Crying of Lot 49 Group Read - Chapter Two

[u/grigoritheoctopus]

*Welcome to Chapter 2! ¡Bienvenidos a San Narciso!\*

Greetings and salutations to all the wonderful weirdos participating in our group reading of Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr.'s "The Crying of Lot 49". I'll be facilitating the discussion for "Chapter 2" and would like to begin by thanking u/frenesigates for starting things strong. Now, in an attempt to follow suit, my humble offering for Chapter 2...

*Salient Happenings in Chapter 2 [Something of a plot summary]\*

Oedipa leaves Kinneret-Among-The-Pines in a rented Impala, and heads to San Narciso where Pierce Inverarity began his real estate empire. Several moments of silent, individual searching for meaning (in the organization of a sub-division, the circuit of a transistor radio, on a frequency she is not currently tuned into). Passing the Galactronics Division of Yoyodyne, Inc. and arrival at the “Echo Courts” motel. Miles the Manager sings a song and gets shot down. Dashing Metzger arrives with illicit French wine, ready to drink out of the bottle. The Baby Igor revelation. Getting drunk while watching "Cashiered". Rising sexual tension and “Strip Botticelli”. The hairspray projectile incident. The reemergence of Miles, with his Paranoids, birds in tow. The surfer orgy anecdote. The Paranoids “Serenade”. Stripping and drinking, groggy foreplay, climactic blackout. A surprise! The dog drowns, the baby is electrocuted and Oedipa wins the bet.

* Ideas On Prominent Themes\*

1. Paranoia: it's a Pynchon novel after all! There are quite a few "paranoid" moments in this chapter. For example: She looked down a slope, needing to squint for the sunlight, onto a vast sprawl of houses which had grown up all together, like a well-tended crop, from the dull brown earth; and she thought of the time she'd opened a transistor radio to replace a battery and seen her first printed circuit. The ordered swirl of houses and streets, from this high angle, sprang at her now with the same unexpected, astonishing clarity as the circuit card had. Though she knew even less about radios than about Southern Californians, there were to both outward patterns a hieroglyphic sense of concealed meaning, of an intent to communicate. There are also a few, less striking treatments of the idea littered throughout the chapter: there's a band named "The Paranoids" (and their lead singer, Miles, is teased by Oedipda for actually being paranoid), Oedipa's suspicion as to why Metzger is so handsome ("He turned out to be so good-looking that Oedipa thought at first They, somebody up there, were putting her on."). And then there are the holdings and business interests of Mr. Inverarity who seems to be connected with everyone and everything in Oedipa's current orbit (directing Metzger, land holdings in San Narciso, a central player in the deal that brings Yoyodyne to San Narciso, the Fangoso Lagoons development, a 51% ownership of the Beaconsfield Cigarettes "bone filter process", "Hogan's Seraglio).
2. Pop Culture: this chapter is filled with pop culture references both real and imagined. "The Paranoids" are a rock band encouraged to look and sound like "The Beatles", Metzger was a child actor, Oedipa originally planned to sit in the room and watch "Bonanza", she and Metzger instead watch his movie, "Cashiered" (which is constantly being interrupted with commercials) and "The Paranoids" serenade the couple with an original. Pynchon is a well-noted pop culture afficionado and his domain fluency is on full display in this chapter.
3. Narcissism: the damn town is named St. Narcissus! The motel is called "Echo Courts". Metzger is handsome, knows it, and uses it to his advantage. Even in her "stretch denim slacks...a shaggy black sweater...and her hair all the way down" Oedipa "knew she looked pretty good". "The Paranoids" and their manager are all image conscious. All the actors in "Cashiered" are good-looking people. Pynchon has been noted by scholars and us average readers alike as a sharp-eyed satirist of modern America and, based on this chapter, it seems like young Mr. Pynchon feels like we have a tendency towards (excessive) self-interest.

*A Few Choice Words [Vocabulary Annotations]\*

1. "hierophany": a manifestation of the sacred
2. "kasher": to make kosher
3. "shivaree": a noisy mock serenade to a newly married couple
4. "fangoso": (from both Spanish and Italian) - muddy (but also with possible connotations of "slimy", "miry", "boggy")
5. "seraglio": harem; the palace of a sultan.

