CoL49 Group Reading chapter 3, pg 31, 32

[Michael Bailey]

“Things then did not delay in turning curious”

A) twice again, the word “revelation”

B) the narrator floats the idea that The Tristero is a system of thought
which may supplant the idea of Rapunzel’s Tower for Oedipa.

Why is the language so conditional?

C) and tells us that she will come to be haunted by the way things fit
together - logically

i) Does the word “haunted” have a negative connotation which suggests that
The Tristero won’t be any more satisfying a myth to live within than
Rapunzel?

ii) is there really anything at all logical about how getting jiggy with
Metzger would start a voyage of discovery? If so, what?

D) Pierce peering at his stamps, an interest she never shared - “little
colored windows into deep vistas of space and time”

i) if she at this point describes stamps as “his substitute often for her”
and “ex-rivals, cheated as she by death” then can we re-cast her words to
Wendell (“It was over. Before he put my name on it.”) as leading up to,
“but now I’m feeling it again?”


-  sympathetic description of her husband’s infidelity. Like, extremely
sympathetic

“It kept her from asking him any more questions. Like all their inabilities
to communicate, this too had a virtuous motive”

i) other inabilities to communicate:
   Letting him preemptively complain before telling about her day (patience
is a virtue)
   Not understanding his car lot angst but consoling anyway (kindness is a
virtue)
   Are there more?