American Postmodernism

Pyncheon’s Crying of Lot 49 begins with a vivid description of the “insulated” Oedipa Mass. Though this novel was published in 1965, she is the product of, what I call, ‘The Whole Foods culture’ that runs rampant through mainstream America. Tupperwear parties and Scientific American merely cap the iceburg of the dual nature of Inverarity’s America, a culture that is embedded in the modern corporate world exemplified by San Narcisco, that yields a ‘wasted’ universe of “the disinherited” or dispossed of San Francisco, and those such as Mike Fallopian and Pierce Inverarity, who appear to succeed in the circuitry of the mainstream world, and yet also seem to circumvent it through their connections to the enigmatic Tristero.
Tristero, whether it is real or ‘a forgery,’ in the same way Genghis Cohen refers to the W.A.S.T.E./ Tristero stamps as “forgeries” when compared to the U.S. Postal Service stamps, emboddies the postmodern reaction to the homogeneity and the safe reality of the mainstream that has been structurally laid down as a ‘buffer’ between everyday human life, and “the underlying truth.’ The truth is as obscure and inaccessible as the Tristero. Truth in the form of ‘hard’ evidence is rendered indecipherable and it cannot be discerned with a ready made explanation, but it does include the “swirl of houses and streets” of our cookie cutter, ‘circuit card’ communites and “the heiroglyphic sense of concealed meaning” that lies beneathe.
The postmodern reaction to mainstream in the novel is connected by the Tristero symbol of the muted post horn. However, the W.A.S.T.E. system, assuming that it is exists, is a discordant opposition without a clear motive or plan for resolution. W.A.S.T.E. is an alternative that offers no alternative solution. Each person Oedipa encounters that obides by some cause affiliated with the symbol or is in some way connected to the muted post horn, has their own sense of the emblem’s history in terms of how it relates to his immediate cause, eventhough none of these men appear to know the true history of the symbol, if there is one. Objective reality or truth is not the point. Perception of truth as applied to one’s identity and the expression of that identity is of significance. For example, Mike Fallopian, an employee of Yoyodine, recieves letters through the Tristero that bear no real message or significance. He, nor any of the employees at Yoyodine who use the alternative postal system, express anything of significance. They don’t attempt to change the systems in which they live and make them any better. He is rebelling for the sake of rebelling, and it appears, for no other reason. However, Fallopian is an inconsistent, untrustworthy character, as are all of the men in the novel, since he ultimately embraces corporate showmanship and suggests that Tristero is all in her head. The member of the “Inamorati Anonymous” that Oedipa, as Arnold Snarb, meets at the Greek Way, wears the symbol in honor of a former suicidal executive who “was automated out of job” and blames “love” for his “disinherited” state as a ‘dithering executive’ that can’t come to a “decision without first hearing the ideas of a committee.” Love had nothing to do with the executive’s misfortunes, but he founded the I.A., to which members subscribe because, feeling alienated, they identify with a “society of isolates… a whole underworld of failed suicides.” The group, however, chooses to alienate itself even further rather than make a conscious effort to take a stand against a society that renders them incompetent, such as the case of the executive that attempted to torch himself. According to Oedipa’s findings, the original Tristero, possibly nothing more than a Spanish misanthrope who desired to undermine the elitist, mainstream Thurn and Taxis postal system that had “disinherited” him from wealth and power. He, in turn, created a band of terrorists to set up an alternative “power spectrum,” that happens to be no better than what it opposes. Oedipa, whether she believes she’s awake, or hung up in a nightmare, or some combination of both realities, navigates through these and many other experiences, which includes her dealings with her husband Mucho, who was initially, a “sensitve” car salesman who could not except the “motorized, metal extensions” of the hopelessly impoverished, but who ultimately ‘looses his identity’ to