aw. RE: Lemuria in GR/IV (also: maritime law, SpongeBob)

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

>
> On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 10:03 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
> wrote:
>>
>> "Paranoia for you here, Tchitcherine. Maybe Moscow's been tipped to your
>> vendetta. If there are gathering evidence for a court-martial, it won't be
>> Central Asia this time. It'll be Last Secretary to the embassy in Atlantis.
>> You can negotiate narcotics arrests for all the drowned Russian sailors,
>> expedit your own father's visas to far Lemuria, to the sun-resorts of
>> Sargasso, where the bones come up to lie and bleach and mock the passing
>> ships."
>>
>> Thomas Pynchon: Gravity's Rainbow (p. 564).
>>
>> Now, 'a court-martial', 'the embassy in Atlantis', 'your own father's visas
>> to far Lemuria', a-and bones coming up to 'mock the passing ships'. Sounds to
>> me as if "maritime law" bzw. the Law of the Sea is not by accident a side-theme
>> in Pynchon's last one. Is there a licensed law-person in the house?
>>
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

>
> i think it's Pynchon's take on that clever Stalin and friends way of
> justice--how negotiate/arrest someone who's dead? sure we'll give yr
> dad a visa fast only to a place that doesn't exist
>
> rich
>

No doubt, Rich, inside the framework of GR this is a possible, yes, the most
plausible reading. It remains still, however, an interesting question why Pynchon,
who obviously just wanted to refer to Atlantis/Lemuria once or twice in his
Big One, places the ref exactly where he did. This led me, since IV sets this 
theme on its agenda, back to maritime law, which corresponds to the GR-passage
in question. There's law, sailors, international relations plus Atlantis and
Lemuria. The latter one is implicitly described as a place to save Tchitcherine.
There is trace of Utopia there. Now, on that Lemuria-as-an-idea-of-spiritual-healing
website I posted yesterday it says that LEMURIA is an inner place in our hearts,
just like it is said about Shambhala in AtD several times. "(A) place that doesn't
exist", like you say? I'm not so sure about that ... Furthermore, when you look
at the way Inherent Vice pictures the conflict between Lemuria and Atlantis, the
GR-passage could (not: should!) be even read as relativation of Stalinist terror:
 
"The U.S., being located between the two oceans into which Atlantis and Lemuria 
had disappeared, was the middle term in their ancient rivalry, remaining trapped
in that position up to the present day, imagining itself to be fighting in Southeast
Asia OUT OF FREE WILL BUT IN FACT REPEATING A KARMIC LOOP AS OLD AS THE GEOGRAPHIES
OF THOSE OCEANS, WITH NIXON AS DESCENDANT OF ATLANTIS JUST AS HO CHI MINH WAS OF 
LEMURIA, BECAUSE FOR TENS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS ALL WARS IN INDOCHINA HAD REALLY BEEN
PROXY WARS, GOING BACK, BACK TO THE PREVIOUS WORLD, BEFORE THE U.S., OR FRENCH INDOCHINA,
BEFORE THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, BEFORE THE BUDDHA, BEFORE WRITTEN HISTORY [my emphasis. kfl],
to the moment when three Lemurian holy men landed on those shores ..." (IV, pp. 108-9)
 
Well, if the poor US of A, while dropping napalm on innocent peasants, were 'trapped ...
in karmic loop[s] as old as the geographies of those oceans ... before written history',
I guess some Russian authors could construct similar mythological stories of the Stalinist
phase of their country's history. For novels this is kinda OK, though there was a smell of
historical revisionism in the air while I was typing down the IV quote ... 
 
Are there Lemuria-related passages in V, Col49, VL, M&D or AtD?
 
Since Pynchon has finished his 7 novels now, we must not read each book by itself, 
yet each and every sentence, to pick up Goethe's famous words, as "parts of one great confession". 
In literature-science they call this the oeuvre's internal intertextuality, I guess. 
The heterarchical whole is a circle of circles ...
 
 
"'Actually I'm a marine lawyer.' 
Doc thought about this. 'You're ... a Marine who practices law? No,
wait, --- you're a lawyer who only represents Marines.... (...)
Maybe you better give me your card,' Doc said. 'Can't ever tell.
Boat hassles, oil spills, SOMETHING [emphasis added.kfl].'" (IV, p. 27)
 
Could that "something" be the "karmic adjustment" we know about from VL? 
And is this somehow connected to Lemuria?
 
Kai