Re: AtdTDA: 38 p. 1066 La Jarretière

[Dave Monroe]

2008/8/4  <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>:

>          In V. she died graphically around the time of the World War.
>          Her stage name is French: The Garter.

>From J. Kerry Grant, A Companion to V. (Athens: U of Georgia P, 2001) ...

""the primary meaning is 'garter,' but it can also mean 'picketing
rope' and, according to Berressem, 'conductor-wire' ('Love' [Pynchon
Notes, p.] 18) .... Dugdale finds a trace of the name of the French
writer Alfred Jarry, the creator of Ubu Roi, a forerunner of the
theater of the absurd, to which Yeats responded with the comment,
'After us, the Savage God' ([The Art
of Allusion, p.] 97)."

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0106&msg=56427

"'Do you know what a fetish is?  Something of a woman which gives
pleasure but is not a woman.  A shoe, a locket ... une jarretiere.
You are the same, not real but an object of pleasure.'" (V., Ch. 14,
Sec. ii, p. 404)

"'Do you only lie passive then, like an object?  Of course you do.  It
is what you are.  Une fetiche.'" (V., Ch. 14, Sec. ii, p. 406)

[...]

>From Hanjo Berressem, Pynchon's Poetics: Interfacing Theory and Text
(Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1993), Ch. 4, "V.: 'V. in love," pp. 53-81
...

"The psychoanalytic concept within and against which the whole chapter
must be read is that of fetishism ....  For Freud and Lacan, fetishism
is related to the fear of castration.  For the male, it serves to
circumvent the fear of castration.  It 're-creates' the woman's
(missing) phallus ... an absence that, he fantasizes, may come to be
his own as well.  It thus re-creates a missing phallus from a
material, inanimate object associated with women's bodies....  The
fetish object is thus always a supplement and a simulation." (p. 59)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0106&msg=56489

Freud, S. (1927). Fetishism. Standard Edition, 21, pp. 152-159.

http://www.haverford.edu/psych/ddavis/p109g/ffetish.html

John Dugdale reads that "Norman dervish" shortly thereafter (V., p.
413) as an allusion to "the 'Norman .... Virgin' ... pursued by Henry
Adams in his Mont-Saint-Michel & Chartres (1904, 1913)" ((Thomas
Pynchon: Allusive Parables of Power, p. 97) ....

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0107&msg=57122

Henry Adams, Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres (1904, 1913)

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4584

Such one-name stagenames, by the way, seem to have been common in
prewar Paris, cf. Toulouse-Lautrec favorite, La Goulue, "The Glutton"
...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Goulue

> A return to a scene in V., La Jarretière was the virgin to be sacrificed
> in a parody rendition of the "succès de scandale" of the Rite of Spring
> —the very definition of modernism, the sonic equivalent of cubism.
> Here the pretty young thing explains it was all to tilllate "the eternally-
> adolescent male mind", an echo of:
>
>          My reading at the time also included many Victorians,
>          allowing World War I in my imagination to assume the shape
>          of that attractive nuisance to dear to adolescent minds, the
>          apocalyptic showdown."
>
>          Slow Learner, 18
>
> Of course, it is also the most obvious back reference to V. imaginable.

Cf. ...

"A pose I found congenial in those days--fairly common, I hope, among
pre-adults--was that of somber glee at any idea of mass destuction or
decline.  The modern political thriller genre, in fact, has been known
to cash in on such visions of death made large-scale or glamorous."
(SL, "Intro," p. 130)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0211&msg=72984

> It has been said that Against the Day is, among other things, a parody
> of a "Pynchon Novel"....

Main Entry: par·o·dy
Pronunciation: \ˈper-ə-dē, ˈpa-rə-\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural par·o·dies
Etymology: Latin parodia, from Greek parōidia, from para- + aidein to
sing — more at ode
Date: 1598
1 : a literary or musical work in which the style of an author or work
is closely imitated for comic effect or in ridicule
2 : a feeble or ridiculous imitation

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/parody

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parody

Main Entry: pas·tiche
Pronunciation: \pas-ˈtēsh, päs-\
Function: noun
Etymology: French, from Italian pasticcio
Date: 1878
1: a literary, artistic, musical, or architectural work that imitates
the style of previous work; also : such stylistic imitation
2 a: a musical, literary, or artistic composition made up of
selections from different works : potpourri b: hodgepodge

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pastiche

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastiche

"'Now single up all lines!'" (AtD, Pt. I, p. 3)

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0701&msg=114290

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_1-25#Page_3