Mason's Nymphets

[cathy ramirez]

John Ruskin. OK. Just chitchat but there is a
connection here between the nymphet and melancholy.
Consider that in Lolita our man suffers from
melancholia (insanity if we must insist on that cruel
term). Like Mason, he has lost his first young love.
BTW, to cure himself he does what so many characters
of great literature do (including, ironically, Mason
and Wicks), sails out to sea. Another connection you
may be interested in (you can tell I've been reading
your stuff in the archives (Poe and magnetism and so
forth), and you can look it up, is his publication on
the psychological affects a journey to the arctic has
on the crew. Of course, the purpose of their journey
to the arctic is all very hushhush, seems no one
really knows why they go up there other than to cure
or study psychological pathologies, but there is also
the connection to Pointsman's fox. But I digress and
do connect too much. 
The narrator of L, being a literary guy, also provides
lots of connections in the arts, in history, in the
law-Dante, Rahab, Virgil, Nefertiti, Petrarch, and so
on and on. 
And, this is the point if there is one, the narrator
of Lolita provides us with a very strict definition of
the nymphet, and I think we can use that definition to
create a spectrum on either side of the "true" nymphet
(as defined by HH in Lolita)  that includes both males
and females and apply this to Pynchon's characters. 



There are three in the short tales. MMV, Lowlands,
Small Rain, 
In V. there is Paola (the main character of that novel
as far as I know?). 
Benny lusts after jail bait. 
There is the fetish girl of Lady V (this is another
big connection-the nymphet, unless she dies, is not
going to remain young-the nymphet is fetishized). 
The slave girl. 
Mucho's girls in CL49
Dozens in GR, including Slothrop's young girls and
Pointsman's little ones. 
Both Zoyd and Brock go for young ones too. 
And in M&D it is poor Mason who is tortured by the
nymphets at the cape and meets up with young Amy in
NY. 



--- Dave Monroe <davidmmonroe at yahoo.com> wrote:
> And I suspect a John Ruskin conection behind all
> that
> somehow, but ...
> 
> --- cathy ramirez <cathyramirez69 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > 
> > There is one symptom that Burton doesn't go into
> > that I can't quite figure out: Mason's attraction
> to
> 
> > nymphets. 
> > 
> > "You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature
> > of infinite melancholy, with bubble of hot poison
> in
> > your loins and a super-voluptuous flame
> permenantly
> > aglow in your subtle spine (oh, how you have to
> > cringe and hide!), in order to dicern at
> once...the
> > little deadly demon..."
> > 
> > Nabokov, Lolita
> 
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