CoL49 group reading ch4 - Koteks/Nefastis

[J K Van Nort]

Also why does Oedipa visit Vesperhaven? She wasn’t going there to meet Mr. Thoth specifically. He’s the first person, beyond the fly obsessed nurse, she meets. Is she making rounds of Inverarity holdings or just bored?

A church father named Clement equates the Egyptian god Thoth with Hermes, the messenger god. Mr. Thoth discusses the Pony Express as well as giving Oedipa a “message” about the Tristero.

Why the knitting bag with blue yarn? 

The comparison between the black clad anarchist in the cartoon and the black feathered, fake Indians makes the overwrought evil anarchist fooled by Porky into a truly threatening violent organization. Yet the Pony Express riding grandfather Thoth proves to be not only up to the challenge but capable of defacing the dead for a trophy.

Who really is the more evil?

In solidarity,
James


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