Lot 49 Ch 3 Random Notes & Shit

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

Some associations regarding time and end of Col49:

# the end is a LOOP à la Finnegans Wake

# or, the end gives, perhaps enforced by an epileptic seizure, to Oedipa
a spiritual revelation (cf. " ... a descending angel")

# or, --- "She heard a lock snap shut; the sound echoed a moment" must,
I think, also be read as a reference to the Nazis' gas-chambers --- some
terrible act of violence (probably by the State and/or Organized Crime)
will take place and this was it ...

# or, those 'teasing references to a lack of proper endings and exits'
(thx for picking them up!) is a self-mocking reflection of Pynchon's own
writing situation way back when. Keep in mind that he was already working
on GR and did write Col49 (which then got partly published in two portions
in 'Cavalier' and 'Esquire Magazin') primarily for the money. Just saying,
not that there's anything wrong with that.


KFL

PS: If it's a LOOP and Oedipa 'back in her tower', one could (I know this
will appear far-fetched to most of you) add that the Tarot's Atu XVI from
the Major Arcana is --- THE TOWER. Note that the Tower is STRUCK. ("It's
raining men ...") On the Tree of Life it's the path from Netzach to Hod.
The related planet is Mars; on the macro-level of Society the card indicates
war. A hidden reference to Vietnam?


>
>> "that's what would haunt her"--there's lots of these looking back on
>> references in this chapter--reminds me of some comments that maybe the
>> end of the book is not the end of the book--as if Oedipa is reviewing
>> how she got to be where she is (back in her tower or within some other
>> mysterious dispensation?)
>
> The whole book is also filled with teasing references to a lack of proper endings
> and exits. On the first couple-three readings they may seem innocent enough, but
> they really do pile up like those posthorns in San Francisco: "should there be a
> happy ending" (32), "endless repetitions" (34), "She could imagine no end to it" (37),
> "Patrols looked for routes out, but those few that returned had found nothing" (62),
> "entirely an anticlimax" (75), "exitlessness" (170) usw. The exitlessness is of course
> Oedipa's - trapped in her solipsistic tower - but it is also the reader's, who is not
> allowed any traditional exit from this novel in the form of a proper resolution, but
> remains "trapped at the centre of some intricate crystal" 92.
>