Tentative Theory of CoL49

[Mark Kohut]

Your opinion of Crying of Lot 49 is unoriginal and lame since you probably got it from Thomas Pynchon. I'm smiling too wide at myself here.😄

Sent from my iPad

> On Oct 3, 2019, at 1:09 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l