What Jessica Knew

[LBernier at tribune.com]

Jessica is exempt from the effects of the war because she is woman.  You know, 
men fight the wars, women carry on.  She was never, for me, a particularly 
endearing character, because she's too much of a stereotype - a little 
duplicitous, airhead demeanor - which may or may not be real, but isn't it 
expected that she be more decorous than substantive?  Doesn't society demand it?
 She's Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca - she'll end up with Beaver because that's 
what she, celluloid femme with no real choice, is expected to do.  Men can 
behave badly, after all, they're fighting a war - and it's the women who must 
somehow reestablish normality once the men are done with their silliness.  But 
she is essentially passive.  As are all the women in the book, even Katje.

Jean.

______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: What Jessica Knew
Author:  Paul Mackin <mackin at allware.com> at Internet_tco
Date:    11/14/96 11:00 AM


Before we leave Jessica's chapter (pp.53-60), there's something I wanted to ask 
a bout.
     
Is she supposed to be some kind of seer, clairvoyant, or mystic?
     
With Roger and earlier in the book she pretends total out-to-lunchness in the 
world of ideas. But there is also continually the feeling that she is aware of 
mu ch much more.
     
The interjection (in the middle of J's reverie at the window) of the scene 
betwee n Mexico and Pointsman (beginning with "An Erlenmeye flask bubbles on the
ring" ( p. 55)) can of course be seen as a shift to the omnipresent pov of some 
off-stage
 narrator. But there is a hint at least that this is NOT the case. "Somewhere a 
 s
napshot of Jessica peeks from beneath Roger's old
Whittaker and Watson." Can it be Jessica HERSELF who somehow is 
doing the peeking?
     
And a little later, her more  conventional recollection of the conversation with
Pirate over  Roger's "paying the minimum dues." J has no trouble understanding 
ex actly what Pirate is getting at--how  his down-to-earth approach (not to say 
thos e swoony eyes)  undermines Roger's sterile statistical analysis of the way 
things
 are.
     
And what about Jessica's feeling that the war has really changed nothing 
for her, that she could to back.  So unlike Roger's view of everything back 
then being so silly and presently inconceivable. Does J have some kind
of dispensation from the horrendous effects of the War?
     
So my question is, is there something really "deep" about all this? 
Or is it merely a brilliant Pynchonian surface requiring nothing more
underneath for its completion? Of course there is nothing "mere" about
a Pynchonian surface. A further explaining of one of these marvels might be 
carry ing coals to Newcastle. 
     
I remember something Jules said to the effect we shouldn't look too 
deeply into how the master gains his effects. Wish I could remember 
his words. Proabably in those archives somewhere.
     
			P.