COL 49 2024 group read MPIN-AT

[Michael Bailey]

My personal, idiosyncratic, non-authoritative take, at least for this
rereading, has 3 main features:


A) I seem to have landed on a postmodern interpretation having to do with
my settling for the meaning of Tristero y Calavera as primarily an obvious
intrusion of the author, and Oedipa fascinated with so many synchronicities
(who wouldn’t be?) asymptotically approaching the realization that she’s a
fictional character

To calculate the area under that curve, we can use a process of (secret)
integration to define an infinite series of authorial/Calaveran delta-t
insertions driving Oedipal attempts at realizations, which sum up into a
status where she will be “in on” the symbolism - will be aware that her
primary struggle is in coming to terms with difficult-to-assimilate facts
of life: Pierce’s death in particular, and death in general - and as we
provisionally accept her reality, we are increasingly sobered/enlightened
by her experiences, encouraged by her perseverance, and buoyed by sharing
such consolation as she finds.

Oedipa lives in a world she didn’t make, as do we; her experiences are
relevant, even if they don’t map exactly.

B) A slight detournement of one of the symbols suggests itself:
Muting a horn doesn’t actually silence it - it changes the tone as when
Miles Davis plays a muted trumpet, makes the sound more pleasing, less
blaring.

C) In choosing to project Oedipa, I think Pynchon was (consciously or
unconsciously) delineating a female character whose charms - and flaws - he
could relate to, & love.

I like to see Pynchon as similar to Genghis Cohen, serenely collecting his
stamps & sharing homemade dandelion wine while doing so; “once so shy” but
now coming up with “new goodies every other day” and beginning to find a
place in Oedipa’s affections, paralleled in real life by the author
gradually weathering life’s buffets, finding true love, flying towards
grace type of thing.

I’m aware & respectful of other interpretations -  the book obviously means
a lot of things to different people, a banquet for thought.



On Sun, Aug 4, 2024 at 11:53 AM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> "Oh, I see - you’re saying that Wharfinger wrote the Tristero in, & the
>
> Vatican suppressed it - no need for Scurvhamites.” MB
>
> Yes that is my idea. I’m not saying Blobb’s records of the existence of
> the Tristero are false, just that the only reason to think there is a
> connection between the "tryst with trystero" line and the Scurvhamites is
> Bortz and D’Amico’s speculations. It seems to me the Vatican has far more
>  motive  and more power to publish and circulate an altered version  and
> suppress the original.
>
> The What the Fuck publisher got hold of an original version, said what the
> fuck, and printed it.
>
> Of course K. da Chingado could have been another PI enterprise. But the
> more I think about that prospect , the more I think that is the most
> conspiracy oriented version. Is the conspiracy to distract from PI’s
> involvement with the Mob? (Takes us back into JFK terrain IMO and maybe
> that is where P wants us to go) But how did PI know OM would stay at the
> Echo C , meet the Paranoids, go with them to Fangoso,  and be influenced by
> one of their chicks to see the Courier’s Tragedy.  Was Pierce threatened by
> the mob and OM chosen by him  as co executor  to find out?  Gets murky in
> every direction.
>
>
>
> On Aug 4, 2024, at 12:55 AM, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Oh, I see - you’re saying that Wharfinger wrote the Tristero in, & the
> Vatican suppressed it - no need for Scurvhamites.
>
> That does fit with Bortz’s tendency to embellish. His Konrad and the
> cold-conking waitress is straight outta his drama-prof mind, eg. (and yet,
> Cohen has a friend who finds something rather similar later on)
>
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 4, 2024 at 12:41 AM Michael Bailey <
> michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Joseph Tracy wrote:
>
> ….
>
>
> The Vatican would by all logic favor the Thurn and Taxis postal control
>
> and their dependence on the Holy Roman Empire. They might simply be
> motivated to keep a copy of the original Wharfinger play both for their
> secret records and their porn collection, and change the words to place all
> the guilt in the story on the incestuous, priest-torturing Duke Angelo and
> would also obscure the very existence of a competing postal system.  This
> seems a far more logical ( Occam’s razor)explanation.
>
>
> However, the Scurvhamite edition did contain the Trystero reference:
>
> [Oed] “But the line about Trystero isn’t dirty.”
>
> [Bortz] scratched his head. “It fits, surely? The ‘hallowed skein of
> stars’ is God’s will. But even that can’t ward, or guard, somebody who has
> an appointment with Trystero. I mean, say you only talked about crossing
> the lusts of Angelo, hell, there’d be any number of ways to get out of
> that. Leave the country. Angelo’s only a man. But the brute Other, that
> kept the nonScurvhamite universe running like clockwork, that was something
> else again. Evidently they felt Trystero would symbolize the Other quite
> well.”
>
>
> I’m in full accord with the rest:
>
>
> The advantage of the Scurvhamites  is to have fun with the bizarre
> extremes of Calvinism,  and to shift focus to the universality of personal
> ambition and scheming within both religion  and secular aspirations to
> rule. Pynchon is pointing out that the same interdependence of church and
> state that passed from the Gods and Ceasars and then moved  to  the
> interdependence  of the Vatican  and the emperor Charlemagne ( beginning of
> Holy Roman Empire), had then passed  in the reformation to the
> interdependence of nationalism and various Protestant sects. There is no
> return  in this progression to the nonviolent healing and sharing of the
> Galilean except in non-state affiliated  religious communities  and
> independent thinkers( the anabaptists, Franciscans, Quakers, ). There is
> also a challenging  secular version of this pursuit in people like Tom
> Paine, Galileo, Copernicus, enlightenment figures etc.)
>
> To look at this history from within the good guys v. bad guys culture
> wars of the 60s or now is startling in the arbitrariness and the  sheer
> violence of dueling doctrines, movements of people,  technological changes,
> intermarriage, language wars etc. How do we frame  our cultural and
> personal  struggles within this confused history and what is the role of
> communication systems, or what we now call media in that  conflicted
> landscape? Who should decide?
>
> To be continued
>
>
>
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>
>
>