Pornography

[DudiousMax at aol.com]

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