CoL49 (6) Either ... or ...

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Goes back to your question of whether the Tristero are sympathetic.  Are they the "THEY who are out to get you" or are they the they who are out to get THEM?  Oedipa thinks they might be " a real alternative to the exitlessness, to the absence of surprise to life, that harrows the head of everybody American you know ..."  There's the idea that anything that's secretive, that's not out in the glaring commercial industrialized light, is somehow sympathetic merely by virtue of being different.

Different from the earlier picture of Tristero as a bunch of murderous grudge-bearing thugs intent on dominating the postal system, if not the world.  Some anti-semites might view Jews this way -- the dual nature of schemers trying to take over banks and governments vs. Holocaust victims (and therefore sympathetic).  In ATD Pynchon has a dual view of the anarchists -- positive, but murderers who blow things up.

Laura



-----Original Message-----
>From: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>

>Well, my qustion is, rather, ARE these either/or, mutually exclusive
>states?  Recall the old caveat, just because you're paranoid, doesn't
>mean They're NOT out to get you ...

>On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 9:29 AM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>>>  She had heard all about excluded middles; they were bad shit, to
>>>be avoided." (ibid.)
>>
>> Clumsy wording or profundity?  How do you avoid something that isn't there?  But maybe that's the essence of paranoia.  Fallopian's explanation, that Oedipa's whole quest had been set in motion as a prank on Inverarity's part, is something that Oedipa had avoided looking at.  It falls between the 0 (there's just America out there) and the 1 (there IS a Tristero at work).  Along with Oedipa, we don't want to believe Fallopian.  In fact, I don't believe him.  Surely it's a case of getting Oedipa to ask the wrong questions.  So examining excluded middles can actually be harmful, if it deters you from examining the stark truth.
>
>