pynchon's misogyny

[Teen Age Riot]

At 03:50 PM 10/30/96 -0500, The Dark Lord Matt wrote:

>as goddesses, women as loving, nurturing v. men as cruel, cold,
>emotionally unattached).  Again, whether this is a "bad" thing depends 
>on your perspective: I'd argue that it is (For does this then imply that
>women who are not "nurturing" are "bad" or "emotionless" [i.e. like Rachel
>at the beginning of the novel] but many others - Camille Paglia, for
>example, would argue that this is somehow empowering.  You might try and
>argue that French feminism would find _V._ powerful, too (I think lots
>of people misread Cixious, Irigaray Kristeva, and argue that they
>"essentialize" the same way as Paglia) but I don't think this works as
>well.  You certainly don't see Pynchon subverting gender roles as a
>construct (a la, Genet, for example): he seems to buy into them wholesale
>within _V._.

Largely true, imho, although I think Vineland presents a much more robust
depiction of women.  Pynchon's come quite a long way.  Amongst Frenesi,
Prairie, Thi Ahn Tran, DL, et al, TRP still presents stereotypes, but he's
managed to combine, distort, and substitute them in interesting ways that
really ultimately serve to undermine their validity.  In particular, I'm
interested in how he presents Asian female stereotypes alongside white
female stereotypes, and then plays games of substitutions(DL disguised as
Frenesi).  

I'd try to be a little more clear, but Bravo's showing all 29 episodes of
Twin Peaks in a row starting at 8PM Eastern tonight(ending like 1 PM
Friday), so I wanna catch an hour snooze before I dig in... :)

Al

PS- what happened to the days when the flames on pynchon-l were actually
interesting?  hag, where are you?
__________________________________________
al wang
http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~alwang/home.htm
talk request: alwang at random.resnet.upenn.edu

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