Coy

[Robin Landseadel]

Excellent obs. Joseph.

This book is turning out to be especially tricky.

These are loose thoughts, but was thinking of the Atlantis/Lemuria  
myths of sunken empires and Doc's prescient acid trips and their  
obvious subtext of climate change, a theme throughout the book of L.A.  
sinking as waters rise. Doubtless you know more than I about the myths  
of these sunken cities.

I'm looking for the copy I just gathered of Chandler's "Lady in the  
Lake", thinking of Shasta [Lemuria] drifting away on "The Golden  
Fang." Where did that postcard come from, anyway?

On Oct 19, 2009, at 8:06 AM, Joseph Tracy wrote:

> 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..