When I was a kid there was a TV movie called A Circle of Children, starring tons of ’70s folks, and most especially featuring Albert from Little House on the Prairie, aka Matthew Labyorteaux as Brian O’Connell.
Brian was a young boy no one could understand. That is, until someone (Jane Alexander?) slowed down a tape recording of him and figured out he was just talking super fast.
<mind. still. blown.>
As a fast-talker myself, I always related to the pathos. And it came back to me this week in a meandering way, as I found myself reliving some literary version of that triumphant slow-it-all down moment.
I tackled TCoL49 for the first time two or three years back, and I loved it flaws and all. But I’m sure I also absorbed about 35%. Slowing things down this week, underlining character names and favorite quotes, reading passages aloud, it was like figuring out that Brian (aka Thomas Pynchon, ok this is getting ornate), was talking all along. With words!
I also had the ongoing joy this time around of one of the best Meander Comment Threads I can remember, including helpful links to paintings and Baby Igor-inspired rock n roll, choice lines galore, and reminiscences from SoCal childhoods.
All to say, very grateful to be on this journey together, and jazzed to dive into Week 2.
Speaking of which….
This coming week: Won’t you please enjoy all of Chapter 3, adding your comment on this post, pausing perhaps to tie your shoes at the bottom of HP (Harper-Perennial) page 63, where “the disk jockey talking was her husband, Mucho.”
Figure 2.1: The actor who played Albert on Little House on the Prairie (above) also won the U.S. Pac-Man championship in 1982, which seems like too much damn talent for one ’70s/’80s teen. Can you imagine losing to him and thinking, “but you already got to be Albert!” ?
I’m behind — will catch up. See you next week!
Still in, just late. Loving all the comments!
Dang! Did I miss it?
you did not! I’m posting week three in a few hours, and also there’s always some fudge factor. 🙂
It wasn’t Nicholas II who was the Czar of Russia at the time of the Civil War, when Peter Pinguid was thwarted in his attempt to open a Pacific front for the Confederacy, but rather Alexander II. Our Narrator is an unreliable historian. Shocking.
thank you!
“The rich cretini from across the sea….”–could be tasty.
Oedipa’s encounter with The Courier’s Tragedy seems analogous to our various encounters with The Crying of Lot 49:
“I want to see if there’s a connection. I’m curious.”
I loved that line — exactly, we are her it seems… at least in that moment.
“So they make misprints…let them” — when is a typo not a typo?
The words are “rote noises to hold line bashes with, to get past bone barriers” (Bones!)
Can “couple-three” become the next “six seven”?
OK, made it. Some quotes that seem to capture where we are: “…soft, elegant chaos, an impression of emanations, mutually interfering, from the stub-antennas of everybody’s exposed nerve endings” and “like a Road Runner cartoon in blank verse.” Glad this chapter is behind me.
I was glad to have the return of the road runner, who may is sometimes us? Lots of things in this book so far strike me as “me, me too, I’m very close on this….”
I did not find the time and space this week to read a lot – I am looking forward to the next meander and hope, that I will catch up.
that 100% counts as a classic comment. Have a good week!
And here I was thinking that the next 30 pages would be more digestible than the first 30. All this paranoia is making me even more paranoid after turning on the so-called news, and it also makes me think that Pierce Inverarity isn’t really dead, and he’s going to pop up using one of those accents he used in the cryptic phone call to Oedipa months before he supposedly died. Did I miss evidence of a funeral? Also, my favorite name so far is Genghis Cohen. Since some have claimed that 1 in every 200 people are descended from Mr. Genghis with the Khan surname, I’m pretty sure this “naming of parts and people” is a Pynchon treasure.
The Couriers Tragedy was being put on by a San Narcisco group known as the Tank Players…
… a partially-filled house. Attendance did not swell by the time the play started.
…the costumes were gorgeous and the lighting imaginative,
…the words were all spoken in Transplanted Middle Western Stage British…
Sounds like every Shakespearean show I’ve done. I think I’ve played Angelo, the evil Duke of Squamuglia.
And was directed by Randolph Driblette, who also put himself in the show!!
Now on to week 3, will we learn more about… the charcoal bones…. ??
Surely someone, somewhere has staged a version of “The Couriers Tragedy”?
