CoL49 group reading, early days

[Joseph Tracy]

Maybe a college affair that got revived later, maybe less than an affair , but either way something  that later became a trip to Mexico, because that  was only a year before she married Wendell. Also it does not seem , apart from attraction and sex , like they had developed any personal intimacy. Dude was doing voices all the way to Mexico. Also part of what turned her off was his talk with the Mexican anarchist on the beach that comes out later, where he is such an archetypal oligarch that he revives the anarchists dedication to his convictions. We don’t know jack about why Cornell and why Kinaret or her parents and whether they actually sold her to a witch when she was done breastfeeding( Not your typical young republican background). 

The whole question of why PI chose someone who walked away from him is intriguing. Did he want to suck her back into his world, or expose his doings to the light?  Did he have a premonition of death.? Why nothing about how he died? Pynchon treats him almost more like a many voiced corporate board than a person. Oedipa herself struggles to feel any intimate connection, fantasizes about death by falling stone bust of Gould.
> On May 11, 2024, at 12:52 PM, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I always thought Oedipa had been married to Pierce but just realized that’s
> unlikely. Also my idea of Pierce as an older guy isn’t at all borne out in
> the text.
> 
> 
> There isn’t anything about him loving or marrying anyone else after her, is
> there? So it’s even more like a Scrooge/Belle dynamic.
> 
> - Makes more sense as a college love affair -
> 
> - Drunk dialing her years later (who hasn’t done that or at least thought
> about it?)
> 
> - The Jay Gould bust as an undergraduate affectation
> 
> - On the narrow shelf in a dorm room is closer to being understandable,
> than had they been married living in a house with plenty of room
> 
> - Making her executrix - more likely as an old flame than if she had been
> his spouse
> 
> - Even an inattentive ex-spouse would probably know more about Pierce’s
> businesses than Oedipa does, going in
> --
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