American Postmodernism

I’m still very interested in the theory that postmodernism could be another stage of modernism itself. I found this discussed last week in Jameson’s work, and also this week in David Harvey’s article: “Does postmodernism, for example, represent a radical break with modernism, or is it simply a revolt within modernism against a certain form of ‘high modernism’…” Michael Berube reinforces this in his article when he says that: “…every attempt to define postmodern fiction in stylistic terms…winds up being a definition of modernist fiction as well.”

If I move forward on this assumption, then I definitely see modernist roots (although the idea of roots is antithetical to postmodernism!) in The Lathe of Heaven. Specifically, I see this in using a river as a metaphor for the unconscious. “To cross a river, ford it, wade it, swim it, use boat, ferry, bridge, airplane, to go upriver, to go downriver in the ceaseless renewal and beginning of current: all that makes sense. But in going under a river, something is involved which is, in the central meaning of the word, perverse. There are roads in the mind and outside it the mere elaborateness of which shows plainly that, to have got into this, a wrong turning must have been taken way back” (40). Here, it is easy to see George’s fear of his own unconscious, and his sense of foreboding about his upcoming work with Dr. Haber.

When I read this passage, I was reminded strongly of a similar passage in The Love of the Last Tycoon, by F. Scott Fitzgerald: “On top of a huge head of the god Siva, two women were floating down the current of an impromtu river. The idol had come loose from a set of Burma and it meandered earnestly on its way, stopping sometimes to waddle and bump in the shallows with the other debris of the tide” (26). I read this book in a class I took last semester on realism. Our class discussion centered on how the head of the floating Siva was a symbol of the unconscious, and how the rise of the symbolic (obviously a modernist tenet) gave rise to the unconscious – the idea that there is something there that can’t be seen. Le Guin touches on the idea of absence as presence, in the last pages of the novel: “The presentiment which had seized Heather as she looked down from the jade sky was now a presence. It was there. It was an area, or perhaps a time-period, a sort of emptiness. It was the presence of absence: an unquantifiable entity without qualities, into which all things fell and from which nothing came forth” (165).

This idea makes my thinking turn to the subject that Ada discussed in her blog – the power of language in the novel. Here, absence as presence is important because often what is not said is as important as what is said. As there is a language barrier between the humans and the Aliens, humans are often left to decide for themselves what Alien language means. When George asks Dr. Haber if he knows the term “iahklu'”, Dr. Haber responds: “Heard it. It’s untranslatable. You’ve decided it means ‘dream’, eh?” (160). George has taken a guess on what the Alien word means. This leads me to believe that perhaps the Aliens are a symbol of the unconscious (although I am not sure if Le Guin intended this), as we are often left to guess the meaning of our own dreams (a product of our unconscious).

This novel calls for the reader to question many concepts, including the definitions of insanity and reality. In the beginning of the book, we learn that George is sent to Voluntary Therapeutic Treatment for drug abuse, but the reason he is sent to Haber is because the medical school sends him “the nuts they [can’t] crack” (16). At that moment, the question of George’s sanity emerges; before that he was just a guy with a prescription drug problem.
What does it mean to be insane? In this book, it means that your version of history and reality is not the same as everyone else’s. Society defines what insane is, and if George is the only one with memories of how things used to be, his version of the past does not mesh with society’s memories of history and therefore his memories must be incorrect. This ties into the history aspect of postmodernism we were discussing the first day of class. History is important in this novel because your memories of the past determine how you view the present. George needs his history to be validated by someone else in order for him to trust his mind.
When he first starts seeing Haber and the psychologist denies that the picture on the wall has changed (from Mt. Hood to a horse), Orr recognizes that he is “alone: knowing that he was insane and knowing he was not insane, simultaneously and intensely” (35-36). If he simply accepts other people’s version of reality, denies what he knows, he is not insane. He flirts with the line between sane and insane when he later decides to ignore his memory that came with the new reality he dreamt: “He was aware that in thus relegating to irreality a major portion of the only reality, the only existence, that he in fact did have, he was running exactly the same risk that the insane mind runs: the loss of the sense of free will” (146). At another point in the novel, George tries to communicate to Haber that he does not have the power to change the world the way Haber wants, that he is not being difficult, but does in fact lack that aspect of control over his dreams. So if George does not have that free will, does that make him insane? He is being controlled by the memories of worlds that have continued to change over four years. He believes that the world has to be left alone, so free will does have to be surrendered in the sense of Haber’s attempts to create a Utopian society, because “We’re in this world, not against it. It doesn’t work to try to stand outside things and run them, that way…there is a way but you have to follow it” (136).
By the end of the novel, George and Haber have changed places to a degree. Haber is in a mental asylum because he cannot reconcile the “unreality” he knows with the way the world is because of his dreams. Haber is a higher degree of insane because he frightens the other patients just by being there. He has become a monster because he used recklessly used technology to change the world for the better and it has backfired. He has free will in a conscious state but not in his dreams, so he succumbs to insanity while George is freed because he asked for help when he dreamt and was able to cure himself. Only by giving up control was he able to stop his dreams and be able to gain control again. Le Guin punishes Haber with a severe degree of insanity because he would not give up control.

