service for this sucidal 
proto-fascist—"an observance not altogether free of political suggestion,
there having remained within the Chums of Chance bureaucracy a 
defiant residue of Boulangism." Remember, as well, that there is after all, 
a certain degree of fictitiousness to the entire CoC enterprise that reminds 
me more than a little of:

          . . . .But Roseman had also spent a sleepless night, brooding over the 
          Perry Mason television program the evening before, which his wife was 
          fond of but toward which Roseman cherished a fierce ambivalence, 
          wanting at once to be a successful trial lawyer like Perry Mason and, 
          since this was impossible, to destroy Perry Mason by undermining him. 
          Oedipa walked in more or less by surprise to catch her trusted family 
          lawyer stuffing with guilty haste a wad of different-sized and colored 
          papers into a desk drawer. She knew it was the rough draft of The 
          Profession v. Perry Mason, A Not-so-hypothetical Indictment, and 
          had been in progress for as long as the TV show had been on the air. . 
. .
          Col 49, pg. 9
          
          . . . ."A cash nexus," brooded Oedipa, "you and Perry Mason, two of 
          a kind, it's all you know about, you shysters." 

          "But our beauty lies," explained Metzger, "in this extended capacity 
          for convolution. A lawyer in a courtroom, in front of any jury, 
          becomes an actor, right? Raymond Burr is an actor, impersonating 
          a lawyer, who in front of a jury becomes an actor. Me, I'm a former 
          actor who became a lawyer. They've done the pilot film of a TV 
          series, in fact, based loosely on my career, starring my friend 
          Manny Di Presso, a one-time lawyer who quit his firm to become an 
          actor. Who in this pilot plays me, an actor become a lawyer 
          reverting periodically to being an actor. The film is in an air-cond-
          itioned vault at one of the Hollywood studios, light can't fatigue it, 
          it can be repeated endlessly." 
          CoL49, pgs. 21/22

     Michel:
     So the CoC attended a Boulanger remembrance, 
     but they are not sad. 

Shall we say, melancholic? triste? And note as well that these timbres fictifs
as being used as postage ['potstage'?] stamps:

          Offical correspondance from the French chapters, for example, 
          could still be found bearing yellow-and-blue postage stamps, with the 
          General's likeness printed in a sorrowful brown—to all apperances 
          legitimate French issues. . . .
          AtD 548

          "Normally this issue, and the others, are unwater-marked," Cohen 
          said, "and in view of other details the hatching, number of 
          perforations, way the paper has aged—it's obviously a counterfeit. 
          Not just an error." 

          "Then it isn't worth anything." 

          Cohen smiled, blew his nose. "You'd be amazed how much you can 
          sell an honest forgery for. Some collectors specialize in them. The 
          question is, who did these? They're atrocious." He flipped the stamp 
          over and with the tip of the tweezers showed her. The picture had a 
          Pony Express rider galloping out of a western fort. From shrubbery 
          over on the right-hand side and possibly in the direction the rider 
          would be heading, protruded a single, painstakingly engraved, black 
          feather. "Why put in a deliberate mistake?" he asked, ignoring—if he 
          saw it—the look on her face. "I've come up so far with eight in all. 
          Each one has an error like this, laboriously worked into the design, like 
          a taunt. There's even a transposition—U. S. Potsage, of all things." 

          "How recent?" blurted Oedipa, louder than she needed to be. . . .
          CoL49, pg 78

Remember that the stamps in question in CoL49 can be described as
timbres fictifs, and that the use of these stamps is an indicator of 
communication that bypasses the Central Authority—the Elect—and
veils the real purpose of the messages. 

W.A.S.T.E..—when it absolutely has to get there without the authorties 
knowing about it.

     Cometman:
     Boulanger - yet another historical personage of whom I never 
     before heard.  A military bureaucrat who developed a large 
     following and posed a threat to the government? 

More like another 'Anarchist Miracle', working towards the reconstitution
of the monarchy and his political movement—'boulangisme'—becoming
a major influence on Fascism. This Wikipedia article is very helpful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Boulanger

     Michel:
     About half a century before this happening in the novel, Charles 
     Baudelaire [this is Patti Smith's Baudelaire, God bless her]. . . .

. . . . considering Ms. Smith's 'Gloria', maybe God really doesn't
want to bless her.

     . . . .wrote the very melancholical pamphlette 'Pauvre Belgique':

          He returned to Paris in 1866 from an extended stay in Brussels, 
          where he had lived at a hotel called Le Grand Miroir. During this 
          miserable period he also visited Mechelen, Antwerp, Ghent, and 
          Liège. Baudelaire was already seriously ill and he stayed in a 
          sanatorium. His hatred against the Belgians Baudelaire poured in 
          a pamphlet or travel book entitled PAUVRE BELGIQUE! He 
          condemned the whole nation and especially the city of Brussels, 
          its men, women, children, streets, food, customs, journalism, and 
          politics. Baudelaire did not finish his book, an unique collection of 
          insults, but its material has been printed in different editions. It 
          was not until the birth of the EU, when Brussels started to 
          provoke similar reactions.

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/baudelai.htm

I'm looking for a copy, this could be fun. . . .