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PY CHON NOTES Editors Bernard Duyfhuizen, University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire Email: [email protected] John M. Krafft, Miami University–Hamilton E-mail: [email protected] Khachig Tölölyan, Wesleyan University E-mail: [email protected] Pynchon Notes is published twice a year, in spring and fall. Member of CELJ, the Council of Editors of Learned Journals Pynchon Notes is supported in part by the English Departments of Miami University–Hamilton and the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire. The journal also receives support through the generosity of a philanthropic foundation which prefers to remain anonymous. Copyright © 2011 John M. Krafft, Bernard Duyfhuizen, Khachig Tölölyan ISSN 0278-1891 Printed in the United States of America Pynchon Notes welcomes essays and notes on all Pynchon-related subjects, written from all critical and theoretical positions. We welcome studies of individual texts and of Pynchon’s oeuvre, and studies of the texts in themselves or in their contexts variously conceived as Amerian, Western, or global; as literary, political, or historical; in postmodernist, postcolonial, or other terms. We also welcome essays on other subjects that may appear to particular advantage viewed through the lens of Pynchon’s writing. The book reviews the journal publishes will be solicited by the editors. Submissions: We prefer manuscripts submitted in electronic form (MSWord or .RTF formats, as e-mail attachments) but we will accept hard copy. Address manuscripts, notes and queries, and bibliographic information to Bernard Duyfhuizen College of Arts & Sciences University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire 105 Garfield Avenue Eau Claire, WI 54702-4004 Email: [email protected] Subscriptions: North America: $8.00 per single issue or $15.00 per year (or double number) Overseas: $11.00 per single issue or $20.00 per year (or double number) Payment may be made in dollars or Euros, by check, direct deposit, or PayPal: • Checks must be in US funds, drawn on a US bank, Make checks payable to the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. • Deposit Euros directly to John Krafft (no middle initial), Sparkasse KölnBonn. Within Germany, use KtoNr. 163793177 and BLZ 37050198. Outside Germany, use IBAN DE26370501980163793177 and BIC/SWIFT COLSDE33. • Pay with PayPal to Bernard Duyfhuizen at [email protected] and use the subject “Pynchon Notes order.” Please add 5% to your payment to offsent PayPal’s feels. • Address subscriptions and back issue orders to Bernard Duyfhuizen at the address above. Back Issues Pynchon Notes has been published since October 1979. • Early issues (Nos. 1-23), now out of print, are available for download from our website, PynchonNotes.org. • The issues still in print are available for purchase in the original hard copy at their original price. 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See previous page for details. * * * For up-to-date information, an order form, the cumulative Pynchon Notes bibliograpy, early back issues, announcements and more, visit PynchonNotes.org V. Is for Varo Too: Hispanic Elements in the Work of Thomas Pynchon Selected Papers from the Granada Pynchon Conference Guest Editors Celia Wallhead & Francisco Collado-Rodríguez PYNCHON NOTES 56–57 spring – fall 2009 PY CHON NOTES 56-57 spring – fall 2009 Introduction Celia Wallhead & Francisco Collado-Rodríguez 9 Apocalyptic Quest in Thomas Pynchon’s V. and Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 Andrei Vasilenko 21 Countering Entropy in The Crying of Lot 49 with Reader Involvement: Remedios Varo as a Role Model for Oedipa Maas William Day 30 No Either/Or: The Stagnation of Forces in Pynchon’s Universe: Ethical and Gender Undecidability in Two Spanish Cases Francisco Collado-Rodríguez 46 The Form of the Conspiracy: Ricardo Piglia’s Reading of Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 David Kelman 57 Ideas of Community in The Crying of Lot 49 Paula Martín Salván 74 Using Schema Theory to Trace the Connections between the Different Aspects of the Conflicting Roles of Oedipa Maas and the Intertext of Remedios Varo Celia Wallhead 87 In the Zone: Sovereignty and Bare Life in Gravity’s Rainbow Steven Weisenburger 100 Useless Lumpens in Gravity’s Rainbow Robert Holton 114 “Presto Change-o! Tyrone Slothrop’s English Again!” Puritan Conversion, Imperfect