As the characters and, in turn, the reader travel through the multiple worlds that are the result of the dreams of Gregory Orr in Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven, the question arises as to the impulse for the changes and the mode through which the changes are enacted. In this text, language and the subtleties of meaning and expression play a key role in the development of the story and also contribute to one of the overarching themes- language is power and powerful and necessary and dangerous. Orr, the well-meaning, altruistic protagonist, is aware that the content of his dreams is “effective.” His role, at the onset, is passive, in the sense that, in the unconscious dream state Orr does not direct his dreams in one way or another, and thus does not actively change, through dreams, the paths of the world around him. He, in fact, attempts to suppress dreaming with drugs. Enter Dr. Haber, under whose care Orr is compulsorily placed. Once Haber figures out the gravity of the situation, he uses language, through persuasive statements uttered in the hypnotized state, to profoundly change the world around them. In a few instances, Le Guin expressively illustrates the subtlety of language and diction through example in the text. In Chapter 7, Heather Lelache hypnotizes Orr and states that he should dream that “Dr. Haber is benevolent…And you’ll dream that the Aliens aren’t out there on the Moon any longer” (109). In an eerie revelatory moment in the book, it becomes apparent that, because of Heather’s specific word choice, the Aliens were no longer on the Moon and now came to Earth. Another example of how language influences the passage of time and the realities of life, is when Dr. Haber implies in hypnosis that Orr should dream the elimination of all racial tensions. The result of such a dream is that people came in only one color- gray, which made them indistinguishable, and indicated that in the language of this world, the in-between was gray- the gray area.

Though not directly related, I am interested in the David Harvey reading, particularly in his presentation of Hassan’s “Schematic differences between modernism and postmodernism” and its juxtaposition of modernism’s concern with semantics and postmodernism’s concern with rhetoric. In analyzing the use of language as device in The Lathe of Heaven, one can see the suggestion of postmodern in the treatment of language as rhetoric. The definition of “rhetoric” in the Oxford English Dictionary is: “The art of using language so as to persuade or influence others; the body of rules to be observed by a speaker or writer in order that he may express himself with eloquence.” If one adheres to the idea that the postmodern text relies and revels in rhetoric, it seems that the subtleties of language and the effects it has on events in The Lathe of Heaven would exemplify such a conclusion.

I too found the reflexivity to be the most interesting aspect of this week’s text. However, it was the existence of the Aldebaranians that troubled me the most. While it could be argued that they were created by Orr to fulfill his need of help and resolution (much like Josh argues that Dr. Haber is a necessary component of the psyche), it’s problematic that they actually had a solution. If we are to read this meta-SF text in this manner, Orr had the solution to his problem all along (like Dorothy and her gaudy slippers).

For some reason, this doesn’t sit well with me… Orr was the jellyfish in the water, the helpless tool.