If not, you’re the man to do it.
I’m in for 4 tickets!
I thought someone else might have posted a link to the very timely article on Thomas Pynchon in today’s New York Times Sunday magazine but, since I don’t see that, here you go:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/magazine/thomas-pynchon-shadow-ticket.html?unlocked_article_code=1.uk8.Z0M1.ZHSYcvZIuH97&smid=url-share
(Even if you don’t subscribe, you should be able to read the article.)
One paragraph from the article helped me understand (sorta) what Oedipa may be after:
“It was in Pynchon that I recall first seeing paranoia depicted not only as pathology but also as a strange and thwarted kind of love…[a desire] for the life to be legible — to be able to trace not only the root systems of nefarious power around us but also the hidden harmonies and, in doing so, to feel ourselves sensitive and useful.”
So… will the gray-suited pursuers of Fallopian win out, as was the gray-clad character in the (godawful violent) revenge play? Will stay tuned, without expect such a neat resolution.
Paranoia is the organizing principle of all Pynchon’s work. A character in Bleeding Edge said, “Paranoia is the garlic in life’s kitchen, right, you can never have too much.”
It’s worth remembering that paranoia is primarily a disorder of the ego. If everyone is out to get you, you must be important… therefore your life has meaning.
And as Dr. Johnny Fever observed, “When everyone’s out to get you, paranoia is just… good thinking.”
ah, that’s a wonderfully helpful quote!
I loved Oedipa’s description of Driblette’s eyes. “They were bright black surrounded by an incredible network of lines, like a laboratory maze for studying intelligence in tears.” A lot to unpack there. Also, why are monsters putting out hits over old bones dredged up from the bottom of a lake? Also, who dredges up old bones from the bottom of a lake for international commerce?
We read Week 2’s pages aloud on the way to Portland and, man, I just about broke my mouth on some of those sentences. If Pynchon was in the car with us I would have slapped him upside the head. But as a veteran of the Gravity’s Rainbow and Against the Day Deathmarches, I know that this is part and parcel of the experience.
I doubt the plot details of The Courier’s Tragedy are going to pay off; I think Tommy got carried away, fell in love with what he’d written, and decided to leave it in. After all these years he is like an exasperating old friend I can’t quit. Did I buy a copy of Shadow Ticket at Powell’s Books? Yes I did.
My main take away so far is that I think my lack of experience dropping acid makes it a little harder to follow what the heck is happening in this adventure. That being said, the story within the story and the character names are crazy fun.
I enjoyed the courier’s tragedy and also thought, this feels medicinally induced or at least influenced. 🙂
Still enjoying Pynchon here, but also can’t help but wonder if my most gossamer electrode is too gross for to catch the brain currents in this one…..!
“Oedipa had believed, long before leaving Kinneret, in some principle of the sea as redemption for Southern California (not, of course, for her own section of the state…”
Pynchon knows California, both the State and the state. In the complete paragraph he manages to skewer our own north/south divide, but also crystallizes the mythic juxtaposition of land and sea that has perpetually conjured a notion of Californian exceptionalism: inviolate, or at least cleansed, in Oedipa’s thinking, regardless of the degradation and depredation committed at its doorsteps.
The sentence on page 32 of my version of the book (Would then proceed at a KCUF record hop to look out . . . “) is bonkers. The length and structure of it, I mean. I kind of love it.
Also, I attempted to read a little bit of the Fallopian bit (the more innocent part) aloud to my six-month-old. Jury is still out, although she did attempt to close the book while I was reading . . .
Dug the West Coast Civil War “history” quite a bit (query on whether there’s much of any truth in it though one also feels a bit like a spoil sport to dig into it instead of just letting the story wash over you), less so the meandering retelling of the play. I’m glad Pynchon had fun parodying Shakespeare, but it certainly felt like one of those exercises that’s a lot more enjoyable to write that it is to then read.
I’m sure many here will disagree with me but “the wise knows himself to be a fool” so I take my foolish response to Pynchon in stride.
“ if one object were to bring to an end, her encapsulation in her tower… “ Is this the whole point, to end the encapsulation? Is this why Cecil coaxes me to meander?
yes!
