blicero's sexuality

[Jeremy Osner]

Hi all,

Walked into summin' unexpected -- sorry, I was just reacting to the
sentence Kai posted -- never read the essay m'self... I wasn't trying to
slander or accuse anyone -- perhaps I ought to have couched my reaction
in a more conditional or hypothetical framework...

Jeremy (of "jbor and Jeremy", also "Kai and Jeremy")

Terrance wrote:
> 
> 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