How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
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?