I would argue that this text is not about the wants and needs of Orr, Dr. Haber, or the dreaming rocks, but rather the wants and needs of Ursula K. Le Guin. Dr. Haber exists because novels need an antagonist, and aliens with solutions exist because novels need resolution. Orr reflects the horror of a self-aware character (if we take this a lot further than I would care to, Orr represents the horror of a character being worked through multiple drafts of a SF novel.) I had to come to this conclusion, otherwise I would be stuck in the horror of a “chicken or the egg” quandary involving Orr and Er’ perrehnne.

At the risk of drastically changing the subject with an insufficient transitional sentence, I would like to address Michael Berube’s article. I really don’t understand his particular beef. In terms of postmodern philosophy, architecture, art (as demonstrated in the Harvey chapter we were assigned), etc., I understand that we are mired in a nebulous world that is uncomfortably described as “postmodern.” However, in terms of literature’s use of this term, it seems relatively straightforward. Teachers break time periods into movements, and call those movements names. Why should the simple fact that elements of pomo’s distinctive characteristics exist in previous novels trouble the label more than any other movement? True, Don Quixote, The Odyssey and even the Bible are reflexive; does this mean we should scrap the whole project? For that matter, doesn’t every literary movement have predecessors that shared similar traits? Isn’t the entire modernist movement predicated on a neo-classical sensibility?

There is something starkly different between the writings of Faulkner, Eliot and cummings and the texts produced by Vonnegut, Vollmann and Pynchon. That difference needs a name. My teachers called it postmodernism. While it may be useful to trouble this distinction, I find it no more useful than troubling any categories in all of literature. However, to do so would be very postmodern (not to mention quixotic).

The snow white good guy; the mad evil scientist; the noble attorney; a doomsday future-present, now the past, who’s predictions have yet to come to pass—stop me if you’ve heard this one before. This book, ostensibly about Taoism, follows the same moral line that just about every other Sci-fi story ever has—namely that helping always hurts, rationalizing leads to disaster, and good intentions always breed bad results. Whether this fact is true to life is, quite frankly, completely meaningless in terms of art. I have personally learned this lesson so many times now that I actually encourage the opposite to happen—I pray that one day the evil scientist gets everything he desires while the good, earnest people scratch their heads at the breakdown of their clichéd logic. “Lathe,” however, is hardly a tragedy
As close as I can guess, Le Guin must have been reading Lao Tse and “1984,” eaten a tad too much granola, and fallen asleep to the indigestion that inspired this nightmare of a book. Lathe is nothing more than a stale allegory. What might pass for postmodernism is heaped under a sheet of cliches as old as fiction itself. Orr, who represents the Taoist ideal of the uncarved block (see: The Tao of Pooh by Hoffman) runs up against a not so well-hidden Republican (he’s admittedly pro-life, and pro-population growth) in the form of Doc Haber. Haber is little more than a cartoon bad guy, who we are expected, unlike actual cartoon bad guys, to take seriously. As in all melodrama, the bad guy here gets what’s coming to him in the end, and the good guy gets the girl. Hurray!!! There’s also a neat little lesson where we learn, that one about life not being perfect, but if we try to perfect it, it will be even more imperfect. Then the Taoist alien imparts a little wisdom about coming and going, and we feel all gooey inside. Hurray!!!
Forgive me a moment of self-contradiction so that I can mention that a great streak of cartoon villainy certainly runs through our current Head of State and his self-appointed staff, who seem Hell-bent on becoming the cliché that writer’s of Le Guin’s type clamor for. Nixon, naturally, fit the same bill when the book was written. But there have always been buffoons in leadership positions, indeed, that might be the defining characteristic of leadership positions. After all, Haber becomes a powerful leader by being a buffoon. Anyway, what I really mean to say is: this is a book of ideas, and is really nothing more than liberal propaganda.

