Hey nice people — you made it! And with that, welcome to Week 1, in which we launch this hardy crew out onto the trail. Just a reminder that we are slow-cooking this time around. You may have read the book before or you may be tempted to jump ahead, but humor me, won’t you? Let’s keep our focus on these weekly 30-page sprints and savor the Pynchon together.
I’m reading the Harper Perennial (HP) paperback, but there are plenty of other editions — for anyone taking another path, I’ll do my best to include a quote you can use to hang your hat on, whatever medium or printing you choose.
For those new to Pynchon I’ll share the one tip I’ve figured out with my modest experience — just to enjoy the sentences. Sometimes I get a little lost I’ll admit. But pretty much every page has a sentence to underline and delight in. And so we turn the pages, gem to shimmery gem.
So remind me one more time, how’s this thing work?
We’ll be reading T C of L 49 over the next 5 weeks — each week I’ll post the next week’s target. Read along, comment on each thread by week’s end, make it to the finish line, and you qualify for some unique digital thing I’ll figure out on the other side….
As always, I believe in you and your ability to read a book in thinly-sliced increments and post on a blog. I don’t know about everyone — but you? You’re a sure bet to make it to the end!
This week: Enjoy chapters 1 and 2, adding your comment (pithy or otherwise) here, pausing for some water and perhaps a slice of orange at the bottom of HP 30, where After a while, she said “I will.” And she did.
Upward and forward!
-Cecil
I’m so tempted to give myself a Pynchonian renaming for the purposes of this discussion…but what would it be?! How to top these character names?!
Anyone else finding this really, really hard to read?! I feel like I start down a page and when I get to the middle of the page I realize I got lost somewhere on the way and I have to start over… This all to say that it’s slow going for me but I’ll keep meandering.
I love the names so far, from Oedipa to Mucho Maas (particularly Mucho makes me laugh as I’m reading these first 30 pages in Spain and am wondering in what way he’ll turn out to be “Much More” than others).
Having spent a few years of my very distant youth in Southern California (Orange County, to be specific), these first two chapters evoke a strange period in that region’s history. The 60s were all about the promise of California (think Beach Boys, Gidget movies, etc.), but there was a lot of darkness beneath the surface (think early aerospace industry and the military industrial complex). The circuit-board imagery feels dated to our oh-so-modern perspectives, but back then “digital machines” were just that–machines. And one of the most promising applications was for warfare. (Times sure have changed!)
I was curious about “[leaving] milk to propitiate the leprechaun,” but the most interesting piece of related information that I could find online was the fact that Lucky Charms were first released in 1964, one year before this book’s publication. Coincidence? 😉
There are no coincidences in Pynchonland.
Today it occurred to me to wonder if anyone had set Baby Igor’s Song to music. And of course someone has. It’s not bad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jfS-qc-jnQ
Wow, so interesting. This is great to read something outside the usual stuff I read for distraction and entertainment. I never imagined what might happen if a hairspray can was pierced, but now I know! On a more serious note, felt a bit sad to think about Oedipa’s husband sitting at home while she got it on with Metzger. But perhaps her husband has his own experiences when they are apart and it works well for them. Looking forward to seeing what unfolds.
Hello, everyone! Happy to be meandering with you all. Though these early chapters felt more like a strut from Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks.
Dr. Vitz, I’m glad you brought up that out-of-sequence movie bit; I’ve been wondering about it too. First off, I’ve never seen a re-run that got the reels out of sequence. But I’ll grant TP a little creative license on that one.
And I’m with you that Oedipa’s wager is an odd one. Metzger knows how the movie ends, so why take his bet? Maybe because deep down she hopes to lose (if losing means being seduced, instead of staying trapped, Rapunzel-like, with a drip like Mucho Maas in the lasagna-layering hell of Kinneret-Among-The-Pines.)
Too, as Metzger points out, the bet’s legit so long as at least one person doesn’t know the outcome. Metzger knows how the film ends, and he knows if the reels are out of sequence. But he can’t know which ending Oedipa will wager on: rescue or death?
In somebody’s mind–say God’s, as I think Oedipa does at one point–the trajectory of that flying can of hairspray is already known, entirely predictable. The circuitboard of San Narciso was worked out in advance by Inverarity and his investment partners.
But from the perspective of an ordinary shlemiel like Oedipa (or us), intentions are sensed, but not seen. You feel there’s a script at work somewhere, but you can’t know where it’s going until the movie ends. The reels may slip out of sequence, but the movie comes to rest at the same place every time: The End.
Ending’s a lot like dying, and I thought I saw a lot of that in these early pages too. Inverarity’s the most obvious example (the Shadow of death?), but also, for me, were those used cars Mucho can’t sleep for having once traded, the detritus of each previous owner’s life identical to the next. The punters all thought they were trading up, but they were really just swapping one gray life for another. That was their bet maybe, that they could somehow break the circuit. Curious to see if Oedipa can break the one Inverarity’s set up for her. Onward!
A quick thought about names – Although Oepida could allude to Oedipus solving the riddle of the sphinx, it’s worth noting that Mucho calls her “Oed” which could allude to the O.E.D.
In Pynchon scholarship, it’s pretty much a cardinal rule that you must discuss 2 scenes from chapter 2 – Oedipa seeing southern California subdivision design as a circuit board, and the flight of the spray bottle. Both scenes are marked by Oedipa’s belief that both the subdivision layout & the can’s path are meaningful designs which, to steal Pynchon’s phrase, offer “some promise of hierophony”
But the chapter is really marked by how little design matters. The outcome of the bet should be certain, because the outcome of the movie is certain – so the Strip Botticelli serves no actual purpose. But along the way, film reels get confused, the can gets broken, Miles gets “duplicated,” and Metzger gets the prize even though Oedipa actually wins the bet
Anyway Oedipa’s lament closing Chapter 1 is gorgeously poignant in that recognition afforded by the painting in Mexico City–by the experience of standing before the painting in Mexico City–that her existence is characterized by captivity and no “knight of deliverance” offers any prospect of rescue. The men in her life–Mucho her husband, Roseman her lawyer, Hilarius her doctor–are, in a best-case scenario, useless to her. Maybe her “gut fear and female cunning” will prove to be weapons against the malignant magic that has her imprisoned. Maybe Pierce has posthumously offered her some escape tools. But we shouldn’t count on it. What is it that “remained [but] had, somehow, before this, stayed away” and will soon be revealed to her? I think we are already sensing by the end of page 12 that Oedipa deserves a better lot in life, a better bunch of cards, than the fat “conjurer’s deck” of indistinguishable days she’s been dealt.
This book is just so, so Pynchon right from the drop – the endless sentences, big words, goofy names, long lists, made-up songs…. Hard not to just gulp it all down.
Crikey!! It didn’t occur to me that I would not be able to obtain the Crying of Lot 49 more or less at a moment’s notice, but such is life in the wilds of Australia. Arrives October 14.
The scene with the hairspray banging around was so preposterously amusing! It reminded me of a comic writing technique I learned called “heightening.” It’s very hard to pull off, and Pynchon does it adeptly.
“Who Knows What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Men? The Shadow Knows.”
When I read this book in high school exactly 40 years ago, our teacher asked if any of us knew who Lamont Cranston was. I happened to be the only one who did. The reference must be completely obscure to almost anyone who picks the book up now.
For those who’d want to know: “The Shadow” was a super-popular radio serial in the ’30s and ’40s, sort of the Batman of its day. And Lamont Cranston was sort of the Bruce Wayne figure in “The Shadow.”
Thanks for this! So helpful. Would have never known that.