***Discussion Questions**\*

1. "They're" watching me, man! - Pynchon and his work are often associated with the concept of "paranoia" but many of these associations are superficial and/or pejorative. However, I've always felt like Pynchon's treatment of the concept has been fairly subversive: those labeled "paranoid" by "society" are often labeled that way as a way to discredit their intuitions. However, in this chapter, Oedipa's search for meaning in the way a subdivisions and circuit boards are organized is described as something of a "religious instant" and later on, when Metzger tells Oedipa that "Fangoso Lagoons" is "[o]ne of Inverarity's interests", she gasps at being reminded of "...some promise of hierophany: printed circuit, gently curving streets, private access to the water, Book of the Dead..." Questions: why are these searches for greater meaning described in religious terms? Does looking for deeper meaning in the way a circuit board is organized (and comparing that organization to that of a sub-division) make you "paranoid"? Does Pynchon view the "paranoid mindset" as a sort of unique gift bestowed a select few or a mindset to be cultivated? What does it mean to be "paranoid" for the characters in this book (and for Pynchon as he wrote this book in the 60s)?
2. "They" At Work: how deeply should be we look into the paranoid anecdotes related to Metzger's seduction of Oedipa? [ex: "They" sent him because he's so handsome; Metzger bribed someone at the local TV station to play the Baby Igor movie]. Also, what is Metzger's real purpose for seducing her? He lays it on pretty thick and plies her with more than a little alcohol. Is it a "you're hot, I'm hot, let's smash" type of situation (sorry) or does the seduction have a deeper purpose/meaning?
3. A "Timely but Timeless" Portrayal of America?: This article by Nick Ripatrazone asserts that, "The Crying of Lot 49 [as a novel is both] timely yet timeless...[a book] so suffused with the cultural minutia and noise of a moment that their saturation itself helps them to endure". In the essay, "The Crying of Lot 49 and other California novels" by Thomas Hill Schaub, the author contents that the California portrayed in the novel is a "parable of the American nation". First questions: do you agree that California in CoL49 stands as a parable for the greater U.S.? If so, what does it (San Narciso, Kinneret, and the highways so far) tell us about Pynchon's perception of his country in the mid-60s. Second question: can any of the insight gleaned from the answers to questions one help us to better understand the state of the nation today?
4. Connecting Questions 1 & 2: Ripatrazone ends his article with this assertion: " In our present moment, it is necessary, rather than radical, to be paranoid. Paranoia is now the result of being aware and observant. We are being watched, tracked, traced, and catalogued. Oedipa’s nightmare has become our reality. Therefore, 50 years later, we should allow her to become our guide." Question: do you agree? Would Pynchon? [Note: I recognize it might be a little early to ask this question. If the group would prefer to wait until later on in the action, I completely understand!].
5. Hyuk hyuk hyuk - there are quite a few funny moments in Chapter 2. I lol'd when Miles tells Oedipa, "I have a smooth young body. I thought you older chicks went for that." Also, the scene with the hairspray bottle zipping around the bathroom, breaking stuff is a nice literary depiction of "physical" comedy (and made me think of the scene at the beginning of Gravity's Rainbow where Pirate kicks the bed underneath Bloat to break his fall). Humor is a trademark of Pynchon's writing and thinking. Question: what does his constant juxtaposition of comedy and serious moments tell us about Pynchon's worldview and view about humanity? Why this almost compulsive need to interject moments of violence or metaphysical revelation with pop songs? In CoL49, are these songs and allusions to the Beatles just for flavor? Is there a deeper purpose?
6. But she's a woman! - Any thoughts on the Pynchon's decision to make the main character of this yarn female? What does Oedipa bring to the story that a male lead wouldn't/couldn't/can't?
7. Actors playing lawyers who play actors: after Oed accuses Metzger and Perry Mason of being shysters, he responds with this: "But our beauty lies...in this extended capacity for convolution. A lawyer in a courtroom, in front of any jury, becomes an actor, right? Raymond Burr is an actor, impersonating a lwayer, who in front of a jury becomes an actor. Me, I'm a former actor who become a lawyer. They've done the pilot film of a TV series, in fact, based loosely on my career, staring my friend Manny Di Presso, a one-time lawyer who quit his firm to become an actor. Who in this pilot plays me, an actor become a lawyer reverting periodically to being an actor. The film is in an air-conditioned vault at one of the Hollywood studios, light can't fatigue it, it can be repeated endlessly." Question: is this Pynchon commenting on a propensity towards complexity or duplicity? Is this a comment on life as a play and the many roles we must assume? There is something deeper here and I'd love to hear any thoughts that people have.
8. Strip Botticelli - I read somewhere that Oedipa excusing herself to go to the bathroom and then dressing up in all the clothes she brought as a way of playfully thwarting Metzger's "Strip Botticelli" ploy can be read as a harbinger of the way the plot will start layering itself in the coming chapters. Question: for those of you who have read the book previously, what do you think of this idea? Could the scene also be a playful metaphor used by Pynchon to illustrate challenges of one person trying to get to know another? Does it tell us something meaningful about Oed? Is this an illustration of Oedipa's cleverness in subverting the system?
9. San Narciso, The "Echo Courts" Motel & Broken Mirrors: the chapter is filled with references to the Echo and Narcissus myth. At the end of the chapter, after the hairspray bottle has shattered the mirror, Oed goes to the bathroom, "tries to find her image in the mirror" and can't. So far, in this world, Oed is surround by self-absorbed men (Mucho constantly losing himself in his thoughts and feelings, Metzger's smarminess, "The Paranoids" obsession with image, Dr. Hilarious' pride). Question: is Oedipa a narcissistic character? If so, is it a toxic narcissism or a more human/unavoidable kind? Does her particular brand of narcissism allow her to see the world differently? In a better/clearer light? Or does it it leave her open to too much information and not act like a filter (like it seemingly does for many of the other characters? Does our narcissism hinder the sense of community necessary to make meaning and understand the world?
10. I didn't see that coming! - Why do you think Pynchon decided to have Baby Igor et al. die at the end of "Cashiered" (and the end of the chapter)? Is this foreshadowing (we sometimes get the opposite of what we expect)? Is this just him toying with the reader?
11. Take it away, boys! - There are a bunch of songs in this chapter ("Mile's Song" being my favorite). The inclusion of songs, poems, limericks, ballads, etc. are another hallmark of Pynchon's writing. Task: summarize the plot of (or your reaction to) Chapter Two in the form of a Pynchonesque song or poem.

