VV(18): The young girl ...

[Dave Monroe]

Oh, hey, from John Dugdale, Thomas Pynchon: Allusive
Parables of Power (London: Macmillan, 1990; New York:
St. Martin's Press, 1990), Ch. 2, "V.," pp. 76-123 ...

"Another post-war writer alluded to in the chapter is
Nabokov, Pynchon's former teacher at Cornell.  The
nympholeptic novelist ('the young girl ... had again
become the mode in erotic fiction', 402) is a fairly
obvious parody, the mystery scene on the next page a
more subtle reference.  Porcepic singing sentimental
Russian ballads, Melanie with her hands over her eyes
('they seemed like a picture he'd seen somewhere
once', 403) reproduce a scene in Lolita [Ch. 11, p. 55
of the Olympia Press ed.]." (p. 96)

One might also read that "mystery scene"--"(A dozen
young gathered round the samovar to read novels aloud:
where had youth gone?) Porcepic, nostalgic, snuffled
over his guitar" (p. 403)--as a more general parody of
the Greenwich Village and/or San Francisco beat folk
coffeehouse scene, but ...

--- Dave Monroe <davidmmonroe at yahoo.com> wrote:
> "Afterward Gerfaut the writer sat by a window,
> discoursing on how for some reason the young
> girl--adolescent or younger--had again become the
> mode in erotic fiction." (V., Ch. 14, Sec. i,
> p. 402)

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