Pynchon's reply

[Joe Allonby]

Half & half, please.

All very good points, Robin. But assuming authorial intent without
real evidence is a minefield. I've encountered this firsthand when
people have tried to tell my what my lyrics are "about" citing
specific people and events. Sometimes I just make things up that sound
like a good story.

Pynchon saturates his stories with so much information that it is
tempting look for things that might not be there.So, I'll take the guy
at his word though allowing that he may have been a little
disingenuous. The self-deprecation of the Slow Learner intro seems
indicative of an ego firmly held in check and a self-critical view of
his own work. I'm reminded of the Dylan interviews in "No Direction
Home" when he cynically toyed with clueless reporters. I won't say
that Hollander is as inane as a mid-sixties pop reporter. Pynchon
shows respect for him. But there is a quality of "Come on, aren't you
reading too much in to this?".

Is this making sense or should I just reach for the mallet and say
"Don't bother, I'll do it myself."


On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 10:49 AM, Robin Landseadel
<robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:
> "Keep it bouncing. . ."
>
> On May 20, 2009, at 7:15 AM, David Morris wrote:
>
>> On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 8:36 AM, Joe Allonby <joeallonby at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Over-analysis seems to be the hobby of most people on this list - myself
>>> included.
>>
>> For some people it's a profession.
>
> Well, yeah? You mean like Pynchon Notes and other sites for analysis of
> Pynchon? Like the reason we're here? Call it over-analysis if you like.
>
> So why are you posting here if you think what we're doing is useless?
>
>> I've only read COL49 once, many years ago.  As I remember it, a
>> central theme, also central to GR, has to do with seeing patterns in
>> the universe and the question whether these are inherent or projected
>> or both.  I remember not liking this book very much, thinking this
>> conspiracy quest wore a little thin by the end.
>>
>> David Morris
>
> I've read the book obsessively for thirty years now—more times than the
> number in the title. I have my reasons, they have everything to do with the
> times and the places of the novel. And so it goes.
>
> While 'seeing patterns' and projecting worlds are major themes in CoL49,
> those themes are subordinate to the theme of losing the sense of self, of
> losing one's humanity.
>
> On May 20, 2009, at 6:36 AM, Joe Allonby wrote:
>
>> How much of this is actually in the text?
>
> Good question.
>
> Answer: it's there alright, like that smog that's not supposed to be in the
> San Francisco/Bay Area.
>
> One of the biggest points of CoL49 is just how much Oedipa overlooked while
> ensconced in her tower in Kinneret in the Pines. The local details are a big
> part of the tapestry: the presence of Yoyo/Rocketdyne is a clear indicator
> of the ongoing cold war and the price we [the U.S.] paid in that war, the
> Peter Penguid Society points to "Russo-American relations during the
> American Civil War," that "OSS"/Bone thing is replicated in GR [Pynchon is
> deep into word games, didn't you notice?], the Thurn and Taxis material is
> there [though the Dude is overextending himself a bit by throwing the
> Rothschilds in his mix.—they may be there, but they're not named.] "Certain
> American corporations and banks were instrumental in preparing Germany for
> war," is folded into the mix, though that's covered more in GR than here.
> That particular thread has a lot to do with Pynchon & Co., though the author
> is careful not to go into too much detail on that particular point. I detect
> Pynchon & Company in CoL49, GR and AtD in particular. It's all part of the
> book's "plot', but even more to the point is just how isolated Oedipa's
> tower in Kinneret in the Pines is from the sights you can see late at night
> from an AC transit bus tooling about in San Francisco. It is easy for anyone
> reading the Crying of Lot 49 to lose track of the human story, much as
> Oedipa loses track of the human element while she pursues these puzzles of
> symbology. Then again, that loss of our collective sense of humanity was a
> central concern of Young Pynchon.
>
>> 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.
>
> The ancient postal fraud/conspiracy may be one last evil design/plot of
> Pierce Invararity, something designed to make Oedipa go nuts. But I think
> it's much more to the point that in this journey Oedipa becomes aware of
> those who are drawing away from "The Union", or more exactly: those who
> never got a chance to be part of "The Union" in the first place. The
> "Isolation" of Oedipa in her tower has much more to do with the vast social
> differences between her and those she encounters in her quest than the
> political particulars of that quest, though the author takes pains to note
> the political particulars.
>
>> 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.
>
> Not quite. Time and place and setting is very important: we are on the cusp
> of the "Acid Revolution", LSD is not just "set & setting" for the book, Acid
> is central to the book, central to the madness that encroaches upon Oedipa.
>
>> Over-analysis seems to be the hobby of most
>> people on this list - myself included. I'll stand back and take my
>> lumps now.
>
> One lump or two? And would you like cream with that?
>
>>
>> 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.
>>>
>
>