CoL49 Chapter 4

[Joseph Tracy]

> On Jun 10, 2024, at 10:38 AM, J K Van Nort via Pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:
> 
> Summary:
> 
> Chapter 4 begins with Oepdipa feeling that revelations pile on each other, each connecting more with the Tristero. She rereads Pierce's testament,trying to unify his life's work into meaning.
> 

I wanted to repeat an earlier thought that I feel more strongly about. The foreshadowing around Tristero and particularly its connections to the PI testament comes ahead of the evidence for Tristero or its connection to anything but the play, a drama which has no inherent relation to PI or the testament. Even looking back to Ch.1 and the malign external forces that keep her trapped, this foreshadowing sets us up to be confirmed by the unveiling of the Trystero question.  I think it is obvious that the narrative voice is looking at events in a kind of dark retrospective reverie rather than as they happen. 

Thanks for the Eisenhower speech details, even more relevant than I thought.  I think there had to have been some exchange between Ike and the incoming Kennedy that had to do with the content of this speech . Certainly Kennedy was seeing it in the budget and then confronted with it at the Bay of Pigs invasion originally endorsed with some qualifications by Eisenhower. This was as serious a  turning point as you get in US history where Kennedy stood against the CIA and later with the missile crisis against the entire Joint Chiefs to end things without going to either a conventional invasion or later to the nuclear first strike urged by the joint chiefs. 

I don’t think Kennedy refers to Pierce Inverarity but I see a psychological connection to the same world and mystique, and the central event of sudden unexplained death of a powerful character who seems to own half the town.  It  is just weird that while  OM refers to other political figures of the time, she fails to mention JFK at all.  It is an absence that begs to be filled. The ambiguity of the actual estate, and absence of any mention of the instructions about beneficiaries  is to my mind intentional. We ask the same kind of questions about P.I.  that are being asked about  the murder of the president; who assumes power, will his will be honored, how did he die?  Kennedy was also the kind of man who would go fishing for Marlin in Mazatlan with Hollywood types and a seducer of women, friend of some mafia, Vegas and LA entertainers. But while P.I. was connected to that circle he was a loner who hid beneath mask-like impersonations meant to entertain. It makes sense to see O.M. as  drawn to the biggest event in her direct experience, and to see a public parallel  which for a nation in love with the handsome youthful Kennedy was cut off in mystery and confusion by assassination.  The Couriers revenge acts as the substitute for the investigation of the assassination in Oedipa’s world which she is finding to be weirder, darker and more dangerous than she had understood. It provides a narrative with mysterious and unsatisfying gaps and resonates with questions that have already arisen about P.I. ’s world. Metzger, who willfully closes his eyes to the Paranoids minor shenanigans, just as the Warren commission seems to do over many significant questions, wants to suppress her curiosity and resorts to insulting her to stop her inquiry.