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

[Robin Landseadel]

	Life is but a memory, happened long ago, theatre full of
	sadness for a long forgotten show.
	Nick Drake: Fruit Tree

On Jul 11, 2009, at 9:05 AM, Dave Monroe wrote:

> Again, what BEYOND "disinheritance" is a distinguishing characteristic
> of the Tristero, what, if any, continuity does Tristero possess?  And
> is there anything historical/political it can be mapped to?  Who are
> "the" Tristero @ any given time/place?  If anyone?

The continuity of "Tristero"/"Trystero" is that of alternate modes of  
communication, necessary to communicate those things which are not  
part of "The Official Story."

To backtrack a little, there is that statement by Pynchon in the intro  
to Slow Learner about how he would "make it literary", that rule of  
writing he made up all by himself and later learned to regret. There  
always have been and doubtless will continue to be word games in  
Pynchon's writing, but that feature/flaw pretty much reaches its  
apogee in CoL 49.

Forget historical pattern—think high magic/low puns. The rules of the  
game here are not that of history, but of poetry. Make a chart, place  
the word "Tristero"/"Trystero" in the center and then run words out of  
that center like spokes in a wheel, words that relate because of  
similarity of sound or spelling, other words evoked by the words  
"Tristero"/"Trystero". There's "Tryst," "Triste", "Trieste." Nick  
Drake's couplet from Fruit Tree comes to mind, as does the town of  
Trieste, that place that gnostically inspired Rilke:

	". . . They've come like angels of death to get me, despite all I
	tried to do. . ."

. . . echos of Rilke, much on Pynchon's mind at the time he was  
writing CoL 49. Late 1965, as TRP was finishing up CoL 49, Pynchon got  
the edited manuscript of Richard Farina's "Been Down So Long It Looks  
Like Up To Me." In addition to one of the all-time great review pull  
quotes—"Holy Shit!— Pynchon also wrote:

	"If you want comparisons, which you don't, I think most of Rilke."

. . . the quote is on page 271 of David Hajdu's "Positively 4th Street."

While BDSLILLUTM doesn't really evoke Rilke for me, Gravity's Rainbow— 
dedicated to Farina—quotes and integrates the Duino Elegies into the  
text.

This empire of sadness—of disinheritance—maps out to the alternate  
communication systems in Against the Day. Oedipa is looking at these  
odd cancelled stamps for alternate communications systems—the waste of  
these sub rose communications, so to speak— but the characters in  
Against the Day are actually using these "bogus" stamps. Binding  
together all these alternative modes of communication under a single  
heading may be Oedipa's webbing together—her projection of a world of  
centralized anarchists. Take away Oedipa's interwebbing of these  
disparate strands and what is left looks a lot like all those  
alternate communications systems in AtD.