Carl Malmgren, in his essay “Meta-SF: The Examples of Dick, LeGuin, and Russ,” points out that George Orr continually recreates Dr. Haber in all of his dreams. Despite Orr’s power to erase millions of people through his effective dreaming, he doesn’t erase Haber. Malmgren goes on to discuss what this means for LeGuin as an author. For Malmgren, The Lathe of Heaven is a work of meta-fiction in the sense that the whole novel acts as a comment on the role of the SF writer. What’s more interesting to me, however, is the complex psychological economy opened up by Malmgren’s initial insight. Despite his seeming anxiety, Orr ensures that Haber survives, suggesting that Haber is crucial to Orr’s psychological well-being. In fact, one could argue that Haber isn’t a real person at all, but simply a portion of Orr’s psyche. Within Freud’s structural psychodynamic theory, the Haber figure seems analogous to the superego – an interior, often putative construct fashioned out of social regulations and added to the restrictions enforced by the individual’s father. But instead of demanding that the individual abide by society’s rules, the superego in the novel seems to demand that society conform to its own ideals. In this way, Orr can be seen to offload his visions of social reformation onto a villainous, anthropomorphized aspect of himself. Perhaps this drive is partially due to the growing fatigue with collective social movements in the 1960s that, although infused with positive goals, could be seen as a cause of civil unrest. Balance this leftist version of social transformation with burgeoning Nixonian conservatism and there become two world-transforming visions in conflict. Honestly, I don’t know where this is going, but sometimes it seems like the novel is also unsure. The book seems to be in great conflict with itself. One thing that can be said is that LeGuin, through George Orr, seems to emphasize the importance of honest though sometimes imperfect communication (as seen in Orr’s efforts with the aliens) and local connections (e.g. with Heather Lelache) over a theoretical ideal that tramples the particular. At the end of the novel, an alien tells George “You have lived well,” which underscores the importance of lived life over the concept of life.

A small preface: I wrote this response prior to my first class, last evening, in the American Postmodern. I would still like to post my immediate thoughts to the text, although, now my understanding of the postmodern is changing, and I’m pretty sure that my reaction to the shiftiness within Oedipa’s story (and maybe not her story at all) was Pynchon’s intention for his readers. So, here it is:

While reading The Crying of Lot 49, I wondered whether I, like Oedipa Maas, was searching, as human beings tend to do, for meaning, which may be non-existent in this novella. Throughout the novella, I found myself attempting to make connections between various “clues” that Oedipa stumbled upon in her own attempt to find out what happened when her lover Pierce named her executrix of his estate. Of these many dead-end searches for connections between things, the first I came across was Oedipa’s observation that her face matched that of a pornographic nymph, which lit up a sign at a motel she was staying at. Perhaps, I thought, we are supposed to recognize Oedipa’s perception of herself as a bit of a sex nymph, and considering that shortly after she sleeps with Metzger/ Baby Igor this analysis seemed probable. This however, is Oedipa’s only impulsive sexual deed in the novella, and later seems to hold little meaning for her in the story. The first of many, this scene served as a way to communicate the story’s resistance to a traditional fiction story’s manner of relaying meaning (which I’d define as a writer positioning scenes, characters, themes, narrative, plot, and more in such a way that a reader can walk away knowing that his/her connections between these different elements constructs the story’s overall meaning).
When Oedipa realizes she won her bet with Metzger, she cries as Metzger reveals that Pierce said she wouldn’t be easy. I felt I should stop myself from trying to understand this statement as a straightforward or even metaphorical statement that would appear in a traditional short story, such as one written by someone like Joyce Carol Oates or someone like that. But the questions that crossed my mind included: Does Pierce mean that Oedipa is not easy to seduce? Does he mean she is not easy to understand, reach, communicate with, manipulate? If these meanings are possible, then they may help explain the paranoia that Oedipa confronts in herself throughout the novella and throughout her search for some form of meaning in this whole “executor of real estate/ American mogul; i.e. Pierce Inverarity” ordeal.

