Chapter 2

2007-03-26T23:53:16Z

MKOHUT:

Chapter 2

2007-03-26T23:52:44Z

MKOHUT:

User:WikiAdmin

2007-03-19T15:25:03Z

MKOHUT: New page: yea, I jumped in not even noticing that the edifice was still being built. I wanted to get down that general observation which I have always thought should lead to better understanding, s...

yea, I jumped in not even noticing that the edifice was still being built.
I wanted to get down that general observation which I have always thought should lead to better understanding, somehow.

I added one 'new' finding re 'shrink" today, before I read my messages...you can erase it--or I will--if you prefer. It fascinated me.(We like to be first with some of these obs, ya know!)

I will not add any other annotations yet.

You would not believe my reading relationship with Pynchon's work....worth a blog entry if not a short essay. Maybe I will.

Thank You. These wikis gives Reading more satisfying worth than it intrinsically has. (I keep imagining hundreds of young people, as I once was, discovering this important writer and the wiki. You people ought to get a tithe of a MacArthur Grant at least!

Chapter 1

2007-03-19T15:10:44Z

MKOHUT:

{{CL49 PbP Text}}
 
'''Dr. Hilarious, her shrink or psychotherapist''' 
a: 8. Shrink is a shortened form of headshrinker, which is 50s slang. The OED cites 'shrink' in this text of 1966, as the first recorded written use of it as a slang term. Which must be why Pynchon defined it in the text.

By dave@wordorigins.org(dave@wordorigins.org)
The clipped form [shrink]appears some 15-odd years later. From Thomas Pynchon’s 1966 The Crying of Lot 49. (Sources: Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition; Historical Dictionary of American Slang)
Wordorigins.org - http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php

a: 10, b: 1 - '''Mazatlán''' 
a Mexican city on Mexico's Pacific coast. Pynchon lived in Mexico during parts of the 1960s.

a: 10, b: 1 - '''Cornell University''' 
Pynchon's alma mater.

a: 10, b: 1 - '''Jay Gould''' 
(1836 – 1892) was an American financier, who became a leading American railroad builder and speculator. In his lifetime and for a century after, Gould had a firm reputation as the most unethical of the 19th century American businessmen known as robber barons. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Gould Wikipedia]

a: 10, b: 2 - '''Warpe, Wistfull, Kubitschek and McMingus''' 
As Pynchon is a lifelong Jazz fan, the final name could be a nod to jazz legend Charles Mingus.

a: 10, b: 2 - '''Kinneret-Among-The-Pines''' 
Fictional California town.

a: 10, b: 2 - '''settecento''' 
Settecento is the Italian word for seven hundred, and is the standard Italian term for the 18th century (not the 17th century, but the years beginning with 17). In English, it refers to styles of that period.

a: 10, b: 2 - '''Vivaldi Kazoo Concerto''' 
Kazoos appear in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow''].

a: 10, b: 2 - '''Boyd Beaver''' 
The name sounds suspiciously similar to Zoyd Wheeler, the protagonist of ''Vineland''.

a: 11, b: 2 - '''Wendell ("Mucho") Maas''' 
"Mucho más" is common Spanish phrase, meaning "much more."

a: 11, b: 2 - '''Pachuco dialect''' 
Pachucos were Mexican American youth who developed their own subculture during the 1930s and 1940s in the Southwestern United States. They wore distinctive clothes (such as Zoot Suits) and spoke their own dialect (Caló). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachuco Wikipedia] Zoot suits appear a few times in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow''].

a: 11, b: 2 - '''chingas and maricones''' 
Spanish slang for "fuck" and "faggot".

a: 11, b: 3 - '''Lamont Cranston''' 
One identity adopted by The Shadow, a character of pulp fiction, radio shows, and comic books. Cranston was a wealthy young man about town. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow Wikipedia]

a: 11, b: 3 - '''Commissioner Weston... Professor Quackenbush''' 
?

