COL 49 group read CH 6 mid section

[Joseph Tracy]

> On Jul 30, 2024, at 4:52 PM, Hübschräuber <huebschraeuber at protonmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> 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.
>> 
> 
> Despite using much verifiable history in "V." and COL49, P is still concerned with the philosophical notions of conspiratorial thinking (cf. Fausto Majistral). Either everything is connected, or nothing is.
I agree that he is interested in that philosophical question or at least with the ease with which it flows into self deluding paranoia. But mostly on that topic  he is showing how paranoia is prevailing among the power players of various forms of imperial ambition and driving their pursuit of dominance and  various schemes. Some branch into entrepreneurial criminality On the other hand, the fear about conspiracy at the base level is usually correct or understated as with Slothrop, Maxine, Doc Sportello, Zoyd and Prairie, where the dimensions of  connected conspiracies grow through investigation.  
> 
> In reality, of course, some things are connected, others are not. There are conspiracies, and there are theories about conspiracies which may be proven right or wrong.
Totally agree. But as you know  there is dark twist of obfuscation that happens when Media, Governments and Intelligence agencies/ military interests dominate the organs of information and direct peoples attention away from the ability to expose unlawful conspiratorial actions by those powerful entities. One could list dozens of examples costing many lives. Honest grass roots journalism has become extremely dangerous.
> P becomes much more interested in real political conspiracies (COINTELPRO, Iran-Contra) with "Vineland”.  
Possibly you are right. But I have been working on the premise that the fictional conspiracy in 49 is a stand in for what I believe was obviously a CIA led coup against Kennedy. Of course the major public assault on questions about the JFK  murder was to call it a paranoid conspiracy theory. If you can get people to question their common sense and question whether they are  kooks and even manage to ignore a Congressional investigation saying it was a conspiracy, you can manage to put yourself beyond the reach of law.  That is a pretty strong parallel to what happens with Oedipa Maas. All tracks seem to lead to Pierce Inverarity and his controlling interest in so many things, I think the idea that he has set up all these clues  and people to delude her in such quotidian detail  really is delusional,  but the resulting confusion and doubts  over her sanity  stymie further inquiry as  the evidence moves out of her reach. In short I am skeptical that the dangers of personal paranoia explains TCOL 49.  

Regardless of the exact nature and details of the Kennedy assassination, CIA media influence and  Government secrecy moved to a dramatically new layer afterward and continues to grow, along with extreme reactions when state crimes are exposed. 

 I suggest Pynchon was very nervous about a direct approach  and that those concerns were well founded. Every student of history knows the dangers of tangling with empires.

> More to the point perhaps, whether invented or not, this is some marvellous writing.


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