VLVL Ditzah

[Richard Fiero]

jbor wrote:
>Ditzah, by the time of Reagan, is prosperous and comfortably assimilated
>into the society, wears a tropical muu-muu, drinks sangria and owns a
>classic car. . . .

Let's see where this is going.
A muu-muu is a very inexpensive and shapeless dress.
Sangria is punch using an inexpensive wine. A step up from 
sloshing some Thunderbird and 7-Up together.
"Classic car" was actually "vintage car" in the text. Just an old car.
I'd never suggest that jbor might be intentionally misleading. 
This is a rather unique reading of the text.

>(And note how this description of her ostentatious appearance
>in the present time circumscribes DL's recollection of the way she and her
>sister dressed up, their "image", back in the day). Isn't part of the point
>here that whatever political commitment she . . .

Ah, yes. The author is indeed trashing the 60's thing.
In a following post jbor wrote:
>Another point to note about this chapter is the way Pynchon 
>emphasises the cultishness and unacknowledged prejudices of the 24fps crew:
>
>     They particularly believed in the ability of close-ups to reveal
>     and devastate. When power corrupts, it keeps a log of its progress,
>     written into that most sensitive memory device, the human face. Who
>     could withstand the light? (195.5)
>
>This is, of course, baloney, phrenological mumbo-jumbo just 
>like Brock Vond's belief that "receding foreheads" and 
>"theromorphic ears" are symptoms of criminality, following on 
>from the work of Cesare Lombroso (272-3). What these chapters 
>disclose is that 24fps, and the student "revolution" from 
>which it was spawned, were primarily narcissistic, a cult of youth.

There is an interesting analysis of mass literature for women 
by Tania Modleski which traces the evolution from Gothic to 
Harlequin to Soap Opera ("Loving With a Vengeance: 
Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women").
The author notes that soap opera close-ups show us things as a 
mother might see them. Modleski has a number of insights into 
the dread,  paranoia, and connived surrender of the first two 
sorts of literature also.