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Koteks is a rebellious engineer who works with Mike Fallopian at Yoyodyne. Koteks grew up hoping to invent something that would change the world, or at least make him famous. But instead, he ends up working on a team, developing technologies that he does not care about, and doing the bidding of Yoyodyne’s inane executives, who spend their days singing cheery songs about going to war and do not know the first thing about actual science. When Oedipa meets Koteks, she sees him drawing the muted horn symbol in his notebook and suspects that he might be part of Tristero. Koteks tells Oedipa about John Nefastis’s secret communication machine, but judges her harshly for pronouncing “W.A.S.T.E.” as a single word, not a five-letter acronym. Pynchon parodies both halves of Koteks’s disaffection: his self-esteem totally depends upon the individualistic American ideal of the brilliant, autonomous, underground male scientist; and his life revolves around the corporate military-industrial complex that forces talented, inquisitive thinkers to waste their lives developing destructive technologies. There is also an element of self-parody in Koteks: Pynchon spent two years writing propaganda to convince the American public to celebrate Boeing missiles, until he swore off the corporate world and decided to become a writer.
Stanley Koteks Quotes in The Crying of Lot 49
The The Crying of Lot 49 quotes below are all either spoken by Stanley Koteks or refer to Stanley Koteks. 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:
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Chapter 4
Quotes
Under the symbols she’d copied off the latrine wall of The Scope into her memo book, she wrote Shall I project a world?
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High above the L.A. freeways,
And the traffic's whine,
Stands the well-known Galactronics
Branch of Yoyodyne.
To the end, we swear undying
Loyalty to you,
Pink pavilions bravely shining,
Palm trees tall and true.
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“Patents,” Oedipa said. Koteks explained how every engineer, in signing the Yoyodyne contract, also signed away the patent rights to any inventions he might come up with.
“This stifles your really creative engineer,” Koteks said, adding bitterly, “wherever he may be.”
“I didn't think people invented any more,” said Oedipa, sensing this would goad him. “I mean, who's there been, really, since Thomas Edison? Isn't it all teamwork now?” Bloody Chiclitz, in his welcoming speech this morning, had stressed teamwork.
“Teamwork,” Koteks snarled, “is one word for it, yeah. What it really is is a way to avoid responsibility. It's a symptom of the gutlessness of the whole society.”
“Goodness,” said Oedipa, “are you allowed to talk like that?
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Stanley Koteks Quotes in The Crying of Lot 49
The The Crying of Lot 49 quotes below are all either spoken by Stanley Koteks or refer to Stanley Koteks. 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:
).
Chapter 4
Quotes
Under the symbols she’d copied off the latrine wall of The Scope into her memo book, she wrote Shall I project a world?
Related Characters:
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
High above the L.A. freeways,
And the traffic's whine,
Stands the well-known Galactronics
Branch of Yoyodyne.
To the end, we swear undying
Loyalty to you,
Pink pavilions bravely shining,
Palm trees tall and true.
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
“Patents,” Oedipa said. Koteks explained how every engineer, in signing the Yoyodyne contract, also signed away the patent rights to any inventions he might come up with.
“This stifles your really creative engineer,” Koteks said, adding bitterly, “wherever he may be.”
“I didn't think people invented any more,” said Oedipa, sensing this would goad him. “I mean, who's there been, really, since Thomas Edison? Isn't it all teamwork now?” Bloody Chiclitz, in his welcoming speech this morning, had stressed teamwork.
“Teamwork,” Koteks snarled, “is one word for it, yeah. What it really is is a way to avoid responsibility. It's a symptom of the gutlessness of the whole society.”
“Goodness,” said Oedipa, “are you allowed to talk like that?
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