ATDTDA (9): Learning curve, 267-269

[Bryan Snyder]

Maybe it's me, but then again I've read tons of sexual passages that didn't
bother me one bit... but ALL the Lake, Sloat and Deuce stuff really makes me
queasy...  I'm not sure why... If it's supposed to, it's working.

B

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Paul Nightingale
Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2007 4:10 AM
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: ATDTDA (9): Learning curve, 267-269

The previous sections (21.6 and 21.7) are brief and to the point; they start
to look like fantasy, or prevarication. Now, Deuce calls Lake "my dove",
which does sound appropriate to the intimacy achieved earlier; but Sloat has
reappeared to destroy the illusion. There is no descriptive detail in the
previous sections: to allow the world into the marriage is to allow Sloat
in. He makes himself at home ("See some more that coffee"); takes Deuce
away; and then joins the marriage as an equal partner. He initially demurs,
or at least pretends to, saying ". only sidekicks get sloppy seconds,
everbody knows that, and I ain't your damned sidekick": a frequent
complaint, perhaps (see 195). Cf. the first dialogue exchange between Deuce
and lake on 261: there is an immediate rapport, and Sloat's "Oooh" is an
insertion that signals his, however brief, exclusion. Subsequently, Lake
focuses on "the way he was looking at her-a knowing look ." etc (262).

Lake is a "[c]hild of the storm". Cf. the return of Deuce and Sloat "in a
storm of hoarse, high-pitched laughter she could hear from half a mile away
that neither . could control" (267). She hears before seeing them, which
means she has time to contemplate their arrival, to speculate. Cf. her
response to meeting him in the Nonpareil: "Like an old memory, older than
herself, something that'd happened before, that she knew now she'd have to
go through again ." (262). Perhaps fearful, she has to learn how to survive;
and yet again the narrative fast-forwards to a point where she can look back
retrospectively. She misreads "Sloat's notion of love-play"; and "by the
time she did figure it out, he'd be long gone" (268). This barely half a
page down from: "Sloat had taken up residence, it seemed .". She has to
travel from the perception of "it seemed" to the more substantial knowledge
of "by the time she did figure it out".

Deuce and Sloat are interchangeable, "usually one in her mouth, the other
from behind": but this generalisation quickly makes way for the specific
instance, "looking up at Deuce" as she speculates about being "really bad".
Deuce before, Sloat to the rear: cf the brief instance of marital harmony,
Lake "mov[ing] spooned in his embrace, feeling no need to turn to exchange a
look" (267). Eye-contact with Deuce is broken by Sloat's intervention; the
dialogue between the two men excludes her. Again, at the Four Corners, she
is face-down.

It might seem the logical next step to exclude the mediator: "Why don't you
boys just leave me out of it and do each other for a change?" (269) Lake is
learning ("anything could put them out of the mood"), not least how to be
manipulative: "She discovered in herself unsuspected talents for
indirectness and flirtation ." etc (268). She has to avoid any kind of
assertion, "careful never to make anything seem like a demand". Throughout
there is some ambiguity attached to the question of her badness. I do this
because I'm bad. Or: If I do this I'll be(come) bad.