C of L49 few--mostly two-- straggling thoughts on Chap 5

[David Payne]

On Mon, 29 Jun 2009, Mark Kohut (markekohut at yahoo.com) wrote:

> With yet another read, I see many of the metaphors within Chap 5 as
> sorta, kinda variations on that Demonic Maxwell's Demon.
>
> Guy who is just under breaking even in life......stasis, entropic?
>
> That letter that circles back to Nefastis' place!?...WTF? more entropy?
>
> Mucho losing his self and becoming a whole roomful of people? like heat dispersion? Or like
> a group mind..a good union?
 
Yes! Me, too. And on re-reading, I read this into earlier Chapters:
 
* Early on (page 2 or 3?) we're told that Mucho is "too sensitive." Later we wonder if Oed is sensitive enough to call on the demon. And later still, as Mark notes, Mucho dissolves into entropy after being nudged into a new place by Dr. H and LSD.
 
* The particles separated into two chambers, as Mark alludes, is like Oed. She starts as a Tupperware-party-going, young-Republican, suburban (did I make that up?), housewife. Then she get nudged (by Pierce, the demon?) into less ordered world (most notably the hallucinatory wandering the streets/riding the bus scenes).
 
* Page 1, Oed tries calling on God. Later she calls on a demon. Doesn't work either time. (Or did it? I'm not sure if she managed reach the demon.) Note, however, that very soon after calling on God and trying to feel drunk fails, Oed succeeds when she calls on Mucho after mixing drinks: in bounds Mucho through the door like Ricky Ricardo. Also note that Dr. H successfully called Oed in Ch. 1, but doesn't persuade her. If he had, would Oed be on LSD, nudged to a different place than where Pierce's will nudged her?
 
> And "furrowed"......it is used three times in this chapter......remember TRPs seeming allusion
> to anthroplogical myths of a fertile land, fisher king, etc.......
>
> The old man has lived a "furrowed' life, says TRP....and a bit later says that Oedipa has not
> yet gotten any furrows........
>
> A life where we plant deep......not possible until we--she--leave(s) the tower?
 
Wait ... I thought, perhaps wrongly, that furrows were bad here, that stuck in furrow is no better than stuck in a tower?

I saw the old man as cammed out of the furrows, the furrows where other people spent their lives digging. As if it were this nudge upward that provided the old man with a new perspective, a vision (now Oed's vision), gained by looking down upon the furrowing ordered masses. Much like Oed's look down upon the city laid out like a circuit.
 
Instead of digging furrows, I saw the old man as celestial, surrounded by dancing light, a floating graceful dance instead of rutting about the furrows. Although I guess that picture that doesn't mesh too well with the old man's rotten mattress, which is about as corporeal as you can get, the fecund land of a gimpy rutting fisher king. So maybe "cammed out the furrows" is his death or a deathbed vision, an ascension?
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