CoL 49 (3) The Torture Never Stops [PC 49/580

[Robin Landseadel]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwhtL0LNoQw

I find it rather amazing than during this leg of our journey through  
the realm of the Tristero—in particular the "Road Runner Cartoon in  
Blank Verse" that is "The Courier's Tragedy"— we have yet to mention  
current news concerning torture as regards "The Courier's Tragedy" in  
The Crying of Lot 49." Seeing as this issue overlaps with the CIA— 
always a popular topic in Pynchonland—this is as good a time as any to  
point out the litany of "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" on display  
in Pynchon's fabulous parody of Jacobean Revenge Tragedy.

	The Courier's Tragedy was being put on by a San Narciso
	group known as the Tank Players, the Tank being a small arena
	theatre located out between a traffic analysis firm and a wildcat
	transistor outfit that hadn't been there last year and wouldn't be
	this coming but meanwhile was underselling even the
	Japanese and hauling in loot by the steamshovelful.

While I know this is highly unlikely as a connection, can't help but  
notice that Rocketdyne [in Canoga Park] is near Agoura CA, the primary  
site for the first set of Renaissance Faires. During that  
onesponatime, the Faire was the site of some the first performances of  
the Firesign Theater and their first major production was a parody of  
Shakespeare: "Anything You Want To," portions of which appeared on two  
of their records. Connecting the Ren Faire to CoL49 is one of those  
stretches that might be classified under "May I Project a world?"  On  
the other hand, the Firesign Theater mode of humor seems to be near at  
hand in Pynchon's California tales. Both enterprises often have  
overlapping paths.

But I digress. Note that the C.I.A. is invoked directly in the context  
of the Che-flavored Jesus Arrabal. In the Courier's Tragedy a  
sixteenth-century play encrypts a reference to an alternate history,  
seemingly a path out for Oedipa's entrapment in her tower. Seeing as  
how "enhanced interrogation techniques" have long been a hallmark of  
CIA activities, seeing how this theatrical gore-fest is littered with  
those sorts of scenes, here goes:

	. . . poisoning the feet on an image of Saint Narcissus, Bishop of
	Jerusalem, in the court chapel, which feet the Duke was in the
	habit of kissing every Sunday at Mass. This enables the evil
	illegitimate son, Pasquale, to take over as regent for his half-
	brother Niccolo, the rightful heir and good guy of the play, till he
	comes of age. . .

Saint Narcissus = San Narcisco

	. . .This he presently confesses to Domenico, though only after
	having enticed that informer into foolishly bending over and
	putting his head into a curious black box, on the pretext of
	showing him a pornographic diorama. A steel vise promptly
	clamps onto the faithless Domenico's head and the box muffles
	his cries for help. Ercole binds his hands and feet with scarlet
	silk cords, lets him know who it is he's run afoul of, reaches into
	the box with a pair of pincers, tears out Domenico's tongue,
	stabs him a couple times, pours into the box a beaker of aqua
	regia, enumerates a list of other goodies, including castration,
	that Domenico will undergo before he's allowed to die, all amid
	screams, tongueless attempts to pray, agonized struggles from
	the victim. With the tongue impaled on his rapier Ercole runs to
	a burning torch set in the wall, sets the tongue aflame and
	waving it around like a madman concludes the act by
	screaming,

	Thy pitiless unmanning is most meet,

	Thinks Ercole the zany Paraclete.

	Descended this malign, Unholy Ghost,

	Let us begin thy frightful Pentecost. . .

I've pointed out how this particular "un-manning" echos the  
unfortunate demise of Giordano Bruno:

	Giordano Bruno spent the next eight years in chains in the
	Castel Sant’Angelo, where he was routinely tortured and
	interrogated until his trial. Despite this, he remained
	unrepentant, stating to his Catholic Church judge, Jesuit
	Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, "I neither ought to recant, nor will I."
	Even a death sentence handed down by the Catholic Church
	did not change his attitude as he defiantly told his accusers, "In
	pronouncing my sentence, your fear is greater than mine in
	hearing it."

	Immediately after the death sentence was handed down,
	Giordano Bruno’s jaw was clamped shut with an iron gag, his
	tongue was pierced with an iron spike and another iron spike
	was driven into his palate. On February 19, 1600, he was driven
	through the streets of Rome, stripped of his clothes and burned
	at the stake.

http://space.about.com/cs/astronomyhistory/a/giordanobruno.htm

For what it's worth, Bruno was a Dominican monk and his torching is  
quite famous and was made something of a cause by the Unitarians. I  
suspect this awful mode of literally silencing Bruno is based on a  
fear of the monk invoking a demon. He ran in the same hermetic circles  
as John Dee:

http://www.esotericarchives.com/esoteric.htm

	It is often maintained that Bruno was executed because of his
	Copernicanism and his belief in the infinity of inhabited worlds
	declared a heretic because his file is missing from the records.
	Scientists such as Galileo and Johannes Kepler were not
	sympathetic to Bruno in their writings.

http://galileo.rice.edu/chr/bruno.html

	Despite the false note of concern about Bruno's physical well-
	being, the Inquisition's verdict was a death sentence. Bruno
	was defiant to the end. Gaspar Schopp of Brelau, a recent
	convert to Catholicism and a witness to the sentencing,
	reported that Bruno exclaimed on hearing the sentence:
	"Perchance you who pronounce my sentence are in greater
	fear than I who receive it."

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/feb2000/brun-f16.shtml

	Meanwhile, back in the torture room . . .

. . . there's plenty more scenes of gore.

Again, take note of the over-the-top humor of this sequence in the  
context of our current culture, engulfed as it is in the issue of  
torture:

http://tinyurl.com/o4g4b9