V-2nd C4 The Search for Bridey Murphy

[Michael Bailey]

alice wellintown  wrote:

> Here we have but another search for ...well...for a quest narrative
> that opens texts within texts within films, and the actors and their
> biographies and stages within theaters and allusions to theatres .

wait, Bridey Murphy an allusion to theaters?

> Think Our Town. Great play you probably read it in high school. Now
> called "Meta-theatrical."

read it, saw it, loved it, my sister named her business after it, my
dad acted in it in his high school play!
 but still...okay, the fact that they talk on beyond the grave and
comment on the deeds of the living;
whereas ol' Bridey Murphy is denied a place outside time and instead
of commenting from there like the graveyard denizens,
she herself is the subject of commentary?  (I haven't read the book though)

> Here we have madam psy chokes us and a
> little bit of hard times for good measure...Mr McChokumchild.
> Mata-historical romance, anybody? Amy Elias? This is the term for the
> so-called historical fiction P writes. I Guess. But here it is also
> the theater within the theater within the boxes that P mixes up on us,
> like a swift three card monte con man on the streets we were subjected
> to in the last chapter.

ok, I guess...not really following how the Dickens McChokumchild
figures (analogous to Schoenmaker?  Bridey Murphy?)

> There, though... who really cares ...

(Ink Spot voice) "If I didn't care..."
(Bob Dylan voice) "obscenity, who really cares, propaganda all is phoney"

> we are
> bounced into James Fisk and his opera house and into the Baedekered
> theatre where the V-point is Grant and the Banks and Railroads and
> Suez...

ok, wait, the arms of a theater meet in a V.?  is this a feature one
expects, like cathedrals being in the shape of a cross?
or Pynchon books becoming even more enjoyable once you swot up the
background info?

(So now, who's buried in Grant's Tomb again?  A-and that's in NYC
also, correct?  I haven't seen it, not in person, but maybe someday...
but the Grant tomb who you refer is the US Grant of song and story,
whose autobio I'd like to read someday, and he, as postwar Civil War
president
dealt with those who, like S Vibe, profited from the altercation; such
parties including the banks and railroads, but the Suez...egads, I
know nothing of
any such connection - Suez crisis during the "present" of V., though...)

> Henry Adams. Here, we have another, like Graves, like other
> prolific breeders of roads not taken and more or less taken for a ride
> or a long trip off a short pier and like Adams we learn nothing

is there any point in mentioning Tristram Shandy at this juncture as a
progenitor of EHA?

(only,
> again, Adams is the exception) and it is, again, a dream and
> impersonation narrative, a  story that sends reporters and other
> curious blood hounds searching the Irish archives (the Irish have
> built a handsome business out of keeping records, church and family
> crest stuff that yanks love to research) for clues and facts and
> speculation and tails round and round and get me off I'm getting dizzy
> from these spinning yarns.

kind of like how the "Paul is dead" thing sent people scurrying to
their Beatles albums to search for arcana, maybe?

> Our Town? German Town? Irish? P does a
> pretty poor job with German Town and NYC generally.

ok, that is the second time you've mentioned German Town.  "I know
nothink, nothink of Chermantown!"
Maybe Germantown is the key, though...

> He's much better
> at places he has never seen. peaking of Irish, what we find here is
> that brilliant Irish wit and play of language that young Fitzgerald
> and young Joyce had too. It is the candy coated diamonds that lilt
> with a sad chuckle than reach for a bottle.
>

candy coated diamonds, ouch