STetc ch 38 indications

[Michael Bailey]

Interesting questions, and I read them with interest -

it's the kind of thing where, you know, Pynchon has a great mind & he's saying something important - which may well be true, I wouldn't doubt it for a minute - and reading such interpretations will help me achieve a frame of mind to complete the English Lit degree I started back in 1973.

Everything has to mean something, and everything symbolizes something. Okay.
There's a lot of fucked-up shit in the world. Tell me something I don't know!

Nonetheless, I don't think I'll ever read a novel that way, looking for symbolism and confirmation of evil doings, outside of a class (and even in a class, it goes against the grain - that may be one reason why it's taken 50+ years to get this close to graduating.)  I'm looking for fun!


________________________________
From: Joseph Tracy <coypoet at mailfence.com>
Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2026 10:33 AM
To: Michael Bailey <mi256118 at ucf.edu>
Subject: Re: STetc ch 38 indications


I'm not at all sure there is an April as a knowable individual.  Is there a real Melania?  There is a point where you are defined by the image and social role you have accepted,  and essentially by who has a controlling interest.  It seems that Hicks comes closer to knowing her in a personal way than anyone in the novel. What he finds is a fragile desire for someone who loves her as her tender self enough to make a bonding relationship, but which desire is completely stymied by her terror of anything like marriage, commitment, vulnerability. He is also bound in the same dilemma and it's a pretty universal issue.

One of the human questions the novel seems to deal with is how, for many, that personal and social  struggle breaks down into negotiating for power advantage, thus losing any or most human needs for unconditional love or for universal values. It seems to me that it is in this process that empathy breaks down both for an individual and for a society.   The angry affinity gangs and the Big Cheeses take over who, almost always through ruthlessness, can afford power and paid loyalty, and there is less and less room for shared values and conscience. Love becomes a hollywood image and loses its down to earth grounding in friendship, care for children and the vulnerable, entended families, local communities with their day to day economies, shared lives, shared stories, shared histories.
   Is there a real Melania, a real Marylin Monroe? Is there a real America buried in the competing and coordinating  crime families and power struggles, or have too many  gone too  far in the pursuit of personal comfort and security,  purchased at the cost of turning our backs on the victims that we have lost the revolutionary energy and vision to stop the Orwellian wars, break from the endless distractions and renegotiate the meaning of our lives, or whatever might be left of a commitment to the common good.

On 4/20/26 12:28 AM, Michael Bailey wrote:
-- Dippy's international intrigue gig, putting together ahead of time a resistance in Sicily, would've been funded by foreign policy elements -

Adding State Dept to the Mob/FBI mix -
It seems like, for Them, as well as for Säure Bummer, "when you're this high and you need somebody to show up, they show up" (or words to that effect.

But (and I know you're not so much) I'm more interested in April qua April and as romantic interest for Hicks.



The mob played a key role in watching the ports and seacoast activity
for the FBI  during WW2. This increased Mob power at docking areas which
later was used to move highly enriched uranium to Israel for nuclear
weapons. Lansky and other mobsters were also key profiteers in Cuba,
whose many connections to the JFK murder have been noted by
investigators, starting with Dorothy Kilgallen who died under very
dubious circumstances, the 1st of many.  If the weirdly innocent April
represents a certain possibility for America, as suggested by this
repeated pattern in P satire, her 'protection/ownership claims' by this
particular conformation of shared interests reinforces that pattern.

On 4/19/26 3:02 AM, Michael Bailey via Pynchon-l wrote:
> Thus underscoring connections betwixt the Chicago/Milwaukee mob and the government agency presumably employing "the Dipster"