CoL49 Group Reading - Week 1 Summary & Questions

[Michael Bailey]

Extrapolating from footwear to narrative stances and attributing
avuncularity to the author -

Treatment of the super-rich as a phenomenon and as people in CoL49 is
evoked in a few of Oedipa’s memories of Pierce, and a lot of details of his
footprint in the economic landscape of Southern California

There’s a way to see this treatment as a way of inveighing against the
effects of extreme wealth (and possibly part of a tendency evinced in AtD’s
Vibe family - certainly malefactors of great wealth - and also in Jess
Traverse’s “monopolist” quote from Emerson in _Vineland_)

But it could also be a thought experiment - how does someone cope after
rejecting the more unsavory aspects of capitalism embodied in Pierce, when
the effects of it are all around her and he made provisions to keep her
involved?

There’s a modicum of tenderness to the portrait of Pierce that emerges -
nowhere does Oedipa remember him being deliberately cruel*, just not
connecting with her Rapunzel self-concept - and bringing them into jeopardy
with the precarious bust of Jay Gould on a narrow shelf above their bed
(which apparently she never felt empowered to move.)

The chance of mishap would be non-trivial in the event of an earthquake or
strong tremor.

What a vivid way to dramatize the risks to Pierce and Oedipa of his
admiration & emulation of the ethically challenged financier!

In fact - maybe that’s how Pierce died?**

* I think it would have almost certainly have been she who slammed the
hotel room door - but his “Shadow” warning to Mucho doesn’t seem very
friendly of a flex,
does it?

** I think of him as much older, but he could just as easily have been a
Wunderkind, couldn’t he?




On Wed, May 1, 2024 at 2:11 PM O G <octogonalyoyo at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Association is the way a higher order of consciousness can operate.  If
> you see your uncle's favorite footwear, you can immediately see and know
> everything about all your uncle's favorite footwear in all of his lives
> forward and backward.  That is, the entity who plays your uncle, all its
> other lives in which is obtained favorite footwear.  You would never have
> to read about the footwear, or hear or learn about them.  They're all just
> there, present, in a flash.
>
> That's how it is possible.  So then you just assume the entity playing
> Pynchon is bleeding through to a degree.
>
> Yes I am being whimsical when I say forward and backward, as there isn't
> any.
>
>