Lot 49, Chapter 3

So this is the chapter where we get this weird Jacobean revenge tragedy. And it's really great. We also hear Mike Fillopian tell about the Peter Penguid society.

So with the Peter Penguid society, they are all into promoting celebrating some historical event that may or may not have happened. If it did happen, they are not sure who was actually involved and whether it took place off the coast of Carmel or Pismo Beach (I love references to the Central California coast!). So there's all this indeterminacy and no real way of getting at the historical truth, if there is any historical truth.

This, of course, immediately precedes Oedipa's first look at the Tristero symbol--the muted horn.

But really, The Courier's Tragedy, is a great send-up of Renaissance revenge tragedy because it includes sort of all the typical elements of a revenge tragedy, only in "spades." There's all kinds of torture and mutilation, and there's even incest. It's like all grusome Renaissance revenge tragedy combined. And of course, Trystero is mentioned as opposing the Thurn and Taxis families, the accepted mail carriers of the time.

Oedipa goes in search of the text for The Courier's Tragedy, hoping that finding the "authentic" text will clear things up for her. Oddly, there's no way of finding an authentic text. Again, Pynchon calls into question what literary scholars tend to take for granted: that there is a meaningful, authentic text, that a text means something.

I don't know--none of this is very scholarly. I just feel like it's something I want to write about right now.

I'm like Oedipa, I suppose, in search of the meaning of a text.