[[Image:jacklemmon.jpg|90px|thumb|left|Jack Lemmon and his hair in the 60s]]a: 13, b: 4 - '''used only water, combing it like Jack Lemmon''' 
American actor (1925-2001). He became a favorite actor of director Billy Wilder, starring in his films ''Some Like It Hot'', ''The Apartment'' and others. Wilder felt Lemmon had a natural tendency toward overacting that had to be tempered; the Wilder biography ''Nobody's Perfect'' quotes the director as saying: "Lemmon, I would describe him as a ham, a fine ham, and with ham you have to trim a little fat." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_lemmon Wikipedia]

a: 17, b: 8 - '''LSD-25, mescaline, psilocybin''' 
These hallucinogenic drugs are also mentioned in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow'']. It remains an open question as to whether and to what extent Pynchon took or was influenced by them. ("whether"? ...) [http://z11.invisionfree.com/thefictionalwoods/index.php?s=3b2d4280876fbd2ed40d5344691a990f&showtopic=400]

[[Image:rorschach1.jpg|150px|thumb|right|The first of the ten cards in the Rorschach inkblot test]]
a: 18, b: 8 - '''Rorschach blot''' 
The Rorschach inkblot test (Pronounced roar-shock) is a method of psychological evaluation. Psychologists use this test to try to examine the personality characteristics and emotional functioning of their patients. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_inkblot_test Wikipedia]

[[Image:rorschachcomic1.png|thumb|150px|right|Rorschach, a comic book character in ''Watchmen'']]
a: 18, b: 8 - '''a face is symmetrical like a Rorschach blot''' 
In the graphic novel, ''Watchmen'', written by Alan Moore, there is a character named Rorschach who wears a mask with a Rorscach blot on the front. Moore is a self-professed Pynchon fan: he referenced [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V. ''V.''] in ''V for Vendetta'' and has mentioned [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow''] in interview. It is possible, not to say probable, that Moore was inspired by this line.

a: 18, b: 8 - '''TAT picture''' 
The TAT is popularly known as the picture interpretation technique because it uses a standard series of 31 provocative yet ambiguous pictures about which the subject must tell a story. It was developed by American psychologists in the 1930s. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thematic_Apperception_Test Wikipedia]

a: 18, b: 9 - '''Fu-Manchu''' 
Dr. Fu Manchu is a fictional character, an evil genius of Chinese origin, first featured in a series of novels by Birmingham author Sax Rohmer during the first half of the 20th century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu_Manchu Wikipedia]

a: 18, b: 9 - '''Perry Mason''' 
Perry Mason is a fictional defense attorney who originally appeared in detective fiction by Erle Stanley Gardner. Mason was portrayed by Raymond Burr in a television series which ran on CBS from 1957 to 1966. The typical plot involves Perry Mason unmasking the actual murderer in a final dramatic courtroom showdown. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Mason Wikipedia]

a: 19, b: 9 - '''''The Profession v. Perry Mason...''''' 
Roseman may be trying to undermine Perry Mason by arguing that the dramatic courtroom twists in the TV show are actually uncommon in the American legal system.

[[Image:remediosvaro.jpg|thumb|175px|''Bornando el manto terrestre'', 1961|left]]
a: 21, b: 11 - '''Bornando el Manto Terrestre''' 
Remedios Varo (1908 - 1963) was a surrealist painter. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remedios_Varo Wikipedia]

Bill Brown [http://www.notbored.org/crying.html notes] that "Pynchon saw Bordando el Manto Terrestre when, as part of the first full retrospective of the painter's work, it was displayed at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City in 1964, a year after her death at the age of 55. Painted in 1961, el Manto (oil on masonite, roughly 40 by 48 inches) is the central panel in an autobiographical triptych. It is possible that Pynchon, writing ''Lot 49'' in 1965, recalled the painting from memory or incomplete notes, and not with a reproduction of it set in front of him. He gets a lot wrong."

[[image:bubble-shades.jpg|thumb|Bubble Shades|120px|right]]
a:21, b:11 - '''she wore dark green bubble shades''' 
This is the sixties, after all...

