Coy

[Joseph Tracy]

Coy Harlingen :Heroin addict, Sax player session man, undercover  
agent for cops,/Vigilant/FBI ?, husband of Hope, father of Amethyst,  
seeker of return home( Jason, Orpheus, Euridice).

Coy:  The politics of heroin in Southeast Asia ( Harper &Row)
by Alfred W McCoy - Mark Kohut wrote: Coy was on heroin; just a Mc  
short of McCoy on heroin......... Coy- hard to get

Harlingen   -  Harlingen Texas ( named after Harlingen, Netherlands ,  
Frisian version of same name as Harlinton, Middlex) far south near  
brownsville 80% mexican was airforce base, almost died when base  
closed -harley- lingo- ingen- gen  .  ARLINGTON CEMETERY :  named   
after virginia town which was named after Harlington, Middlesex      
Name etymology:  Place( open field)  of the army , Ton= town
Harley' s (HD)  also have connections to war(Pancho Villa , WW1)and  
heroin (Hells angels,Easy Rider)   Harlequin-romance stories

I think Coy Harlingen's story is a version of the Orpheus and  
Euridice story of Greek myth which may be a major mythic refrain of  
the novel. It takes up a regular pattern and theme of Pynchon's  
fiction in journeys to the underworld( Vheissu, Chumps of Chance  
hollow earth/ sub sand machine witch, caves in Mexico/ in Colorado/  
Switzerland, down urinal, caves in Peenemunde, subtext, underwater  
bones, Dante', Lemuria etc....)
One of the main forms this journey takes is an immersion into the  
great game of  imperial espionage, undercover operations and  
underground resistance.  Often those who travel this way experience a  
crisis point when they find the game is simply a lucrative and greedy  
cover and themselves implicated in serving people and actions which  
are despicable.  What happens then varies , some seem unable to  
emerge, some disappear in transcendence beyond the knowledge of self  
or reader. Some, perhaps most, bounce like yo-yos.  Some journeys  
turn back  toward something more humble that you might call home,  
usually without so much sentiment, often flawed, but a  place with  
love, family , friends, dogs, hope. Whether there is such a place is  
not easily answered.

Whatever the origins, the character of Orpheus has generated myth,  
legend and supposed history( as teacher and founder of mystery  
religions).  He is always a musician and was the lyre player aboard  
the Argo who played so beautifully that he broke the spell of the  
sirens over Jason. In this chapter Jason is a pimp who is under the  
spell of flash, cash,  and stash and is naive and unable to control  
"his" women and admires the slick operation of the Golden Fang. Doc  
goes from Jason to a bar where there is a torch singer who has him  
pretty intrigued but he is even more drawn by the musical  
reappearance of Coy Harlingen and is caught up again in the implied  
story of a homecoming in the house of the Harlingens.

The major story of Orpheus is his love story with Euridice .   
Supposedly on the day of his wedding, Euridice is chased by Aristaeus  
the son of Apollo into a nest of snakes and bitten.  Coy meets Hope  
in a junkie bar ( nest of poison injectors)  on the Mexican border in  
the loo where they shit out and puke up packets of heroin and are  
soon injecting together ( a 2 fanged serpent). In the myth Orpheus,  
upon Euridice's loss, plays music so sad it moves the gods and they  
advise him to go to the underworld to plead with Hades which he  
successfully does.  In this story both Hope and Coy are sinking into  
addiction and watching their child drink milk laced with heroin from  
Hope's breasts when Coy OD's in mysterious circumstances and Hope  
never sees the body and questions his death.  The song that moves the  
reader's hearts and Doc's is the powerful evidence of a Love from  
both Coy and Hope.  When we meet her she is healthy , recovered,  
attractive (apart from her false teeth), and has ample money which  
appeared when Coy "died" and/or disappeared into the underworld. Her  
daughter is healthy, curious and lively. But what Hope really wants  
is her husband and clearly not to resume the habit.

Coy's journey is revealed in pieces more slowly. First we find him in  
the Club Asiatique where he gets paid, but doesn't know who he works  
for.. He is straight now and living with the Boards and concerned  
about Hope & Amethyst.  He tells the Doc GF is a boat with smuggled  
goods and dangerous. We see him next at the Boards place where Doc  
gives him a coded message amidst an  atmosphere of intense paranoia  
that H& A are OK.  The Boards are so blinded by egotism they don't  
even know their sax player is the reputedly dead Coy. Then he shows  
at the Nixon rally and Penny says he is a cop snitch.  In Ch 10 he is  
playing with the chanteuse and tells Doc he took the offer to work  
undercover to get straight and serve his country . Now he has  
realized that the people he is working for are not protecting people  
but addicted to war and control/power/money. His addiction is dead  
but he is still trapped in the underworld.  He misses his wife and  
child, his only consolation is music.

Now Plato says Orpheus is a weak willed coward who if he had any  
manliness would have died . But Plato was a fascist prick and the  
ultimate ideologist. Pynchon seems to have arranged things more along  
the lines of where there's Life there's Hope or vice versa. Like  
committing honorable seppukku is really not the way to save your  
marriage ( or much else).

In the myth, Orpheus is allowed to lead Euridice out of hell if he  
trusts Hades and Euridice enough to not turn around to check up  
before escaping. He fails and sings sad music until killed by women.

As a parable of addiction this is pretty accurate; the recovered  
person can lead the way but can't set the other free. That is a step  
by step process they must take themselves.  As a parable of  
unconsolable love as a source of the saddest and most beautiful music  
it works well also. Somehow the saddest music purifies cleanses and  
renews the will to love.


Love guarantees neither success nor failure in the short term,  some  
addicts recover , some don't,  families and marriages heal and they  
fall apart, nations occasionally heal.  In  a version  of the myth,  
Orpheus refuses women after Euridice's death and consoles himself  
with boys. This sounds to me a sad explanation for homoerotic love  
and art. Even the greeks could not fully accept this aspect of human  
diversity.

What is the way back from, or away from  war as a way of life? What  
is the way back from or away from our many addiction's. Can anyone   
or anything break the hold of ego and greed enough to heal this  
paranoid country. Neither TV nor not TV, neither sex nor not sex,  
neither information nor not information. Pynchon saturates us with  
the detritus and the weighty issues of the early 70s until we are  
reeling with it. Things haven't changed much. The gods of our age are  
hard to move. Pynchon documents the course of empire and resistance  
as it affects every type of individual, using satire, cultural  
insanity, and moments of sheer horror to diffuse simplistic self  
satisfaction and jolt the mind awake.

One of the great gifts of our times are the people who have ventured  
into the dark places and come back to tell the truth, but the  
greatest power of these visionaries is when they lead people out of  
hell.  I think of people like Bayard Rustin, Pete Seeger, Aung San  
Suu Kyi Dorothy Day, but  just as much, maybe even more on a personal  
level, one thinks of  the friends and teachers and bakers and makers  
and children who surprise us with courage grace and insight , empathy  
and love, and information we can use.  I think one thing Pynchon is  
trying to do is showing the struggle to escape the powers of hades as  
it plays out in the confused, compromised realities of average  
screwed up people. The lights may be rare but they  come through the  
cracks in the world..