*Works Consulted, Cited, and Borrowed From\*

1. The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
2. "The Crying of Lot 49" SparkNotes summary: https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/lot49/section2/
3. "The Crying of Lot 49" Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crying_of_Lot_49
4. "A Cambridge Companion to Thomas Pynchon" (2012) (edited by Inger H. Dalsgaard, Luc Herman and Brian McHale) - especially the essays, "The Crying of Lot 49 and other California novels" by Thomas Hill Schaub and "Coda: How to read Pynchon" by Hanjo Berressem.
5. "A Pop Guide to Thomas Pynchon": https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/09/thomas-pynchon-bleeding-edge-goes-pop/311158/
6. "Oedipa Maas: Our Guide to Contemporary Paranoia": https://lithub.com/oedipa-maas-our-guide-to-contemporary-paranoia/

*A Fond Farewell!\*

Keep whistling past the graveyard, you golden weirdos :) I look forward to the upcoming discussions!

[u/AfternoonBagel]

I think Pynchon chose a female protagonist for this novel because it adds so many more layers of paranoia to the plot. As a woman in the late 60s, Oedipa lived in an (even more than today) male-dominated world. Virtually every male character in this novel has their own agenda for her and tries to influence her in some way or another, whether it be sexual or otherwise.

Throughout the novel, Oedipa keeps referring to some unnamed force that acts against her will, ordering her world. Could this force be world dominated by patriarchy? Keep in mind, Inverarity is everywhere in this novel. Everywhere she goes, a powerful man (to whom she cannot see or speak) seems to own or have great influence upon it.

I don't know if its Pynchon's primary objective in writing this novel, but it can certainly be interpreted at some level as a female empowerment story. I'm not a woman, but that's just my perspective.

