CoL49 (6) The Invisible Field

[Dave Monroe]

"'Randy Driblette's production? No, I thought it was typically
virtuous.' He looked sadly past her toward a stretch of sky. "He was a
peculiarly moral man. He felt hardly any responsibility toward the
word, really; but to the invisible field surrounding the play, its
spirit, he was always intensely faithful...." (Lot 49, Ch. 6, p. 152)


"... the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life ..." --2 Corinthians 3:7

Also ...

"All the world's a stage ..." (As You Like It, II.vii.139)

Cf. ...

   "'You don't understand,' getting mad.  'You guys, you're like
Puritans are about the Bible.  So hung up with words, words.  You know
where that play exists, not in that file cabinet, not in any paperback
you're looking for, but--' a hand emerged from the veil of
shower-steam to indicate his suspended head--'in here.  That's what
I'm for.  To give the spirit flesh.  The words, who cares?  They're
rote noises to hold line bashes with, to get past the bone barriers
around an actor's memory, right?  But the reality is in this head.
Mine, I'm the projector at the planetarium, all the closed little
universe visible in the circle of
that stage is coming out of my mouth, eyes, sometimes other orifices
also.'" (Lot 49, Ch. 3, p. 79)

And then ...

"Shall I project a world?" (Lot 49, Ch. 4, p. 82)

"'Randy,' recalled the third grad student, a stocky kid with hornrims,
'what was bugging him inside, usually, somehow or other, would have to
come outside, on stage.  He might have looked at a lot of versions, to
develop a feel for the spirit of the play, not necessarily the words,
and that's how he came across your paperback there, with the variation
in it.'
   "'Then,' Oedipa concluded, 'something must have happened in his
personal life, something must have changed drastically that night, and
that's what made him put the lines in.'" (Lot 49, Ch. 6, p. 154)

"'Trystero enjoyed counter-revolution in those days. Look at England,
the king about to lose his head.  A set-up.'" (Lot 49, Ch. 6, p. 158)

Recall ...

"'You know, blokes,' remarked one of the girls, a long-waisted,
brown-haired lovely in a black knit leotard and pointed sneakers,
'this all has a most bizarre resemblance to that ill, ill Jacobean
revenge play we went to last week.'
   "'The Courier's Tragedy,' said Miles, 'she's right.  The same kind
of kinky thing, you know ....'" (Lot 49, Ch. 3, p. 63)

"Offstage there is a sound of footpads.[...]  The lights all go out"
(Lot 49, Ch. 3, p. 73)

... and from Charles Hollander, "Pynchon, JFK and the CIA: Magic Eye
Views of The Crying of Lot 49," Pynchon Notes 40-41 (Spring-Fall
1997), p.p. 100-1:

"... Pynchon's meditation on the state of American affairs in the
mid-sixties .... And all these meditations were triggered by the
assassination of President Kennedy.
   "Pynchon published his political satire under his own name during a
dangerous time, raising most secret secrets in public, albeit in code,
warning, statesmanlike, of a dire outcome."

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