Pynchon and porno

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

      Tore:
        It's probably fair to say that P comes squarely 
        down on both sides of this question. 

Here, Here!!!

        T:
        FWIW, though, I tend to believe that arousal is 
        the last thing that's on Pynchon's mind as he 
        writes his own pornographical scenes. 

Conversly, if that's his intention, he failed. That Katje/Pudding scene is 
one of life's great turn-offs.

        T: 
        The scene between Katje and Pudding in GR, for 
        instance, is an exploration of power, of submission, 
        and of the reality of pain. . . .

. . . .and the brave boys, "our boys", getting gassed at Flanders, a subject
I'll have to deal with in a few months.

        T:
        The juicy triangle between Cyprian, Yashmeen, and Reef 
        in AtD is equally all about power. . . . 

. . . .you forgot black magic, another of OBA's idées fixes. . . .
Of course, whatever label you choose to afix to these strenuous depictions,
ultimately they're still not arousing, at least in the usual sense. By way of 
example: I was wondering, while considering the three-way scenes (In AtD, 
like Noah's Ark, everything comes in matched pairs),"how does this 
relate to Quaternions?" 

        T:
        I'm not that sure of the scene between Slothrop and Bianca, 
        except that - again - its main purpose is not to arouse us. 
        One way of viewing the scene is as a subversion of the 
        corporate State's cooptation of the culture of childhood. 
        Of the rationale behind the children's resort Zwölfkinder we hear:

        "In a corporate State, a place must be made for innocence, 
        and its many uses. In developing an official version of innocence, 
        the culture of childhood has proven invaluable." (GR, 419)

That was on my mind when I posted the link to:

http://hippiegoddess.com/sample/html/sshow001.html

It's all about turning desires into marketable commodities, like taking 
Iggy Pop's "Lust For Life" and turning it into a jingle for some 
"Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again." What was once regarded
as liberating has been mutated into another one of "their" tools.

        T:
        In his essay "Reading Gravity's Rainbow After September Eleventh: An 
        Anecdotal Approach," David Rando has (convincingly, IMO) read the 
        sex scene between Slothrop and Bianca as "a means of resisting the 
        state's long history of appropriating the innocence of its children for 
        its prosecution of war." Once again, the main purpose of P's porno-
        graphy is not to arouse, but - like Charlie Parker's music - "to gainsay 
        the Man's lullabies, to subvert the groggy wash of the endlessly, gut-
        lessly overdubbed strings...." 
       (GR, 64).

What would you make of all the uses of the striptease and all the 
mixed-metaphorical utilizations of the term "pornography" in 
"The Crying of Lot 49"?

        T:
        There's pornography, and there's pornography, and my guess is 
        that Pynchon has little time for, or interest in, the kind of 
        pornography that's merely meant to let us approach "that Absolute 
        Comfort - the self-induced orgasm." 

There's a genuine interest expressed in his Novels concerning the
subject. I'll agree he's on all sides of this issue, but none of us are certain 
of any of the specifics of his private life, are we?

        T:
        That's certainly not the kind of pornography he practices in his novels, 
        but it is probably the kind of pornography practiced by Tristan 
        Taormino, and frankly I don't find it overly strange that he has 
        refrained from giving her his public support. Pynchon appropriates and 
        transforms some of pornography's codes for his own purposes, just as he 
        appropriates and transforms other codes of popular culture, but we 
        wouldn't expect him to publicly endorse any old porn flick, just as we 
        wouldn't expect him to publicly endorse Dan Brown's next novel, o-or 
        Die Hard 4.

As far as I can tell, the bulk of Annie Sprinkle's work would be classed in the 
preterite catagory in which you're placing Tristan Taormino, but at the end of 
the day I'd call the both of them Sex Educators. And I'd bet you anything that 
OBA loves the Die-Hard franchise. That doesn't mean we should expect any pull 
quotes from the man on the postmodern uses of "Let it Snow":

http://tinyurl.com/2hbkfy