Oedipa calls on Emory Bortz and his wife, Grace, greets her. The Bortz children are hellions, throwing beer bottles at each other; Grace asks Oedipa if she has any children, because she carries herself with “a certain harassed style”. This aura of harassment comes as a result of what she’s been through int he story to this point. We don’t really find out why the Maases don’t have children; could it be the case that her manic pursuit of the Tristero conspiracy is a sort of sublimated motherhood? (This is confirmed when Pynchon later says “your gynecologist has not test for what she’s pregnant with.” (144)
Oedipa goes on to discover a long history of the Tristero which Pynchon inexplicably recounts. This, like the discussion of the perpetual motion machine in chapter 5, is difficult to penetrate and doesn’t seem to have a direct connection to what’s going on in the plot. This may be another attempt by Pynchon to put the reader in Oedipa’s shoes by bombarding him with informration, although that might reading might be either too charitable or too convenient.
One interesting tidbit from this history is that the Tristero postal monopoly was sponsored by the governments of Europe and because of various rivalries inside and outside the organization, had their governmental patronage withdrawn. The organization falls upon hard times, “now reduced to handling anarchist correspondence” (142). This notion of pushing the organization to the margins is sort of like saying “when guns are outlawed, only criminals will carry guns.”
American Lit Journal 