{{CL49 PbP}}

Chapter 1

2007-03-19T15:07:26Z

MKOHUT:

{{CL49 PbP Text}}
 
'''Dr. Hilarious, her shrink or psychotherapist''' 
Shrink is a shortened form of headshrinker, which is 50s slang. The OED cites 'shrink' in this text, 1966, as the first recorded written use of it as a slang term. Which must be why Pynchon defined it in the text then.

a: 10, b: 1 - '''Mazatlán''' 
a Mexican city on Mexico's Pacific coast. Pynchon lived in Mexico during parts of the 1960s.

a: 10, b: 1 - '''Cornell University''' 
Pynchon's alma mater.

a: 10, b: 1 - '''Jay Gould''' 
(1836 – 1892) was an American financier, who became a leading American railroad builder and speculator. In his lifetime and for a century after, Gould had a firm reputation as the most unethical of the 19th century American businessmen known as robber barons. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Gould Wikipedia]

a: 10, b: 2 - '''Warpe, Wistfull, Kubitschek and McMingus''' 
As Pynchon is a lifelong Jazz fan, the final name could be a nod to jazz legend Charles Mingus.

a: 10, b: 2 - '''Kinneret-Among-The-Pines''' 
Fictional California town.

a: 10, b: 2 - '''settecento''' 
Settecento is the Italian word for seven hundred, and is the standard Italian term for the 18th century (not the 17th century, but the years beginning with 17). In English, it refers to styles of that period.

a: 10, b: 2 - '''Vivaldi Kazoo Concerto''' 
Kazoos appear in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow''].

a: 10, b: 2 - '''Boyd Beaver''' 
The name sounds suspiciously similar to Zoyd Wheeler, the protagonist of ''Vineland''.

a: 11, b: 2 - '''Wendell ("Mucho") Maas''' 
"Mucho más" is common Spanish phrase, meaning "much more."

a: 11, b: 2 - '''Pachuco dialect''' 
Pachucos were Mexican American youth who developed their own subculture during the 1930s and 1940s in the Southwestern United States. They wore distinctive clothes (such as Zoot Suits) and spoke their own dialect (Caló). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachuco Wikipedia] Zoot suits appear a few times in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow''].

a: 11, b: 2 - '''chingas and maricones''' 
Spanish slang for "fuck" and "faggot".

a: 11, b: 3 - '''Lamont Cranston''' 
One identity adopted by The Shadow, a character of pulp fiction, radio shows, and comic books. Cranston was a wealthy young man about town. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow Wikipedia]

a: 11, b: 3 - '''Commissioner Weston... Professor Quackenbush''' 
?

[[Image:jacklemmon.jpg|90px|thumb|left|Jack Lemmon and his hair in the 60s]]a: 13, b: 4 - '''used only water, combing it like Jack Lemmon''' 
American actor (1925-2001). He became a favorite actor of director Billy Wilder, starring in his films ''Some Like It Hot'', ''The Apartment'' and others. Wilder felt Lemmon had a natural tendency toward overacting that had to be tempered; the Wilder biography ''Nobody's Perfect'' quotes the director as saying: "Lemmon, I would describe him as a ham, a fine ham, and with ham you have to trim a little fat." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_lemmon Wikipedia]

a: 17, b: 8 - '''LSD-25, mescaline, psilocybin''' 
These hallucinogenic drugs are also mentioned in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow'']. It remains an open question as to whether and to what extent Pynchon took or was influenced by them. ("whether"? ...) [http://z11.invisionfree.com/thefictionalwoods/index.php?s=3b2d4280876fbd2ed40d5344691a990f&showtopic=400]

[[Image:rorschach1.jpg|150px|thumb|right|The first of the ten cards in the Rorschach inkblot test]]
a: 18, b: 8 - '''Rorschach blot''' 
The Rorschach inkblot test (Pronounced roar-shock) is a method of psychological evaluation. Psychologists use this test to try to examine the personality characteristics and emotional functioning of their patients. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_inkblot_test Wikipedia]

