----- etymonline.com
I spent chapters 4 and 5 thinking about what you said, about history-as-catastrophe for Pynchon, and about determining Pynchon's place on the spectrum of Romanticism. I remember seeing something on JSTOR about Gravity's Rainbow and a "new sublime" or something like that, so I'm going to try and recover that real soon. I was also turned on by a friend to Marx's article "18 Brumaire..." with the [apparently] famous opening line about history appearing twice, "the first time as tragedy, and the second time as farce" which I can't help but see as super relevant to Pynchon's interests. He also alerted me to the root of "katastrophe" in the Greek tragedy, as the moment when the Chorus appears to sing the tragic change, which calls to mind all of those bizarre, Vaudevillian poppings-up of songs in Pynchon. Are these catastrophes-in-miniature to foreshadow the grander historic catastrophes?
With regard to the Marx quote, the only problem is that I'm having trouble determining whether Lot 49 is depicting first instances (tragedies) or seconds (farces). Possibly, that's quite intentional, like the way Oedipa ends up in tears in response to a ridiculous stripping game.
So at this point, we've got the encounter with John Nefastis and the whole Maxwell's Demon thing, which sets up the explorations later in the chapter of the "miraculous" nature of colliding systems. Jesus Arrabal tells Oedipa that a "miracle" is "another world's intrusion into this one." Jesus describes Pierce as a miracle in the perfection of his opposition to the revolutionaries, something not of this world. This gives the dead man's name a new significance, in that Pierce pierces the membrane of "this" world, and that Oedipa acts as the "Maxwell's Demon" between the two, the point where two unrelated systems come into contact -- Pierce names her the executor of the will, thereby introducing the muted post horn, symbol of Pierce's [constructed? digital?] world.
But all of this high, abstract stuff about information and systems and universes is offset almost immediately in the second half of the chapter, outside the rooming house, when Oedipa encounters the old man with the post horn tattoo on the back of his hand, his "wrecked" face a vision of her potential future. For the first time, a character other than Oedipa is crying, and she sort of plays mother to him. The scene is one of the most memorable in the book, but what struck me this time is the way that Oedipa whispers to the sailor, "I can't help" repeatedly as she calms him. This man, marked by the post horn, breaks down and curls into the bosom of his makeshift mother, who cannot help. There are a bunch of role-reversals, age-reversals, etc here, that must be significant: the way Oedipa, of the younger generation, becomes the mother/nurse/consoler of the old generation, who in all his pursuit of the system, has forgotten his wife (the way Oedipa loses Mucho (and "mucho")). But Oedipa is not the youngest generation, having just arrived from her own series of rejected admissions. It is Marx's the tragedy and farce at once, poised to begin again.
Oedipa wonders if her clues "were only some kind of compensation. To make up for her having lost the direct, epileptic Word, the cry that might abolish the night." I think this illustrates the meeting point of these two worlds [entropy is involved, but I'm not articulate enough] well: the logocentric, maybe impersonal or impregnable conspiracy, and the organic human reaction to this world, the crying. "Abolish the night" still bothers me though, and I'd appreciate some direction as to what that might stand for.
The scene with the new Mucho (who "digs") is disturbing too. I haven't really begun yet to consider what LSD might mean to Pynchon, because I can only imagine it as representative.
Matt
A very nice comment & exploration. I agree that Marx line seems important for old Tom's tragico-farcial view of history, but perhaps (as you hint) b/c he can't separate tragedy from farce. This seems certainly to be the case in GR, though I also think P isn't thereby passive in a fully pomo / radically skeptical sort of way. But we can talk about politics for the next novel.
ReplyDeleteMy sense of "crying" & also of the kirsch in the fondue is that P. is trying to think through the question of sentimentality in the English novel. In some ways it grows out of Dickens (and various 18c writers too), & P. both wants the emotional force it creates -- Oed does cry -- and also wants to deflect that all-consuming sincerity. Hence that ultimate "crying" is about a cash transaction, not an emotional one.
I agree that the night-in-SF episode in *Lot 48* (in Ch 5?) is a highlight & the emotional center. Perhaps it become the Zone in the next book?
FInally -- I kind of like your Germanic reading of the kirsch, though I had not thought of it. If kirsch is both overly sweet/sentimental & German, that may be meaningful b/c P. tends to finger German Romanticism (and its Nazi children) for much of what he wants to correct.