Chap 3 COFL49

[Joseph Tracy]

On May 22, 2009, at 7:48 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:

>
> So, some dark W.A.S.T.E system from way back had a recent staging  
> alluding
> to the assassination (by more elements of that Tristero system) of  
> America's Fisher-King,
> so to speak?
>
> And how does that fit into The Courier's Tragedy? Lust, greed,  
> mutilating torture and death in a play from the Jocobean era?
>
> I am reminded of the mysterious black horsemen in Against the Day.  
> Anyone else?
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: "kelber at mindspring.com" <kelber at mindspring.com>
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2009 6:01:44 PM
> Subject: Re: Inherent Good: back to Rich's work on Chap 3 COFL49
>
> Hollander's take on the three-assassin theory of the Kennedy  
> Assassination seems pretty relevant here. A hint at three shadowy  
> assassins not referred to in the official text (Warren Report).  
> Also, three is the minimum number needed for a V-shaped assault.
>
> By the way, just finished reading the great article Robin posted a  
> while back:
>
>
> http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_6750/is_46-49/ai_n28819965/? 
> tag=content;col1
>
> about Pynchon's writings at Boeing.  He made a number of references  
> to the V2 rocket and had a tendency to use triangular bullets,  
> instead of the customary round ones, for his lists.
>
> Laura

One aspect of this play, which is echoed in Oedipa's discoveries of  
Pierce Inverarity's shady business dealings( use of bones suggesting  
Nazi mining of bodies, connections to mafia, military industry, issue  
of intellectual ownership) is the jolting contrast of Oedipa's  
suburban safety where all the days look alike to a world where power  
arrangements are brutal, bloody, and the product of tactical finesse  
in the arts of deception, manipulation,  speed, murder and espionage.  
This is all part of realpolitic 101 for her. We don't really know  
what P. I . 's role is or why he brought Oedipa into the mix. But his  
roleplaying games point toward the Shadow and possibly the desire to  
right wrongs and bring dark things to light, maybe some kind of  
atonement.  It doesn't matter because we are all theoretically  
executors of an ill gotten national inheritance.

  I am reminded of Orwell's essay , James Burnham and the Managerial  
Revolution, which Pynchon mentions in his intro to 1984. Burnham was  
the original neo con and had a very Machiavellian view of how power  
is gained and maintained.  What is interesting is Orwell's confidence  
that the public would not put up with the plutocratic machinations  
envisioned by Burnham, that the same ordinary people who fought the  
Nazi's and believed they could and must win would demand a greater  
stake in their commonwealth.  But Machiavelli is all about advising  
the prince as to how to shape public opinion and Pynchon has watched  
the rise of the American Military Industrial Complex powered by  
assassinations, wars and money, and that  this America is more comfy  
rebuilding Germany and hiring ex Nazi's and fascistic generalissimos  
than working for democratic freedoms for anyone, least of all latinos  
and blacks. Still the idea that a troublemaking president who  
enforced civil rights legislation, was planning withdrawal from  
Vietnam, was seriously pissed at the the CIA ater the Bay of Pigs,  
and was challenging Texas Oilmen with a move to reverse the oil  
depletion allowance would be killed in an assassination with many  
loose ends including the murder in a police station of his alleged  
killer and all on TV before the American Public, and that the whole  
thing could be covered up thanks to J Edgar... well, it would inspire  
any  writer  who was onto the game to be circumspect  especially  
considering the death of several investigators including the famous  
unexplained death of reporter Dorothy Kilgallen, who interviewed  
Oswald’s assassin, Jack Ruby.

What the book is about for me is the paranoia and search for  
meaningful resistance that follows when you see how seriously fucked  
up America is, how intolerant of change. Coping with that contrast  
between what we are taught as schoolchildren  and news "consumers"  
and even as young republicans, liberal democrats...,   and what we  
find in the  the real world of rule by murder , deception and  
corruption is like entering a dark surrealistic netherworld in which  
nothing is trustworthy. To know or even be open to truth that does  
not conform with" land of the free and home of the brave" is to be  
marginalized as a paranoid nut case.     Lets face it EH Hunt  
confessed that this was a planned assassination.  So  if you prefer  
accuracy then the issue shifts to how the story is presented, if the  
standard media is just propaganda, are there more reliable media? Who  
explains our historic and human and spiritual condition and is there  
a community that is inherently distrustful and inclined towards  
alternate modes of communication.

What Pynchon is getting at is how dark  and aleinated this path is,  
that it does not come with a built in heaven or a working model of a  
new world, but only hints and the common dreams of humanity..  
Yesterday my daughter said something in a discussion of the  
importance of individual imagination that hit me as wonderfully  
clear. She said that most of us are forced into other peoples dreams  
and nightmares because we do not keep alive our own picture of the  
world however faulty and incomplete, that freedom is an act of the  
imagination.



The 3 or 4  co conspirators are the CIA( E H Hunt, Sturgis, Dulles,  
Bush),  Oil and the politics of Oil (LBJ, H L Hunt, Bright) . The FBI  
and its junior partner the Mafia.

One question about the  Couriers tragedy is who plays what part and  
what do the parts represent , who was the former King, etc.  I can  
only suggest that we give it a go.  I will be making some stabs at  
it.  This is one heavily studied book but I think there is still some  
fresh insight if one can manage not to be crippled by the existing  
body of interpretation.