Friday, November 30, 2007

Inside Joke

Life imitates art in Santa Barbara, where someone is spraypainting graffiti on the local UC campus. The red figures are in the shape of the muted trumpet (below) from Thomas Pynchon's novel The Crying of Lot 49. In the book, the trumpet is the clue which allows the protaganist Oedipus Maas to discover the reclusive organization called Tristero. Fifteen to twenty of the designs have been found so far on the University of California campus.



No one has claimed responsibility for the grafitti, and says insidehighered.com, presumably with a straight face, "Pynchon could not be reached for comment."--David E

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Brilliant! good to see underground symbolism alive and well in the faculty.

i remember when i'd just finished reading this mind-stretching book (back in 1988), looking down at the wall next to me, in the melbourne uni cafe, and seeing the symbol scrawled there. Uncanny timing.