CoL49 Group Reading - Week 1 Summary & Questions

[Laura Kelber]

I've always assumed Pierce was older, but the reference to the hillside on
the Cornell campus (obviously a personal one for Pynchon) could indicate
that he was a college friend.

The bust of Jay Gould looming over them in bed ( would a pretentious
proto-capitalist lug a bust of his idol to his college dorm?) is maybe an
ironic homage to the quintessential robber baron. Was Pierce (and by
extension, Oedipa) hoping or fearing to become him? Maybe succumbing to
Capitalism, in its most brutal, robber baron form, is a kind of death wish.
Oedipa was spared, but maybe Pierce got what he deserved,or asked for. It's
not for the faint of heart.


On Thu, May 2, 2024, 11:54 PM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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.
> >
> >
> --
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>