Re: CoL49 group reading ch6 - then there’s this

[Joseph Tracy]

Of course there is the possibility that she was pregnant and had a miscarriage. We really don’t know. Some of the ambiguities bother me and feel oddly unlike other Pynchon novel’s where those kinds of details are part of the narrative. There is part of me that thinks we are being led into unresolvable competing narratives because we are asking the wrong questions, questions that  Pynchon never intended us to take too seriously. 

The question is who is the rightful prince and heir:  a prince of the power of the air, or a prince of peace? 

Who does this proposed American legacy of freedom and abundance belong to? Who will have access to it?

And who is  America , what kind of life will she give birth to? Is she an illusion of unity concealing unscrupulous criminal power struggles , an illusion of law and justice concealing racism, exploitation and sexism?

 Or is some kind disrobing of false appearance needed, love that is not a b movie performance, not a drunken contest, but  naked love, the deepest of shared affinities,  love freed from the gravity of the past, where mercy kisses truth.  

Oedipa takes off layer after layer, leaving behind Young Republicanism,  dropping millionaires with too much power and too little  humanity,  dropping cute actor lawyer fakes,  dropping  militarism, dreams of technological magic, self righteous nuts who’s eyes are green with envy for fascist power, living behind the insanity of fascism,  leaving behind experts who invent facts , leaving behind a friend so wrapped up in the universal mind he can’t see the needs of the woman he married; but Oedipa is also finding along the way new affinities with those who refuse to be ruled,  a women painter, a Mexican anarchist, an old alcoholic sailor, young musicians looking for a vision and a voice, peace activists making a ruckus.

 

> On Aug 4, 2024, at 5:08 PM, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> They say it’s different every time you read a great story. I came into this
> reading thinking that Oedipa had slept with at least one other person
> besides Metzger, but it doesn’t seem she did.
> 
> I also never noticed this paragraph before:
> 
> “Waves of nausea, lasting five to ten minutes, would strike her at random,
> cause her deep misery, then vanish as if they had never been. There were
> headaches, nightmares, menstrual pains. One day she drove into L.A., picked
> a doctor at random from the phone book, went to her, told her she thought
> she was pregnant. They arranged for tests. Oedipa gave her name as Grace
> Bortz and didn’t show up for her next appointment.”
> 
> 
> 
> 
> She picked a female doctor, that’s interesting, & in the early ‘60s
> would’ve been slim pickin’s.
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7784804/
> 
> 
> Waves of nausea could be morning sickness though not just in the morning,
> but menstrual pains? That’s interesting and ambiguous.
> 
> Good Housekeeping says they can occur in the absence of a period:
> https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/health/a41340417/cramps-but-no-period/
> 
> 
> 
> Giving her name as Grace Bortz - that’s also interesting. Almost as if a
> paucity of identity-affirming relationships in her own name has driven her
> to try to take on Grace Bortz’s.
> 
> One good reason for not showing up for a next appointment would be the
> arrival of her period.
> But that’s not specified explicitly.
> 
> - when she gets drunk and drives, probably that shows she knows she’s not
> pregnant?
> --
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