COL49 - Chap 2: Strip Botticelli, leprechaun's, etc.

[kelber at mindspring.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botticelli_(game)

1. Metzger and Oedipa aren't playing the actual game of Botticelli.  The point is for Oedipa to strip until she presumably resembles Botticelli's Venus.

The absurd amount and variety of clothes she's brought along for her short trip seems a precursor to the Banana Breakfast scene in GR.  Both scenes tell us we've left the realm of reality.

2. "On the doorsill, the Paranoids, as we leave milk to propitiate the leprechaun, had set a fifth of Jack Daniels."  AN oddball sentence.  Leprechauns are usually male, have buried treasure and (sometimes) an evil nature.  Is this Metzger?  A veiled warning for Oedipa that he's not whom he seems (a charming lay?).  His ambiguous nature makes him seem very similar to Inverarity.  In the midst of flirting:

"She wondered then if this were really happening in the same way as, say, her first time in bed with Pierce, the dead man."

You could almost think that Metzger is Inverarity in leprechaun form.  He's the portal to the new world Oedipa's about to enter, guarding the hidden treasure therein.  The Paranoids are urging her on.  Paranoia is the guide to the journey she's about to take.  They serenade the lonely girl in her lonely flat, "No, I must lie alone, Till it comes for me; ..."  Implying that Metzger isn't really there, or at least that Oedipa's still very much in her tower.

3.  Not having access to a credit card, I'm unable to sign up for even a free trial read of this article on highbeam:

Summary:
	
A note on propitiating leprechauns in The Crying of Lot 49.
Article from:Pynchon Notes Article date:March 22, 2008 Author: Philippo, Christopher K. More results for: propitiating leprechauns | Copyright information
For a friend of mine

Doorbell rings. Lady opens the door, a milkman stands there.

Milkman: Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake baker's man. Good morning, madam, I'm a psychiatrist.

Lady: You look like a milkman to me.

Milkman: Good. (ticks form on his clipboard) I am in fact dressed as a milkman ... you spotted that--well done. (Chapman 214)

During Oedipa Maas's first evening at the Echo Courts motel, where she meets with the lawyer Metzger, "On the doorsill," we read, "the Paranoids, as we leave milk to propitiate the leprechaun, had set a fifth of Jack Daniels" (40). J. Kerry Grant's Companion to The Crying of Lot 49 notes, "While Irish folklore is replete with ...