CoL49 group reading ch3 - echo of “Low-Lands” / handoff

[Michael Bailey]

Quick note:

Low-Lands:
They started down a long spiraling road into the dump.



CoL49

They came in among earth-moving machines, a total absence of trees, the
usual hieratic geometry, and eventually, shimmying for the sand roads, down
in a helix to a sculptured body of water named Lake Inverarity.




Joseph mentioned a dawning awareness of “something awry” post-1963

Holding that up against the paragraph I was wondering about - particularly

“…as if a plunge toward dawn indefinite black hours long would indeed be
necessary before The Tristero could be revealed in its terrible nakedness.
Would its smile, then, be coy, and would it flirt away harmlessly
backstage, say good night with a Bourbon Street bow and leave her in peace?
Or would it instead, the dance ended, come back down the runway, its
luminous stare locked to Oedipa’s, smile gone malign and pitiless; bend to
her alone among the desolate rows of seats and begin to speak words she
never wanted to hear?”

There are points of similarity.

The two choices are what intrigue me.

The narrator seems to think it’s the Trystero which will choose how to
appear to her, but doesn’t it really depend on how she chooses to see it?

Either Oedipa will notice there’s a pattern and move on; after all, the
world is full of such patterns - Norman Mailer has the characters in _The
Naked and the Dead_ ruminate on how somebody’s making big money off World
War Two, but he didn’t chase that idea for the rest of his career.

Or she will become obsessed as a personal mission with finding out more -
as did Mae Brussel, (may she rest in peace) who started by reading the
entire Warren Report, and couldn’t quit until she’d compiled a huge archive
of shady goings on, which is still available
https://maebrussellresearchlibrary.com


I look forward to other Livingstonian insights.

Thank you and goodnight!