How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Though she knew even less about radios than about Southern Californians, there were to both outward patterns a hieroglyphic sense of concealed meaning, of an intent to communicate. (2.2)
Is Oedipa able to distinguish between things that actually have meaning and those that only give a sense of it? How does this quote anticipate later events in the book?
Quote #2
Like all their inabilities to communicate, this too had a virtuous motive. (3.3)
Why doesn't Oedipa press Mucho on his infatuation with young girls? How does this allow their marriage to function? How can the decision not to communicate have a "virtuous motive"?
Quote #3
Off the coast of either what is now Carmel-by-the-Sea, or what is now Pismo Beach, around noon or possibly toward dusk, the two ships sighted each other. One of them may have fired, if it did then the other responded; but both were out of range so neither showed a scar afterward to prove anything. (3.21)
What do you think Pynchon is trying to say about history and the way it is told? Does it only apply to a nut-job like Mike Fallopian, or can it be applied to the study of history at large?
Quote #4
It is at about this point in the play, in fact, that things really get peculiar, and a gentle chill, an ambiguity, begins to creep in among the words. Heretofore the naming of names has gone on either literally or as metaphor. But now, as the Duke gives his fatal command, a new mode of expression takes over. It can only be called a ritual reluctance. (3.125)
Does Oedipa's ability to detect the "ambiguity" in the play suggest that she is becoming a better literary critic? How does the "reluctance" to say the word Tristero give it power in Oedipa's mind?
Quote #5
"The words, who cares? They're rote noises to hold line bashes with, to get past the bone barriers around an actor's memory, right? But the reality is in this head. Mine." (3.167)
Is Driblette telling Oedipa something significant about the relationship between playwrights, directors, and their audience? How much is his opinion shaped by his ego, and how much is it shaped by honest observation?
Quote #6
"Entropy is a figure of speech, then, a metaphor. It connects the world of thermodynamics to the world of information flow. The Machine uses both. The Demon makes the metaphor not only verbally graceful, but also objectively true." (5.18)
Check out our "Symbols, Images, Allegory" section and read up on entropy in thermodynamics and in communication theory. Is Nefastis actually on to something, or is he just nutso? How does the metaphor allow the two concepts to at least seem to fit together? How does this apply to Oedipa's quest to discover the Tristero?
Quote #7
The act of metaphor then was a thrust at truth and a lie, depending where you were: inside, safe, or outside, lost. (5.124)
What is the grand metaphor of Lot 49? Is Oedipa inside or outside of it? Is Pynchon simply playing literary games here, or do we have grand metaphors in our own lives as well?
Quote #8
She knew that the sailor had seen worlds no other man had seen if only because there was that high magic to low puns, because DT's must give access to dt's of spectra beyond the known sun, music made purely of Antarctic loneliness and fright. (5.124)
Has Oedipa lost it?! What is this relationship she suggests between "high magic" and "low puns"? How does Lot 49 itself operate using "high magic" and "low puns"? What can one possibly learn from a pun?
Quote #9
Squatters [...] swung among a web of telephone wires, living in the very copper rigging and secular miracle of communication, untroubled by the dumb voltages flickering their miles, the night long, in the thousands of unheard messages. (6.147)
How is Lot 49 a book about the "secular miracle of communication"? Does Oedipa confuse the means of communication here— "the very copper rigging" —with communication itself? If so, does this tendency appear anywhere else in the book?