CoL49 Group Reading

[Laura Kelber]

We never get to know (and, presumably, Oedipa never got to know) the real
Pierce, just as the identity of The Shadow was unknown (until it wasn't -
maybe revealed at some shark-jumping moment in one of the show's later
incarnations). As JK says, Pierce vacillates between elect and preterite
voices, making it difficult for at least the college-age Oedipa to know
what he's really about. On the campus hill, he's romantic and approachable,
but Gould is always looming over their relationship, if in whitewashed
form. So Pierce is a kind of shape-shifter, like the Norse character Loki.
I know that Pynchon references the icy North in GR. But are there any Norse
mythology references in COL49, other than (maybe) Pierce as Loki?

I haven't read Joseph Campbell's Hero of a Thousand Faces for ages, but his
concept is that all world mythology shares some basic tropes. The Hero
receives a call to adventure, causing him to leave the safety of his home
and set out to find something and/or seek knowledge, and eventually, to
return, enriched. The shape-shifter/trickster is a stock character. And
it's this shapeshifting trickster who calls Oedipa to adventure from the
safety of her drab suburban life.

LK

On Fri, May 10, 2024 at 11:36 AM J K Van Nort via Pynchon-l <
pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:

> Pierce’s late night phone call voices swing back and forth between
> authority figures (elect) and disenfranchised (preterite). The
> Transylvanian embassy and the Nazi gestapo alternate with the comic negro
> and the Pachucos. The Shadow was an elect who acted as a vigilante in
> cooperation with the police like Batman. Is this an indication that Pierce
> might have vacillated between seeking wealth/power and something opposed to
> that, ending as a tool of the elect? I’m not familiar with the Shadow, but
> what little I know indicates a vigilante type character.
> In solidarity,
> James
>
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