VL-IV (12) We'll Always Have Parrots

[Robin Landseadel]

-----Original Message-----
> From: Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>

> Pages 222-223   Parrots?  What's with the parrots?   Are they toys
> to put the kiddies to sleep?  Is the "voice" the one we hear on dolls
> and electronic gadgets?  They're very colorful,  like Atman in his
> get-up - which is a tux which might even have a tail.   :-)   (heh)
> Parrots are tropical birds - from Nicaragua or some other South
> American area where we were trying to stop drugs but they said
> what about ours?   Van Meter apparently has one - Luis - and the
> description is rather magical - surreal.     But the kids are going,
> flying,  somewhere jungle-like and meeting in their sleep so it
> might  be more like a drug or television or something.   ???


	A parrot smuggler in an all-chrome Kenworth/Fruehauf
	combination known as the Stealth Rig, nearly invisible on radar,
	swooping by law enforcement with the touch-me-not authority of
	a UFO, showed up late one Saturday afternoon, parked beside
	101 just across the bridge in unincorporated county, and sold
	out his entire load before the sheriff even heard about it, as if
	the town, already jittery, just went parrot-crazy the minute they
	saw these birds, kept drunk and quiet on tequila for days,
	ranked out in front of the great ghostly eighteen-wheeler, 	
	bundles of primary color with hangovers, their reflections 	
	stretching and blooming along the side of the trailer. Soon there
	was scarcely a house in Vineland that didn't have one of these
	birds, who all spoke English with the same peculiar accent, one
	nobody could identify, as if a single unknown bird wrangler
	somewhere had processed them through in batches -
	"All right, you parrots, listen up!"
	Vineland, pages 223, 224


On Feb 23, 2009, at 1:50 PM, Robin Landseadel wrote:

> I like to think of Pynchon's use of parrots as a perfect sign, a
> summing up of an esthetic and a literary movement in shorthand.
> But I don't know enough about parrots and postmodernism to get a
> ll deconstructive on your posterior, so I'm going to hunt down
> parrots in Pynchon and see what pops up.


To bifurcate and explain, parrots represent Magical Realism, like a  
neon sign that flashes "Magical Realism" in some vibrant & exotic  
color not usually found in nature.

At the same time, it looks like parrots don't become Pynchon regulars  
until Vineland, and their appearance always seems to include some sort  
of sign/signifier joke. Perhaps a comment on all the Pynchon  
Intellectual Factory spewing out all that po-mo lit-crit on signs and  
signifiers.


	Instead of the traditional repertoire of short, often unrelated
	phrases, the parrots could tell full-length stories - of humorless
	jaguars and mischief-seeking monkeys, mating competitions
	and displays, the coming of humans and the disappearance of
	the trees - so becoming necessary members of households, 	
	telling bedtime stories to years of children, sending them off to
	alternate worlds in a relaxed and upbeat set of mind, though
	after a while the kids were dreaming landscapes that might
	have astonished even the parrots, In Van Meter's tiny house 	
	behind the Cucumber Lounge, the kids, perhaps under the
	influence of the house parrot, Luis, figured out a way to meet, 	
	lucidly dreaming, in the same part of the great southern forest.
	Or so they told Van Meter.
	Vineland, 224


On Feb 24, 2009, at 11:05 AM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
> On the other hand, though, parrots bite.

	"And this is Joaquin," El Nato smiling up at the bird. "Tell them
	something about yourself, m'hijo."

	"I like to fuck the gringo pussy," confided the parrot.
	Against the Day, page 385


On Feb 24, 2009, at 7:49 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
> Let's riff on this for a moment....parrots are like tripping,
> getting high, giggling and talking a lot; parrots are like
> magical realism, flights of surreal connections -verbally--,
> what is 'reality' re the parrots asks Bekah and maybe
> the reality is that they mediate reality--that huge Vineland theme--
> with words that connect magically, so to speak, like word-users
> who mediate reality for us?  Words they hear but repeat in unusual
> ways.  a small symbol of the writer in the modern world?

. . . or of those who "Parrot."


	 . . . The preference, in this earlier mode of Pynchon criticism,
	was for drifting along with the author's own signs, symptoms,
	and signifiers, allowing Pynchon's literature to be
	"bookmatched" with Derridean (and other theorists')
	assumptions in such a way that the demarcation between the
	subject and method of analysis is deliberately blurred. . .
	http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/fictionspresent/speculated


	"How's that?" Ewball blinking at the bird's theatrical-British
	accent, recalling somehow vaudeville Shakespeare and
	profligate nights.

	A hideous laugh. "Got a problem with that, pendejo?"

	El Nato beamed fretfully. "There, there, Joaquin, we mustn't give
	our guests the wrong idea-it was only that one house-cat, one
	time, up in Corpus Christi, long, long ago."

	"Sin embargo, mi capitan, the adventure has haunted me."
	