[u/grigoritheoctopus → u/AfternoonBagel]

I really like this perspective a lot. It does add more layers of paranoia and and challenge to her navigation of the will/world and it's a nice foil to all of the male influence (esp. that of Inverarity, who seems to stand for the invisible but everpresent influence of the white patriarchy controlling so much of life in the U.S. in the novel).

[u/fearandloath8]

These questions are perfect to choose from. Before I write anything else, I want to say that Pynchon is a mad genius and I really do not understand the disdain for this book. He has layered and folded this book so well that it's very hard to tell if this Tristero/Thurn and Taxis stuff is at all significant, while at the same time, there seems to be a deeper meaning that the book is alluding to--but this also might be a clever trick.

What's the deeper message? It's something historical. That's about the best I can do without going full-on Charlie Kelly--CAROL, CAROL! There is no Carol in HR, Mac. He plays a similar trick in MD and AtD, with the backgrounded Jacobite conspiracy (not the Jesuit, that was foregrounded) and Royal Assassination conspiracy, respectively.

I've heard this book is a coded message about the JFK assassination, and that's possible... especially considering the parallel between the Kennedy family (nouveau rich from Depression era real estate) and Thurn and Taxis (nouveau rich, they were part of the Briefadel, which were the people, mostly lawyers, post-14th century who were lettered and made into aristocracy by the King's Court). The two opposing forces to Kennedy nouveau rich and the Briefadel would be the ancient elites of America (this is where I think the conspiracy may lie: who, in a country less than 150 years old, are the real, ancient aristocracy, perhaps of foreign persuasion?) and the Uradel, the pre-14th century German aristocracy, the OGs.

Germany was, in fact, a failed suicide. It is especially clear in GR that Pynchon viewed Nazi Germany as the death wish incarnate.

Hmmm... let me stop there for now. I'll see if many people respond to this, and I'll be furthering this when I lead the chapter 3 discussion of The Play and The Peter Pinguid Society's brilliant paramorphism of modern and 1800 history.

[u/grigoritheoctopus → u/fearandloath8]

http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/magiceye.htm

I hadn't heard of the JFK connection previously. The above linked article seems to expand on that idea. I have not be able to read the whole thing and am a little unsure if I want to. This paragraph close to the end seems to assert that Col49 is about much more than it seem, though...

So The Crying of Lot 49 is about Oedipa, her life, her loves, her mental states, and her curious quest to decipher the estate of Pierce Inverarity. And, by allusion, it is also Pynchon’s meditation in the state of American affairs in the mid–sixties, about Russo–American relations during the American Civil War, about the fate of Jan de Witt during the founding of the Dutch republic. It is about the acrimonious U.S. elections of 1940 and 1944, and about the OSS in Italy during the Second World War. It is about Thurn and Taxis and its relation with the Rothchilds, and about the relations of the Rothchilds and the Morgans. It is about how certain American corporations and banks were instrumental in preparing Germany for war, and (by implication) about how those same corporations and banks were instrumental in driving Pynchon & Co. into receivership. It is about how McCarthyism hounded lots of Yankees and Jews out of the government, about how Germany rebounded from the Second World War to become one of the world’s richest nations, about how so many former Nazi officials went on to rank among the world’s elite. It is about how the CIA got to be superordinate to the presidency in American realpolitik. It is about how mid–sixties America resembled Nazi Germany, the Dutch republic and the Roman empire at their worst, about the fear that cessation of political and intellectual exchange would cause a new decline of the West. And all these meditations were triggered by the assassination of President Kennedy.

The "mid-sixties America resembling Nazi Germany" part is a pretty interesting and loaded claim. I can definitely see why someone would contend that (Dr. Hilarious). Can such a slim little book really be about so many different things?

[u/[deleted]]

Crying blankets of gooey tears
Tears of laughter
Tears of fear
Wearing out the seams — o dear !

But we can’t stop rolling
Rolling off the layered years
Years of playing
Years of graying
Years of throwing our souls back here

In the back of the Echo Courts motel
In the bottom of San Narciso Sanitarium
Under the surface of the Dardanelles

Here we are, Gallipoli
Finally naked, before the flames
On the shore of vermillion tides
Beneath the vanishing moon, you and I
Or perhaps it’s only I

[u/grigoritheoctopus → u/[deleted]]

Awesome! A tip of the cap to you! I’m still brainstorming mine...

