Pynchon/Hollander

[Robin Landseadel]

Charles Hollander's big essay on The Crying of Lot 49 — Pynchon, JFK  
and the CIA: Magic Eye Views of The Crying of Lot 49 — ties the novel  
to the assassination of JFK. Hollander's method often consists of  
teasing out meanings and cross-references from homophones, homographs  
& homonyms. Charles Hollander takes up Pynchon's location of "high  
magic in low puns" and runs with it:

	The closeness of the name Rockefeller and the word rocket
	allows Pynchon to construct many puns and combinations.
	Indeed, the Rockefellers use their own name in like manner.
	They own Rockefeller Center, where the Rockettes dance. They
	also own Rockresorts, Greenrock Farms, Winrock Farms, Ven-
	Rock Inc.

	Pynchon is leading us to the Rockefellers throughout Rainbow
	with combination words, puns, and corruptions, Numerous
	characters call Slothrop Rocky and fella, though never Rocky,
	fella. Just as the Tristero leads to Thurn and Taxis leads to the
	Rothschilds leads to the Morgans leads to Pynchon & Co. and
	to DISINHERITANCE; the Harrimans and the Whitneys (28),
	Allen Dulles (268), Winthrop (630), Thomas E. Dewey (636),
	Mark Hanna (664), Richard M. Zhlubb (754), and “Standard
	Awl” (565) point to the DISINHERITORS. Though he never
	names them, Those Who Know, know.

	http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/inferno.htm

This sort of exegesis lies at the heart of Charles Hollander's writings:

	On the surface, The Crying of Lot 49 is so much a novel about
	Oedipa Maas, her life, her loves, her thoughts, that it hardly
	qualifies as what Irving Howe would describe as a political
	novel. [1] Yet while this miniature masterpiece is not a
	manifesto or a call to arms, some critics see reading it as a
	"subversive experience" that could generate contempt for
	power, a disrespect for the national leadership, because Lot 49
	is a scathing history lesson, a look behind the political events
	and historical figurations that led America into the mess that
	was the mid-sixties ((Kolodny)). To study Lot 49 is to decrypt
	Pynchon's encoded messages and enter split-level
	consciousness, to read the narrative against the subtext of
	historical allusions, to find how skepticism toward government
	is central to Pynchon's work. When we do, we find Lot 49 to be
	Pynchon's encrypted meditation on the assassination of
	President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

	In 1977, Jules Siegel recalled asking Pynchon a decade
	earlier: "'What are you always so afraid of? … Don't you
	understand that what you have written will get you out of almost
	anything you might get yourself into?'" Siegel also recalled
	recognizing Pynchon's unvoiced answer: "'You think that it is
	what you have written that they will want to get you for'" (172-
	74). "They?" Which they? "Get you," Pynchon the invisible
	novelist? "Get you for" what? For writing, albeit in deep code,
	about the Kennedy regicide.

	Charles Hollander: Pynchon, JFK and the CIA:
	Magic Eye Views of The Crying of Lot 49
	Pynchon Notes 40-41, spring-fall 1997, pp. 61-106


In part, I agree with Mr. Hollander in that Pynchon is using little  
encryptions everywhere in his books. While I can see the logic in the  
Dude's conclusions, there are other threads in Pynchon's writing that  
interest me more—right now— than the conspiratorial/paranoid threads  
that hypnotized me in the past, back when the sense of conspiracy and  
paranoia central to "The Crying of Lot 49" and "Gravity's Rainbow" was  
what pulled me along. The atmosphere of dread in the nocturnal scenes  
of those two novels seemed to be there as a backdrop for some  
dreadful, awful revelation. Now it seems that all that dreadful  
waiting is its own reward. While I still see Standard Oil & the Bush  
Crime family all through Pynchon's writings, there's lots of other  
stuff that I'm seeing now that has a lot more to do with writing qua  
writing, stuff that was always there, but that I ignored, off in  
search of what I thought was bigger game.

Going on my own logical paths, much like those of Charles Hollander, I  
find that T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land has at least as big as place in  
CoL49 as JFK, if not bigger—when it comes to family history, the  
Pynchon clan is all over America's "Waste Doctrine", with T.S. Eliot's  
ancestors, the Sterns family, working as a counterforce to the  
Pynchons. Interesting to see the fall of the house of Stearns—the  
first big indicator of our current depression—as a counterpart to the  
Fall of the house of Pynchon back during the previous depression. Of  
course, both threads can be true at the same time. I would also wonder  
about MKULTRA in CoL49, feeling like there are more pointers in that  
particular direction than a JFK conspiracy—again, those two threads  
may be tied together.

Of course, it is also possible that these themes find their way into  
Pynchon's writings for simpler reasons:

	". . . I just don't think you ought to be writing about me. The sad
	truth is that you're giving me much too much credit. My own
	research is nowhere near as deep or as conscientious as
	yours. It is, in fact, as shallow as I think I can get away with,
	because I don't write 'novels of ideas.' Plot and character come
	first, just like with most other folks's stuff, and the heavy thotz
	and capitalized references and shit are in there to advance
	action, set scenes, fill in characters and so forth, and the less of
	it I have to do, the better for me cause I'm lazy. . . .

I would offer up that more likely than not, what ends up in Pynchon's  
books has a lot more to do with the quotidian details of the author's  
life than the author would ever want to have the public at large to  
know. And I suspect the man has good reasons for us not to know the  
reasons or details.