	"Of course Joaquin and now gentlemen, if you wouldn't mind ... "
	Against the Day, page 385


We'll always have Parrots . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npjOSLCR2hE&feature=related


	When they may, they drink.
	Mason & Dixon, page 452


	"Reality is more than the thing itself.  I look always for the super-
	reality.  Reality lies in how you see things.  A green parrot is
	also a green salad and a green parrot.  He who makes it only a
	parrot diminishes reality.  A painter who copies a tree blinds
	himself to the real tree.  I see things otherwise.  A palm tree can
	become a horse."
	(Pablo Picasso, A Palm Tree Becomes a Horse, 1950.)


So a semiotician walks into a bar—"Ouch! This is not a symbol!"


	First thing Monday morning, they all come staggering from
	Bedrolls and Latrines to stand in loose Ranks and be tallied in.
	Overseer Barnes reads the Plan of the Day, the Revd comes by
	to say a short Prayer, then Special Requests are submitted, a
	few in writing, but most aloud and expected to be dealt with
	upon the Spot. Some mornings the Petitioning grows agitated
	indeed, with only the clanging of the Breakfast Alarm able to
	interrupt it.
	
	"He's telling them Parrot Jokes again."

	"Who is?"

	"You know, ... him."

	"Ehud? is this true, what he's saying?"

	"Mr. Barnes, Cap'n, Sir, all I said was, 'Sailor walks into a
	Tavern with a Parrot on his Shoulder, young Lass says,- ' "

	"There! he's doing it again!"
	
	" , "What'll it be?" and the Parrot says,- ' "

	"Two hours' extra Duty, Ehud. Yes, Mr. Spinney" . . .
	Mason & Dixon, pages 453, 454

Like Moe Syzlak explains, Postmodernism is "Weird for the sake of  
being weird."

	One Value of Chamberlain's observation is that it offers an
	approach that does not oppose experimental (postmodernist)
	fiction and Realism, but rather combines these in a new critical
	formulation. I would argue, however, that magical realism is
	different from the narrative aim or focus of novels such as
	Waterland or Money. Magical realism implies, narratologically,
	that the real is invested with the strange in order to reinvest the
	familiar with meaning through the act of defamiliarization:
	magical realism defamiliarizes the real. I would argue that
	Postmodern Realism attempts to record the real, but that the
	real itself has become a strange new world: mediated reaility
	Amy J. Elias: Meta-mimesis? The Problem of British Postmodern Realism.


	Magical realism is a much quieter thing on the page than one
	might suspect, and much louder in the heart than one can
	predict.

http://www.public.asu.edu/~aarios/resourcebank/01magicalrealism/index.html



Flaubert's Parrot was first published in 1984:

	One of the central themes of the novel is a figurehead of
	Postmodernism; subjectivism. For example, the novel provides
	three sequential chronologies of Flaubert's life: the first is
	optimistic (citing his successes, conquests, etc.), the second is
	negative (citing the deaths of his friends/lovers, his failures,
	illnesses etc.) and the third compiles quotations written by
	Flaubert in his journal at various points in his life. The attempts
	to find the real Flaubert mirror the attempt to find his parrot, i.e.
	apparent futility.
	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaubert's_Parrot


	In a novel called Flaubert’s Parrot, Julian Barnes tells the story
	of a British physician obsessed with discovering the truth about
	the nineteenth-century novelist, Gustave Flaubert. He travels
	back and forth to Rouen and the surrounding country where
	Flaubert spent much of his life; he visits the hospital, the local
	museum, what is left of Flaubert’s homes and his lovers’ homes.
	He reads everything from Flaubert’s letters and journals to
	contemporary British criticism. Although the novelist died more
	than a century ago, the doctor, Geoffrey Braithwaite, realizes
	that “all that remains of him is paper. Paper, ideas, phrases,
	metaphors, structured prose which turns into sound.” He
	studies everything that survives, nonetheless, hoping to reach
	beyond the texts at least to the extent of identifying a stuffed
	parrot as the “real” one that stood on the writer’s desk and
	served as model for Felicité’s parrot in “The Simple Heart.” He
	examines a statue of Flaubert that is ostensibly a reliable
	semblance of the “real.” It turns out that there are three identical
	parrots left of fifty that looked almost the same. There are three
	statues of Flaubert, each one a second impression, a
	replacement of the original, each one lacking something — a
	thigh, a mustache, an arm. To make it harder, six North Africans
	are playing boules around the statue in Rouen, suggesting a
	multiculturalism that enhances the uncertainty. The doctor
	devises a number of chronologies of Flaubert’s life; each is from
	a different vantage point; each is, to some degree, “true.” The
	doctor asks how we can ever seize the past. He remembers
	that, when he was a medical student, some pranksters at a
	dance released into the hall a piglet smeared with grease. “It
	squirmed between legs, evaded capture, squealed a lot.
	People fell over trying to grasp it, and were made to look
	ridiculous in the process. The past often seems to behave like
	that piglet.” And so, given what we see happening today, does
	what we used to call “objective reality.” It does occur to me,
	however, that there was an actual pig. . .

http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/eps/PES-Yearbook/93_docs/Greene.HTM


Parrots seem to pop up in "Between the World" situations in Pynchon.


