CoL49 group reading ch6 part 1

[Michael Bailey]

The Nook edition had the “b” pagination for the part of Ch3 I hosted,
but chapter 6 is quite different.

The “b” pagination division James suggests is from 120 to 152, or 33 pages
inclusive, with each host working on 11 pages.

The Nook edition I have puts chapter 6 from page 109 to 136: 28 pages
inclusive.

A third that would be 9 pages & a skosh: thru 117 & a third of 118.

109 is a short page, so to even it up I’d like to go more than 1/3 into
page 118, and end my tenure after
“…Oedipa was able to fit together this account of how the organization
began:”

If I’m shirking or hogging, I'm sure someone will let me know, and I’ll be
happy to change (within reason)



brief summary:

The Paranoids burst into song with a lament - Metzger has stolen one of
their “chicks”

Metzger breaks up with Oedipa with no notice, just a fair accompli

She learns, via a note on top of the TV set in the room at Echo Court, of
his quitting as co-executor

She tries to call Driblette but his mother answers & tells her that their
attorney will be reading a statement the next day at noon

She calls Emory Bortz at home, reaching his wife Grace, who invites Oedipa
over

On the way to Bortz’s, she passes the charred remnants of Zapf’s Used Books.

She inquires of the neighboring surplus-store’s owner, and learns that Zapf
had torched the place for the insurance. She also gets an earful of racist
and opportunistic Nazi-sympathizing.

Remonstrates with herself for not assaulting that person for his
contemptible views and actions.

At Bortz’s she takes in a lovely domestic scene with Grace and some
children on her way to the backyard, where Emory and some of his graduate
students are drinking a lot of beer.

She joins in the drinking, bandying words with the grad students,
especially w/r/t different versions of the “Courier’s Tragedy” text.

During the course of the conversation, she also learns that at least part
of the drinking is by way of a wake for Driblette, who’d walked into the
Pacific (and drowned)

Bortz shows Oedipa into his study to view some slides  of the pornographic
illustrations in one of the variant texts.

They lapse into near-scholarly discourse. Oedipa inevitably introduces the
topic of The Tristero, whereupon Bortz unlocks a bookcase containing his
“Wharfingeriana.”

Evidently Bortz had found in Wharfinger’s “commonplace book” (which is
apparently a fancy term for “diary”, and which he does not show her, at
least not in this scene) a reference to yet another text: the
wonderfully-named Diocletian Blobb’s travel journal, wherein Blobb
describes an encounter with The Tristero.

He gives her a copy of the travel journal printed in antique style to read.

Sure enough, Blobb and his companions, while passengers in a Thurn and
Taxis mail coach, witnessed the theft of the mail and a massacre of all the
T&T personnel at the hands of The Tristero.

Blobb et al loudly proclaimed their English citizenship, dissociating
themselves from Thurn & Taxis, and even singing hymns - The Tristero spared
them.

A gap of several days is noted but not described, before Oedipa and Bortz
discuss the passage.

Oedipa wonders why spare Blobb; Bortz reads the passage where the Tristero
leader “in perfect English” exhorted Blobb to spread the word of The
Tristero in England, speculating that part of their plan may have been to
lay the groundwork for expanding their organization there.

Oedipa collects some more fragments. From these sources she pieces together
a rough chronological narrative of The Tristero, beginning in 1577.