AtDTdA: (9) 268-269

[Mark Kohut]

Simplicity 1:  more Pynchonian linkin of sex and death.
   
  Simplicity 2: Deuce and Sloat.....From V. onwards---that guy Schoonmaker?, who becomes 
  a plastic surgeon after the flyboy he has a kind of homoerotic crush on loses his face---and in GR, of course, men loving men is linked to men making war.
   
  Just remembered: In V., there is that paragraph about how it was the same word used to describe what men did to women and what men say when they best another in action.---(not
  articulated there, we know the word is "screwed".
   
  And, I think we must see all of their sexual entanglements as a decadence...a falling away from lost true fully-human sexual encounters ala TRP's lifelong vision. 
   
  Okay, shoot me down. (god, military metaphors everywhere)
   
  MK
   
  

Jasper <jasper.fidget at gmail.com> wrote:
  268-269 Deuce and Lake Get Hitched (continued)

Page 268
"oh how bad of a badgirl was she turning out to be here? Next thing she 
knew [...]"
"'Guess this makes me really bad," she said in a quiet voice, looking up 
at Deuce.'"

Today's badgirl essay question:
Discuss Lake's fixation on being "bad". What is her psychological 
profile? Is she masochistic or just experimental? Is all this an 
expression of her guilt? Or is she just going all DH Lawrence here, 
finally freeing her sexuality, etc? Note that she has a kind of 
eagerness for it all:

"She discovered in herself unsuspected talents for indirectness and 
flirtation, because she had to be careful never to make anything seem 
like a demand" (268).

See also p. 191: "I'm so bad". See also http://imdb.com/name/nm0517820/

Furthermore or Otherwise! What does the ménage à trois say about Lake, 
Deuce, and Sloat as a triple? And Deuce and Sloat as a couple! Be sure 
to also see the next page: "Why don't you boys just leave me out of it 
and do each other for a change?"

Why all the kinky sex, the "badness", the ménage à trois? Why the Four 
Corners? Be as graphic and vulgar as possible.

---

Elk Hotel in Colorado Springs
exterior photo:
http://photoswest.org/cgi-bin/imager?10014637+X-14637
dining room:
http://photoswest.org/cgi-bin/imager?10014636+X-14636
the staff:
http://photoswest.org/cgi-bin/imager?10014635+X-14635

---

sideways pussy
Folklore.
*wiki*

---

side hobbles
A hobble is a device for a horse or a dog that restricts the range of 
motion of the legs. See Wikipedia entry. It is also a type of skirt used 
(apparently) in bondage, see this example (not safe for work) in latex.
http://www.darksidecreations.com/product.asp?productid=19
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobble
*wiki*

---

Page 269
"Why don't you boys just leave me out of it and do each other for a change?"
Shock and outrage!
Comments?

---

"Sloat was partial to the color green"
"'Deuce, your partner is really crazy.'"
"'Yehp, never could see green, bein a mauve man myself.'"

P's color scheme showing up again. He lets Deuce make a bad joke just 
to get it in there.

---

items, nearly always stolen
Cf bower-bird.
*wiki*

---

the Four Corners
The Four Corners is the survey point at the intersection of the four 
U.S. states of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona and the high 
desert plateau region surrounding that point in the southwestern United 
States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Corners

Given P's interest in arbitrary boundaries, a connection to M&D might be 
drawn by someone interested in comparing P's novels.

See also p. 284, the Four Corners Boys

---

"exactly above the mythical crosshairs itself"
The word "mythical" is an interesting choice.... So is crosshairs, as 
in a rifle scope.

---

"the blood-red dirt"
Though some disagree (like whatever impudent, self-appointed editor 
removed it from the pynchon-wiki), to me this recalls Homer's "wine-dark 
sea" -- first found in The Iliad (Bk VII) in a scene in which Achilles 
grieves for the death of his lover (perhaps lover, certainly close 
friend) Patroclus. The phrase is possibly coined by Chapman in his 
translation, as the original Greek seems to mean "wine-appearing sea", 
but it's been immortalized as "wine-dark". It also appears several 
times in The Odyssey.

It also shows up in Joyce's Ulysses, but why go crazy? Ah, hell with 
it, it's the last note:

In Joyce's Ulysses, Mulligan says, "The snotgreen sea. The 
scrotumtightening sea. /Epi oinopa ponton/. Ah, Dedalus, the Greeks! 
She is our great sweet mother." (Ulysses, p. 5) 

Then later, Stephen:

"Tides, myriadislanded, within her, blood not mine, /oinopa ponton/, a 
winedark sea. Behold the handmaid of the moon. In sleep the wet sign 
calls her hour, bids her rise. Bridebed, childbed, bed of death, 
ghostcandled. /Omnis caro ad te veniet/. He comes, pale vampire, through 
storm his eyes, his bat sails bloodying the sea, mouth to her mouth's 
kiss." (Ulysses, pp. 47-48)

There, a Joyce allusion! Hah! That's it for me, peace out.


 
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