As a postmodern text, Pynchon’s novel fits the thumbnail sketch parameters Dr. Sample gave us in class: highly self-conscious style; defies tradition; foregrounded literature/language; artist is alienated. As I conclude this novel (my first foray into the Pynchon literary landscape, I must confess that I need to read it again to make sense of it as a novel. Perhaps I am on to something here. It is not supposed to make sense in the normal sense of literary analysis. The ending is totally ambiguous. One does not know what will happen to Oedipa (a female version of the Oedipus of the classic Greek tragedy by Sophocles whose protagonist is searching for the truth of his identity, a legitimate connection, his true name) at the end. I get the quest theme, though. I get the significance of names and naming and how Pynchon uses irony as a device in his naming schema. But as an experience of reading, I felt like Pynchon was making it up as he went along, which was disconcerting to say the least. As a reader, I was in a constant spiraling pattern trying to find meaning as I went along. The notion of “a descending angel” suggested by Passerine’s arm-spreading gesture could mean death for Oedipa at the end, but I am not certain. Oedipa as character seems both alienated and connected at the points in the novel, but she never makes an authentic and lasting connection, despite her best efforts. I don’t get the title. What is the crying of lot 49? At the close of chapter 1, I hear Oedipa raise the central question of her life quest that relates to crying and to her buffered insulated existence that is “absent of intensity” ( 10-12). I can trace the references to crying throughout the novel. All in all, this was not a successful experience for me.

So much is being said about “The Crying of Lot 49”, I figure, why not be different and look at Jameson’s article. The problem with that is there is WAYYYY to much to go into any great detail. The main point that kept grabbing my attention is the constant reference to architecture. The fact that Jameson credits architecture as one of the first modes of postmodernism shows how important expression is. There is a quote from Mies van der Rohe that I love, “Skyscrapers reveal their bold structural pattern during construction. Only then does the gigantic steel web seem impressive. When the outer walls are put in place, the structural system, which is the basis of all artistic design, is hidden by a chaos of meaningless and trivial forms… We can see the new structural principles most clearly when we use glass in place of the outer walls, which is feasible today since in a skeleton building these outer walls do not carry weight.” (Mies van der Rohe. from Martin Pawley, introduction and notes. Library of Contemporary Architects: Mies van der Rohe. p12.)
The skeletal frame of the building can be in any form, much like postmodernism can take on writing, art, music, even capitalist ideals and express them. Mies van der Rohe let the viewer see the insides of his buildings. Gehry’s process starts with sketches that look like they are thrown onto paper and then he designs in a matter that conforms to the initial idea and not the limitations that arise. He adapts to each new idea.
I think Jameson sees this in postmodernism in general as well. on pg. 72 as he grapples with explaining Lacan, he moves from language to biology, then back to the ideas of paternal authority represented in linguistic function (the Name-of-the-Father). I think this is why I see postmodernism as one big conglomerate. It cannot be pinned down, wrestled with until it gives you a definite idea of what it is, or finagled into something tangible. As Jameson references architecture on pg. 80 he says, “The newer architecture therefor-like many of the other cultural products I have evoked in the preceding remarks-stands as something like an imperative to grow new organs, to expand our sensorium and our body to some new as yet unimaginable, perhaps ultimately impossible, dimensions”. For anyone who has seen a Gehry building, you’ll understand just how relevant this idea is in a postmodern sense.

first, a word on the delillo short short, which i thought was quite brilliant. delillo challenges hierarchies of what are important human actions, and democratizes these actions by sandwiching “killing a roach” between “conteplating an abortion” and “romantic love.” this is an extremely liberating feeling for the reader because it semiotically challenges the “natural” priviliging of “love” and “abortion” over having, say, “roast beef and mashed potatoes.” of course, reading this short simply as a satiric take on what we would call now a “made-for-tv-movie” is fine, as are the infinite other ‘readings’ of this story.
second, and related, is the question of whether pynchon is saying a whole lot of nothing or a grand something. the main plot of the story is whether oedipa can grasp any firm solid truth. throughout, i felt that pynchon revealed the real ‘truths’ about the san narciso (and thus american) landscape, that, however, his characters were never able to grasp. the recurring imagery of drinking, eating, and smoking human bones, the smog, the electronic circuitry of city planning, the two towering missiles that decorated the yoyodyne building. at once, this landscape seems both threatening and benign, as the characters gloss over these realities in a frenzied and confused search for higher truths. pynchon’s careful use of adjectives like ‘gossamer’ (41) and ‘dross’ (76) indicate what we talked about in the first class: that the postmodern american landscape is a glossed over surface, with no depth, nothing of substance.
jameson is describing this “break” in history, when things began to lose their depth, their modernist meaning, and he discusses painting, photography, architecture, and cartogrpahy, among other things. new manifestations of cultural production in these areas are simply images, that have lost their link to old world meaning. where the two missiles at the entrance of yoydyne no longer signify war, crisis, or death, but rather serve as a garnish to an already inundated militaristic landscape, such as a dandelion would garnish a delicious glass of human bone aged dandelion wine.

