this is a man's world (was: Re: Top TV)

[Paul Mackin]

On Thu, 2004-09-23 at 07:40, Otto wrote:
> Will :
> > When Bekah -- a member of list even -- said that she found GR "yucky,"
> > she made my point quite succinctly.
> >
> > The critical bib don't convince me.
> >
> > w
> >
> 
> Well, parts of GR necessarily are "yucky" (had to look up the word) given
> its topics. War is "yucky," as Abu Ghraib or Beslan show.
> 

I think I might say that infants in diapers are yucky. War is hell.

> The critical bib just showed some examples. I think Rob's right in what he
> says about it.
> 
> The need for "characters fully fleshed out" sounds to my ears like being
> somewhat outdated. Tyrone Slothrop's story is a story of someone looking for
> who "he" is.

Old fashioned? Not so sure we can relegate strong interesting
characterization to the out of date. Fleshed out characters keep us
alert because we are interested in what happens to "real" people. And
the alertness so generated carries over to our reception of the
inherently less exciting, purely intellectual or aesthetic aspects of
the work, in all liklihood most worthwhile part.

Actually I think Slothrop IS fleshed out in his own way. Imagine if
Pynchon had created him as someone who is led to rockets using, say, his
nose rather than his dingdong. We would lose interest in the proceedings
early on. (Doberman and German Shephard lovers might disagree)


> I've just finished Franzen's "The Corrections" -- maybe we could hear some
> opinions on those characters (who are surely more "fleshy" than Pynchon's),
> especially Denise:
> 
> "Life, in her experience, had a kind of velvet luster. You looked at
> yourself from one perspective and all you saw was weirdness. Move your head
> a little bit, though, and everything looked reasonably normal." (TC, p. 404)
> 
> "She had a thing for a straight woman who was married to a man whom she
> herself might have liked to marry. It was a reasonably hopeless case."
> (ibid, p. 431)

Loved the book and remember a little about this apsect of Denise's
character. Not enough to comment on but only to say that it sounds like
her situation here, though mildly hopeless, is not all that unusual for
a modern woman.




> 
> Bekah also said about GR:
> "It had a distinctly male point of view."
> 
> Or is critical of this point of view:
> 
> "Girls are to go in from the front, singing, dancing, vamping the
> woman-hungry barbarians. Otto will try to knock out the car, Haftung will
> get everybody rounded up and ready to rendezvous with the boat. "Tits 'n'
> ass," mutter the girls, "tits 'n' ass. That's all we are around here."
> "Ah, shaddap," snarls G. M. B. Haftung, which is his usual way of dealing
> with the help." (GR, p. 507)
> 
> "This is a man's world, this is a man's world
> But it wouldn't be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl."
> (James Brown)
> 
> Otto
>