Lot 49 Ch 3 Random Notes & Shit

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Lots to think about in your notes, but picking out a couple-three of them for now.  This chapter is all about clandestine communication.  The PPS (where people communicate nothing, merely for the sake of communicating); the WASTE ad (emblazoned on the wall of a room where waste is disposed of),which has a lot more suggestive content than the PPS (or Much's letters) do; in the Courier's Tragedy: Duke Angelo's private cadre of couriers, Thurn and Taxis and, of course, Trystero.  Also, on p. 48 (Bantam)"She could not say why, exactly, but felt threatened by this absence of even the marginal try at communication latrines are known for."  Latrines=Communication?  In GR, Slothrop scrawls a mandala-like symbol on an outhouse wall, realizing later that it's a depiction of a rocket seen from underneath.  In V, Profane (I think?) sees the Kilroy Was Here graffito, (on an otherwise blank, but not a bathroom, wall).  Pynchon says the figure's origin was as a bandpass filter schematic.  This seems to be something he made up himself.  Stand corrected if anyone has more info on this.  Looking at the WASTE symbol, it looks like its origin could have been a diode symbol:

http://images.absoluteastronomy.com/images/encyclopediaimages/d/di/diode_symbol.svg.png

Pynchon's still in love with everything electronic in these early books.  It certainly makes sense that a diode-like symbol would be scrawled on the wall in an engineers' hang-out.  Pynchon must have looked at a lot of engineering blueprints during his brief engineering student days.  They appear as obscure hieroglyphics to those not initiated into their secrets.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com>

>
>Stockhausen--another example of an alternative way of
>communication--can't think of a better example of a representative of
>the WASTE symbolism than him in music

>52
>
>in the ladies latrine (i don't equate latrine w/ a woman's
>bathroom--pynchon plays around with gender roles throughout the book)
>
>the WASTE ad--the thought that even an underground communication
>system is corrupted by the ephemera of the trash-y and
>vulgar--contrast also w/ the PPS mail system which is just bland
>(working within the system)--i.e. how alternative is it?
>