"Low-lands," part 3a: Discussions & Questions, pg 55-66

[The Great Quail]

I must say, "Low-lands" is my favorite of Pynchon's short stories. Not only
am I very attracted the sea imagery and themes, but I feel it has some
beautiful passages that anticipate the amazing prose of GR. I find it a very
melancholy work, and one with numerous subtle, intertwined themes. I'll
bring up a few ideas and questions of mine for possible discussion,
restraining myself to pages 55-66 for now. In a few days, I will post more.

I hope I don't sound pedagogical with these questions -- I just hope they
may stimulate a discussion, which I will happily join with my own thoughts
and elaborations. So please forgive me if it sounds like a half-assed
reading group guide!

1. Cindy is not portrayed very well in the story. She is described as
"austere," generally depicted as cold and unfeeling, and Flange even
suggests that he cannot think imaginatively when she is around. In fact, he
says almost no positive things about her. So why has he remained married to
her for seven years? Is it simple inertia? The delusion that one day they'll
have a child? Or is she just a safe, secure mother-figure? What are some
ways he tries to escape, alleviate, or re-imagine the relationship?

2. In his introduction, Pynchon declares that "Low-lands" is the product of
a of "a smart-assed jerk who didn't know any better," and has many moments
of racism, fascism, and sexism. Is the portrayal of Cindy sexist? Is
Pynchon/Flange afraid of a "mature" woman, and therefore reduces her to a
sterile caricature? Pynchon's  introduction seems to suggest something along
these lines, and yet Flange's dark opinion of Cindy helps fuel the story and
adds a very sharp poignancy to his character. Any thoughts?

3. Flange himself thinks his labyrinthine home symbolizes a womb; and it's
significant that in the end of the story, Nerissa is found living in a
similar "network of tunnels," one fashioned from barren, household detritus.
(Which of course, might just be a drunken fantasy.) What, if anything, does
the womb symbolism of his home signify? And why does he term it
"relentlessly rationality?" That seems to me an odd description of such a
damp, chthonian space.

4. Geronimo Diaz is the first in a long line of crazy Pynchonian analysts
and psychiatrists. Although he is clearly unhinged, Flange keeps returning
to him, going so far as to suggest that Diaz' lunacy is proof against his
life with Cindy. Any comments on this?

5. Flange has some very intense notions about the sea: among other things,
it seems to represent both mother and lover. At one point, Geronimo, who is
bringing home the point that the ocean is our true mother, reminds Flange
that he himself said the sea was a woman; in reply, Flange says, "Fuck your
mother!" To which Geronimo exclaims, "Aha! You see!" It's obvious that
there's an unresolved Oedipal conflict here, and in the end of the story,
Flange apparently opts for regression. How does the sea or sea symbolism
relate to Cindy, Flange's sexuality, or his residence in an "unrelentingly
rational" womb?

6. Does anyone think Cindy is really throwing Flange out for good? And if
so, why does he take it so easily?

7. Any comments on the titular ballad? Any significance to the name of the
ship, the "Golden Vanity?"

"A ship have I got in the North Country
And she goes by the name of 'Golden Vanity,'
O, I fear she will be taken by a Spanish Gal-la-lee,
As she sails by the Low-lands low."

8. Finally, Flange's whole notion of "low-lands." Rather than quote them in
entirety, I will use an excerpt from the summary I posted:

The Scottish low-lands have always held a symbolic value to Flange, who
likens them to the ocean itself: "that immense clouded-glass plain was kind
of a low-land which almost demanded a single human figure striding across it
for completeness." The center of the dump's spiral is another kind of
low-land, the "dead center, the single point which implied an entire low
country." This triggers a recurring notion, one he has "Whenever he was away
from Cindy and could think," wherein he imagines his life "as a surface in
the process of change, much as the floor of the dump was in transition: from
concavity or inclosure to perhaps a flatness like the one he stood in now.
What he worried about was any eventual convexity, a shrinking, it might be,
of the planet itself to some palpable curvature of whatever he would be
standing on, so that he would be left sticking out like a projected radius,
unsheltered and reeling across the empty lunes of his tint sphere."

Any thoughts on this? Just what do the low-lands symbolize to Flange? Why is
he attracted to the notion of a dead center, and the messianic notion of a
lone figure? And what about that last sentence, a classic Pynchonian
twister? Just what does Flange desire, and what is he most afraid of?

Best,

--Quail