The Crying of Lot 49

by

Thomas Pynchon

Bortz is an English professor and Richard Wharfinger expert who teaches at the Pierce Inverarity-funded San Narciso College and spends much of his free time binge-drinking with his students. Oedipa consults him for information about the “tryst with Trystero” line in Randolph Driblette’s production of The Courier’s Tragedy. Whereas Driblette identifies the true version of the play as his company’s performance, Bortz insists that Wharfinger’s original script is the real version. However, Bortz also admits that most of the play’s historical editions have been significantly altered, and he praises Driblette for changing the script to capture the play’s spirit. These statements both seem to undermine his emphasis on the sanctity of the script. He chalks the “tryst with Trystero” line up to an intentionally sinful adaptation of the play compiled by a Puritan sect called the Scurvhamites. Then, he directs Oedipa to a series of old books—most importantly, the memoirs of Dr. Diocletian Blobb—that suggest that Tristero was founded by a Spanish nobleman in the 1500s. However, Bortz then fills in several hundred years more of Tristero’s history by simply making it up. His nonchalant personality and propensity for wild speculation defy stereotypes about professors—especially those specializing in 17th-century literature. However, his relative neglect of his overburdened wife makes him totally consistent with the rest of the novel’s male characters.

Professor Emory Bortz Quotes in The Crying of Lot 49

The The Crying of Lot 49 quotes below are all either spoken by Professor Emory Bortz or refer to Professor Emory Bortz. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Conspiracy, Interpretation, and Meaning Theme Icon
).
Chapter 6 Quotes

It may have been some vision of the continent-wide power structure Hinckart could have taken over, now momentarily weakened and tottering, that inspired Tristero to set up his own system. He seems to have been highly unstable, apt at any time to appear at a public function and begin a speech. His constant theme, disinheritance. The postal monopoly belonged to Ohain by right of conquest, and Ohain belonged to Tristero by right of blood. He styled himself El Desheredado, The Disinherited, and fashioned a livery of black for his followers, black to symbolize the only thing that truly belonged to them in their exile: the night. Soon he had added to his iconography the muted post horn and a dead badger with its four feet in the air (some said that the name Taxis came from the Italian tasso, badger, referring to hats of badger fur the early Bergamascan couriers wore). He began a sub rosa campaign of obstruction, terror and depredation along the Thurn and Taxis mail routes.

Related Characters: Oedipa Maas, Professor Emory Bortz
Related Symbols: The Tristero Muted Horn Symbol
Page Number: 131-2
Explanation and Analysis:

Either you have stumbled indeed, without the aid of LSD or other indole alkaloids, onto a secret richness and concealed density of dream […] Or you are hallucinating it. Or a plot has been mounted against you […] all financed out of the estate in a way either too secret or too involved for your non-legal mind to know about even though you are co-executor, so labyrinthine that it must have meaning beyond just a practical joke. Or you are fantasying some such plot, in which case you are a nut, Oedipa, out of your skull.

Those, now that she was looking at them, she saw to be the alternatives. Those symmetrical four. She didn’t like any of them, but hoped she was mentally ill; that that’s all it was. That night she sat for hours, too numb even to drink, teaching herself to breathe in a vacuum. For this, oh God, was the void. There was nobody who could help her. Nobody in the world. They were all on something, mad, possible enemies, dead.

Related Characters: Oedipa Maas, Pierce Inverarity, Professor Emory Bortz
Related Symbols: Mail, Drugs and Alcohol, The Tristero Muted Horn Symbol
Page Number: 140-1
Explanation and Analysis:
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The Crying of Lot 49 PDF

Professor Emory Bortz Quotes in The Crying of Lot 49

The The Crying of Lot 49 quotes below are all either spoken by Professor Emory Bortz or refer to Professor Emory Bortz. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Conspiracy, Interpretation, and Meaning Theme Icon
).
Chapter 6 Quotes

It may have been some vision of the continent-wide power structure Hinckart could have taken over, now momentarily weakened and tottering, that inspired Tristero to set up his own system. He seems to have been highly unstable, apt at any time to appear at a public function and begin a speech. His constant theme, disinheritance. The postal monopoly belonged to Ohain by right of conquest, and Ohain belonged to Tristero by right of blood. He styled himself El Desheredado, The Disinherited, and fashioned a livery of black for his followers, black to symbolize the only thing that truly belonged to them in their exile: the night. Soon he had added to his iconography the muted post horn and a dead badger with its four feet in the air (some said that the name Taxis came from the Italian tasso, badger, referring to hats of badger fur the early Bergamascan couriers wore). He began a sub rosa campaign of obstruction, terror and depredation along the Thurn and Taxis mail routes.

Related Characters: Oedipa Maas, Professor Emory Bortz
Related Symbols: The Tristero Muted Horn Symbol
Page Number: 131-2
Explanation and Analysis:

Either you have stumbled indeed, without the aid of LSD or other indole alkaloids, onto a secret richness and concealed density of dream […] Or you are hallucinating it. Or a plot has been mounted against you […] all financed out of the estate in a way either too secret or too involved for your non-legal mind to know about even though you are co-executor, so labyrinthine that it must have meaning beyond just a practical joke. Or you are fantasying some such plot, in which case you are a nut, Oedipa, out of your skull.

Those, now that she was looking at them, she saw to be the alternatives. Those symmetrical four. She didn’t like any of them, but hoped she was mentally ill; that that’s all it was. That night she sat for hours, too numb even to drink, teaching herself to breathe in a vacuum. For this, oh God, was the void. There was nobody who could help her. Nobody in the world. They were all on something, mad, possible enemies, dead.

Related Characters: Oedipa Maas, Pierce Inverarity, Professor Emory Bortz
Related Symbols: Mail, Drugs and Alcohol, The Tristero Muted Horn Symbol
Page Number: 140-1
Explanation and Analysis: