CoL49 Group Reading

[Joseph Tracy]

> On May 10, 2024, at 4:11 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On May 10, 2024, at 12:57 PM, Laura Kelber <laurakelber at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 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?
> 
> 
> What comes to mind is the Icy unswimmable waters of Lago di Prieta, rhyming with icy waters navigated by the submarine Justine, rhyming with the cold lake where the flower of Faggian youth ended up in their battle with Tristero, by which Nicole was killed,,  and the strangely named Fangoso lagoon( strange because it is for scuba divers who would want clarity to explore the imported Spanish galleons, but Fangoso means muddy, murky.) Bones in the cold depths everywhere. And some question as to who knows where the bodies are buried which Oedipa is curious about but  Metzger, Cohen and Driblet discourage.
> 
> 
> Water is the commonest symbol for the unconscious.
> The lake in the valley is the unconscious, which lies, as it were, underneath consciousness, so that it is often referred to as the “subconscious,” usually with the pejorative connotation of an inferior consciousness.
> Water is the “valley spirit,” the water dragon of Tao, whose nature resembles water- a yang in the yin, therefore, water means spirit that has become unconscious.
> Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious
> Paragraph 40

More watery graves: 

Driblette drowns or is drowned in his Genarro suit the night after the last performance of Courier’s Tragedy. 

When Prof Bortz studied Wharfinger’s notes he came across An Account of the Singular Peregrinations of Dr. Diocletian Blobb among the Italians, Illuminated with Exemplary Tales from the True History of That Outlandish And Fantastical Race.

This book  has another chilling story.  Diocletian Blobb , riding in a Torre and Tassis coach in the Mountains. Being attacked by the Lake of Piety by black cloaked rider "who engaged them in a fierce, silent struggle in the icy wind blowing in from the lake.”
All were killed but D Blobb, who was given this message" in perfect English: “Messer, you have witnessed the wrath of Trystero. Know that we are not without mercy. Tell your king and Parliament what we have done. Tell them that we prevail. That neither tempest nor strife, nor fierce beasts, nor the loneliness of the desert, nor yet the illegitimate usurpers of our rightful estate, can deter our couriers.” And leaving them and their purses intact, the highwaymen, in a cracking of cloaks like black sails, vanished back into their twilit mountains.”  This inquiry with Bortz  quickly leads to the history of the Tristero and the power struggles it enters.

Returning to the shadow theme we find Bortz has this theory: Bortz …. held, for instance, to a mirror-image theory, by which any period of instability for Thurn and Taxis must have its reflection in Tristero’s shadow-state.” 

Are we back at Echo Court with Oedipa writ large, her nymph outfit blowing in the artificial wind? It’s all like a word fugue, the saddest and silliest Bach arrangement ever, layers and variations galore. 

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