COL 49 End of Chapter 3 summary

Tue Jun 4 12:06:28 UTC 2024

Who in the hell showers and talks from it in the visit of a new person, a
woman? We have to
explain THIS re TRP's story meaning...

On Tue, Jun 4, 2024 at 7:53 AM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Thanks for the summary!
>
> Some not completely unrelated thoughts:
>
>
> Zapf’s Used Books - Hermann Zapf was the designer of the Dingbat font, but
> also a bunch of other stuff, including the Palatino font and automated
> justification.
>
> Also a calligrapher, in 1960 he did the Preamble to the United Nations
> Charter in 4 languages for the Morgan Museum.
>
> https://www.themorgan.org/literary-historical/116614
>
>
> He also was a consultant for Hallmark Cards in the 1960s and ‘70s,
> developing a style manual for their lettering artists.
>
>
>
> —- regarding the anthology Driblette can’t lend her because somebody took
> it -
>
> “There was another copy there. Zapf might still have it. Can you find the
> place?” Something came to her viscera, danced briefly, and went. “Are you
> putting me on?”
>
> — does she say, “Are you putting me on?” in response to “can you find the
> place?”
> (Like, of course I can find the place?)
>
> - but that seems too mundane to follow a feeling of something dancing in
> her viscera.
>
> — so do all the other proximate possible meanings I can think of:
>
>  a) she’s incredulous that he loaned out his copy to party unknown & didn’t
> get it back?
>
> b) you’re putting me on - his name is Zapf?
>
> c) it’s just a throwaway remark to a showering man?
>
> d) an example of the “bad ear” Pynchon deprecated in the _Slow Learner_
> intro?
>
> - slowly it dawns on me that the dancing in her viscera is connected to the
> dance mentioned earlier in that bit about the languid, sinister blooming of
> The Tristero:
>  “something a little extra for whoever’d stayed this late”
> Which she has.
>
> Maybe the reason Driblette can’t just ask one of the cast for the book back
> is because whoever he gave the book to is, like, a Man in Black.
>
> Maybe they’ve put the frighteners on him and took his original copy,
> although that would seem an ineffective way of impeding him.
>
> He seems loath to reveal anything about other interested parties - and
> imputes an unlikely “scholarly dispute” to explain her and their interest.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jun 2, 2024 at 4:35 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
> > What happens after the play, as CHAPTER  3 draws to a close, marks  a
> > break between Metzger and Oedipa, and raises questions about Driblette’s
> > nervous evasiveness, and  his passionate portrayal of the play as merely
> > entertainment.
> >
> > HERE IS A not very condensed SUMMARY  with comments
> >
> > OM wants to go backstage with Metzger to question the director Randolph
> > Driblette who also played Gennaro.
> >
> > “Oh, about the bones.” He had a brooding look.
> > Oedipa said, “I don’t know. It just has me uneasy. The two things, so
> > close.”
> >
> > It now becomes obvious that Metz’s urgent desire to leave is more than
> > distaste for the play, In recent events Oedipa has found out that Pierce
> > Inveraritiy’s holdings are quite vast and that there is very dark aspect
> to
> > some of his business affairs including the purchase of human bones of
> > american GIs from  an ex fascist mafioso,  aerospace weapons investments,
> > and the ability to run freeways through cemetaries.   The author has
> > foreshadowed the way these shadows will come from Trystero and now in the
> > play the Trystero  has begun to be named and identified in the center of
> a
> > bloody power struggle. Metz himself may be the legal side of settling the
> > estate but he is also an actor  who has already deceived Oedipa and must
> > understand her “easy”ness may be in doubt. He turns to acting the macho
> > lawyer scolding a ridiculous softheaded witness.
> >
> > “Fine,” Metzger said, “and what next, picket the V.A.? March on
> > Washington? God protect me,” he addressed the ceiling of the little
> > theater, causing a few heads among those leaving to swivel, “from these
> > lib, overeducated broads with the soft heads and bleeding hearts. I am 35
> > years old, and I should know better.
> > ” “Metzger,” Oedipa whispered, embarrassed, “I’m a Young Republican.”
> >  “Hap Harrigan comics,” Metzger now even louder, “which she is hardly old
> > enough to read, John Wayne on Saturday afternoon slaughtering ten
> thousand
