ST ch 37 Business Plot

[Joseph Tracy]

On 5/11/26 12:24 AM, Robin Landseadel wrote:
>> On 05/10/2026 6:10 PM PDT Joseph Tracy <coypoet at mailfence.com> wrote:
>>
>> In the p-lists last reading of COL 49 I decided to explore the idea ( 
>> most forcefully developed by Charles Hollander) that the/Courier's 
>> Tragedy /play and the tristero was an indirect reference to the 
>> assassination of JFK and the battle for control of the media  and of 
>> private thought life of citizens  which is part of CIA/deepstate 
>> history, but is a concept and practice of statecraft reaching far 
>> back in history, in COL49 the history focusing  on the reformation 
>> era. I did not refer much to Hollander's work, trying to see the 
>> patterns  and references for myself but the results had some overlap 
>> and I found the basic premise to be hard wired into the novel.
>>
> Haven't made the great leap to the JFK assassination yet. I remember 
> spending a fair amount
> of time in 1964 in L. A.'s South Central, remember that every house in 
> that neighborhood had
> a copy of the JFK memorial record, not played much but on prominent 
> display, usually near the
> portrait of Jesus. We were living in a tiny apartment in November 
> 1963. When we turned on
> the TV to watch the news on the 22nd, the TV's transformer blew out, 
> leaving an awful acrid
> stench hanging in the air for days. We got a replacement TV, used 
> naturally, we were pretty poor
> back then. This Raytheon model blew out the very same way around the 
> time Jack Ruby shot
> Lee Harvey Oswald.
>
>         **********************************
>
> AT age 12 in Jr high, right after we moved to a suburb of Philadelphia 
> from Los Altos CA, Kenedy was shot. I was not political at all when 
> JFK was killed. My parents liked him and he was handsome and said 
> inspirational stuff and I felt  an increase in a sense of humor 
> positive energy with his Presidency. In a rare move, the weekend after 
> the shooting I watched a lot of news and was watching when Rubenstein 
> shot Oswald.
> THAT truly and deeply shook me up.

