Coy

[alice wellintown]

David Morris wrote:
> There might be some value to the Orpheus-Persephone myth in IV, but so
> far it's not been convincingly developed.  Coy as Orpheus?  More like
> Persephone, the one who disappeared underground.  And the pursuer here
> is Doc, not much in common w/ Orpheus.  And anyway Doc's Persephone
> would be Shasta, and she isn't found.  She returns of her own free
> will. And speaking of Shasta, what a dud of a development was her part in
> this story.  She just essentially gets dumped, and returns to her old
> haunt.  Penny was more interesting, and that's not saying much.
>> But, despite the above, I did enjoy IV...
>> David Morris.

>From a purely structural point of view, _Oedipus the King_ is
practically unrivaled in dramatic literature. Sophocles demonstrates
his
remarkable skill as a dramatist by allowing Oedipus to become
aquatinted with His story incrementally, while at the same time
exploiting the total range of possible ironies by allowing the
audience to know more of His story than Oedipus knows at any given
moment in the play. Moreover, in _Oedipus the King_ we find perfect
motivation for individual actions. This is one of the reasons
Aristotle turns to this drama more than any other Greek Tragedy to
illustrate his critical theories.

Perfect Motivation for Individual Action!

The characters in IV are looking for people, places, things ....they
are seekers, on quests. This is standard Romance stuff and P makes
extensive use of Romance standards in all of his works. However,
Slothrop, Stencil, Oedipa, Doc, are playing roles or parts in various
parodies of genre (fiction, biography, history, film, TV) that involve
quests: fable, cowboy, detective, picaresque, Blues Clues/Clews and
Scooby Doo too ...and theseoccur in Sacral (Kabbalist, Masonic,
Gnostic etc), Mythic or Magical (Grail, Tarot, Astrological, etc.),
Scientific/Technological (psychology, mathematics, aerodynamics,
rocket engineering, etc.), and in variations
of these assimilated.

The Scentific/Technological quests (Faustian) are presented as Profane
or corrupt versions of
the Sacred, Mythical, and Magical, while the Sacred, Mythical, and
Magical, are Carnivalized.

So, sometimes characters are not sure if they are on a quest or if
they are running for their lives (Dorothy, Slothrop, Doc).

And like Dorothy, the goal (spiritual and material) of the quest keep
multiplying ("some place where there isn't any trouble",
"get out of OZ", Emerald City, Home, Heart, Brains, Courage, OZ,
Wizard, WWW's broom, Kansas, and of course "the land of
E Pluribus Unum").

Characters are on quests for a whole bunch of things: Self or
Identity, lovers, relatives, ancestors, doubles, drugs,
information, money, technology (Imipolex G, S-Gerat) discharge from
the service ("ruptured duck" GR.61 and
GR.526), Jamf, and so on.

Note how Doc's quest multiplies and fractures.


Notice how Doc & the people he's "working for" changes interests
rather haphazardly, abandoning one set of objects or goals and
adopting new ones as the story moves along, parody after fantastic
parody.

See Fowler's 'A Reader's Guide to GR' where he notes that "human
motive as the most important fact in dramatic event"
(115) does not operate in GR.

Pynchon subverts traditional character motivation, thus subverting
both the quests and questers, characters are not where we will find
the "traditional" maturation, evolution, learning, etc.

Motivation is present, however, what motivates characters are various
Forces. This is what Pynchon is concerned with, the forces of
consciousness, though consciousness is not individualized nor is it
separate from the forces "outside" consciousness.  Again, Slothrop is
our best model,but Coy will serve or Doc. Ee are told that Slothrop is
to be counted among the zone's lost and as
individual character this is the case, but at the level of force
motivation, Slothrop is transformed and transcends.


The single force motivation in Pynchon does not change. All quests
promise some sort of redemption from an insufferable
predicament (for Coy and Hope it is the "Middle Class Suburban Hell of
the parents) and characters try everything on Earth to "transcend"
their human condition. Like, becaome a Star. A TV idol. Most fail
either because they cannot get to their goal or when they do, they
find annihilation. What's interesting is that when questers succeed,
they succeed only in protecting or redeeming
others, Doc, for example, may prevent some bad shit even as he causes
othe bad things to happen. On the other hand, when questers fail, they
fail for all sorts of reasons: they are late, they are on the wring
track, the wrong train, the wrong ship, moving in the wrong direction,
they forget, they are afraid (like Stencil is afraid to got to Malta).

Sometimes, like with Shasta, they fail and end up where they started.
Kinda like Benny, wearing the same clothes, just a bit dizzy from the
yo-yo out and back again, but right back where they started having
learned not a G-d Darn Thang.