VLVL2 - Take me anyplace you want

[Paul Mackin]

On Wed, 2004-04-21 at 15:36, Ghetta Life wrote:
> I think the post below is just so much wishful thinking.  Sorry Toby.
> 
> Just last night I was thinking about VL being a display of power structures 
> and their associated sexual counterparts (in all their myriad of sexual 
> permutations).  It's all over this book, but with no subtlety or richness - 
> it's all cartoon and no reality.  Zoyd wears a dress when he performs his 
> dutiy to the state for obvious reasons.  Brock is deathly afraid of his 
> anima in the attic.  Frenesi loves men in uniform and yearns for her own bit 
> of power to weild with impugnity.  Etc, etc.
> 
> No, Prarie is also fascinated with Brock's penis/gun, his strength/power, 
> and she wants to feel it used aginst her. She's got tha penis-envy thing in 
> her blood.  And she is dissapointed when his power is yanked away from him 
> via a long-distance power shift (so impersonal).  All this makes no sense in 
> real-life human terms, but that's not what Pynchon is concerned about, and 
> his lack of that concern shows throughout the book.


I'd forget the penis-envy idea as a too discredited element of
Freudianism. 

My feeling about the closing lines of the book would be this: why is the
author is so intent upon driving home his earlier points about people in
spite of themselves and against their better judgment fairly reaching
out to be dominated by power or at least fantasizing about doing so. I
think its to emphasize his realization (postmodernist realization?) that
power relations are always going to be with us despite continuing
struggles for freedom.



> 
> Ghetta
> 
> >From: Toby G Levy <tobylevy at juno.com>
> >Subject: VLVL2 - Take me anyplace you want
> >
> >The oft quoted statement of Prarie at the end of the novel in which she
> >returns to the site of her confrontation with Brock Vond, seems to me to
> >be NOT a message of submission, but a test of her own bravery.  She
> >thinks "He had left too suddenly. There should have been more."  She
> >wants MORE confrontation, more oppostion, a chance to show how tough she
> >is in the face of unspeakable power and evil.  Pynchon closes the novel
> >with a display of her bravery.  He has kindly disposed of the villain a
> >few pages back so that her bravery will not have to be consumated with
> >the terrible fate that Vond clearly has in store for her.  Vond's
> >intentions were to annihilate all those associated with Frenesi.  Why?
> >Because he believed he had the power to do so.  Evil needs no other
> >reason.
> 
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