Pornography

[HenryM]

Dube -

Hard to believe that anyone ever confuse your my message style with mine.
Unless...

Keep cool, but care.

AsB4,

Ma

----- Original Message -----
From: <DudiousMax at aol.com>
To: <Pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sunday, March 05, 2000 10:04 AM
Subject: Pornography


> Yo Dudes,
>                 There are a lot of words for love.  I'll remind you the
> Greeks had words for "filia," or brotherly love, from which we see the
city
> of.  "Eros," or erotic love, which we ususally associate mostly with
sexual
> lust.  "Agape," or spiritual love, by which is usually meant something
> related to "Universal Love."  There are some others, like "philosophy" or
the
> "love of wisdom."  And there are the pedantic types, like "bibliophilia"
or
> "love of books," and "audiophilie" for the "lover of good sound
(systems)."
> So there can be as many specific types of "filia" as one can make Latinate
> combination words for.
>                 The Greeks also had some specific words for other stuff.
As
> the Logos was the word, Graphos was writing, and Porne was the word for
what
> we would now call "harlot."  So Porne Graphos (pornography) was writing
about
> the activity of harlots.  We have generalized that to mean writing,
pictures,
> films, video cassettes depicting sexual behavior.  Such artifacts are also
> the means by which such well-respected scholars as Dr. John Money (and
before
> him Wilhelm Reich) studied the various manifestations of sexual behavior.
> So, what is one man's tittilation (erotic stimulator, rubbing the titties,
if
> you will) is another man's research material.
>                 I propose that Pynchon's various lovers are a depiction of
> the varieties of sexual behavior that he wants to put forth, an erotic
> typology of all the various sex activities that suit his thematic purpose.
> Various individual readers will respond to his/her favorite type of
> behaviors.  Maybe it is cynical market building on his part.  Maybe he is
> suggesting we are all hard-wired soft-machines.  That the notion of "the
> penis he thought was his own," is common to all of us, our sexual
preferences
> an accident of early conditioning, not necessarily nefarious.  In any
event,
> the penis mightier than the sword, or the basic biological drives are very
> strong, no matter on what they're focused.  We are all in it together.
IMHO
> that's what he's saying on one level.
>                 Then again, as a satirist (a posture that presumes a
commonly
> held moral landscape), maybe he is holding some of our sexual behaviors up
to
> ridicule as Dante does in his Inferno.  Major Marvy, for one, doesn't get
off
> too lightly.  In other words, in Pynchon's hands "pornography" is another
> trope in his bag of tricks.  It has a purpose beyond rubbing our
collective
> nipples, IMHO.  Any opinions on just what that might be?  Kai?  Terrance?
> Just random thoughts.  Maybe we can come up with something?
>                 Max
>