	"Ahhh!" Ewball was out the tentflap faster than the muzzle
	velocity of any known firearm. Frank placed the smoking
	cylinder, which on a closer look might've been no more than a
	giant Cuban claro in a Partidos wrapper, between his teeth and
	strolled out among the trapa, who, under the impression that he
	was actually smoking a stick of dynamite, scattered from his
	path muttering in admiration. The only one willing to engage
	him in conversation was the parrot Joaquin.

	"Ever wonder why they call it Zacatecas, Zacatecas? Or why it's
	Guanajuato, Guanajuato?"

	Frank, fallen by now into the doubtful habit of Conversation with
	a Parrot, shrugged in irritation. "One's a city, one's a state."

	"¡Pendejo!" screamed the parrot. "Think! Double refraction! Your
	favorite optical property! Silver mines, full of espato double-
	refracting all the time, and not only light rays, naw, uh-uh! Cities,
	too! People! Parrots! You just keep floating along in that gringo
	smoke cloud, thinking there's only one of everything, huevon,
	you don't see those strange lights all around you. Ay,
	Chihuahua. In fact, Ay, Chihuahua, Chihuahua. Kid engineers!
	All alike. Closed minds. Always been your problem." Giving in
	at length to parrot hysteria, sinister in its prolonged indifference.

	"Here's your problem," Frank approaching Joaquin with his
	hands out in strangling position.
	Against the Day, page 387


Frank will be flying on peyote in 5 pages.


	"Not a Meat Olaf fancier, I gather."

	"Can anything be done?"

	"Well, it's supposed to be for emergencies, but I guess this
	qualifies as one." Unlocking a black valise and gazing inside for
	 a moment. "Here you go," handing over an ancient hand-blown
	bottle whose label, carefully engraved and printed in an
	unfaded spectrum of tropical colors, showed an erupting
	volcano, a parrot with a disdainful smile and the legend
	iGuidado Cabron! Salsa Explosiva La Original. "Couple of
	drops is all you'll need really to light that Meat Olaf right up, not
	that I'm being stingy, understand. My father handed this on to 	
	me, as did his father to him, and it isn't down by even a quarter
	of an inch yet, so do exercise caution's all I'm saying."

	As expected, this advice was ignored, and next mealtime the
	bottle got passed around and everybody slopped on the salsa.
	The evening that resulted was notable for hysteria and
	recrimination.

	The luxuriant world of the parrot on the label, though seemingly
	as remote from this severe ice-scape as could be imagined, in
	fact was separated from it by only the thinnest of membranes.
	To get from one to the other one had only to fill one's attention
	unremittingly with the bird's image, abasing oneself meantime
	before his contempt, and repeat" iGuidado cabron!" preferably
	with a parrot accent, until the phrase no longer had meaning-
	though in practice, of course, the number of repetitions was
	known to run into the millions, even as it ran listeners'
	forbearance into the ground. In thus acquiring some of the force
	of a Tibetan prayer-wheel, the practice was thought to serve as
	an open-sesame to the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra country as well,
	a point which old Expedition hands were not reluctant to bring
	up.
	Against the Day, pages 129/130


Tsangpo-Brahmaputra  is the river that flows into the Ganges. This all  
seems to rhyme with Hindu/Buddhist notions of transmigration of the  
soul.

Note that:

	The noted Quatemionist Dr. V. Ganesh Rao of Calcutta
	University was seeking a gateway to the Ulterior, as he liked to
	phrase it, having come to recognize the wisdom of simply
	finding silence and allowing Mathematics and History to
	proceed as they would.
	Against the Day, page 130



	"¡Pendejo!" screamed the parrot.

	"Think! Double refraction!

	Your favorite optical property!"



Again, parrots make an announcement, by their mere presence, that we  
are about to move between the worlds, that reality is about to get  
slippery. Van Meter is about to enter the land of the dead, or at  
least the land of those not quite ready to accept that they're dead:

	They tried to teach him how to do it, but he never got much
	closer than the edge of the jungle _ if that's what it was. How
	cynical would a man have to be not to trust these glowing souls,
	just in from flying all night at canopy level, shiny-eyed, open,
	happy to share it with him? Van Meter had been searching all
	his life for transcendent chances exactly like this one the kids
	took so for granted, but whenever he got close it was like, can't
	shit, can't get a hardon, the more he worried the less likely it
	was to happen .... It drove him crazy, though most of the time he
	could keep from taking it out on others, what muttering he did
	do just lost as usual in the ambient uproar of the day, often
	oppressive enough to force him out of the cabin on gigs like
	this, though it meant a long, intimidating drive upward through
	crowds of tall trees, perilous switchbacks, one-lane stretches
	hugging the mountainsides, pavement not always there — then
	a sunset so early he thought at first something must have
	happened, an eclipse, or worse. He nearly lost his way in the
	dark but was guided by its own pale violet glow at last to the
	Blackstream Hotel, which loomed up in an array of dim round
	lights that seemed to cover much of the sky. He'd heard about
	the place but had no idea it was this big.
	Vineland, page 224

Now, turn off your mind, relax and float downstream, it is not dying.