I’m finding this book to be an oddly passive experience, like I’m just sitting there while the words fly past and I have no idea how I got from Point A to Point B. It’s almost like watching a movie, somehow. With that, I’m off to read this section again because I’m not quite sure how we got from that hotel to the play. Did I blink somewhere along the way?
How could 30 pages be so long! This is a pure placeholder so you don’t kick me out.
🙂 I believe in you!
It was great to finally get acquainted with the OG Yoyodyne (I originally heard of it via Buckaroo Banzai/Star Trek homages) this week, and slide more in sync with Pynchon’s style. I got a bit overwhelmed by his sheer sentence density the first week, but it’s almost starting to feel as familiar as my own inner dialogue now (both comforting and frightening). Once you let go and let that flood of words hit you, it all falls into a perfect (but chaotic) rhythm. Brilliant stuff, tho I’m having a hard time stopping at the mark each week. 🙂
I thought of Buckaroo Banzai too and then I thought I must be crazy. Thanks for mentioning it!
Dear Meanderers. How are you? Just thought I’d drop you a note. How’s your book coming? Guess that’s all for now.
How quaint the thought of a covert mail system that requires members to send at least one letter per week to “keep up some kind of reasonable volume.” These days you can just create an AI agent to generate daily commentary on life’s challenges for posting on Facebook or X and you’re playing your part in the latest production of The Courier’s Tragedy.
I’ll confess that I found the detailed account of TCT to be a bit… unnecessary. But Pynchon was clearly having a fun time writing it, so I just went along for the ride.
Mike “Fallopian” as a metaphor for the book’s communication pathways is really something.
Yoyodyne defense contractor (military industrial complex) name is awesome word play on the toy. Crazily, but Yoyodyne reminded me of Cyberdyne from the Terminator movies, and then I read that it is quite possible that Cyberdyne’s name was influenced by Yoyodyne, and Pynchon’s fake corporation may have become a template for later pop culture megacorps:
• Omni Consumer Products (OCP) in RoboCop
• Weyland-Yutani in Alien
• InGen in Jurassic Park
• Cyberdyne Systems in The Terminator
I would pay good money for a T-shirt with Pynchon’s word play randomly printed on it, from this book. Cecil should create it for sale to raise money for a cause to be determined.
Driblette’s (and I still love that he appears as a bodiless head in a veil of steam when he himself may be less than a full dribble) thoughts on the words vs the play & performance that contain them, the unspoken T-t-t, the mail call at the Scope full of messages empty of meaning to keep up volume, the graffitiless bathroom stall . . .
Perhaps we think of words as couriers of meaning, and the fact that they so often are not is the real Courier’s Tragedy
I never expected this book to take me back to childhood and my maternal grandmother reading opera synopsis out loud for me to make sure I understood what would be going on onstage at the Graz Opera; and just the way it happened then, it also happened now while reading chapter 3: I got lost in act 1 and never recovered…
I love that image. And I’m confident in your recovery! Great walk to that opera too…
Week 2 – “I want to see about the bones.”
so say we all!
Greetings Meanderers!
One thought I brought to this chapter from last week’s comments was the link between Oedipa and Oedipus, both out to solve the riddle of the Sphinx (or in this case, Shadow) and say “I will” to Fate’s design. The prize, I guess—Oedipa’s Quest—is “to bring an end to her encapsulation within the tower.” (p. 31)
Oedipa’s something of a riddle herself, wrapped up in that ridiculous rainbow of clothes during the guessing game with Metzger. Cashiered—the film with the reels out of sequence—is our first story within the story. This chapter’s dominated by our second: The Courier’s Tragedy. I wondered if both were meant as clues to how to read the mother story, The Crying of Lot 49.
First, I guess we have to get used to the reels being out of sequence. Oedipa sticks on that word “Trystero” in The Courier’s Tragedy before it has any reason to mean anything to her:
“The word hung in the air as the act ended and all lights were for a moment cut; hung in the dark to puzzle Oedipa Maas, but not yet to exert the power over her it was to.” (p. 58)
Next, we have to like puzzles. And take them in the playful spirit you might bring to a friendly bet. Or a daytime TV game show, with the prizes behind the curtain. Or an amateur play:
“Or rather, her attendance at some unique performance, prolonged as if it were the last of the night, something a little extra for whoever’d stayed this late. As if the breakaway gowns, net bras, jeweled garters and G-strings of historical figuration that would fall away were layered dense as Oedipa’s own street clothes in that game with Metzger in front of the Baby Igor movie;” (p. 40)
Finally, the fun’s in putting the different stories together to see if they fit, like trying to slot a puzzle piece into a likely looking blank. Are we, the readers, meant to be like Oedipa, who spots the parallel between Wharfinger’s play and the Beaconsfield filters, made from the bones of WW II soldiers “cut off and without communications” (p. 46), which is good as being dead in Pynchonland?