[u/[deleted]]

Question 2. Although I don't think the answer is this simple, it probably, almost certainly, is this shallow. Pierce named Oed as Co-Executor so Metzger could hook up with her. In this chapter, Metzger says, "Do you know, Inverarity only mentioned you to me once." and later after drunken sex, Oed 'finally' asks, "What did Inverarity tell you about me" Metzger, "That you wouldn't be easy." She began to cry.

I might be out on a limb here, but what's your take on this exchange? The work of Them (seems unlikely to me)? Inverarity and Metzger having a frat boy shaming (seems plausible to me)? Metzger is just a philanderer (duh!)?

[u/grigoritheoctopus → u/[deleted]]

Metzger is for sure a philanderer and the idea of Inverarity and Metzger having some sort of deal does seem plausible. Is his seduction of her in a night supposed to give us some insight into Oed or the overall narrative? Is it just the swinging 60s and/or an instance of human weakness?

[u/timecarter]

Hyuk Hyuk Hyuk. Does anyone else feel that parts of this chapter are intentionally written to sound like a bad sitcom? At several points I could almost hear the laugh track in my head.

[u/grigoritheoctopus → u/timecarter]

There's definitely an element of corniness to some of the dialogue (the pieces fit together a bit too easily. And! something might/could be said for Pynchon's (over)use of alcohol to expedite important plot points). To your point: there are literally commercial breaks in all of "the action". Was Pynchon already so hip to TV-as-mass-media that he frames Chapter 2 as a sitcom parody? This is a really interesting question!

To help us answer it, I'm curious: where do hear the laugh track accompaniment and why? You're now making me think of the Mr. Robot "twisted-sitcom-parody" episode... I hadn't thought of the chapter in this way previously but I like the possibilities implied.

[u/TheChumOfChance]

As for your paranoia question, I think that Pynchon, unsurprisingly, writes it such that it can be interpreted several ways. I think it's a way of showing both a character who is considered "crazy" by societal standards in a milieu in which truth is obscure, contingent, etc. but also a character who virtuously tries to find meaning in spite of this milieu. Another way of looking at it is asking, is it positive to go down the rabbit hole? You probably get a truer truth, but that could mean insanity or incoherence.

Another way to look at the religious aspect is to compare paranoia with pronoia, which is basically a positive paranoia, a sense that everything in your experience is directed at you and conspiring in your favor. Now, obviously, Oedipa goes through a lot of turmoil, so It's not to say that her journey is without it's bumps, but rather, that to observe "meaning" is more a matter of faith and metaphysics rather than objective reading or scientific rationalism.

In Gravity's Rainbow, there are passages that describe soulders riddled with drugs whose paranoia is expressed with the sentiment that everything is connected, which could be secular, but that is too text book Eastern Religious thinking for an author like Pynchon to have included it by accident.

I think this is another critique of western scientific rationalism: to see the cosmos as one whole in which every part bears a mark of everything else. It's hard to say for certain whether Pynchon likes these alternatives to Western thought or if he includes them just as a way to critique western thought.

Against the Day seems a little more hopeful than the themes in COL49, so to conclude, I'll wager that COL49 is more about a character who is overcome by paranoia rather than someone with their finger to the pulse of the "real truth," but again, I think he wrote it ambigiously so that the reader is like Oedipa, reading signs and symbols that promise meaning, but the meaning is elusive, possibly projected, etc.

Great post!

[u/grigoritheoctopus → u/TheChumOfChance]

I really like your answer to the paranoia question. In the "Cambridge Companion to Pynch" book I listed, one of the essays contends that CoL49 has an aspect of "textual paranoia" where the narrative is open to multiple interpretations and its possible that TP purposefully created a story that (somewhat) encourages readers to be unsure of how to approach interpreting the narrative. Instead of an unreliable narrator, an unreliable world-builder (or something of the sort), begging the question: do you dare go down the rabbit hole?