[[Image:rorschachcomic1.png|thumb|150px|right|Rorschach, a comic book character in ''Watchmen'']]
a: 18, b: 8 - '''a face is symmetrical like a Rorschach blot''' 
In the graphic novel, ''Watchmen'', written by Alan Moore, there is a character named Rorschach who wears a mask with a Rorscach blot on the front. Moore is a self-professed Pynchon fan: he referenced [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V. ''V.''] in ''V for Vendetta'' and has mentioned [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow''] in interview. It is possible, not to say probable, that Moore was inspired by this line.

a: 18, b: 8 - '''TAT picture''' 
The TAT is popularly known as the picture interpretation technique because it uses a standard series of 31 provocative yet ambiguous pictures about which the subject must tell a story. It was developed by American psychologists in the 1930s. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thematic_Apperception_Test Wikipedia]

a: 18, b: 9 - '''Fu-Manchu''' 
Dr. Fu Manchu is a fictional character, an evil genius of Chinese origin, first featured in a series of novels by Birmingham author Sax Rohmer during the first half of the 20th century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu_Manchu Wikipedia]

a: 18, b: 9 - '''Perry Mason''' 
Perry Mason is a fictional defense attorney who originally appeared in detective fiction by Erle Stanley Gardner. Mason was portrayed by Raymond Burr in a television series which ran on CBS from 1957 to 1966. The typical plot involves Perry Mason unmasking the actual murderer in a final dramatic courtroom showdown. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Mason Wikipedia]

a: 19, b: 9 - '''''The Profession v. Perry Mason...''''' 
Roseman may be trying to undermine Perry Mason by arguing that the dramatic courtroom twists in the TV show are actually uncommon in the American legal system.

[[Image:remediosvaro.jpg|thumb|175px|''Bornando el manto terrestre'', 1961|left]]
a: 21, b: 11 - '''Bornando el Manto Terrestre''' 
Remedios Varo (1908 - 1963) was a surrealist painter. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remedios_Varo Wikipedia]

Bill Brown [http://www.notbored.org/crying.html notes] that "Pynchon saw Bordando el Manto Terrestre when, as part of the first full retrospective of the painter's work, it was displayed at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City in 1964, a year after her death at the age of 55. Painted in 1961, el Manto (oil on masonite, roughly 40 by 48 inches) is the central panel in an autobiographical triptych. It is possible that Pynchon, writing ''Lot 49'' in 1965, recalled the painting from memory or incomplete notes, and not with a reproduction of it set in front of him. He gets a lot wrong."

[[image:bubble-shades.jpg|thumb|Bubble Shades|120px|right]]
a:21, b:11 - '''she wore dark green bubble shades''' 
This is the sixties, after all...

{{CL49 PbP}}

The Crying of Lot 49 Obs

2007-03-18T17:21:55Z

MKOHUT: New page: Novel vs. Story. This seems to be the place to note something Pynchon has written--in Slow Learner, the introduction---about this work. He wrote there, in talking about his early stories t...

Novel vs. Story. This seems to be the place to note something Pynchon
has written--in Slow Learner, the introduction---about this work.
He wrote there, in talking about his early stories that his next story
The Crying of Lot 49 was marketed as a novel.... 

Given Pynchon's care with concepts, this distinction seems worth
keeping in mind. Stories meant, usually, to be taken in 'all at once",
in one reading, novels not. Stories much more focussed on a single theme usually; novels full of many themes.

Pynchon's words have made me think about his lifelong theme of crossing boundaries, of seeing boundaries as artificial, man-made. [Mason & Dixon
most thoroughly]. Boundaries such as those between story and novel.

As a "story" to get a kind of unitary impression, is how I have seen Harold Bloom's remark on reading The Crying of Lot 49. Read it again immediately, he avers. It's meaning(s) are very mysterious, we might all agree.