> > Japs with his teeth, this is Oedipa Maas’s World War II, man. Some people
> > today can drive VW’s, carry a Sony radio in their shirt pocket. Not this
> > one, folks, she wants to right wrongs, 20 years after it’s all over.
> Raise
> > ghosts. All from a drunken hassle with Manny Di Presso. Forgetting her
> > first loyalty, legal and moral, is to the estate she represents. Not to
> our
> > boys in uniform, however gallant, whenever they died.”
> >
> > This is obviously more about fears in Metzger’s mind about where her
> > questions might lead than the wildly overgeneralized  tough guy put down
> of
> > her as an idealistic youthful female, which then  leads up to his dubious
> > legal and moral argument over her required loyalty to what is quite
> likely
> > a criminally acquired estate.
> >
> > “It isn’t that,” she protested. “I don’t care what Beaconsfield uses in
> > its filter. I don’t care what Pierce bought from the Cosa Nostra. I don’t
> > want to think about them. Or about what happened at Lago di Pietà, or
> > cancer . . .” She looked around for words, feeling helpless. “What then?”
> > Metzger challenged, getting to his feet, looming. “What?” “I don’t know,”
> > she said, a little desperate. “Metzger, don’t harass me. Be on my side.”
> > “Against whom?” inquired Metzger, putting on shades.
> > “I want to see if there’s a connection. I’m curious.”
> >  “Yes, you’re curious,” Metzger said. “I’ll wait in the car, OK?”
> >
> > In this exchange I am seeing the oft-noted pattern in Pynchon’s
> characters
> > of the divided loyalties of a woman attracted in 2 directions- both
> toward
> > the authority figure of the state (or estate), and toward truth that
> might
> > question and undermine such loyalty( Frenesi, Shasta Fey, Katje, Maxine
> > Tarnow). Her curiosity has been met with  insults. Her request for
> support
> > can only be understood by Metzger as being “against” someone.  As we have
> > seen earlier, the instincts of this lawyer are to close his eyes to the
> > truth if he thinks it will serve even a potential client.
> >
> > OM makes a beautifully written entry backstage to where Driblette stands
> > .”She couldn’t stop watching his eyes. They were bright black, surrounded
> > by an incredible network of lines, like a laboratory maze for studying
> > intelligence in tears. They seemed to know what she wanted, even if she
> > didn’t.” He discourages her from asking about the play elaborating an
> > argument that it is a cheap horror flick with no meaning, but also,
> later,
> > that the words are not the important part but the life-giving vision of
> the
> > director. She asks about a copy of the text.
> > “Why,” Driblette said at last, “is everybody so interested in texts?”
> > “Who else?” Too quickly. Maybe he had only been talking in general.
> > Driblette’s head wagged back and forth. “Don’t drag me into your
> scholarly
> > disputes,” adding “whoever you all are,”
> > She asks about the chill silence in the 4th act and finds they weren’t in
> > the original nor were the 3 assassins seen.
> > He goes on, under the assumption she is a scholar , saying you guys are
> > like puritans about the Bible, hung up with words  and perhaps goes  a
> bit
> > too far in dismissing the importance of words. His arguments much better
> > crafted than Metzger describing himself as the projector in the
> planetarium
> > procecting a world.
> > He tells her “ you could could fall in love, talk to my shrink….
> > “Driblette?” Oedipa called, after awhile. His face appeared briefly. “We
> > could do that.”
> > He wasn’t smiling. His eyes waited, at the centers of their webs.
> >  “I’ll call,” said Oedipa. She left, and was all the way outside before
> > thinking, I went in there to ask about bones and instead we talked about
> > the Trystero thing. She stood in a nearly deserted parking lot, watching
> > the headlights of Metzger’s car come at her, and wondered how accidental
> it
> > had been. Metzger had been listening to the car radio. She got in and
> rode
> > with him for two miles before realizing that the whimsies of nighttime
> > reception were bringing them KCUF down from Kinneret, and that the disk
> > jockey talking was her husband, Mucho.
> >
> >
> > Open to questions, theories,
> > ? “like a lab maze for studying intelligence in tears” ?
> >
> > ? we could do that?
> >
> > Insolid verity and pierced parity…. About the best I can do JT
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >
> --
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>