A Dirty Story

[Paul Mackin]

Enjoyed Chris Stolz' story about his college course. Though
the story had more than one point, I particularly approve of
the way the professor reacted to the students' practically
unanimously-expressed opinion:

> "I'm amazed that none of you have
> either had, or have felt comfortable enough to admit you've had, a response
> similar to mine."


No real effort here to condemn or blame herd-instinct,
"politically-correct" thinking, brain-washing, bourgeois
 morality. Just a hint that these MIGHT be a factor. At root,
the response commendably confines itself to simple,
quite-human AMAZEMENT.

Once in a while I myself am a little AMAZED that one or another
p-lister seems not to have chosen to follow the prof's model.
(wonder if I practice what I preach)

No big deal, of course. Love ya all.

					P 



----------
> From: Chris Stolz <chstolz at canuck.com>
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: A Dirty Story
> Date: Saturday, January 25, 1997 1:24 AM
> 
> Herny M.'s post reminds me of soemthign tha happened in the first feminism
> seminar I took in university (at McGill).  The professor (a woman) assigned
> us to read excerpts from Norman Mailer's _An American Dream_ and Henry
> Miller's _Sexus_.  In the first, the hero kills his wife and then sodomises
> his maid before hitting the road for an all-american killing spree.  In the
> second, the passage had the narrator in the bathtub, sexually ordering his
> maid around to gratify him.
> 
> When we got to class the next week (the class was 17 women and two men), the
> professor asked us what we thought of the passages.  One after another, the
> young women stood up and said "It was disGUSting!  Awful!  Gross!  Totally
> sexist and patriarchal," etc etc.  I didn't say anything.
> 
> When everybody was done, the professor stood up and looked at us and said,
> "You know, I find some of this kind of arousing, and really well written
> too," at which point there were at least twelve audible gasps in the room.
> The professor then went on and said "and I'm amazed that none of you have
> either had, or have felt comfortable enough to admit you've had, a response
> similar to mine."
> 
> Anyway, she taught us a useful lesson in that course, which is that what we
> want to call evil, or sexist, or whatever modern term we have for it, has
> something appealing to it (even for those who can be its victims, or victims
> by association), and that we cannot go and outright condemn anything.
> Nothing's as simple as being totally evil or wrong or degrading. A text
> always has somethign going on in it that doesn't play along with its main
> impression or idea...and when discussion of the salacious passgaes of _GR_,
> or _Lolita_ come up, this always pops back into my head
> 
> Chris Stolz      Internet:  chstolz at canuck.com
> 		Hard mail:  405-7A St. N.E.  
>                             Calgary, AB, Canada
>                             T2E-4E9  (403) 234-8653
> 
> Modern man likes to pretend that his thinking is wide-awake. 
> But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the mazes of a 
> nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly 
> repeated in the mirrors of reason.  When we emerge, perhaps 
> we will realise we have been dreaming with our eyes open, 
> and that the dreams of reason are intolerable.  And then, 
> perhaps, we will begin to dream once more with our eyes closed.
> 
> 			-- Octavio Paz, _The Labyrinth of Solitude_	
>