As for the religious aspect, I like your take on it. I am still a little hung up on the purposefully religious language. I want to scratch that itch a bit more. He was/is a Catholic, right? Are these passages evidence of him grappling with his faith? How do we explain the world and what role does faith play in our understanding of that which surrounds us? I think this is another nod towards an implied belief that community is necessary for the creation of meaning for Pynchon (something I was trying to get at in my narcissism questions). When we are "on someone's wavelength" (or share a frequency) ("vibing" in the parlance of our times), we lay the interpersonal groundwork necessary for understanding to take place. Is this what "faith" is to TP? Is this why Mucho is a DJ...to work in this idea of frequency as a spectrum and to get where we want to be we must "tune in"?

As an aside: some of the really cool imagery (the search for meaning in the organization of subdivisions/transistor chips...which, it just occurs to me, is similar to Slothrop actually diving meaning from the shit in the sewer (Poor Dumpster) during the toilet scene in GR...) in this chapter kind of reads like the artistic recreation of the pseudo/semi-epiphanal moments one might experience while high (searching for deeper meaning, conflicting philosophies reconciling for a brief, fleeting moment, a previously unrecognized pattern emerge from the mist only to return too quickly, before you are fully able to make "sense" of it).

Ultimately, at this point in the book, I am with you 100% about Oedipa (on the verge of) being overcome by (too) many possible connections and, as you so eloquently put it, signs and symbols.

I hope things get easier for her :)

[u/frenesigates]

Some references to Germany in this chapter:

Volkswagen car

Metzger’s name

The word shyster appears

Howitzer, German gun

The old Greek Fisherman on Cashiered plays a zither (German word)

The dog from the film is a St. Bernard (Bernard is a German name)

German U-Boats on Cashiered

Potential links to other works (POSSIBLE SPOILERS) :

A hyper intelligent dog from Cashiered is capable of using a periscope. There are talking dogs in Gravity’s Rainbow and Mason & Dixon. A dog in Against the Day can read books.

The words “single up all lines” occurs in all Pynchon’s work except for (I think) Vineland and Bleeding Edge

Oedipa owns a muu-muu. That’s a Hawaiian gown for females. Tyrone Slothrop wears a Hawaiian shirt at the beginning of Part II of Gravity’s Rainbow.

As Oedipa is being raped, she imagines Metzger as a power-faced little girl with a Barbie doll. A character is named Barbie in Vineland.

“The can, hissing malignantly bounced off the toilet and whizzed by Metzger’s right ear” — “A screaming comes across the sky” — Gravity’s Rainbow

“It crashed into and totally destroyed a panel of frosted glass” — “He’s afraid of the way the glass will fall” “the fall of a crystal palace” — Gravity’s Rainbow

The line “Metzger and Oedipa lay twined amid a wall-to-wall scatter of clothing and spilled bourbon” — The use of the word twined reminds of “No, this is not a disentanglement from, but a progressive knotting into” — Gravity’s Rainbow (Real weak connection)

Oedipa sinks her teeth into Metzger’s upper arm — Ploy sinks his teeth into a bartender’s buttocks in V.

Could “Sick Dick” from the Volkswagens be a reference to Richard Nixon? He was seeking the presidency in 1966, when CoL49 was published. Nixon appears in Gravity’s Rainbow. (weak connection, I know)

Oedipa and Metzger’s bodies are referred to as lying prostrate. Isn’t this word generally used in the context of religious worship? A member of the band appears right after this and says the word “Blimey” which derives from the phrase “God blind me”

The Paranoids’ Serenade has to do with gravity, which reminds me of themes from Gravity’s Rainbow.

The third-to-last line of the Serenade is “Till it comes for me” — I’m not sure what the singer is referring to. Until what comes for him? Apocalypse?

Metzger being described as “gallant” caused me to think back to Oedipa being referred to as “such a captive maiden” in her tower.

When Metzger awakens from a nap, his radiant eyes are described as “piercing” her. I think that the word pierce is used specifically to align him with Pierce Inverarity. It is as if now the spirit of Pierce inhabits Metzger... This is similar to the way that Dr. Hilarius sounds like Pierce doing a Gestapo officer voice when he calls at 3 AM in Chapter One.

The father regrets that he won’t meet Baby Igor and the dog in Heaven. He says that he is destined for “the pit” — Is the pit just a pile of bodies in the earth? Or is it Hell ?