I’m still having fun, but I found a few to too many jewels on the garter this week. Fallopian’s Peter Pinguid Society? The clash between the “Disgruntled” and the Russians? Di Presso’s Tony Jaguar mob tale? The twisty Richard Wharfinger plot, told act by exhaustive act? All had me feeling like I do when I listen to Zappa—Frank sounds like he’s enjoying this more than I am.
Oh, Pynchon, you facile SOB. The mock-Shakespeare really dominates these pages, and I honestly felt like once the joke came across that I could skip past the plot. But maybe that’s wrong. Maybe we’re supposed to pay close attention to that plot. Or maybe the words are the couriers, and maybe Oedipa knows that, as does Driblette. But then it’s sort of sad (Trystero) that the words are what Oedipa and we are after, when, as Driblette says, she and others are
So hung up with words, words. You know where that play exists, not in that file cabinet, not in any paperback you’re looking for, but—” a hand emerged from the veil of shower-steam to indicate his suspended head—“in here. That’s what I’m for. To give the spirit flesh. The words, who cares? They’re rote noises to hold line bashes with, to get past the bone barriers around an actor’s memory, right? But the reality is in this head. Mine. I’m the projector at the planetarium, all the closed little universe visible in the circle of that stage is coming out of my mouth, eyes, sometimes other orifices also.”
But those bone barriers are the stuff of filters, which purify the killer substance, cultivated and manufactured by corporations, and words can get us past them, so we need those words. If the sea can’t redeem them all, maybe words can. Is this what Oedipa believes? What does she believe? What does she fear?
Minor throwaway thought – back in the day, most radio deejays had to engineer their broadcast as well, and the controls for modulation & such are called potentiators, but everyone calls them “pots”
Meaning, that when Oedipa receives the letter from Mucho, it is possibly not a misprint since Mucho is arguably a potsmaster
Throwaway on top of throwaway: the common acronym POTS, used increasingly as communications media became more varied: Plain Old Telephone Service. Maas Bell?
this is wonderful 2X addition — thanks both…
Weighing in late on Week 1 before I move on to Week 2, I have only a couple of things to add to what has already been said.
First, a quibble that a 1965 transistor radio’s circuit board was a much simpler array than a contemporary PC motherboard. It was a piece of particle board with a grid of holes drilled in it and a dozen or fewer discrete transistors wired through those holes and soldered together. I’d say it’s mostly this grid that Pynchon is referring to.
And speaking of transistor radios, I’m struck by Pynchon’s use of popular music as a subject of satire, a theme he continued at least through Vineland (where a child prodigy was said to “modulate like a little lounge singer,” IIRC) and Inherent Vice. The Paranoids’ “Serenade” has a gloomy grandeur, like Brian Wilson in a bipolar trough.
Back later with notes on ch.3.
The Courier’s Tragedy feels to me like eight or ten Pynchons were having a sleepover and decided to play And Then: you have to write the next clause of the story, and whoever ends the last sentence loses.
I had a Manny di Presso rookie card, back when he was fresh out of 3L and everybody thought of him as a slap hitter. Late ’70s, I dug out my collection and found out the pack was priceless but the card was worthless. In the ’60s they were shaping the gum like animal crackers, and the stick that came with Manny was in the form of an EMT wagon. I was just chewing the gum from my packs. None of us knew that Manny was the only player to get that shape, the most valuable gum in the world: the “ambulance Fleer”.
This passage, which made me chuckle, wonderfully exemplifies the absurdist tone of the book: “ … around noon or possibly toward dusk, the two ships sighted each other. One of them may have fired, if it did then the other responded … “ What are we supposed to believe? What is real?