> HOW could that happen in a police station on TV? What the fuck was 
> going on? What kind of country am I in? By 17  I followed the civil 
> rights movement and worked at Catholic sponsored summer camp for poor 
> kids from Philadelphia I knew how deep the racism in America was 
> because it was so prevalent and open, but my sense that my picture of 
> America was seriously distorted was again amplified when MLK and RFK 
> were murdered.
>
> THE idea of conspiracies  or knowledge of modern US history was 
> minimal. I was caught up in the 60s, went to Woodstock joined anti war 
> activists. Liked Mescaline. Then spent years in a Christian commune 
> mostly as a large scale gardener, then years researching my way out of 
> fundamentalist biblicism, focusing on teaching art and english and 
> mastering Stained Glass and in College doing a deep dive into CIA 
> history, Children's literature and the role of water in nature.
>
> WHEN 25 years ago I came back to the Kennedy assassination everything 
> looked different. A personal history of the value of infomed 
> skepticism was now fundamental to my world view. The mainstream story 
> looked extremely dubious, and the reasons for and evidence for CIA and 
> mob involvement looked overwhelming. It looked like a one of many CIA 
> coups. It also made more sense of post Kennedy, post FDR history than 
> any other  explanation I was hearing.
>
> I was introduced to Pynchon  by an English major  friend who knew I 
> had lived in Arcata and gave me a copy of Vineland. The combination of 
> hilarious satire, slant history, and multidimensional weirdness hit 
> the spot. From there to V and on. The first time I read COL 49 I was 
> mostly interested in the Tristero angle and the picture of changing 
> culture with its violent undercurrents.  By the 3rd or 4th time the 
> Courier's tale began to look a lot like the JFK assassination.  My 
> last reading i decided to really test that angle and enter my findings 
> and logic into the Plsist archives and subject them to the plist for 
> better or worse.
>
> *****************************
>
>
> The hand of the CIA and presence of the military-industrial complex in 
> this work is ubiquitous.
> The Beatles were still the biggest game in town, I was permanently 
> attached to a portable AM
> radio, constantly plugged into top 40. I remember the long boulevard 
> that led to Rocketdyne, we the Courirs
> would drive past it to get to the house of one of my dad's friends. 
> JPL was our backyard, early 1964. They would occasionally conduct 
> rocket engine tests. I watched Yogi Bear and
> Magilla Gorilla in my time but would rather watch Bugs Bunny in the 
> afternoon, three-ish.
>
> There's more than one thing going on here and I can recall more than a 
> few.
>
> JT: "Of course there is much more there concerning this time -period 
> in California, the role of the Aerospace and fledgling digital 
> industries,  the ongoing battle to shape the mental landscape,  and 
> the hidden legacy of fascism evident in MK ultra, the postwar movement 
> of axis wealth, the Vietnam war.  I don't understand what  Pynchon 
> felt he had unlearned with the Crying of Lot 49.  Guesses won't do and 
> he seems to have little else to say."
>
> I'm pretty sure Pynchon said enough. Here are a couple two/three 
> things he said and some
> conjecture from moi:
>
> 1: "It is simply wrong to begin with a theme, symbol or other abstract 
> unifying agent, and then try
> to force characters and events to conform to it.
>
> Slow Learner, 12
>
> Don't ever antagonize the horn.
>
> 2: "The next year, he is in the middle of writing a book that he 
> characterizes as a potboiler. When it grows to 155 pages, he calls it 
> "a short story, but with gland trouble," and hopes that his agent "can 
> unload it on some poor sucker." The book turned out to be his highly 
> praised second novel, "The Crying of Lot 49.""
>
> Pynchon's Letters Nudge His Mask 
> <https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/books/030498pynchon-letters.html> 
>
>
> 3: This is a guess, but one can't help but get the impression that 
> CoL49 was a rush job that that
> author whipped out in order to keep the lights on and the rent paid. I 
> guess that feature makes
> this "short story, but with gland trouble" a bit like On the Road in 
> having a lot of "first thought,
> best thought" "Beat" thing going on, but stuff like rented cars enter 
> and exit from the story as if
> they've been apported/asported.
>
> He mentions some other things in Slow Learner he seems to have 
> supposedly learned earlier,
> forgot later, that apply to this supersized pamphlet. Like "I was 
> operating on the motto "make
> it literary," a piece of bad advice I made up all by myself and then 
> took" and "The problem here
> is like the problem with "Entropy": beginning with something 
> abstract—a thermodynamic coinage or the data in a guidebook—and only 
> then going on to try to develop plot and
> characters. This is simply, as we say in the profession, ass 
> backwards. Without some grounding in human reality, you are apt to be 
> left only with another apprentice exercise, which is what this
> uncomfortably resembles."
> SL, 17/18
>
> But hey! Chicago Tribune sez: "A spectacular tale. . . . The work of a 
> virtuoso with prose . . . .
> Pynchon's intricate symbolic order is akin to that of Joyce's Ulysses."
> So, what does this guy know anyway?
>
> I think the author was in the process of reconsidering his priorities 
> as of 1984, with the two books he was working on having far more 
> grounding in character and human reality.
>
> Whatever is going on, the dude didn't like it.
>
> What I find striking about this work is that the author seems to have 
> found his voice here.
>
> Also, that I became seriously obsessed with it.
> ********************
> MAYBE it is just what happens when a genius cranks out something 
> short, pithy and full of mischief, while being rather guarded about 
> potential repercusions for personal safety.  Maybe it's annoying when 
> something you crank out becomes your big hit, read in colleges accross 
> the country with descriptions like post-modern masterwork.
> ******************************
>
>>
>> Since the 60s some very powerful books and research into the CIA, MK 
>> Ultra, and the JFK assassination have been published. For me the most 
>> telling is David Talbot's book the Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, 
>> the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government. Talbot did lots 
>> of interviews with people who knew Dulles and other players and 
>> obviously had the advantage of having been educated in the elite 
>> schools and had family familiarity with the upper classes. He has 
>> since written about Smedley Butler, the Kennedy brothers, and 
>> radicals from the 60s.
>>
> Have placed the e-book on hold from the local library. Thanks again.
>
> "There must be a pony in here somewhere."