As with the poetry of John Ashbery, I believe Pynchon to be tremendously gifted, and very technically proficient–yet, ultimately hollow. There are some wonderful things in “Lot” –the description of “The Courier’s Tragedy,” Oedipa’s wanderings around San Francisco, and especially his telling of the founder of IA. But there are moments of extreme boredom, when you feel the weight of his need to be impressive and profound. It is then, when his detail takes a turn away from the funny and the poetic; when it delves into tediousness; that Pynchon loses my interest, and ultimately my fondness for his book. I had the same problem with Vineland, which I never finished. The first fifty pages of that novel were excellent, but then, out of a seeming distrust of telling a somewhat straightforward story he turns into a writer working hard to be weird, difficult, and Joycean. “Lot” would be vastly improved without these breakdowns. Or perhaps the breakdowns are what make Pynchon what he is–namely, not near Nabokov, and not quite Donald Barthelme. Nabokov (whom Pynchon once took an English class from at Cornell) spins his stories on a circle, and runs circles around Pynchon’s formidable prose. Conversely, “Lot” seems lost, with every layer of Oedipa’s correspondence randomly arriving and then fanning out–with more than the occasional strand never being heard from again. Barthelme, meanwhile, hits all the same notes as TP, but does it with a relaxed air and a readability that makes one long for him while enduring the final 49 pages of this novel. I will say, however, that Pynchon can be wonderfully poetic at times, and his sense of humor is often charming. “Lot” certainly deserves a rereading, owing to its difficulty, and I, too, admit to being lost at times with its Trystero quest. But I was so bored with the back part of the book that I wonder if I’ll ever make it through a second time.

I think it’s appropriate that Pynchon made his main character Oedipa, for a woman seems to be the most alienated in this postmodern society. Capitalistic Postmodern American society seems to need expansion and commodities in the same way Inverarity feels “the need to possess, to alter the land” (148). The men in Lot 49 are scientists, capitalist, attorneys, etc. while women are left to attend Tupperware parties and be sexual objects. Oedipa may be the novel’s only strong female character; however, this is only because she is the protagonist. A list of the women in the novel goes as such: Oedipa, a married, adulterous woman. Francesca, incestuous and almost oedipal (coincidence?). Serge’s girlfriend, a 15-year-old who ran off with an aging Metzger. The women at The Scope, twined about Fallopian’s body like whores. Grace Bortz, a mother who can’t seem to control her children. All of the above are either sexual conquests or mother-figures since there is no place for them in society and they, like Oedipa, would be alienated if they tried for more. After all, American society is only concerned with reproduction, right?

It seems that Oedipa’s only power over the men in the novel is her sexuality. She is repeated referred to as Inverarity’s mistress, strips for Metzger in order to get the “truth” out of him, and when she can be no help to Nefestis and his demon, his immediate response is sexual intercourse. When posing as “Arnold Snarb” in The Greek Way (which, by the way, also contains no women as it is a gay bar), Oedipa finds that a sect of society does not even want her for sex…the man she meets has no need for her either mentally or sexually.

So what are we to learn from this? Well, Oedipa’s struggle to find herself in a society that seems to only have a superficial use for her may represent the alienated and lost individual in a society where mass production and “more” or mucho maas (Much more) is valued over singularity or individualism. Also, it may be commenting on the fact that, as sex becomes less and less of a taboo in postmodern culture, women themselves are becoming a commodity.

