COL 49 group read CH 6 mid section

[Joseph Tracy]

	"From obscure philatelic journals furnished her by Genghis Cohen, an ambiguous footnote in Motley’s Rise of the Dutch Republic,
	 an 80-year-old pamphlet on the roots of modern anarchism, a book of sermons by Blobb’s brother 	Augustine also among Bortz’s 
	Wharfingeriana, along with Blobb’s original clues, Oedipa was able to fit together this account of how the organization began:” 

1577    The 1st of several Williams of Orange, fighting to free the Low Countries from the Catholic Holy Roman Empire unites Calvinist resistance and skilled workers to take control of police, the governors, and others including the  T&T Postmaster and replaced him with Jan Hinckart, Lord of Ohain. ( all accepted history)

"Hernando Joaquín de Tristero y Calavera, perhaps a madman, perhaps an honest rebel, according to some only a con artist. Tristero claimed to be Jan Hinckart’s cousin, from the Spanish and legitimate branch of the family, and true lord of Ohain—rightful heir to everything Jan Hinckart then possessed, including his recent appointment as Grand Master.”  For 7 years J. of Tristero and Calavera fought a guerrilla and propaganda war to take control of OHain's inheritance and position. ( pure fiction)

Hinckart was fired by Alexander Farnese, a skilled military commander of the Spanish led empire,  and the T&T postmaster reinstated..( historic) 
 
The political fights were bad for T&T business( could not yet verify) and Joaquin Tristero decides to make a competing postal system symbolized by a post horn and dead badger. He styles himself the Disinherited, dresses followers in black and "began a sub rosa campaign of obstruction, terror and depredation along the Thurn and Taxis mail routes."( fiction.)

OM, Emory and Grace Bortz,, and grad students attend Driblettes burial and return at night to sit and drink Driblettes’ Napa muscatel. OM tries to psychically contact R.D. hoping to learn how he died; she wonders if the grieved female grad student was his lover. "But as with Maxwell’s Demon, so now. Either she could not communicate, or he did not exist.

 She wonders how the name of Trystero had gotten into the Vatican version of Wharfinger. To find more about Tristero she needs to find more from the T&T side. Bortz’s speculations seem like a cute game to her.  One T&T heir dies 1628 , a woman becomes unofficial  postmaster, retires in 1645 next male heir assumes power in 1650 but Antwerp and Brussels shut down T&T offices in favor of local postal service.( this shift to national and local service  was the historic pattern that finally ended T&T’s monopoly. )

Bortz speculates more about attempts by  a guy with a name like Konrad( can’t find historic correlate) to use postal monopoly to quell rebellion, OM points out it didn’t happen and Bortz moves on to speculate that the  Tristero attacks might appear to T&T as Scurvamitish automatic anti-God but they then discovers actual secular Tristero . Bortz says "it is even suggested that Tristero has staged the entire French Revolution, just for an excuse to issue the Proclamation of 9th Frimaire, An III, ratifying the end of the Thurn and Taxis postal monopoly in France and the Lowlands." “Suggested by who, though,” said Oedipa. “Did you read that someplace?” “Wouldn’t somebody have brought it up?” Bortz said. “Maybe not.”

OM is discouraged, goes to see Mike Fallopian at Scope, who deflects a question about WASTE and suggests it is all a put on orchestrated  by Inverarity and she should write down what she clearly knows, what is speculation, verify sources.. She feels hated. He laughs at idea, knows Tremaine.


G Cohen shows up with dubious stamp ( because it is addendum)"bearing the device of the muted post horn, belly-up badger, and the motto: WE AWAIT SILENT TRISTERO’S EMPIRE.” She doesn’t trust it looks at Invererity’s assets and finds "the whole shopping center that housed Zapf’s Used Books and Tremaine’s surplus place had been owned by Pierce. Not only that, but the Tank Theater, also. She realizes " OK. It’s unavoidable, isn’t it? Every access route to the Tristero could be traced also back to the Inverarity estate. Even Emory Bortz,”

She does not know if she is caught in a deceptive plot or has stumbled into a secret organization with roots in ancient power struggles  and offshoots that include anarchists , a postal system for the preterite, and an anti-love support group. Either way she frames it she will appear crazy. 
				??????

Does Bortz appear to be misleading her or merely too willing to speculate on this narrow area of academic expertise?

Why  might Pynchon lead us to the Protestant v Catholic wars and the end of the Holy Roman Empire, which had its own numerous internal wars.?

Why the Disinherited? Is that notion still popular for organizing people?  

What I feel compelled to ask again is why has Pynchon directed so much attention to a fictional secret organization and its efforts to either control international communication or make an alternate system that includes assassinations? Where does that idea fit into his larger historic interests? The Pinkertons were real historic private police, the Great Game was real, the union busters, and the Main Core plan to incarcerate US dissidents was real, the German war on the Hereros was real, V2 rockets,  the CIA violence in Guatemala, the Yakuza, the revolutionary wars in Mexico. The fiction in these cases is individuals and their stories, or clearly symbolic entities like the anarchist golfers or the Thanatoids, the robotic V or the talking heartsick  Duck.. But in COL 49 Pynchon creates a secret organization with historic roots going back to the 16th Century and then suggests it may all be a paranoid delusion or deception. Why?  And why does it all come out of a fictional murder mystery about killing the rightful leaders of Faggio.

Faggio is Italian for Beech tree, a symbol of resilience, wisdom and connection to the divine.





















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