12: “In which the Pynchon Pals retell Platonic dialogues and Porky Pig cartoons” (The Crying of Lot 49 Chs. 4-5)

The devil is in the details in this episode—or should we say, the demon? We follow Oedipa up north and into the entropic underground. Groovy… 

Next time, The Crying of Lot 49 Ch. 6. 

Support the show and get access to monthly bonus episodes at patreon.com/pynchonpals and follow us @pynchonpals.bsky.social. 

Show Notes:

Spoilers for Twin Peaks Season 2 around 2:31:50 to 2:32:05!

Thomas Pynchon, in correspondence, on The Crying of Lot 49 as a “potboiler,” via Mel Gussow in the New York Times archive

“The Crisis of the University Started Long Before Trump,” by Clifford Ando via Compact, on the Bayh–Dole Act and its implications for patents on government funded research

“Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” by Jorge Luis Borges, .pdf via University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

“Encuentro,” by Remedios Varo (1959) via the National Galleries of Scotland 

The “Batusi” in Batman (1966) via YouTube

Project OXYGAS (Dolphin Training) via the CIA online reading room

“The dolphin who loved me: the Nasa-funded project that went wrong,” by Christopher Riley via The Guardian (or, the one about LSD trials on dolphins)

Content warnings: strong language, physical and sexual violence, misogyny, racism, suicide, genocide, antisemitism

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Featuring Patrick Fiorilli, Andrew Tillett, and Duri Long.

Produced and edited by Patrick Fiorilli (www.patf.io and @patfio.bsky.social).

Our theme music is “Horology,” by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives license on the album Polygondwanaland.