COL 49 End of Chapter 3 summary

[Joseph Tracy]

> On Jun 8, 2024, at 10:02 PM, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 8:58 AM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> Couple more honest thoughts: The whole self exaltation of Driblettes
>> direction is weird  for me on 2 fronts,  1) if the text is so unimportant
>> why didn’t he write his own play ? And how/why did he choose this play in
>> particular?
> 
> 
> I found it off-putting, but maybe like the shower it was a come-on directed
> towards Oedipa
> 
> He may have thought she would be susceptible because of the first thing she
> said to him (“it was great”) and she obeyed when he told her to feel his
> arm:
> 
> “she stood before Driblette, still wearing his gray Gennaro outfit. “It was
> great,” said Oedipa. “Feel,” said Driblette, extending his arm. She felt.”
> 
> (- so there are 2 things about which she’s been enthusiastic: the social
> hall on Lake Isle of Inverarity, and now the horrible play.)
Very interesting observation and almost irreconcilable. But makes sense to me in terms of the thesis that Pynchon has often used important women of his American fictional characters to represent the divided inner life of American popular political tendencies, attracted both to individual freedom and fascistic macho men. But here it is a subset of that division split  between a dream of community amidst a natural( seeming) island of peace, vs the excitement of a bloody  horror drama with some assurance of survival and  proper come-uppance for the monster.  
> 
> 
> One possible answer is that he saw a correspondence in events that would
>> speak to the audience or spoke to himself. The Paranoids  saw it as sick
>> but were fascinated, and particularly by the similarity to story of the
>> bones in Fangoso Lagoon.  Again that real story came from a particular
>> incident of Jews murdered in Italy by Nazis.
> 
> 
> Wasn’t it American soldiers, rather?
It is quite likely  based on a real historic incident that I mentioned in an earlier post: Historically this is a reference to the Lake Maggiore massacre  (also 1943) in which a Panzer division killed 56 greek and Italian Jews and threw their bodies in Lake Maggiore. The name of the lake is also from a real historic event( In 1957 an artificial lake was made in Pertulsillo province in Italy , finished in 1962) and called Lago di  Pietra.) ( both from Wikipedia)
It does seem odd that Pynchon is barely disguising a real incident by making the victims US soldiers but perhaps the real story would have been too inflammatory, too similar to Nazi gathering of gold fillings etc. Even though it seems like that is the kind of comparison he wants to make.   The connection to Italian fascism, murdereous  European powers struggles  brought home, and US mafia connections to Cuba and Jack Ruby/Rubinstein are more foregrounded.

> 
> “For weeks, a handful of American troops, cut off and without
> communications, huddled on the narrow shore of the clear and tranquil lake
> while from the cliffs that tilted vertiginously over the beach Germans hit
> them day and night with plunging, enfilading fire. The water of the lake
> was too cold to swim….”
> --
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