Tentative Theory of CoL49

[David Morris]

COL49 is my least favorite of his first works.  Its overt conspiracy trek
is unoriginal and lame.  V and GR were his successes at that game.

David Morris

On Wed, Oct 2, 2019 at 11:59 PM Raphael Saltwood <PlainMrBotanyB at outlook.com>
wrote:

> When written in as a metaphor in the mid-sixties, it might say the US post
> office now had an alternative communication system..
> Come @ me.
>
> https://twitter.com/PoliticsReid/status/1179199569592274944?s=20
> --
>
>
> V. written around 1960 and took place in mid50s, the biggest thing going
> on still WWII and aftermath, Profane Depression baby achieved some upward
> mobility from the Navy...somehow his Mom (no word of his Dad) got to a nice
> Brooklyn (?) apartment from Hoovertown where Benny began...nice venue with
> a fridge full of food, the attaining of which would be another great
> tale...but anyway, Slothrop fresh out of military, examining habitat for
> niches as a PFC, pore forlorn civilian, may be emblematic of American
> demobilization and prospects/prosperity/wants and needs - he's the fresh
> face, Stencil the guy that knows all the backstories, the sweet spot in the
> tale being Paola's optimism and Miraculous Medal (later the MM was
> mentioned in GR worn by a number of casualties, which someone, maybe jbor,
> reminded cometman of back in 2005, taking on a more somber note fitting in
> a later work)(though Josefina's religion in V. while extending grace to
> Slothrop at a crucial moment didn't bulwark her su
>  fficiently to matrimonize her to him - which in turn could be emblematic
> of NYC's failure to commit to the Nuyoricans instead razing their habitat -
> nor protect her from the juvenile delinquents)
>
>
> Whereas a new catastrophe has occurred in Dallas by the writing of, and,
> one guesses, the events in Lot 49...the alternative messaging system itself
> has a long backstory, Oedipa as proto-feminist (part of the V. optimism
> also being the possibility of feminine influence in successive abortive
> attempts by V. to attain personal agency and in the war-torn world becoming
> mineralized but she keeps trying...and Rachel as a successor to V.,
> inhabiting a social position where she not only has some personal agency
> but is perhaps the only positive influence for Benny) where the passing of
> Inverarity leaves her not heir but executor - do we learn of any
> beneficiaries? Very mysterious, but that is the kind of enigma posed by the
> legacy of war, fought, when sincerely fought, to protect children and
> empower women.
>
> Her investigation comes to center around the alternative postal system,
> rather than asking as you or I (well definitely I) would, who gets the
> bequests? Meet these people, write some checks. Maybe she's the beneficiary
> - time to do some re-orgs.
>
> It's gotta be a bit of magical realism relating to the educational and
> media heritage and the foci that joker Pierce chose for her attention. Like
> in the Huckleberry Hound cartoon intro where the carriage is rolling along
> and the road splits and of a sudden he is sitting in the carriage while the
> axles telescope so the wheels on one side are on one road and the wheels on
> the other side on another, and he's riding along over the abyss.
>
> So if one views the left wheels as the legit educational and governmental
> apparati, the right wheels as the alternate comms of WASTE and other
> refurbished acronyms, or vice versa...and the abyss is filled with the poor
> schmoes like the guy living up a phone pole. She's rolling along above this
> societal bifurcation in the carriage of her relatively privileged
> upbringing and, like Huckleberry Hound, relatively oblivious (inured
> because it happened on every episode? privileged? on a cockamamie adventure
> that occupies her full attention? All the above?) to the precarity and
> illogic - now obviously the embedded base at all these companies is like
> the nearly-dead hands of the geezers at the Yoyodyne meeting, which, though
> decrepit and so forth, grope her (which is assault, even just touching, but
> how does that ever get enforced?) - nothing they would enjoy more (as Pig
> Bodine said, "Nothing I love -" (and Rachel or somebody goes, "I believe
> that!") "- than good shit-kickin' music") than ou
>  sting a newcomer with ideas, and female at that! - so, wisely, she
> eschews a corporate power struggle which would wake these somnolent hounds
> of war, and focuses on the aspects in which her Berkeley training in
> lit-crit has empowered her.
>
> At the end, when Passerine begins the auction, she has gravitated to a
> situation that makes sense to her, and when the door clicks shut, it's
> closing the rest of the world out - not jailing her Ugolino-like -
> centering her in a room where she will be somewhat empowered but, one
> hopes, not a threat to other bidders, and will learn more.
>
> Is this theory Manichaean, or like Michael Moorcock's chaos and order
> dichotomy where the balance constantly shuttles? Maybe her quest
> acknowledges a dichotomy but improbably rides above it like Huckleberry
> Hound, and in attending to her evolving theories, places her in a
> suggestive exploratory mode.
>
> Also, and I think somebody mentioned this in _Pynchon Notes_, the old Pony
> Express rider interview has intertextual overtones with one of the stories
> in _Dandelion Wine_ - the story like all good historical fiction has a
> savoring of all these events that continue to take place as time passes,
> and inevitably for her to eventually learn something, which will be more
> than Benny Profane would admit.
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>