Right now I feel as if I’m making a bit of a stretch. I feel I need more time to flesh out my thoughts, but alas I only finished reading today (having felt the same road blocks as Karen).

On a final note: I have Two questions.
1. I was actually going to write something similar (although not quite so eloquent) as Julie/Jules’ post about the nature of Trystero and the “muted horn” until I was too late and she got there first…One thing I’d like to add though is that I feel it’s ironic that Pynchon has the characters in his novel place their letters of dissent in a trashcan labled “WASTE.” Is it a waste, this search for the truth? Is it a waste to dissent? Are we all going to be taken, like it or not, by mainstream society (or, as Julie/Jules puts it, “Whole Foods Culture”)?
2. Is Trystero mainstream? Trystero itself seems to mutate and change throughout history in order to meet its needs in each new society. Perhaps it represents the oppression of the revolution in each society that is systematically dominated at each step by the more conservative sect? The more powerful agents?

First, I’d like to say that I too found the novel to be extremely difficult to manage/understand. The scenes/conversations moved in such a dreamlike manner that it often times made it difficult to digest the concepts presented. So Karen, you were not alone. ?

I found myself giving Pynchon’s choice in names/titles a lot of thought. Not only the initial naming process, but also the way that the spelling of Tristero/Trysteo changed throughout the novel. Perhaps I missed some sort of significance between the two, but from what I could tell Tristero/Trystero was relatively interchangeable. I could find little distinguishing difference between the use. It was mentioned that “triste” means sad in Spanish, and yet “tryst” also means old lovers’ meeting in well, English. It might be a stretch, but Oedipa’s entire journey revolves around becoming reacquainted with her mysterious and deceased old boyfriend (on at least one level). Through her “investigation” of sorts, she’s discovering a whole new identity to Inverarity. Thus the separate spellings. Even the spelling of “W.A.S.T.E.” versus just regular old “WASTE.” There isn’t a consensus on whether to punctuate or not. Perhaps there is absolutely no significance to these issues, or perhaps it serves to merely solidify the lack of truth/consistency/identity.

The same train of thought leads to the flexible nature of each individual character’s identity either outwardly or through physical changes in names. Towards the end when Mucho calls Oedipa “Edna” instead and then to the stranger at Greek Way she is introduced as Arnold Snarb. And then on page 140, in the midst of Oedipa’s inner-revelations, it says “Change your name to Miles, Dean, Serge, and/or Leonard… Either way, they’ll call it paranoia.” These changes are significant examples of the loss of individual that has been previously discussed. Many of the characters go through transformations during the course of the novel, or perhaps they are never established as individuals in the first place. Such as the paranoids. They are a group of boys who have no distinguishing characteristics from the other. Inverarity is remembered as having several different names/accents/personalities. Metzger runs off with a 15-year-old out of the blue after seeming like a genuinely normal person. Mucho develops an entirely new persona. Dr. Hilarious looses himself as well. I’m not really sure how to tie all of these thoughts together, but I am certain that it has something to do with the theme of transparent identities and the loss of individuality.

OR since the story is told basically through Oedipa’s perspective, then perhaps these characters fail to establish a firm identity because their previous personalities were mere hallucinations. Such as the creepy way that Metzger fails to acknowledge he and Oedipa’s semi-relationship when he runs off with the young girl. Oedipa apparently shared a rather significant relationship with Inverarity, and yet she doesn’t seem to know anything about him. The characters tend to sweep in and out of the storyline in what literally felt like a dreamlike state. Oedipa flowed from one encounter to the next and I kept finding myself wondering if the whole thing wasn’t merely a dream. The scene when she is swept into the dance with the deaf-mute crowd dressed in Chinese communist attire was very, very dreamlike. And then after she runs from her dancing partner, the very next sentence reads, “Next day, after twelve hours of sleep and no dreams to speak of… (107).” Of course, whether the entire story was a dream or not is irrelevant, but when thinking of how the characters transformed with such lack of individuality, it made me think of imaginary encounters such as through dreams and/or halluncinations.

