blicero's sexuality

[Terrance]

lorentzen-nicklaus wrote:
> 
>  oh come on, terrance ... since you've been riding on mr. eddins' ticket for
>  such a long time, you should try a little harder, shouldn't you?! & didn't you
>  argue here quite similar concerning s&m and, if my memory does not mislead me,
>  homosexuality in gr?

Quite similar to what? Thus far you have not said what it is
Eddins argues. And so, what it is I argued that you are
claiming is similar to his argument is not clear to me.  
The
sentence you quote doesn't mean much as is. What does Eddins
say about S&M? I don't remember his saying much about it, so
I'm 
quite sure that I didn't make an argument about S&M in GR
after "riding on Mr. Eddins' ticket."  



 of course we can discuss whether this moment of
>  stuffyness and, perhaps, homophobia is already present in pynchon's texts
>  (later in v we'll come to a lesbian mirror love scene), but you shouldn't act
>  stupid or play it down. 

I'm not playing stupid or playing anything down.  

I disagree with your speculative characterization of the
Eddins interpretation. 

I say speculative because you have been asking questions for
the most part. Although you did say something about a "mono
cultural positivism" and I'm sorry I'm not sure what this
means and I don't want to misinterpret, so if you could say
more on this I would appreciate it. 

I don't think there is a "stuffiness" or "homophobia" in 
the Eddins interpretation. 

Perhaps if you point it out to me I can provide my reasons
for this or perhaps I will change my opinion. In any event,
this discussion is one I think we might both enjoy. 

The single sentence that you have provided has not changed
my opinion. 

It's not that the single sentence you have posted doesn't
look like it might support your speculations. I'm not sure
if jbor and Jeremy have the text handy, but the sentence is
one sentence, the second sentence of a very, very critical
paragraph, in fact it is the concluding paragraph, not of
the chapter, but of the ten or so page study of Blicero.
After this 
concluding paragraph Eddins takes up Greta. 

Here it is: 

"Buggery, however, is only the starting point of Blicero's
violations. By dressing as a women with artificial genitalia
fashioned from various synthetics and by interdicting the
natural attraction between Gottfried and Kaje, Blicero is
undertaking to found a competing sexual order, one that is
entirely the product of human imagination rather than the
natural instincts and that serves Death--the Oven--rather
than Life. The ultimate perversion in this wildly escalating
fantasies to sacrifice the Beloved, garbed in feminine
stockings and shrouded in Imipolex, to the very principle of
perversion. The firing of the 00000 symbolizes an artificial
apocalypse, engineered to celebrate the religion of gnostic
artifice." 

All caps are Eddins

Now, to be fair and "true"  to the texts (GR and Eddins) we
need to
reconstruct, and feel free to deconstruct, the argument so
that we can better understand the language, this concluding
paragraph, and the interpretation.  I understand why the
sentence you posted, and indeed this  paragraph alone, might
cause one to speculate as to the "stuffiness"  of the Eddins
interpretation. However, the language here, for example,
"the natural attraction," "buggary," "natural instincts,"
"perversion," and of course, as we have discussed,
"gnostic," needs to be read as defined by Eddins and his
interpretation, and until this is done I can't see how we
can characterize it as "stuffy." What does Eddins mean 
here when he writes the words  "gnostic," "natural," and so
on. 

Also, he's not making a social commentary, a moral argument
against homosexuality or making any value judgment about
people and their sexual practices. For example, the term
"buggary"
is defined by Eddins by citing Bloom citing Richard
Poirier's interpretation of 
Mailer use of the trope. 

Also, Eddins makes it clear that he is interpreting a novel
and  he says that the sexual, the sacred, the scientific,
are
"tropes," and  that Blicero's fantasies are "symbolic of..." 

He never makes a comment about Pynchon being "stuffy" and he
never implies this. 

This is another issue, one Eddins does not address.    

Gnostic Pynchon, Chapter 5, Orphic contra Gnostic