CoL49 Group Reading - procreational note

[David Morris]

Character names with TRP are often just good for a quick one-off smirk.
But I think that ALL of these names having to do with the female
reproductive system is too much smoke to be smirked at.

On Tue, Jun 11, 2024 at 3:00 AM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

> So while Oedipa is having sex with Metzger, she meets Fallopian.
>
> After Metzger departs (“the big lummox, she’s glad he backed out” to quote
> sweet Betsy from Pike) having left her unimpregnated so far as any textual
> indication - Koteks enters the picture.
>
>
> Could be a reference to egg cycle. Fallopian and Koteks both appear
> recurrently, don’t they?
>
> Why would Pynchon choose these names?
>
> A reminder of a monthly cycle she has to deal with while she is
> perambulating?
>
> A way to underline her femininity?
>
> I like and agree with Mark’s comment that we can’t insist that character
> names be excessively meaningful, so I don’t think it’s a way to connote the
> passage of time exactly -
> though of course if it were, it’d be about 2 weeks from The Scope to the
> Yoyodyne meeting.
>
>
> I saw on Qi a bit where they said the Italian anatomist Fallopian actually
> named them “tubas” because of their shape, but the Italian plural was
> “tube” - so eventually everyone just called them tubes.
>
> Almost a post horn reference…
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>