Pynchon/Roth

[Michael Bailey]

Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:

>  described in terms of symptoms. So we have a framing! No matter how
>  scandalous the content (sexual and otherwise) by the time of publishing
>  may have appeared, it is all still inside the boundaries of institutional
>  control. On the level of the narrative meta-structure.

right on.  Who sez Roth isn't po-mo?  Or is that a po-mo thing?  I was
made aware of frame tales by Barth's explicit baring of narrative
structures...

>
>  Don't get me wrong: I like "The Counterlife" very much! Also "Operation
>  Shylock" and a couple of others by Roth. But since I read "Portnoy's
>  Complaint" later, I was --- taken its 'offical canonical status' ---
>  a little disappointed. Probably my own problem with exaggerated expectations.
>

I thought the same thing when I saw "I am Curious (Yellow)"
Not being that much of a porn hound, what I took away from that was
the little scene where the Dad is talking about fighting in the
Spanish Civil War (probably inserted for redeeming social value) and,
I guess, also that you can fuck while sitting on a wall.
Read Portnoy about the same time, while the gloss was still on its
newness, and yet what I mostly took away from that was the childhood
stuff (I'm also an insurance salesman's son, like Roth) and the
relationship with his father.  Well some other stuff.  Fake news
headline: "Assistant Human Rights Commish Flogs Dummy"
Also, I realized that in the world there existed at least one person
who was hugely more of a horn dog than me.  Even if he was
fictional...

>  While Pynchon is very critical of scientists in general and psychologists in
>  particular (didn't he re-coin the word "Shrink" as a, well, non-respectful
>  word for psychoanalysts in Col49?), Roth has real trust in official
>  institutions. The opening quote is, as far as I can judge it from translation,
>  also making fun of science, but in a very harmless way ... Frame is there,
>  the Rebel is not Roth yet Pynchon!
>

Yes, for early Roth the struggle was trying to do what Allen Sherman
wrote in his Autobiography (a masterpiece I still say) - "I tell the
Jews, come on in and join the human race, the water's fine" - and then
his later books he discovers how fucked up the rest of us
are...maybe...?  And describes it beautifully!

>  The name Dr. Spielvogel reminds me of the German speaking psychoanalysts
>  seeking during the Nazi years exile in America. Heinz Kohut comes to mind.
>  And also Otto Kernberg whom I once had the pleasure to listen to at the
>  world-congress for psychotherapy in Hamburg somewhen in the mid 1990s.
>  A seen-it-all, if I ever saw one. He was pretty relaxed while talking. Slow
>  but VERY clear. A-and in German which was a surprise, since the official
>  conference-language was English. Actually --- I can't help it! --- he made the
>  impression being glad to talk to a (largely) German audience: "Guten Tag, mein
>  Name ist Otto Kernberg, und ich komme aus New York". The theme of the panel was
>  'resistance-work' and Kernberg reported about a woman he once treated and who
>  always when she didn't like a question or interpretation did not use the ashtray
>  but the carpet ... "Das war noch in der Zeit, als es in den USA noch kein
>  Kapitalverbrechen war zu rauchen". (This was at a time when it still wasn't a
>  capital crime to smoke [tobacco] in the USA). With this little joke --- you
>  should have seen his subtile smile --- Kernberg had the audience all on his
>  side ... No offfence intended, but funny it is, no?
>
>  Kai
>
>

yes.


- Feliz Navidad