CoL49 (1) The Automobile Graveyard

Tue May 5 17:53:50 CDT 2009

On 06/05/2009, at 1:29 AM, robin landseadel wrote:

>  A source/inspiration I have not seen cited elsewhere is
> Fernando Arrabal's "The Automobile Graveyard", a play first published
> in French back in 1958 and translated into English in 1960.

Sigh. There is so much valuable stuff in the pynchon-l archives and  
they really are quite easy to navigate using the 'Keyword' search  
function.

Agree wholeheartedly re. the significance of Remedios Varo in her own  
right. Georgiana M.M. Colvile's book Beyond and Beneath the Mantle is  
worth getting a hold of for that.

best regards

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0108&msg=59029

Jesùs Arrabal (82-3): As well as conflating the name of the Spanish
playwright Fernando Arrabal and Jesus, the protagonist of Arrabal's  
first
major play, _Le cimetière des voitures_, I like the way that the grave  
over
the u in the  character's "christian" name alters the pronunciation
slightly. I can hear "Je, Zeus", or "I, Zeus", which in terms of  
"projecting
a world" and, say, Blake's drawing of an all-powerful God with compass  
and
protractors, sparks off an interesting interpretative flight.  
Interestingly
also, Arrabal was a Ford Foundation award recipient in 1959 and  
travelled in
America in that year, just as, I presume, Pynchon was putting the  
finishing
touches to his own application to that institution.

K. da Chingado and Company (publishers of a "corrupt" edition of the
Bortz/Vatican edition of the Wharfinger play, 104): I can hear this as
onomatopoiec, "da CHING" as the sound a cash register makes, denoting  
a cash
windfall of some sort, and which has been taken up as an idiomatic
ejaculation in latter-day movies and sitcoms as such.

Many of Pynchon's names are onomatopoeic, such as Helga Blamm,  
Hilarius's
nurse. One of my favourite lines in the novel is this one:

"Well he's shot at half a dozen people," replied Nurse Blamm ... (92)

At times the narrative actually seems to *turn into* a Porky Pig  
cartoon!

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0108&msg=58723

Back to the Theatre of the Absurd. There's Jesus Arrabal later on,  
another
character ominously pulling various of the plot strings -- perhaps --  
and
whose surname, using the Hollander method, leads us to Fernando  
Arrabal, the
renowned playwright. Arrabal's earliest works are 'Le cemetiere des
voitures' (1958, trans as 'The Car Cemetery'), where life is seen as a  
used
car dump, and the play 'Pique-nique en campagne' (1959: 'Picnic on the
Battlefield'), in which the "characters display the savage innocence of
children in a dream world in which understanding and communication  
give way
to magic and ceremonial". I can't see Varo --> Varro either but  
Arrabal -->
Arrabal does seem to provide more fertile ground:

http://www.arrabal.org/

     In 1962 Fernando Arrabal founds the "Panic Movement" together with
     Roland Topor and Alexandro Jodorowsky. "Panic" comes from the God  
Pan,
     the All. The "Panic" man was a man of total refusal, refusal of all
     danger, he did not expose himself and did not die a hero's death.

     Although he is one of the most "controversial" writers, he has  
received
     many international prizes and distinctions. His work has been  
translated
     in most languages (he is notably one of the French speaking  
authors that
     is the most translated in Europe). The sun never sets on his  
plays among
     the most performed in the world.

     His multiple activities are also expressed in the plastic arts.  
He has
     been exploring these through a profusion of sculptures, paintings,
     collages, drawings, of which many exhibitions and retrospectives  
have
     been held in galleries and museums in different countries.

     "Merrily playful, rebellious and unconventional, Arrabal's work  
is the
     syndrome of our century of barbed wires and camps. : a way to  
keep in
     reprieve". (Dictionary of French language literatures).

     When he is not travelling all over all the continents to give  
lectures,
     to attend performances of his plays, "to take note" of the  
world's state
     and to defend human rights where they are flouted, Fernando Arrabal
     lives and works in Paris.

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0010&msg=50737

Just noticed, by the way, that the term théâtre panique was invented  
in 1962
by Fernando Arrabal, a Spanish-born playwright (in the Artaud/Beckett
mould), film director, actor and chess aficionado, who writes in  
French. He
is very much a contemporary of TRP's, his work shows the influence of
surrealism and magic realism, and in 1959 he visited the U.S. to  
receive a
Ford Foundation award. In his plays he "sought to create a kind of
ritualistic drama which combines elements of tragedy and buffoonery with
religious (or quasi-religious) ceremonial. It is intended to surprise  
and
frighten as well as to arouse laughter."

http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0804818.html
http://www.uky.edu/UniversityPress/books/festplay.html
http://eonline.com/Facts/People/0%2C12%2C39243%2C00.html
http://cledar.ch/arrabal/
http://jinx.sistm.unsw.edu.au/~greenlft/1994/154/154p24b.htm

That name certainly rings a bell (or, at least, stirs a clear soup  
with a
chicken foot).