L.S.D. , prescribed to him by one Dr. Hilarious, who seems to have been involved with the county hospitals and government in some conspiracy to eliminate individuation. This easily connects to Stanley Kotek’s qualms with Yoyodine Inc. and its policy toward the creativity of the individual employee. While Oedipa is harassed by Hilarious to take L.S.D. to soothe anxiety, a very real marker of personhood regardless of its sometimes negative consequences, L.S.D. also eliminates a sense of the individual self, which Mucho looses. Expression of the individuated self is, in fact, creativity, the ability to create or invent. Yoyodyne forces its employees to sign a patent agreement which stipulates that employees, if they do create, cannot take credit for their individual expression. It is therefore labeled a product of “teamwork” and the individual is lost in the mix. However, Koteks as does Fallopian, Driblette, Metzger, the sleezy lawyer, Mucho and Hilarious all accept their fates by either surrendering to the complete assimilation of self with everything else or die. Then there’s Dr. Hilarious, who is overtaken by the paranoia hyper self-consiousness yields. He seems to individuate too much since he comes to believe that he is the locus of all plots and conspiracies due to his service to the Nazi’a at Buchenwald. All are symptoms of the postmodern reaction to modern societal structures. Oedipa doesn’t seem to accept any of these reactions as viable or useful since they further the alienation of those around her and deepen her own sense of isolation.
Though these many causes attached to Tristero diverge according to separate mythologies, supposing “there really was a Tristero…then by that continuity, she might have found The Tristero anywhere in her Republic, through any of a hundred lightly-concealed entranceways, a hundred alienations, if only she’d looked.” What is truth beyond our own perceptions and personal myths that we hold onto? Whether Tristero exists as a tangibly real enitity that levies its power along the dispensation of the myriad of mythologies of “the disinherieted” or whether it is Inverarity’s perverse attempt “to survive death, as a paranoia: a pure conspiracy against someone he loved,” Oedipa is remarkably changed. At the conclusion of the novel, regardless of her isolation and her sense of loss, since she can no longer trust in the people or the superficial ‘matirx’ of ‘Kinneret towers’ and postmodern American institutions that have kept her “insulated” and quiet, like Tristero itself, she has gained a clearer sense of self since she can never go back to her former, “buffered” way of life. The novel, though it appears cyclical in terms of her hunt for the cold, hard facts of Tristero, which may not exist at all in any situation in the postmodern world, it is not cyclical because she chooses to finally act on behalf of her own self interest. She attends the Crying of Lot 49, the point at which she will truly finds out the significance of the Tristero. She decides to take action and move toward some semblence of reconciliation, a move that none of the diverse constituents of the Tristero symbol or the Tristero system itself has accomplished. Tristero seeks to remain silent, to hide, to pillage society in the darkness, and yet never to take responsibility for its actions, and therefore, never gain a unique identity that can express its discontent, let alone resolve the “disinherited” status of its loosely affiliated, in some cases grossly misguided, memebers. Contrarily, Oedipa will no longer accept what she is told to believe, from any side. She wants to know, for herself, the underlying continuity between “the Whole Foods” culture of San Narcisco and Kinneret Among the Pines and its inadequate, silent, diffuse, and immoblized oppostion, the Tristero. She desires a new identity, individuated, defined, competent as a woman as well as an American, and resourceful even when the given resources are questionable. At the end, standing “in a patch of sun, among brilliant rising and falling poinst of dust” before she enters Lot 49, she is the only woman, highly distinquishable among the men in “black mohair…pale, cruel faces.” She is ready to move forward, to take action on behalf of her responsibility as ‘executrix’, to take responsibility for who she wants to be in relation to the world of the entrenced and the isolates, who ever that may be.

