Pynchon's Mothers & Roger's Mother
Mark Wright AIA
mwaia at yahoo.com
Mon Oct 22 08:45:12 CDT 2001
Howdy
--- Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net> wrote:
> He also call his sexual rival (Jessica's man) the war.
> He also calls Jessica's man Beaver.
> Beaver is a slang term for vagina. It's an insult for sure.
I don't have my copy of GR handy and so I may be unpersuasive (I can't
remember his name, dammit) but I've never thought of Roger's Rival's
nickname "Beaver" as a nasty sexual reference at all. I interpreted it
as descriptive of the man, pegging him as a childishly eager (as in
'Eager Beaver') fellow with the underbite of the fabled and
stereotypical "upper class twit". A host of possible mannerisms and
speech patterns are called to mind by the nickname as Roger uses it,
few of them sexual as far as I'm concerned. The sexual aspects of the
name do, later in GR, find expression in Roger's imagination as he is
losing Jessica during the demobilization.
Not sure what this might have to do with Oedipus or Freud...
Mark
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