"great sex " (was "wholesome" sex)

[Paul Mackin]

I think Heiki puts it very well. 

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From: 	hankhank at ccwf.cc.utexas.edu
Sent: 	Monday, November 25, 1996 4:51 PM
To: 	pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: 	RE: "wholesome" sex


Yes, what could "healthy" and "normal" and "wholesome" sex in Pynchon be?
What makes Roger & Jessica episodes (which, as I see them, are not mainly
parodic) quite electrifying is that they have found that love-making pocket 
outside Peace, or Jeremy's War, in that illegal private Zone of theirs. 
Their romance is able to last as long as that electrifyingly shattered (=
not wholesome in any traditonal sense) dwelling of danger and hope. It
seems quite obvious that Roger's (whose mother is the War) ardent desire
for Jessica would have severely slackened in peacetime without any
intervening Beavers. To find one's way to "great sex", as Americans say,
seems to require that each love-making unit must create pockets at least a
bit dangerous, 'erogeneous Zones' of their own. So I don't find it very
surprising that in that less Zonal and more pastoral book of Pynchon's,
_Vineland_, (at least overtly) erotic and/or sexual episodes are *almost*
omitted in favor of what they seem to threaten, the family.  

Heikki

P.S. I saw THE ENGLISH PATIENT yesterday, and did not find it very
Hollywoodian. Real similarities with CASABLANCA being very superficial if
not non-existent. It felt much more "European" to me than, say, anything
by Bertolucci, but then again, Bertolucci has always been a real 
'butterfingers' in my eyes. Or would "Commonwealth-Hungarian" describe the
film better?