castrated P

[kelber at mindspring.com]

P is essentially a man's author?  How do you figure?  Because he doesn't write Harlequin Romances?  My definition of a man's author is one who uses female characters (wifey, bimbo) strictly as window dressing, to let us know the macho man character isn't a closet queer, or as basically male characters given female names, to show that the author is politically correct (lots of sci-fi authors pull this crap).  Pynchon's female characters (Owlglass, Paola, V, Oedipa, Katje, Geli) are as full and real as any of his male characters (Profane, Slothrop, etc.).  His not getting the Nobel Prize probably has as much to do with anxiety that he'd turn it down or treat it as a joke, than with his actual writing.

Laura 

-----Original Message-----
>From: terrance fitzgerald <fitzgerald_terrance at yahoo.com>
>Sent: Aug 28, 2006 10:50 PM
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: castrated P
>
>GR was a roaring success in the 70s and even in the 80s. People talked about P getting a nobel prize. In the 70s and 80s the nobel for literature was given to males. Only males. And some manly men too. Roth and Pynchon missed the high water mark for Hemingway-like male writers.  In the 90s, a record 4 females were awarded the nobel in literature. So what? Well, P is essentially a man's author and his modern view of females is deeply embedded in his fiction. It looks like he's lost his balls. Roth Marquez, Grass, by contrast, are still writing like men with super balls, P has been castrated.  
>
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