COL49 - Chap 2: Strip Botticelli, leprechaun's, etc.
rich
richard.romeo at gmail.com
Thu May 14 15:08:49 CDT 2009
Metzger and Oedipa aren't playing the actual game of Botticelli. The
point is for Oedipa to strip until she presumably resembles
Botticelli's Venus.
_______
Oedipa is slowly emerging from her shell (half) no? well, the sea
really, see Oedipa's musings on the sea in Ch. 3, the place where all
is subsumed into some form of tranquility, nothingness. Oedipa in a
way is re-enacting Venus's emergence from an environment of safety to
the realm of the specific, the fallen, the lost, the hostile, and
shame (she needs that cloak) being pulled by the winds this way and
that.
rich
On 5/14/09, kelber at mindspring.com <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botticelli_(game)
>
> 1. Metzger and Oedipa aren't playing the actual game of Botticelli. The
> point is for Oedipa to strip until she presumably resembles Botticelli's
> Venus.
>
> The absurd amount and variety of clothes she's brought along for her short
> trip seems a precursor to the Banana Breakfast scene in GR. Both scenes
> tell us we've left the realm of reality.
>
> 2. "On the doorsill, the Paranoids, as we leave milk to propitiate the
> leprechaun, had set a fifth of Jack Daniels." AN oddball sentence.
> Leprechauns are usually male, have buried treasure and (sometimes) an evil
> nature. Is this Metzger? A veiled warning for Oedipa that he's not whom he
> seems (a charming lay?). His ambiguous nature makes him seem very similar
> to Inverarity. In the midst of flirting:
>
> "She wondered then if this were really happening in the same way as, say,
> her first time in bed with Pierce, the dead man."
>
> You could almost think that Metzger is Inverarity in leprechaun form. He's
> the portal to the new world Oedipa's about to enter, guarding the hidden
> treasure therein. The Paranoids are urging her on. Paranoia is the guide
> to the journey she's about to take. They serenade the lonely girl in her
> lonely flat, "No, I must lie alone, Till it comes for me; ..." Implying
> that Metzger isn't really there, or at least that Oedipa's still very much
> in her tower.
>
> 3. Not having access to a credit card, I'm unable to sign up for even a
> free trial read of this article on highbeam:
>
> Summary:
>
> A note on propitiating leprechauns in The Crying of Lot 49.
> Article from:Pynchon Notes Article date:March 22, 2008 Author: Philippo,
> Christopher K. More results for: propitiating leprechauns | Copyright
> information
> For a friend of mine
>
> Doorbell rings. Lady opens the door, a milkman stands there.
>
> Milkman: Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake baker's man. Good morning, madam, I'm a
> psychiatrist.
>
> Lady: You look like a milkman to me.
>
> Milkman: Good. (ticks form on his clipboard) I am in fact dressed as a
> milkman ... you spotted that--well done. (Chapman 214)
>
> During Oedipa Maas's first evening at the Echo Courts motel, where she meets
> with the lawyer Metzger, "On the doorsill," we read, "the Paranoids, as we
> leave milk to propitiate the leprechaun, had set a fifth of Jack Daniels"
> (40). J. Kerry Grant's Companion to The Crying of Lot 49 notes, "While Irish
> folklore is replete with ...
>
>
>
>
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