'No hallowed skein of stars can ward, I trow'

[Rob Jackson]

On 25/05/2009, at 5:00 PM, Janos Szekely wrote:

> What comes to my mind is something quite different. It might be one of
> OBA's open-ended conspiracy moves. Later on (113), the couplet turns
> out to be taken from a pornographic version in the Vatican Library,
> unknown to Bortz the Scholar before 1961, but that is _not_ the
> edition Driblette used. So Driblette learned about the couplet from an
> unidentifiable source, or somebody else planted the lines in the typed
> copies, or (and) the Vatican version had been faked in modern times
> (of course by the Tristero). Anyway, Driblette, whose production is
> "particularly virtuous", found the couplet relevant and a means of
> "speaking out" to an unaware present-day public. Whatever the source
> is, he uses it as a topical comment (and maybe that is why he has to
> die). Now Oedipa's quest culminates in this binary possibility (136):
> "For there either was some Tristero beyond the appearance of the
> legacy America, or there was just America".
>
> I mean, _for Driblette_, either by coincidence or by deliberate
> fakery, the "hallowed skein of stars" means the stars in the upper
> left corner of the flag, that is, the United States, and this is a
> deliberately anachronistic "aside", whose message is "if you accept
> the existence of Tristero, the 'real' America cannot protect you".


Kudos. This is a really insightful interpretation. Driblette's role as  
a creative artist places him along with all those other outsiders in  
the society who are a part of the Tristero. While anarchy seems to be  
the political model for the 'organisation' of the 'group', Driblette  
himself is most likely a member of a shadowy extremist wing of the  
cabal. His radical action, such as it is, is to encode a treasonous  
message in his production of the play, propagandising in order to  
recruit disaffected students and provoke them to rebel (cf. the way  
Oedipa senses the new intensity of the student radicalism at Berkeley  
p. 71). For his act of treason Driblette (just like Niccolò in the  
play) is a target ... assassinated ... or a self-made martyr in the  
name of the 'cause'.

People like Bortz and Oedipa (critics rather than artists) are outside  
the Tristero cabal looking in. Then there are the right-wing, left- 
wing and apolitical hangers-on like Koteks, Fallopian, Nefastis, Zapf,  
Arrabal, Winthrop Tremaine, the Inamorati Anonymous dude, et al.  
'Hangers-on' is the wrong term, because it implies that there's a  
'centre' to the Tristero, which there isn't, but many of these  
initiates or illuminati are characterised as ridiculous or  
reprehensible nonetheless.

Ultimately, everyone is implicated. The message (both satiric and  
sincere at the same time) seems to be that America alienates all its  
sons and daughters, irregardless of their race, creed or political  
persuasion. American capitalism, as both institution and constitution,  
is anti-human.

best regards