oh my poor doomed ass

[Paul Mackin]

On Fri, 2003-01-17 at 12:31, Lucky Pierre wrote:
 
> Well, wouldn't keep suggesting this book if I didn't
> think it is right up a Pynchon reader's valley.
> Really, it is. I think the old prof getting it on with
> the young student is just a bit too much in fictions
> of late, all these 60's folks having flash-back
> fantasies or what have you, but in DA I think it works
> for a lot of reasons and on many different levels. One
> has to do with celebrity status/privacy and the
> culture hungry Cuban's powerful/power varacious
> breasts. However, I imagine lots of readers thinking,
> well...she's much too young and he's much too old. Why
> not make her a "returning adult" student in her 30s.
> Obviously to keep the Father Karamozov 60s stuff he
> needs the prof to be yeat's dying animal and old man
> among school children so the old man can be in good
> shape but he needs to be an old man. He needs her to
> be Cubana of that generation so he simply puts her in
> an office dress and blouse. There is something about
> the attraction of young students to their
> "parent/grand-parent" professors that is quite
> different from the attraction of young interns on
> their knees have for presidents of nations and
> corporations and other power/sexual relations.

Probably too prejudicial, favoring one occupation over another. Even
though Bill "didn't really love" Monica and David "really does love"
Consuela. 

 What is
> this difference? 
> 
> Not sure and maybe I'm just putting my prick in my
> mouth again, but I suspect it has something to do with
> all this useless beauty and death. 

Useless beauty. Used beauty, then useless beauty--because of lost
beauty, and death in the bargain. Atonement is taking place. David has
been transgressing for some time. We require a strong transgression to
expiate, and age/youth is what this writer favors. A story about
happiness (happiness at last), then hell to pay.  The youth/age dream
insures a doomed outcome--regardless of other complications. And of
course, working backwards perhaps, the true paradises are the paradises
we have lost. 
P.