V. Was for Varo Too

[Dave Monroe]

--- Clement Levy <cl.levy at free.fr> wrote:

> A few of the lecturers studied Pynchon's works under
> other authors perspective: Wittgenstein by Sascha
> Poehlmann, or Dan Brown (!) by Rodney Taveira....

>From Dana Medoro, "Traces of Blood and the Matter of a
Paraclete's Coming: The Menstrual Economy of Pynchon's
V.," Pynchon Notes 44-45 (Spring-Fall 1999), pp. 14-34
...

   "While the patriarchal legacies in V. attempt to
write and perpetuate themselves across the idealized,
passive female body, V.'s is not necessarily a
maternal or material power .... Although Maijstral's
memoirs (his legacy to his daughter) circulate around
an obsession with the maternal feminine, matriarchy
cannot be patriarchy's alternative in the text; it is
only an inverse reflection of Maijstral's anxiety
about a world at war....  This anxiety is displaced
onto a V.-figure, whom he believes to be in some way
occasioned by the war .... her scattered pieces
reemerge in the hands of other women.  These women, as
manifestations of V., appear throughout the novel as
prostitutes, virgins, mothers, lesbians, nuns.
   "What cuts across each representation of female
sexuality is menstruation; it is the link among women
scattered throughout a world divided by violent
masculine givernance.... proliferating allusions to
menstruation and menstrual blood ....  Like V.
herself, menstrual blood materializes in veiled,
ambivalent forms, provoking male dread and
fascination.  As an aspect of V., it equivocated her
alignment with either maternity or death; she embraces
each.  Menstruation is both a positive and a negative
power, the blood simultaneously an announcement of
fertility and its negation." (pp. 23-4)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0203&msg=65844

Medoro, Dana.  The Bleeding of America:
   Menstruation as Symbolic Economy in Pynchon,
   Faulkner, and Morrison.  Westport, CT:
   Greenwood Press, 2002.

http://www.greenwood.com/books/BookDetail.asp?dept_id=1&sku=GM2059

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0211&msg=73217

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com