pynchon's misogyny

[Andrew Dinn]

Craig Clark writes:

> Interestingly enough, Susanne Kappeler's _The Pornography of 
> Representation_ - which deals with this idea - is highly critical of 
> TRP's status as a novelist: for Kappeler, the acclaim accorded to 
> _GR_, with its frequent images of the sexual degradation of women, 
> constitutes one mechanism whereby the White Male Establishment 
> disempowers women. Personally I disagree: I believe that the 
> "pornographic" (by which I mean degrading of women) elements in _GR_ 
> are intended as ironies, to indicate not that women enjoy being 
> forced into degrading relationships (which would render them purely 
> pornographic, IMHO), but rather to illustrate the consciousnesses 
> created by the White Male Establishment, including those whereby 
> women are degraded. Anyone who mistakes Pynchon's work for a defense 
> or even a complicit gesture of support for the White Male 
> Establishment has clearly missed the boat.

  `a defense or even a complicit gesture of support for the White
   Male Establishment'

It would be hard to come up with a more misleading one line
description of GR. There is so much in the book and in TRP's other
work which stands in opposition to the White Male Establishment that
to suggest that this is the book's agenda is to send Pynchon to the
circle where incompetents receive for punishment. And nothing Jules
has revealed on the matter (e.g. regarding the way Tom fell for
Chrissie's 8 year old act) really has any bearing on the book. To me
Pynchon's child-sex fantasies are way too close to the bone to feel
comfortable about. He manipulates the reader (this reader, at least)
just as brilliantly as Nabokov does when describing Lolita. It does
not matter where this stuff comes from. What matters is where it is
going i.e. straight for the groin. If he can hit that bulls eye he
must be on to something which transcends individual experience (I
don't think I am alone here - hell, I've known several women who were
seduced by HH's revelation of Lolita in the garden peering over the
top of her shades and even one woman who found TRP dangerously erotic,
never mind males who find it arousing).

Jules' posts do not add further confirmation that TRP has got under
the skin of child sexuality and adult fantasy. How could they?
Pynchon's writing exposes a susceptibility of which I am all too aware
in myself and other males. Pynchon's personal response to Chrissie
(let alone the version of it we obtain via Jules from Chrissie) is not
only unnecessary as another data point, it may in fact not be in the
least bit representative of what is at stake in adult-child (or
adult-adult playing child) power games. There's an awkward irony here
in the fact that *personal* experience is one of the worst arguments
for *general* validity, yet it invariably - and quite naturally given
the circumstances - forms the envelope within which we organize our
general expectations.

Anyway, to get back to stereotyping I'll throw in another related data
point which I think does inform. I just bought and devoured volume 5
of the collected works of Robert Crumb the other day. Aside from
recommending it to everyone (I noticed several Pynchon themes, in
particular one cartoon called Shit or Shinola, and doubtless there are
many more connections) it provides a similar case to TRP.

Crumb has a black female character called Angelfood McSpade who is a
stereotypical `jungle' black with fat lips, hair tied up and secured
by a bone, naked breasts and a grass skirt barely covering the most
enormously callipygian butt you will ever see, even in a Crumb cartoon
(that's saying something, his women usually have massive thighs and
arses). She is a portrayed as a lust filled sexpot and Crumb consigns
her to the jungle lest she blow the minds (ok, not just the minds) of
weak EuroAmerican males with her sexual wiles (all of which are
lovingly described and occasionally depicted in obscene detail).

Although such caricatures were originally drawn out of ignorance and
prejudice (see e.g. early Tintin cartoons where the same imagery is
used with no attempt to reflect back on the society which conceived
it), Crumb uses Angelfood very knowingly to explore EuroAmerican male
attitudes both to sex and to blacks. He uses equally stereotyped
images of hippies, young girls, the family (that lays together . . .)
etc. for the same purpose. Crumb may well have his own problems with
these subjects and his cartoons may be based as much on insights into
his own character as into the hearts and minds of the people who were
round him at the time. But Angelfood says nothing about black women
and everything about western cultural attitudes to black women. To
even consider that such a character is meant to represent real people
is ridiculous. Is this not also as true of Margarita, Bianca, Katje
(Blicero, Gottfried et al) as it is of Lolita or Angelfood?

If there is any character whose presentation approaches being rounded
and full it is . . . Slothrop? . . . naah, not him he hardly even
exists on his own terms let alone as everyman . . . no, it's Poekler,
who gets to play with pretty much a full deck. So how do we interpret
those scenes with him and his `daughter'? Well they sure as hell are
not real i.e. they are presented as part of a fantasy. But they are
part of Poekler's reality, part of what makes Poekler Poekler.  Just
as in Vineland it is part of Prairie's reality that she has fantasies
about wearing frilly knickers and turning Zoyd on. Or is there really
no sexual element to a father/daughter relationship? Well having no
kids I don't know from personal experience but then what's a mere
single missing data point. I do have eyes and ears and friends or
relatives who are parents. At the very least I think every father
speculates about whether and with whom his teenage daughter is having
sex - probably right down to the intimate details and often with
quality graphic rendering to boot. Does a little personal erotic
involvement never cross his mind too? Especially when circumstances
militate towards it as in Poekler's or Zoyd's case. I doubt it.

Oh and any fathers who want to lecture me on how `you could never say
that if you were a father - fatherhood just changes everything about
you and your attitudes to things' can forget it right now (ditto
mothers and motherhood). I'll just reply that you don't know how much
fatherhood (motherhood) blinds you to your own worst characteristics,
what with all those kids around all the time messing up your endocrine
system. There is perspective and there are perspectives.


Andrew Dinn
-----------
And though Earthliness forget you,
To the stilled Earth say:  I flow.
To the rushing water speak:  I am.