Pynchon's reply

[Paul Mackin]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joe Allonby" <joeallonby at gmail.com>
To: "Robin Landseadel" <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
Cc: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2009 9:36 AM
Subject: Re: Pynchon's reply


> How much of this is actually in the text? Near as I can tell, COL49 is
> about a woman at a turning point in her life
> (impending breakup, death of influential friend/lover/mentor)
> stumbling upon an ancient postal fraud conspiracy that may have been
> right under her nose all the time. Or she may be losing her mind. Or
> both. Nothing will ever be the same regardless of what actually takes
> place at that auction. Details of time and place establish the setting
> and reinforce the feelings of dread and confusion. Anything beyond
> that is speculation. Over-analysis seems to be the hobby of most
> people on this list - myself included. I'll stand back and take my
> lumps now.

No need to apologize. Pynchon piles meanings upon meanings allegoizing as 
far as the eye can see. What's the poor reader to do?

P



> On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 10:57 AM, Robin Landseadel
> <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
>> On May 19, 2009, at 7:41 AM, Heikki Raudaskoski wrote:
>>
>>> Would just like to check if the article is as monoreductive as I
>>> recall; as E.D. Hirschian as I recall.
>>
>> I think not:
>>
>> So The Crying of Lot 49 is about Oedipa, her life, her loves, her
>> mental states, and her curious quest to decipher the estate of
>> Pierce Inverarity. And, by allusion, it is also Pynchon's
>> meditation on the state of American affairs in the mid-sixties,
>> about Russo-American relations during the American Civil War,
>> about the fate of Jan De Witt during the founding of the Dutch
>> Republic. It is about the the acrimonious U.S. elections of 1940
>> and 1944, and about the OSS in Italy during the Second World
>> War. It is about Thurn and Taxis and its relation with the
>> Rothschild, and about the relations of the Rothschilds and the
>> Morgans. It is about how certain American corporations and
>> banks were instrumental in preparing Germany for war, and (by
>> implication) about how those same corporations and banks
>> were instrumental in driving Pynchon & Co. into receivership. It
>> is about how McCarthyism hounded lots of Yankees and Jews
>> out of government, about how Germany rebounded from the
>> Second World War to become one of the world's richest nations,
>> about how so many former Nazi officials went on to rank among
>> the world's elite. It is about how the CIA got to be superordinate
>> to the presidency in American realpolitik. It is about how mid-
>> sixties America resembled Nazi Germany, the Dutch republic
>> and the Roman empire at their worst, about the fear that
>> cessation of political and intellectual exchange would cause a
>> new decline of the West. And all these meditations were
>> triggered by the assassination of President Kennedy.
>> Charles Hollander: Pynchon, JFK and the CIA: Magic Eye
>> Views of The Crying of Lot 49
>> Pynchon Notes 40-41, spring-fall 1997, pp. 61-106
>>
>> One thing that's going on here is the Dude's [fairly reasonable] attempt 
>> to
>> present GR and CoL49 as two works that are of a piece. There are plenty 
>> of
>> connections between the two novels.
>>
>