{"id":117,"date":"2009-02-04T02:55:09","date_gmt":"2009-02-04T07:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/?p=117"},"modified":"2009-02-04T09:47:43","modified_gmt":"2009-02-04T14:47:43","slug":"just-a-little-on-pynchons-parody-and-an-afterthought-on-varo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/?p=117","title":{"rendered":"Just a little on Pynchon’s parody (and an afterthought on Varo)"},"content":{"rendered":"

A large portion of my interest in Thomas Pynchon is with his sense of humor and the resulting parodic nature of his writing.\u00a0 Having already read The Crying of Lot 49<\/em>, this re-reading allowed me to really focus on the “world” of Southern California that Pynchon has created, or more accurately, parodied.<\/p>\n

Throughout The Crying of Lot 49<\/em>, Thomas Pynchon seems to be humorously commenting on American, and specifically Californian, culture.\u00a0 As stated by the narrator, “Like many named places in California it was less an identifiable city than a grouping of concepts–census tracts, special purpose bond-issue districts, shopping nuclei, all overlaid with access roads to its own freeway” (13).\u00a0 Per Pynchon’s construction, it’s a culture lacking substance; California and its inhabitants are all image, which is often merely imitation.\u00a0 For example, the Paranoids, who “watch English movies a lot, for the accent,” are Pynchon’s American ripoff version of The Beatles (17).\u00a0 (Considering Oedipa’s increasing paranoia throughout the story, the Paranoids seem appropriately named.\u00a0 In fact, they periodically serve as the “Greek chorus” for the tragic (yet comical) unraveling of Oedipa’s life as she uncovers a potential conspiracy)\u00a0 Dr. Hilarius, Oedipa’s “shrink or psychotherapist,” is perhaps only best described as a psycho.<\/p>\n

In his first novel V.<\/em>, Pynchon presents a woman who becomes increasingly machine-like as the novel progresses, and threads of this same metaphorical device can be identified in The Crying of Lot 49<\/em> (although not as ubiquitous).\u00a0 “[Oedipa] looked down a slope […] onto a vast sprawl of house which had grown up all together, like a well-tended crop, from the dull brown earth; and she though of the time she’d opened a transistor radio to replace a battery and seen her first printed circuit” (14).\u00a0 Here, Pynchon is reacting against the increase of tract housing suburbs\u00a0 noting their machine-like resemblance (if I’m not mistaken, the “cookie-cutter” suburbs first got their start in the 1950s, just a few years before the publishing of The Crying of Lot 49<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Continuing with Pynchon’s role as social commentator, I come to perhaps my favorite passage in The Crying of Lot 49<\/em>: the initial description of Wendell “Mucho” Maas.\u00a0 “[H]e could still never accept the way each owner, each shadow, filed in only to exchange a dented, malfunctioning version of himself for another, just as futureless, automotive projection of somebody else’s life.\u00a0 As if it were the most natural thing.\u00a0 To Mucho it was horrible.\u00a0 Endless, convoluted incest” (5).\u00a0 To me, this passage evokes a couple of Pynchon’s concerns.\u00a0 First, the machine once again stands in for the human being, and in fact, the passage preceeding this quotation describes these used cars as “metal extensions” of their owners.\u00a0 Second, Mucho’s association of used cars\/humans with “Endless, convoluted incest” reminds me of Pynchon’s recurring theme of entropy and\/or entropic decline; if a system is closed, then that system will inevitably decline.<\/p>\n

______________<\/p>\n

On a somewhat random, separate note, I searched for and found the Remedios Varo painting referenced in The Crying of Lot 49<\/em>: “In Mexico City they somehow wandered into an exhibition of paintings by the beautiful Spanish exile Remedios Varo: in the central painting of a triptych, titled “Bordando el Manto Terrestre,” were a number of frail girls with heart-shaped faces, huge eyes, spun-gold hair, prisoners in the top room of a circular tower, embroidering a kind\"Remedios of tapestry which spilled out the slit windows and into a void, seeking hopelessly to fill the void: for all the other buildings and creatures, all the waves, ships and forests of the earth were contained in this tapestry, and the tapestry was the world.\u00a0 Oedipa, perverse, had stood in front of the painting and cried” (11).\u00a0 In the context of the chapter, the painting refers to her personal relationship with Pierce Inverarity, but I can’t help but look at the painting and think of Oedipa’s journey as a “detective” through the Trystero conspiracy.\u00a0 In many ways, she is weaving her own tapestry with the threads of conspiracy, filling a void, creating a world with the jigsaw pieces she has discovered (or perhaps have discovered her).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A large portion of my interest in Thomas Pynchon is with his sense of humor and the resulting parodic nature of his writing.\u00a0 Having already read The Crying of Lot 49, this re-reading allowed me to really focus on the “world” of Southern California that Pynchon has created, or more accurately, parodied. Throughout The Crying … Continue reading Just a little on Pynchon’s parody (and an afterthought on Varo)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[22,120,35],"class_list":["post-117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pynchon","tag-humor","tag-pynchon","tag-reality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":132,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions\/132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}