As you may notice (or soon will), a number of the selected readings for this course are narratives that critique what could be called the culture of subculture. In an attempt not to ruin the theatrics of the future readings for the rest of the class, I’ll say only that a recurring theme amongst several of the readings is the indirect pervasiveness of intended counterculture movements. In more than one case throughout the selected readings, a counterculture movement is established with certain goals and edicts in mind, yet is somehow hijacked or co-opted along the way to become something other than what is originally intended.

Pynchon, in The Crying of Lot 49, critiques the culture of subculture to comment existentially on both the emergence and flimsiness of the ready-made subculture. Pynchon constructs his narrative in a way that never explicitly outs the Trystero mail subculture as accidental, but he allows for the idea that it could be, which opens up avenues of discourse on the topic. One could be subcultures’ tendencies towards various types of subdivision. For instance, as Oedipa encounters the various factions of the Trystero subculture, it’s interesting to note how Pynchon seems to be using Trystero as a framework to point out how subcultures inevitably give way to further subcultures, such as the inamoratos or that of Maxwell’s Demon (which subdivides even further to “sensitives”). By compounding what is already a convoluted subculture into further (and seemingly unrelated) subcultures, what is Pynchon saying about the nature of counter-movements? Is showning their serial lower factioning a way to comment on subcultures as mere outlets for demagogues, or as small staples of a necessary opposition to traditional thought?

One instance where subculturism has followed similar paths to Trystero would be that of the the modern polyamorist. In an essay for the online magazine Nerve entitled “Husbands and Wives,” writer Meghan Daum profiled the Ravenheart family, who consist of “three men, all heterosexual, and three women, all bisexual.” They no doubt belong to the polyamorist subculture, but ascribe to the subdivision that belongs to the Church of All Worlds, which uses as a near-bible ritualistic behaviors from Robert Heinlein’s 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land to govern their sect of polyamory. Daum’s profile of the Ravenhearts certainly highlights the argument of demagogue versus bona fide movement, as well as questions the Ravenhearts’ interpretation of the original intent of polyamory. I’m interested to see what the rest of you think about these aspects of counterculturalism as they relate to postmodernist thought.

Note: “Husbands & Wives” by Meghan Daum was revised and retitled as “According to the Women I’m Fairly Pretty” for her essay collection, My Misspent Youth.

The issue of the circular nature of narrative in The Crying of Lot 49 is poignantly addressed in Carolyn’s posting. I am specifically referring to the passage she cites, and then expounds through a closer reading of not just the content of the conversation, but the implications that such a circular though has not only in the book, but also as a mode of explication for the author. Carolyn writes, “In this passage, Pynchon could be seen as pointing out that all the basic storylines have been done, so they will just continue to repeat themselves. It’s the challenge of the creator to bring something new to them.” The idea that a conversation between two characters is not only a vehicle for moving plot, but is also a comment on the form of narrative and ways that an author addresses issues of originality, is one that looks at the text as something other and more than the text itself.
Along those lines, and working with the question of narrative form in postmodern works, I would like to address the issue of repetition. In Don DeLillo’s story “Coming Sun. Mon. Tues.” my immediate reaction to repetition and the use of “or” to indicate place and time is to view that as an indication of the arbitrariness of such details (where the characters are) and the implications of such an approach. DeLillo writes, describing the abortionist, “He has a moustache and long, elegant fingers” (392). Then a few sentences later describes a series of tall men, “He is interviewed by a series of tall men with elegant fingers” (392). Repetition is a literary device that can emphasize and draw attention. In excess, repetition can indicate the arbitrary nature of what is being repeated. I don’t think that in the case of the men with “long elegant fingers” in DeLillo’s story or the repetition in the circularity of Pynchon’s narrative indicates arbitrariness of what is being described, but instead as in Andy Warhol’s Campell’s Soup Cans, repetition allows the audience to decipher which of the elements, literary or artistic, are interchangeable, and which cannot stand one without the other and the other, in order to call attention to the object, person, thing.

