COL 49 chapter 1 4th question

[Joseph Tracy]

Is there a pattern to Pierce Inverarity's various voices in his cryptic phone call? If so, how does that pattern connect to the quest?

Pattern: 1)Vampire voice, 2) comic Negro (Step& Fetchit? Amos & Andy?) 3)hostile Pachuco (cultural rebellion through style, dangerousness)   4)  interrogating Gestapo Officer.5) Lamont Cranston (seemingly his primary mask ) ??? Secretive preserver of  a certain law and order? 

It’s hard to say how much of a pattern there is. It is not real obvious that there is one. 3 of the voices are somewhat sinister and imply a rater threatening search for information: Transylvanian bat search, Gestapo interrogator, Shadow with clue to the killing of professor quackenbush.  We also find that the Lamont Cranston voice is a kind of standby mask for Inverarity a major persona. He also threatens Mucho with a visit from the Shadow. In a sense this threat is fulfilled  with the executor letter and Oedipa drawn away from Mucho by a quest into Inverarity’s  shadow lands.

Let’s stop here to ask who the fuck is PI and does he represent something larger. Later an actual rep of Gestapo mind, Dr Hilarius, in his latest “research with LSD” says to Oed “I want YOU!” and she images the classic Uncle Sam poster and tells Hilarius no. I don’t think it a crazy stretch to push this novella toward allegorical qualities and pose PI as the US’s claims on individuals and particularly what that means for the spouse of PI’s  and Uncle Sam’s quintessential American longing.. Does Uncle Sam want us to be free or want us to be soldiers to protect and serve his ambitions for power and wealth. There is a common theme throughout P’s writing which is symbolized by the V male  wanting to colonize and control the presumed feminine. That seems to be an expansive conception  which in much western literature includes  the actual  female, the land, resources, and even the subconscious, the inner mythos. 
  This colonial enterprise makes a fair amount of dark space for the flight of the inner vampire,  whose predation recruits new vampires. Whatever PI has begun has a transcendent corporate life and will not die with him. His vampire appetites live on in Metzger, in the inheritors of his empire, the buyers of the stamps, Yoyodyne, The holy narcissism. 
  So what about Comic Negro and Pachuco and their brief appearance sandwiched between vampire and fascist? They are the what remains in popular culture of a people thoroughly disenfranchised, masticated and humiliated, both former slaves and former owners, portrayed as fools who deserve to be mocked, whose place in Los Angeles continues in the 50s  to be stolen by white real estate interests, whose image is controlled by the unquestioned racism of much of Hollywood.. 
 The Shadow as secret enforcer of American law and order required an alter ego. from Wikipeda: In their first meeting, The Shadow threatens Cranston, saying that unless the playboy agrees to allow the aviator to use his identity when he is abroad, then Allard will simply take over the man's identity entirely. 
In the larger cultural context of the 50s-60s McCarthy style anticommunism was king.( PI’s lawyer Metzger is a staunch anticommunist as are employees of Yoyodyne). There was a power struggle between JFK who was turning away from the anti-communist wars and the CIA because of Cuba, and ending when Kennedy was killed in Dallas. CIA former head put in charge of assasination investigation. A story that can easily map onto the Courier’s revenge. The war in Vietnam has kicked into high gear under Johnson after falsification of Gulf of Tonkin incident. Among many other CIA activities later revealed in the 70s was Operation Shamrock  (wikipedia)in which the major telecommunications companies shared their traffic with the NSA from 1945 to the early 1970s. 
Shamrock was the basis of  an NSA watchlist. Many Nazi Intel officers had been recruited into our CIA NSA and were active in Europe in Operation Gladio heaed by James Jesus Angleton ( not to be confused with Duke Angelo). Angleton once said, ”Deception is a State of Mind, and the Mind of the State” 

This historic context brings up the question of what really is Pynchon investigating through Oedipa Maas. One of the oldest and most successful activities of the CIA is its influence on mass media, Papers, TV, Internet. In many ways we are still in the age of competing communications systems and that is the central focus and discovery of Oedipa Maas.