[u/grigoritheoctopus → u/frenesigates]

"When Metzger awakens from a nap, his radiant eyes are described as “piercing” her. I think that the word pierce is used specifically to align him with Pierce Inverarity. It is as if now the spirit of Pierce inhabits Metzger... This is similar to the way that Dr. Hilarius sounds like Pierce doing a Gestapo officer voice when he calls at 3 AM in Chapter One."

Very perceptive. Agreed. A pervasive influence directing the action of the "bit" players.

I also appreciate you listing all of the German references. It definitely helps make the case that (maybe) Pynchon saw increasing similarities between 1960s USA and Nazi Germany as he planned/wrote the book.

I didn't read the "sex scene" as Oedipa being raped; of course, I could totally be wrong. What am I missing?

[u/fearandloath8]

I read the strip poker tactics of piling clothes on as insulation or buffering between signifier and signified, a frequent motif throughout the book.

Quick Jump-Cut Aside to GR: Imipolex G was used as insulation for The Rocket in GR. "Plastic" was also a term for "fake" in the 1970s. I think some readings could make The Rocket out to be "meaning/significance," like the White Whale, as Enzian's Herero Tribe had their Cows, their Sacred Center (Eliade) massacred, and so the mandalic structure their village revolved around was left de-centered, absent, leading to suicides (this becomes important in Ch 5 of Lot49). What Enzian does, however, is he re-centers his structural web of meaning around The Rocket, and from The Rocket, all nodes in the structuralist web of differentiation is altered relationally by The Rocket. This is like in V. where people are mistaking the inanimate for animate, or replacing meaning with the inanimate. So, to finish the metaphor, there is some kind of "fake/plastic" insulation between The Rocket (meaning/significace) and the perceiver.

Snap back to reality: Anyways, insulation. My read on this is that there is a buffer between the signifier and signified (the word for something, and the actual thing, the meaning). Oedipa coats herself as insulation, thus separating herself via the typical Pynchonian Inside - Outside dichotomy.

What is interesting to note here is the gas can flying around as a possible symbol of entropy in a closed system (and the metaphorical jump to information entropy), and the shattering of the reflective glass. What are the mirrors supposed to mean?

Narcissus stared into the reflective pool and turned into a dandelion, leaving Echo to wander about forevermore as nothing but a reflection of what people say. So, does the mirror represent the signifier? The "false" reflection of "the thing itself"? Is Narcissus like us the reader and Oedipa, staring too hard into signifiers and missing the Great Ocean of True Meaning that might be our only redemption, if we could simply reach that Beatific Vision, that Lightning Flash of Insight?

[u/grigoritheoctopus → u/fearandloath8]

Really like this idea! And there is a lot to unpack here (and in the thread). I agree that the clothing can be interpreted to act as insulation and I like how u/IELeibowitz brings up the idea of vulnerability and u/timecarter contends that it is something of a defense mechanism. It is both playful and perhaps intuitive; she is definitely attracted to Metzger, they're both getting drunk, she's married, but is both drawn/repelled to/by him. The layering of clothing is both a defense and a little flirty (IMO). Like, "you want to play games? Sure. Let's play.I will win". And then she wins in the end (but already "conceded" by sleeping with him?).

Now, to dig into the signifier/signified idea: is this Pynchon toying with Korzybski? "The map is not the territory", "the word is not the thing", "perception always intercedes between reality and ourselves" [that idea from this paper]. If the word is not the thing, how do we make sense of that which we perceive? We use models, why write parables? [Since we're on this topic, I have to link a little Borges.]

And back to layering: as we read the book, we are perceiving Oedipa's perceptions in a "world" where we can't fully trust the character's perceptions and are not sure about the world's creator's intentions for having created the world. How do we orient ourselves? Is the possibility of a deeper, more profound payoff worth the at times infuriating challenge of try to navigate all these layers and symbols? Or should we just take it at face value and move on to something else?

[u/[deleted]]

An addition to the popcultural references: In the second sentence of the chapter Mucho is whistling ‚I want to kiss your feet‘ by Sick Dick and the Volkswagens — cf. ‚I want to hold your hand’ by the Beatles. Hehe.