I agree with Kira that the novel was circular and I found a great example of this just in the conversations Oedipa has with other people. When she and Metzger are watching the movie he starred in as a child, he talks about being an actor and lawyer, and how they end up getting blurred: “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” (21-22). Then Metzger goes on to discuss a movie based on his life story, with his actor-lawyer friend playing the part of him. He sums the film up by saying “light can’t fatigue it, it can be repeated endlessly” (22). In this passage, Pynchon could be seen as pointing out that all the basic storylines have been done, so they will just continue to repeat themselves. It’s the challenge of the creator to bring something new to them.
I was glad to see discussion about the ending of the book, because I did not know what to make of the lack of resolution. The ambiguous ending is another facet of postmodernism we discussed in class, so I was somewhat prepared for it, but still felt the need to go back and see if there was a clue somewhere that gave an answer one way or another as to whether or not W.A.S.T.E. was real, but there is enough evidence for it to either exist or to be an elaborate ruse. Fallopian suggests to Oedipa that she has been set up, which has never crossed her mind before, but after he says this, she begins to question the validity of everything. There is an answer to the question of W.A.S.T.E.’s existence, and knowing who the bidder for lot 49 is would probably lead to something more, but the novel leaves the reader without that knowledge. So Pynchon is saying that the resolution is not as important as the way Oedipa’s life has changed while she has been trying to unearth details about this alternative postal service.
The book was ironic throughout, but it even ended in irony by only revealing what the title meant at the end of the book, so title refers to what happens after the book ends, not what happens throughout the book (again, the circular nature of the book). So is the thought of W.A.S.T.E. being real enough to redeem the life that she leads? One passage makes it appear that she could have “stumbled… onto a real alternative to exitlessness, to the absence of surprise to life, that harrows the head of every American” Oedipa knows, including herself (141). If the whole search for meaning behind the trumpet sympbol was a ruse, was there a deeper purpose behind it? After thinking about it and how all the men in her life have abandoned her, Oedipa feels a deep sense of despair. Perhaps Pierce wanted her to feel grief, about something, even if it wasn’t directly about his death, so that he set all of this up when he died. Like Oedipa, I think that if it was all a set-up, “it must have meaning beyond just a practical joke” (141). I’m an optimist, though, so maybe that is coming through too much.

Pynchon foreshadows the novel’s ending at quite literally the middle of the book: “Oedipa wondered whether, at the end of this (if it were supposed to end), she too might not be left with only compiled memories of clues, announcements, intimations, but never the central truth itself, which must somehow be too bright for her memory to hold” (76). Indeed this is how the novel ends, although we as the reader don’t know how this whole episode in Oedipa’s life actually ends (supposing there’s a distinction). This passage points to the pastiche element of postmodernism, the “complied memories of clues, announcements, [and] intimations,” as well as to the elusiveness of central truth: if the “central truth” is too bright for Oedipa’s memory to hold, it’s also too bright for ours as the reader, because Pynchon doesn’t present the “central truth” to us either. At first I considered whether Pynchon is just posturing: is there some real “central truth” that he is just hinting at but not revealing? Or is this just a convenient and deceptive way of hiding the fact that he doesn’t have a “central truth” at all? Or, better yet, perhaps there is no “central truth” for him to have and he’s bluffing, which is the best answer I could come up with. The excerpt is a summary of Oedipa’s thoughts, not necessarily Pynchon’s or the narrator’s; therefore Pynchon isn’t necessarily suggesting there is a “central truth.” The novel, for me, draws a parallel to Camus’ The Outsider in that it seems to be saying there is no point trying to impose reason on an unreasonable universe. When Oedipa tries to discover the “central truth” behind Pierce’s business dealings, it becomes one big farce.

My own thinking was most stimulated by an alternative theory Fredric Jameson referred to in the beginning of his essay: “Consider, for example, the powerful alternative position that postmodernism is itself little more than one more stage of modernism proper…” He mentions that Gertrude Stein, among others, could be an “outright postmodernist”, and this, in turn, jogged my memory on a theory Stein herself floated and which ties in neatly with the postmodernist view of time: the idea of the continuous present.

If postmodernism is an extension of modernism, and Stein is rightfully a postmodern author, then her concept of a continuous present is seen throughout The Crying of Lot 49. The passage of time is not important in the novel. Everything that Oedipa experiences occurs in the now, and it could be any now. An example of this is when she visits the campus of San Narciso College, looking for Professor Bortz: “It was summer, a weekday, and midafternoon…” (82). This could be any day, in any summer. Furthermore, recent experiences keep slipping away from Oedipa, and isolating her in the now – Driblette dies and takes his knowledge with him, Mucho goes mad and can no longer explain the “potsmaster” notation, Zapf’s Used Books is burned to the ground. Memory leaves Oedipa too, causing her to remain in the continuous present: “She copied the address and walked away trying to remember who’d put out the paperback. She couldn’t.” (82).

