Once More Around the Oedipa Tangle

[Mark Kohut]

in almost a throwaway remark in an essay in
Bloom's book, Leo Bersani sez that in a curious
way Slothrop has affinities with Oedipus as he spends
his novel trying to avoid fated death while he/we are 
learning that it--being targeted--- all may have started when he was an 
infant...



----- Original Message ----
From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Fri, July 1, 2011 8:50:42 AM
Subject: Once More Around the Oedipa Tangle

Lionel Trilling has an essay on Oedipus Rex in his Prefaces
to Literature that might be described as Back to Basics 101.

He focuses on the horror of it as Oedipus ends tragically even
though he tried like hell to AVOID doing anything to tempt fate.
Trilling sees this as Sophocles understanding of the darkest, uncontrollable
forces in life which 

led me to think of Oedius' descendant down the agaes, Oedipa, who spends
her book learning of the existence of the darkest, mysterious, unstoppable
forces in history?