CofL49, this reading

[Paul Mackin]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Kohut" <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: "Paul Mackin" <mackin.paul at gmail.com>
Cc: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 30, 2009 12:59 PM
Subject: Re: CofL49, this reading





>
> Yes, all sounds fated ala Oedipa's name...
> That leap in causality has bothered me.....TRP nodding?....or just showing 
> how everything is connected---logically.

Paul macklin writes:
Fate would mean Oedipa wasn't responsible for her actions (like Oedipus 
wasn't). but can we really assume this about her?

In this style of narration, part of what we learn is what Oedipa knows and 
part is what the author knows, and we can't always be sure which is which. 
(we can often guess)

I think that with this story the causality is more analagous to the 
Christian idea of Free Will than the Greek idea that it's all the 
responsibility of the Gods.

God (Pynchon) knows from all eternity what will transpire but still the 
characters' actions have a lot of bearing on the outcome.

This theology may not make sense, but the conventions of story telling don't 
always either.

The test is in what works.


Mark:

How about this? Yes, Oedipa 'chooses' in CofL49, like any character with 
free will. Yet, she worries that she is caught in
an omniscient plot....she worries that she is being manipulated from the 
beyond................

Sartre once wrote [about a Catholic writer, Nobelist I think, Francois 
Mauriac] that there can no longer be an omniscient narrator
in fiction unless one is a true believer.

So, TRP presents Oedipa's future 'understandings' in order to show the 
universal truths she learns--as she goes. It has been oft-observed
that the novel ends with the book's title, which might, logically, send us 
back to the beginning of the book again. All the new Tristero contingency 
Oedipa
discovers IS a constant......so, she now understands it that way. Allusion 
to Nietzsche's, or more likely, Eliade's concept of The Eternal Return.?

wikipedia: "The "Eternal return" is, according to the theories of religious 
historian Mircea Eliade, a belief, expressed (sometimes implicitly but often 
explicitly) in religious behavior, in the ability to return to the mythical 
age, to become contemporary with the events described in one's myths.[1]

"to become contemporary----O's future (in the book) is her constant 
present!---with the events described in one's myths" seems like it might 
apply to CofL49, yes?

Paul:

Entirely possible Oedipa thinks she's being manipulated from beyond. That's 
where the paranoia comes in. Funny thing is, at the end of the book 
paranoia may be the only solution to  her proposed dilemma.

A kind of paranoia is embraced by us readers as well. We're hoping against 
hope that every little hiccough means something important. Fortunately we 
only have to play the game as long as it's fun.

Whereas Oedipa may drive herself nuts.

As far as E.R. is concerned, if Oedipa's myth is that she awaits rescue from 
her tower, she still awaits rescue at the end of the book. The next moment 
could have changed that of course.

Another possible interpretaion here of "eternal return" might be the high 
liklihood others beside Oedipa are seeing the signs and portents and seeing 
them as possibly salutary.

The search is never over.


P.





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> ----- Original Message ----
> From: "kelber at mindspring.com" <kelber at mindspring.com>
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2009 1:31:59 PM
> Subject: Re: CofL49, this reading
>
> There are a lot of these constructions suggesting that everything that's 
> happening is somehow fated to be.
>
> "She left, Kinneret, then, with no idea she was moving toward anything 
> new." This, plus Mark's examples 1) and 2) could be statements made by we 
> the readers by the end of the book, though they could be made later with 
> additional information that Oedipa has after the book ends. Example 3) 
> sounds like it refers to a later time, after the book ends, in that we 
> don't get a scene (at least I don't think so -- correct me here) where 
> she's thinking of that night and pondering whether it was real or dreamed.
>
> Example 2) is followed by the statement: "Much of the revelation was to 
> come through the stamp collection Pierce had left ..." That seems to refer 
> to post-auction revelations.
>
> Gratuitously have to throw in one of TRP's many great sentences (mute 
> stamps being the question's subject): "Yet if she hadn't been set up or 
> sensitized, first by her peculiar seduction, then by the other, almost 
> offhand things, what after all could the mute stamps have told her, 
> remaining then as they would've only ex-rivals, cheated as she by death, 
> about to be broken up into lots, on route to any number of new masters?"
>
> This sounds as if Oedipa's in the hands of some higher fate, as opposed to 
> being guided along by some shadowy conspiracy or posthumous plot 
> engineered by Pierce. One very frail link in the human conspiracy theory: 
> One of the Paranoid chicks makes an offhand reference (one of the offhand 
> things sensitizing Oedipa) to The Courier's Tragedy. Oedipa immediately 
> decides she must see it and also talk to the director. That's a big leap 
> in causality. What higher fate's in control? Surely not God. Maxwell's 
> Demon?
>
> Laura
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>
> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>
>>
>>
>> I am noticing the grammatical tense shifts, so barely, subtly
>> indicating different time periods...esp. a just ahead future (from within 
>> the time of the sentence)......................
>> Examples:
>>
>> 1) "as things developed, she was to have all manner of 
>> revelations".........
>>
>> 2) "That's what would come to haunt her most, perhaps, the way it fitted, 
>> logically, together"
>>
>> 3) p. 117 "Later, possibly, she would have trouble sorting the night into 
>> real and dreamed."
>>
>> All of these future times sometime before the locked room end?
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