I felt that when the passage of time did occur, it was depicted as circuitous. For example, when Oedipa follows the W.A.S.T.E. carrier throughout the day, she merely ends up back at John Nefastis’s house. After her night in San Francisco, Oedipa finds herself back at her hotel, dancing in a circle with a deaf-mute, in a crowd of deaf-mutes, all dancing in almost-but-never-interlocking circles.

Oedipa’s circuitous experiences made me think of another postmodernist tenet – that perhaps there is no ultimate truth. Each time Oedipa meets Mike Fallopian, Dr. Hilarius, and the tall man from The Greek Way, she learns more and more about The Tristero. Her increasing knowledge perpetuates her journey – to discover whether this organization is real or not – which is its own circle. Oedipa debates this, at the end: “For there either was some Tristero beyond the appearance of the legacy America, or there was just America and if there was just America then it seemed the only was she could continue, and manage to be at all relevant to it, was as an alien, unfurrowed, assumed full circle into some paranoia” (151).

Since I’m definitely someone who would like to believe that there is an ultimate truth out there, I found the end of the novel disturbing. I took it to mean that perhaps there was no ultimate truth, but that there is only what one chooses to believe or not to believe, and that this locks us in our own circles.

Well, there is much, much more to discuss, debate, and dissect in The Crying of Lot 49, but right now I’ll quit while I’m behind. :)

Josh, you will have to expand on this in class, for I don’t know that I agree (perhaps I simply don’t understand). Dealing with themes of loss of innocence and alienation (I assume you are linking the work to T.S. Elliot-esque imagery) isn’t necessarily a hallmark of Modernism or Postmodernism. The telling feature may be how the characters come out on the other end. (i.e. Holden Caulfield laments his inability to erase the word “Fuck” or be a “catcher” in the rye. Yet, he lets his sister reach for the brass ring at the end without trying to save her. Eliot’s Prufrock doesn’t dare to eat the peach. In other words, the characters have changed as a result of their alienation.)

The real test here is whether or not Oedipa has been affected by her hallucinatory journeys. She may not have solved the mystery, but (to borrow a film metaphor) has her character “arced” at all? Some critics claim that she has evolved as a result of her journey (i.e. the false pregnancy, her self reliance.) This, more than the themes (for I’m sure we both can think of a dozen PoMo characters that are alienated and disenchanted), would align Pynchon with the modernists.

If I misunderstood your post, a thousand apologies.

It’s quiet in here, so I thought I’d make a quick post about the dramatic and lyrical scene in which Oedipa meets the old sailor during her long dark night of the soul. She imagines the old sailor’s passing, a fiery death in which his mattress burns up around him like a funeral pyre. When the sailor is lost to us, we no longer have access to “the quantity of hallucination belonging to just the sailor” (95). Subjective perception — hallucination — is the hallmark of distinctive human life. And the change in time (dt) is the supplanting of one hallucination by another until all record of it is lost in death. The Crying of Lot 49 is in some sense an examination of hallucinations as they increase their pace, Oedipa flitting from one hypothesis to another. In the end, what seems most troubling to Oedipa is that each passing hallucination is a loss of life, that ‘change in time’ is actually the loss of the specific delirium that is both innocence and stability. At the risk of beginning a categorical Modernism/Postmodernism debate, I’d say this episode in the novel pursues its alienation in a more ‘modernist’ way than many other sections. But now it’s time for bed. See you all tomorrow.

Josh, you have written an incredibly insightful blog posting, one that shall be a worthy result of a Google search for the word “what-me-worryism.” Unfortunately, owing to the fact that you so thoroughly covered the topic and didn’t present a follow-up question, I shall, from this point on, abandon it altogether.

