MDDM: melancholy, Mason, Lolita

[cathy ramirez]

--- Doug Millison <millison at online-journalist.com>
wrote:
> >Consider that in Lolita our man suffers from
> >melancholia (insanity if we must insist on that
> cruel
> >term).  [...]
> 
> Absent the worldview in which "melancholy" means
> what it means for Burton
> and can stand as a medical diagnosis, it doesn't
> seem to make much sense,
> imo,  to rip this label out of the 16th century,
> taking it out of the
> setting in which Burton develops his topic and the
> period it which he
> publishes The Anatomy of Melancholy, and stick it to
> 20th century Humbert



Why not? Are you saying that any pre-20th century
study 
of melancholy can not be applied to HH? 




> -- and I'm not sure that adds much of anything to a
> reading of Pynchon.

Pynchon read Lolita. In fact we know he read the novel
because he mentions it in Serge's song in CL49. In
Lolita, HH melancholy is caused, at least in part, by
the loss of his young love and his obsession with
nymphets. In Pynchon's novels we find characters
suffering from melancholy due to the loss of a young
love and or an obsession with nympehts. Again, I'm 
pre-supposing  a range of nymphets, above and below
the the definition of "nymphet" in Lolita. 

Mason suffers from all the symptoms and causes of
Melancholy that Burton describes. All of them. If I'm
wrong on this please correct me by providing one
example from the texts. As I stated, Burton does not
take up the nympeht as cause/symptom of melancholy. 
But this cause/symptom seem to appply to Mason and
other Pynchon characters. 

Does any of this add anything to your reading of
Pynchon? Who cares? Not me, that's for sure. 

> 
> Looking at Mason in the context of melancholy as
> defined by Burton might be
> an interesting exercise, if for no other reason than
> to establish the depth
> of Pynchon's research and character development.

Yeah, I bet it would. 



> Beyond that, I'm not sure
> where that takes a reader,  since "melancholy" seems
> to recede even beyond
> Burton's reach the harder he tries to grasp it; a
> challenge  not foreign to
> Pynchon's work, either.

Not sure what your saying here? Melancholy recedes? 
Didn't you argue previously that my application of
Burton's book was preposterous because the tome is
such an extensive study?  



> 


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