Cof L49 Whiteness

kelber at mindspring.com kelber at mindspring.com
Tue Jun 2 16:18:35 CDT 2009


The bright, whiteness she suddenly finds herself in almost seems like the start of a dream or fantasy sequence.  We never get a physical description of Oedipa, but the various people she encounters are described:  Metzger too good-looking to be for real, the others (Fallopian, Koteks and Genghis)described in terms of what they're wearing -- almost like characters in a hallucination or fever dream - products of Oedipa's imagination.  Supporting the idea that she's not doing "real" work, only mental work, as Koteks says.

Laura 

-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>Sent: Jun 2, 2009 3:21 PM
>To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Cof L49 Whiteness
>
>
>Somehow Oedipa got lost [no there there?]--the metaphor continues--amongst somnolent old men--the old tower creators caught in the tower long ago?---
>
>p. 84 Then she is in a whiteness ala The White Visitation [GR], the White City [AtD], a Pynchon trope concerning the abstracting, the leaching of the world's color; on white paper, paper-pushing creators of our damaged world. [Remember that Gennaro at end of The Courier's Tragedy was a 'colorless administrator'] As contrast, think of all the color in AtD..the light across the "ranges" and so much more.
> 
>Still waiting for someone to "rescue her"....still Rapunzel-like.....near-panic and "no way out", it soon seemed. This corporate part of the tower was now everywhere no exit.
>But twice we read that no one noticed in YoYodyne. The impersonality of the corporation. Oedipa is invisible there. 
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