CoL49 group reading ch4 - Koteks/Nefastis

[J K Van Nort]

Pardon my ignorance, what is DW referring to?


Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone


On Thursday, June 20, 2024, 01:10, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:

It’s been noticed but not expounded on.

I thought Mr Thoth related to that one story in DW about how talking with
an old person is like a Time Machine.

But that’s the only story I remember from DW (-;

Do you have some more correlations?



On Wed, Jun 19, 2024 at 5:43 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Have we spoken of* Dandelion Wine*? Connections?
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandelion_Wine
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 19, 2024 at 5:08 PM Michael Bailey <
> michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Wed, Jun 19, 2024 at 3:19 AM János Széky wrote:
>>
>> Doesn't it refer to the Kotex sanitary pad?
>>
>>
>>
>> That’s probably the primary connotation.
>>
>> Besides bemused startlement, ive been trying to link the name choice along
>> with Fallopian's as a reference to Oedipa’s menstrual cycle - but to what
>> end?
>>
>> To underscore her gender?
>> To relate her questing to some kind of biological clock?
>>
>> Maybe just to hint these things in the background?
>>
>>
>> Since the spelling isn’t exact (the product is spelled Kotex) it seemed
>> possible to impute a secondary possible connotation when “Kotek” isn’t any
>> farther from Koteks than is “Kotex”
>>
>> If Pynchon invents names in part to avoid using, & offending the owners
>> of,
>> conventional names, adding the “s” has that effect.
>>
>> - however, again, to what purpose? There isn’t anything particularly
>> catlike about him, & there doesn’t seem to be a Polish connection in the
>> story.
>>
>>
>> Taking a liberty, one might suggest his name is really Kotek & she
>> misreads
>> as Koteks. Fallopian could be a similar Armenian sounding name
>> misapprehended - by either the author or the character- for humorous
>> purposes. (Tom Robbins has named an Armenian-American character
>> “Buckaroojian”, eg)
>>
>> If it’s meant as Oedipa humorously blurring the names because of her
>> gender, that’s kind of sexist, but (imho) not unbearably so.
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>
>
--
Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l