COL 49 2024 group read MPIN-AT

[Michael Bailey]

It’s an Oedipa-centric reading.
There’s certainly more to the book that that, but that’s the part I noticed
most this time around.

On Wed, Aug 7, 2024 at 4:52 PM Joseph Tracy <brook at sover.net> wrote:

> I do like the idea of her realizing she is somebody’s fiction. From my
> perspective America is a work of fiction to which we ascribe more meaning
> than can be born.  I still see more of ? What is real? Than ?what is
> reality?. That seems too vast for mortals .
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On Aug 7, 2024, at 1:30 AM, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > 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
> >>
> >>
> >>
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>
>
>
>