I have a general question about the class, one that has been troubling me (in one form or another) for a number of years now. Dr. Sample has gone through great pains to credit his sources (even the images in his PowerPoint), to ensure that living authors receive royalties for the works we read, and to reiterate the conventions of MLA. However, in light of Roland Barthes’s essay “The Death of the Author,” Jorge Luis Borges’s “Pierre Minard, Author of Don Quixote,” The photographs of Sherrie Levine, and Raymond Federman’s experiments in “play-gerism,” isn’t this decidedly un-postmodern? Isn’t the very concept of pastiche, mashing or the simulacral Vegas landscape predicated upon the appropriation of texts? I, of course, realize that for the sake of academic ethics, not to mention survival, we should be credited for our work, but my question still remains. Why is it acceptable to “sample” but not to plagiarize? It’s alright for the Coen Brothers to steal whole personas from Howard Hawks’s “His Girl Friday” in order to make “The Hudsucker Proxy,” for Lucas and Spielberg to borrow from Kurosawa. When is it postmodernism, and when is it stealing?

With that being said, I would like to present a second question, one about CoL49. As Dr. Sample pointed out, challenging the “postmoderness” of a text is futile, yet, I wonder what about this text warrants its inclusion in a class entitled “American Postmodernism.” Though we have only had a brief discussion as to the definition of the term, I will proffer my opinions and anxiously await your responses.

1. This book, as Dr. Sample articulated, “revels in pop-culture.” Whether it is a rock band, 1960’s drug culture, or the appropriation of the detective novel, Pynchon makes use of these tropes to trouble the high/low distinction.
2. This text is a critique of modern reason. Unlike the traditional detective story, Oedipa finds no resolution. In fact, each clue only further complicates the mystery at hand. Moreover, the little mysteries in the book (i.e. the significance of the ridiculous names, symbols, radio station call letters (which spell obscene words when reversed) or acronyms) remain a mystery by the end. This would speak to our fellow student’s complaint (I am terrible with names) about the lack of “truth.”
3. While I didn’t notice an obscene amount of intertextuality, the book makes reference to Nabokov’s Lolita. This is significant as Lolita, in some sense, is another postmodern anti-detective story. Is Pynchon referencing an author who is known for his own intertextual references?

I never know how to end these things.

I’m most interested in Fredric Jameson’s discussion of ‘expression’ and its reliance on the centered subject. He suggests that postmodernism solves the problem of alienation by doing away with the subject entirely, which means forgoing expression. But it’s interesting that Jameson seems to quickly replace the concept of ‘expression’ with an interest in feelings, emotions, and affect. The ‘waning of affect,’ for Jameson, is tantamount to the complete loss of expression. I think this is because Jameson privileges alienation as an appropriate display of emotion, while the ‘euphoria’ that replaces alienation is inappropriate to the late capitalist socioeconomic situation. Euphoria, then, reifies the prevailing economic logic. It’s not a stretch to consider this view a bit dour. For Jameson, the centered subject acts as an anchor that keeps one from drifting, providing a stationary place from which one can begin the project of cognitive mapping, Jameson’s antidote to postmodernism. I don’t think many people would argue against cognitive mapping – after all, what’s the matter with attempting to create “a pedagogical political culture which seeks to endow the individual subject with some new heightened sense of its place in the global system”? – but what happens when someone actually attempts such a mapping? I think Thomas Pynchon shows us in The Crying of Lot 49, and in the process challenges Jameson’s perspective by problematizing cognitive mapping. The novel begins with a jokey quality that steadily dissolves into the anxieties that attend an unrewarded search for epistemological certainty. In the early going, the story of the Peter Pinguid Society (rife with the same or’s or possibly’s in the DeLillo story we read in class) exemplifies the sort of euphoric free-floating indeterminacy Jameson criticizes. But the novel takes a turn when Oedipa tries to root out the truth about Trystero/W.A.S.T.E. Her attempt to gain a sense of her ‘place in the global system’ reads like the kind of dark descent that only an anchor can provide. In other words, the attempt to map so alienates her that it becomes ridiculous. Despite the darkness of the descent, we realize that her object is a mysterious postal service, after all. This zany detail allows the novel to poke fun at the uses of committed alienation – in direct opposition to Jameson’s tack (i.e. taking seriously the euphoria of postmodernism). This opposition condemns the novel to charges of political what-me-worryism, but it also opens up a sharp critique of the attempt to totalize society or ‘euphorize’ alienation.