COL 49 group read CH 6 mid section

[Michael Bailey]

On Tue, Jul 30, 2024 at 7:53 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

>
>
>  I suggest Pynchon was very nervous about a direct approach  and that
> those concerns were well founded. Every student of history knows the
> dangers of tangling with empires.
>

You make a good case - I have some elaborate pseudo-biographical points of
agreement, and a few mild differences


In agreement -

Rev’d Cherrycoke in M&D had to ship out after becoming known as a writer of
pamphlets critical of the Establishment at that time

His career thereafter took a different course, and perhaps his experience
changed his viewpoint to one more like that AA prayer about learning the
difference between things he could or couldn’t change.

It’s easy enough, and not immediately dismissable as fallacious, to see
Cherrycoke’s evolution as an expression - maybe even a recommendation - of
the author’s “attitude journey”

If so, it’s but one step beyond that
https://youtu.be/SOJSM46nWwo?si=rk3g2mVjw_p4TYYL
to imagine that, emboldened by lack of negative consequences, indeed,
plaudits and dinero, for 49, and an antiwar/counterculture groundswell in
society up and into the ‘70s, & also steeled in resolution by his friend
Richard Fariña’s death, GR became a more overt, passionate statement

But then, his alarms set to clanging by the Pulitzer Board’s refusal to
award GR a prize - and other cultural changes starting to be documented by
the efforts of writers like Hunter S Thompson - he took a lower profile for
quite awhile, and no doubt had time to think deeply…while writing VL about
the ins and outs of the right wing response to, and the roots and shoots
of, the Movement which Thompson had called “the crest of a high and
beautiful wave”

By the time M&D came out, having looked at “both sides now” and then some,
he was seeking a place in the culture like that of Rev’d Cherrycoke.


The slight differences I offer are more of emphasis:

Pynchon was never a pamphleteer (afaik) - always consciously a litterateur

As an artist his emphasis would be closer to that William Carlos Williams
quote, “It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably
every day for lack of what is found there.
<https://quotefancy.com/quote/39722/William-Carlos-Williams-It-is-difficult-to-get-the-news-from-poems-yet-men-die-miserably>
”

In addition to any topical references, I want to see broad narrative aims:
Oedipa’s individuation & blossoming of maturity; the enlargement of her POV
with a growing awareness of dastardly plots all around, and of other human
realities besides her own; her twin impulses to pursue the trail, but also
not to; a truly generous helping of her introspection, served up adroitly
and sympathetically; & enough real history to serve as a crèche for the
nativity of the fictive “Tristero y Calavera” which serves to connote
sadness, the Day of the Dead, the sweet treats of that commemoration, and a
multitude of reactions to Pierce’s death (and Death in general & also
personal, “it is Margaret you mourn for”)

Going yet one step beyond that, speculatively, the author at this point in
his career having attempted marriage once - could he in Oedipa be trying to
imagine a more compatible woman with a sensibility akin to his? If we liken
novels to stamps, a woman who attends an auction of those items would be
like a literary agent in some respects

I find it pleasing so to muse - ymmv

And in conclusion:

> On Jul 30, 2024, at 4:52 PM, Hübschräuber <huebschraeuber at protonmail.com>
wrote:


> > More to the point perhaps, whether invented or not, this is some
> marvelous writing



Yes indeedy!

>