Well, I seem to be the only one who found untangling this “mystery” completely baffling. I found Pynchon’s lack of concern for appropriate punctuation or clarification of pronouns to be incredible stumbling blocks. It took me a good fifty pages to finally get into a rhythm where I could actually piece together what Pynchon must have been trying to say in his sentences. That aside…

Several people have commented on the ending or lack thereof. Because of our discussion in class, I was actually expecting an inconclusive ending; in fact, I thought we got more out of the ending than I was expecting, based on our discussion. I would not have been surprised, if we had been left in the midst of Oedipa’s inability to distinguish reality from imagination or the ultimate meaning of all she had experienced – perhaps in the wake of the phonecall with the nameless man at the Greek Way. I will admit, though, that I prefer a clear, clean ending. That being said, with the ending as it was, I felt it gave me as a reader the opportunity to make Oedipa’s experience real or forged, depending on what I wanted the “truth” to be – if Pynchon had revealed, for example, that Cohen had been the secret bidder (or someone else we already knew) as part of the joke or to further the joke, I would not be able to change that “fact.” As the story ends, I can invent my own version of what transpires after the doors close (including the possibility that Oedipa is locked into a room of men cloaked in black – the Tristero themselves there to silence her…or make her one of their own…) On a different note, I found Pynchon’s choice of ending the entire novel with the title/the title’s explanation a bit forced and lame, to be honest. I was moderately okay with the classification of the stamp collection as “lot 49” (145) and of Cohen’s explanation of the use of “cries” (151) just prior to the auction, but the use of the entire line at the end for me felt compeltely contrived and made me feel as though Pynchon was not sure I would have the ability to put two-and-two together, one of the few understandings I DID manage to have while reading. I like for a title to hold meaning, so throughout my reading, I charted all of the uses of “lot” to try to come up with my own understanding of the title. I thought I was going to come to some magnificent and transcendent “truth” (or “lack of truth”) about the metaphorical meaning of the “crying of lot 49.” I was therefore deeply disappointed to have it so obviously spelled out for me in the end. The uses of “lot” include (the actual first reference of stamps being divided into groupings or “lots”) – “[the stamps] cheated as she by death, about to be broken up into lots…” (32); (during the boat/picnic day) “They wandered all in a loose pattern down the beach toward a small marina for what boat owners didn’t have lots directly on the water” (41); (during her participation in the Yoyodyne stockholders’ meeting) “They gave her a round white visitor’s badge at one of the gates, and she parked in an enormous lot next to a quonset building…” (65); (during Mucho’s LSD trip) “The bad dream that I used to have all the time, about the car lot, remember that?” (118); (during the conversation about swastika armbands with the government surplus outlet owner) “We’re working it in with the back-to-school campaign, lot of 37 longs, you know, teenage kid sizes” (123). After Mucho’s last statement, about the car lot of his former employment, I began to think of all of the people in Oedipa’s life as being a grouping or “lot” and was leaning toward some metaphorical weeping of the misfortunate people who had served as representations of society throughout the novel.

My parting thoughts for this round revolve around my expectation for the Tristero to represent some overall significant movement for Pynchon. I felt as if the entire novel was full of potential political/societal statements and that they would lead ultimately to a significance in “tristero.” That was one answer I WAS waiting for from Pynchon, but which I felt remained essentially unanswered. I like the posts that have discussed the idea of the individual vs. the masses, and I found it actually ironic that julie/jules typed “Oedipa Mass” instead of “Oedipa Maas” – I am uncertain about Pynchon’s purpose in name choices throughout the novel; however, it does seem clear that Oedipa is on a constant search for individualism (in herself and in others) among the masses. As to the meaning of Tristero, with the explanation of its “real origin” on p. 131, it has a Spanish origin. And “triste” in Spanish means “sad.” I found this connection/coincidence/choice particularly interesting, as Oedipa’s attempts to unravel her halluciantions and experiences of reality leave her in a state of isolation, lonliness, and really, sadness up until she resolves to attend the auction.