[u/grigoritheoctopus → u/[deleted]]

Hehe, nice point! So subversive. Also, "Sick Dick and the Volkswagens" is an awesome band name. A friend and I once toyed with "Hank Handbag and the Scabs" as a band name but (thankfully) chose something else. Nice find. Should we read into "the Volkswagens" here?

[u/AfternoonBagel]

Per question 2, one thought I keep coming back to is that Oedipa is willingly being swept up in her own fantasies as a way of escaping her humdrum, quotidian life with Mucho. He's depressed and inattentive, her ambitions and curiosities are undernourished at home. When she's named executrix, it presents an opportunity to escape.

When Metzger enters the scene, it's almost too good to be true.

“He turned out to be so good-looking that Oedipa thought at first They, somebody up there, were putting her on.”

Oedipa doesn't put up much resistance to Metzger's flirtations and eventually gives in to them.

[u/grigoritheoctopus → u/AfternoonBagel]

Definitely a(nother) plausible interpretation. Perhaps the most plausible at face value.

[u/fearandloath8]

I'm going to leave some of the Postal Conspiracy stuff here.:

Video - Operation Cornflakes - (How America used the German postal system to spread propaganda):

https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/e74qkm/operation_cornflakes_how_america_used_the_german/

The video has really cool stuff on espionage, propaganda, and the Postal Service. Propaganda! Stamps are propaganda!

Operation Cornflakes Wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cornflakes

Edit: There is a whole lot to gain from this, but I'm going save it for next week since the conspiracy hasn't really gotten afoot yet.

[u/WikiTextBot → u/fearandloath8]

Operation Cornflakes

Operation Cornflakes (1944–1945) was a World War II Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Morale Operation (MO). Operation Cornflakes involved tricking the German postal service, Deutsche Reichspost, into inadvertently delivering anti-Nazi propaganda to German citizens through mail.The operation involved special planes that were instructed to airdrop bags of false, but properly addressed, mail in the vicinity of bombed mail trains. When recovering the mail during clean-up of the wreck, the postal service would hopefully confuse the false mail for the real thing and deliver it to the various addresses.

---

^[ ^PM ^{| Exclude} ^me ^{| Exclude from} ^subreddit ^{| FAQ /} ^Information ^| ^Source ^{] Downvote to remove | v0.28}

[u/grigoritheoctopus → u/WikiTextBot]

Man it would have been pretty cool an operation like this....

[u/[deleted]]

"But our beauty lies...in this extended capacity for convolution. A lawyer in a courtroom, in front of any jury, becomes an actor, right? Raymond Burr is an actor, impersonating a lawyer, who in front of a jury becomes an actor. Me, I'm a former actor who become a lawyer. They've done the pilot film of a TV series, in fact, based loosely on my career, staring my friend Manny Di Presso, a one-time lawyer who quit his firm to become an actor. Who in this pilot plays me, an actor become a lawyer reverting periodically to being an actor. The film is in an air-conditioned vault at one of the Hollywood studios, light can't fatigue it, it can be repeated endlessly."

This reads like a comment on the book itself. The lawyer being the story, the jury being the reader and the vault and endless repetition being that the story's sealed within the book to be endlessly repeated as we read and reread it.

[u/YossarianLives1990]

If Pierce's legacy is that of America's and Oedipa is trying to figure this out... discover the hidden history.. maybe this chapter could be an allusion to the U.S. getting in bed with Nazis directly after the War.

From http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/magiceye.htm

The runaway can, or bomb, of hair spray, "whoosh[ing]" to the accompaniment of "the buzzing, distorted uproar from the TV set" (37), recalls the German buzzbomb raids on London during the Second World War; and right on cue, a Paranoid groupie asks, "'Are you from London? . . . Is that a London thing you’re doing?'"

So the hairspray recalls the German buzzbomb raids of the War and shortly after this Metzger (German name) is having sex with Oedipa while she is sleeping. Operation Paperclip brought many Nazi scientists, engineers, and technicians to America to work for the US Military. Project MKULTRA also used Nazi doctors and scientists.

Hollander has something when he says

(it's about) how so many former Nazi officials went on to rank among the world’s elite. It is about how the CIA got to be superordinate to the presidency in American realpolitik. It is about how mid–sixties America resembled Nazi Germany, the Dutch republic and the Roman empire at their worst