Assurance, and the Salvific Sloth in Gravity’s Rainbow Christopher Leise 127 Gravity’s Rainbow: A Portrait of the Artist as Engineer Birger Vanwesenbeeck 144 Silences and Worlds: Wittgenstein and Pynchon Sascha Pöhlmann 158 Medicine and the Paranormal in Gravity’s Rainbow: Epheyre, Anaphylaxis, and That Charles Richet Terry Reilly and Steve Tomaske 181 Seeing the Wood for the Trees: Levels of Reading and Intertextual Mythmaking in Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow Mark Quinn 192 In Fascism’s Footprint: The History of “Creeping” and Vineland’s Poetics of Betrayal Jeffrey Severs 212 Childhood as a Metaphor: Motif and Narrative Device in Mason & Dixon Sofia Kolbuszewska 229 Historical Sources for Thomas Pynchon’s “Peter Pinguid Society” Martin Paul Eve 242 Pynchon’s Bequest (Review) Robert L. McLaughlin 246 Measuring the World Anew Tore Rye Andersen 253 Contributors 259 Introduction (Granada Pynchon Conference Volume) Celia Wallhead & Francisco Collado-Rodríguez When Maltese Pynchon fans (and others) decided to organize a conference in the early summer of 2004, they didn’t have to look far for a title theme: the planet Venus was conveniently in line to edge its way across the sun on the morning of the first day. In view of the significant role Malta plays in V., “The Transit of Venus” was the perfect theme. Spaniards, on the other hand, did not have it so easy when, inspired by the success in Malta, they thought of organizing the next Pynchon Conference in Granada two years later. One has to admit that Spain has not figured large in Pynchon’s oeuvre. His protagonists go to Germany, Italy, France and England, but rarely to Spain. In his novel Against the Day some of the anarchist characters do make a brief visit to Barcelona, but nothing much happens there (and, of course, the novel had not been published yet). Almost all the Hispanic material in his novels, people and places, are Spanish American. No doubt this is due to the proximity of Mexico and Pynchon’s frequent visits there, plus the strong Hispanic flavor of the west coast in lands originally part of the Spanish Empire. These in themselves explain the dearth of Peninsular Hispanic referents. But precisely because of, and on account of, one of Pynchon’s trips to Mexico, there is a strong Spanish presence in The Crying of Lot 49. This presence is the work of the Spanish painter in exile, Remedios Varo. The coincidence of the Spanish origin and the V in the surname (also, she was from Vascongadas) led us to the title of “V. Is for Varo Too: Hispanic Elements in the Work of Thomas Pynchon.” Pynchon has not yet exhausted the V-value. In Against the Day, the Vibe family are at the vortex of the novel, with their Vormance Expedition, and much action in Vienna and Venice. (Why didn’t Pynchon send the anarchists further down the coast to Valencia?) In organizing the Granada Conference, the vantage point of the V was not, however, taken to extremes, nor was the Hispanic angle; it was stressed that papers could be offered on any topic related to Pynchon’s work. As often happens (and would happen again at the next Conference in Munich in June 2008), a Pynchon Conference coincides with an important football fixture. The Granada Conference was held in the same week as the opening rounds of the 2006 World Cup finals. Sessions had to be planned, 10 Pynchon Notes 56–57 therefore, around key matches and the obligatory visit in Granada, which is to the Alhambra. This explains the fact that the reading of the twenty-odd papers, which under more normal circumstances might have been heard in two days, took place over four days. Speakers came from far-flung places—such is the Pynchon craze: from Australia, the Pacific coast of the United States, Canada and Latvia, as well as from places closer to Spain: Italy, Germany, Ireland, France, Belgium and Poland. There were four speakers from the host country, and they did, in fact, speak mostly on issues related to Remedios Varo or other Spanish aspects of Lot 49, Gravity’s Rainbow, and Mason & Dixon. Other speakers focused either on these aspects or on themes which draw Pynchon close to certain Hispano- American writers. The rest of the speakers fanned out to cover all Pynchon novels published by 2006, from those of the 1960s, V. and Lot 49, to the major work of the 1970s, Gravity’s Rainbow, which seems to be inexhaustible, to Pynchon’s two works of the last decade of the century: Vineland and Mason & Dixon.