ST ch 37 Business Plot

[Corbeau Castrum]

How dangerous would it have been for Pynchon to suggest or imply the CIA had a hand (that of the conductor) in JFK's assassination? Was it not widely suspected and discussed? Or was it his prominence as the next big thing in American writing that put him in (perceived) danger? How would he have known if it was not common knowledge?

I think the scene in GR when Slothrop discovers FDR is dead works pretty well as a stand-in for Kennedy too.


-------- Original Message --------
On Monday, 05/11/26 at 15:51 Joseph Tracy via Pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:

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."
--
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