C ofL49. Overarching.

[Mark Kohut]

I went to one of those national spaghetti joints the other day. One that had a 15-layer
lasagna as a signature dish. Torqued as I am by TRPs genius, I thought of him and his layered writing.
(Quit laughing so loudly)
 
Anyway, I think we plisters--and many others in books and papers---have got a lot of understanding of
the meaning of Tristero as it makes the story, the plot, move Cof L49..........to its interesting ending.
 
Perhaps not as much explored, are the meanings, the satire, in many scenes of C of L 49. I keep reminding
myself, TRP IS a satirist, a hilarious one, a savage one (at times). Under the Tristero quest part of the plot,
we have Oedipa having experiences shaped (in the book's structure) like Gulliver on his travels, like Candide,
like the trio in Sam Johnson's "Rasselas"---a paper on the (unusual in its time; "The Conclusion in Which Nothing is Concluded") ending of, TRP wrote at Cornell, which we know M.H. Abrams, his teacher, used as an example of a great paper to later students.
 
So, Oedipa the tower-entrapped Rapunzel has adventures. Like all the innocents above?