Blodgett Waxwing and Pale Fire

[Smoke Teff]

Why are you guys talking Pynchon on my American politics listserv

> On Jan 26, 2017, at 3:35 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I think some Pynchon names are character tags and some misleading, meaning we mistrust the Dickensian tradition of personality writ into one's very naming. Laszlo Jamf (jive ass m-f) is what it says on the label, Tyrone Slothrop (entropy sloth) is a cypher, but Bongo-Shaftsbury probably doesn't warrant much deep thought.
> 
>> On 27 Jan 2017 4:05 am, "Monte Davis" <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> AFAIK there's no record of Pynchon registered for a Nabokov class (although anyone could audit or drop in). OTOH, there's an alternate, unattested avenue:
>> 
>> "[P] was taught for a spell by no less a figure than Vladimir Nabokov, who was on the staff of The Cornell Writer. The magazine published Pynchon’s first story “The Small Rain” in March 1959, shortly before he graduated. The two men were not, however, close, Pynchon later told a friend that Nabokov’s Russian accent was so thick, he could hardly understand a word he said. Nabokov, when asked about his famous ex-student, claimed not to remember him well, though his wife recalled his unusual handwriting, 'half printing, half script'. "
>> 
>> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/thomas-pynchon-on-911-american-literature-s-greatest-conspiracy-theorist-finally-addresses-his-8830225.html
>> 
>> Contact between a college literary magazine's faculty advisor and a one-shot contributor? I can imagine none, little, or much. The remark about N's accent could have come from sitting in on a lecture (other, enrolled students said the same) as readily as from personal contact.   
>> 
>> Re Oedipa and Oedipus: I find connection not through Freud, but through the plague on Thebes that prompted Oedipus to look back and discover whom he'd killed. There's Oedipa's initial anomie, a quest that reveals varieties of midcentury cultural sickness -- and. of course the riddle of the Sphinx to be answered. More, several of Oedipa's moments of heightened doubt and revelation are couched in the language of vision and blindness.
>> 
>> 
>>> On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 4:04 AM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> The Nabokov class rumour apparently came from Nabokov's wife, but there's been a marked lack of evidence to back it up (from what I remember).
>>> Blodgett Waxwing's specialty is forging documents, however, and the Caserne Martiere he escaped from was a prison for (among other things) theft and black market stuff, so perhaps it's a nod to the Pale Fire narrator/editor's gift for literary grifting.
>>> 
>>>> On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 5:07 PM, Jade Becker <jbecker13 at georgefox.edu> wrote:
>>>> Noticed on the first line of Nabokov's Pale Fire (the poem part), we've got a mention of "the shadow of the waxwing slain."
>>>> 
>>>> Do you think this adds any meaning to our friend Blodgett Waxwing's name/role in Gravity's Rainbow? Or is it just for fun? I remember hearing rumors about Pynchon taking a class or two by Nabokov. I haven't finished Pale Fire yet, so perhaps the significance will become apparent.
>>>> 
>>>> Or perhaps not. Unless there was something I missed about Mucho, Oedipa's name seemed to have little to do with the Complex.
>>>> 
>>>> Jade-
>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>> 
>> 
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