CoL49 group reading - Rapunzel musings

[Mark Kohut]

if we have to know ourselves aright, to love ourselves rightly, then I see
Oedipa, from the
allusive name and her quest to be seeking self-knowledge even
though---isn't it a condition
of full self-awareness that you can't really realize what you are seeking?

On Sun, May 19, 2024 at 12:20 AM O G <octogonalyoyo at gmail.com> wrote:

> Maybe she is lacking/searching for self-love, maybe without even realizing
> it.
>
> On Sat, May 18, 2024, 2:24 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>
> > Yes. This is pretty much  how I am reading Oed’s psychological terrain
> > seen through the Rapunzel story.. My sense is that she can lo longer play
> > the role of maiden saved by Prince because a) PI is 3/4ths asshole and b)
> > he has not brought true escape but a realization about the deeper nature
> of
> > her entrapment.
> >
> > Her tower length hair as  genuine outgrowth of feminine identity is
> > severed by that realization and what remains is no longer a sustainable
> > connection to herself or  PI.
> >
> > > On May 18, 2024, at 9:17 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Sat, May 18, 2024 at 5:00 AM Michael
> > >
> > >>
> > > “Suppose that climbing the hair is the legitimate way to woo - dealing
> > > directly with something that grows out of her, and entering her
> > imprisoning
> > > environment via Oedipa herself, whereupon they bond and escape that
> > > environment. […]
> > >
> > > [***]Something[***] interferes with the fairytale”
> > >
> > > SOMETHING? It’s identities as:
> > > “some sinister sorcery”
> > > And:
> > > “ having no apparatus except gut, fear and female, cunning to examine
> the
> > > formless magic, to understand how it works, how to measure its field
> > > strength, count its lines of force”
> > >
> > > But a more precise, deeper look by Oed reveals that the fairy tale is
> not
> > > so easily understood.  The Tower is seemingly inescapable, because it
> > > FOLLOWS HER, as in, “Wherever you go, There you are!”
> > >
> > > “ such a captive maiden [Oed] Soon realizes *the tower [is]* like her
> > > ego, *only
> > > incidental*.”
> > >
> > > The tower, like her ego, are fictional, constructs, artificial devices,
> > > which are symptoms of an invisible and ubiquitous “Magic, anonymous and
> > > malignant, visited on her from outside and for no reason at all.”
> One’s
> > > Ego is an attempt to meditate a fatally wounded inner psyche with the
> > > slave’s fate once finds thwarting the desires of the Id (Pynch was
> deeply
> > > into Freud at the time. It’s an ever-frustrating inescapable task.
> > >
> > > So there was no way that she could be rescued by a man.  The
> > Counter-magic
> > > escapes her right now. But that’s what she’s looking for on her quest.
> > > --
> > > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
> >
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>