TRTR Chapter VI - page 202, the advantage of a classical education

[Mark Kohut]

LIKE..as they say on FACEBOOK..fly stuff esp



----- Original Message ----
From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sat, May 28, 2011 11:22:57 AM
Subject: TRTR Chapter VI - page 202, the advantage of a classical education

Where are we?  We're in Otto's digs.

What is happening?
Lying in bed, Otto is, and there's, like, a housefly buzzing around.

rather than reaching for a swatter, either he or the narrator -
probably the latter, since Otto's erudition has been sounded and the
string came back up hardly wet - is able to think of multi-eyed
critters including Argus, (that eye, after Argus's death (stoned in
North Africa?) singled up and transmuted to the eye in the peacock's
tail - although if every peacock possesses one of Argus's eyes, rather
than singled up, they have multiplied to many more than a hundred) and
the fly.

this resonates with the phrase "a fly on the wall", which might
describe the narrator's role here - this was very noticeable in
Chapter 5.
Buzzing from conversation to conversation.

Otto is waking up; the girl next door is wailing about something or
other, to the accompaniment of more opera on the radio.

Rhadames before the judges is the aria.
http://ftp.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F3/70/70.F3d.764.95-1299.html -
probably not, eh?

the aria is from Aida.  Seems to indicate the classic conflict between
love and war, and clash of loyalties.

What *has* the poor girl done?

Otto is clinging to sleep, even as the fly walks on his face!