TMOP: Chapter 7

[Bekah]

Just catching up finally - there is fairly large controversy even  
today about the sexuality of Henry James.   Those who say he was  
actively homosexual get this from his writings (especially his little  
erotically tinged letters to young men)  as well as his fast little,  
male-based life-style  - he never actually confessed but imo, he came  
as close as he could.   He may have been a celibate homosexual -  
(there's some evidence of that, too, although that's kinda "iffy" to  
me.)

Those who say he wasn't say there's way too little evidence.   The  
recent(?) fiction is just that - fiction - there was a whole spate of  
it a few years ago.  It's a great subject because James himself left  
the question open -

As to Dostoevsky,  I think he was just a garden variety obsessive who  
was traumatized by events in his childhood and had

Bekah

On Oct 17, 2008, at 2:26 PM, Richard Ryan wrote:

> In re James:  I thought that evidence had recently surfaced that he  
> was more sexually active than had previously been thought.  I  
> believe the record is clear that by his middle age he knew and  
> accepted his own homosexuality.
>
> --- On Fri, 10/17/08, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: TMOP: Chapter 7
> To: "Richard Ryan" <richardryannyc at yahoo.com>
> Cc: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Friday, October 17, 2008, 3:55 PM
>
> Don't think Dostoevesky was as...unsexed.....as Nietzsche or James....
>
> James was wilfully repressed, all seem to agree; Nietzsche was barely
> lucky enough to...(seemed to be in love with Lou Salome, and maybe she
> was back, without doing IT)....But
>
> Dostoevsky was just of his poor, Christian, Russian society and its  
> norms....
>
>
>
> --- On Fri, 10/17/08, Richard Ryan <richardryannyc at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > From: Richard Ryan <richardryannyc at yahoo.com>
> > Subject: Re: TMOP: Chapter 7
> > To: markekohut at yahoo.com, "Bekah"
> <Bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
> > Cc: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> > Date: Friday, October 17, 2008, 12:56 PM
> > Bekah's remark about the real word D's erotic
> > dabblings reminds me of the comment about Nietzsche:
> > "Never got laid but died of the clap."
> >
> > Given their prevalence at the edges of 19th Century
> > bourgeois society - and in his work - one has to imagine
> > that Dostoevsky had at least a passing exposure to
> > prostitutes.   He has that familiar early modern quality _
> > one thinks of it in James as well - of being both very
> > sexual and very repressed (maybe sublimated is a better
> > word) simultaneously.
> >
> > --- On Sun, 10/12/08, Bekah <Bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
> > wrote:
> >
> > Dostoevsky never had much of a sex life outside marriage
> >
> > that I've ever heard of.
> >
> > There were rumors (probably started by Turgenev) that
> > Dostoevsky had
> > visited the child prostitutes around St. Petersburg but
> > nothing
> > substantial was ever found.
> >
> > Dostoevsky experienced and heard of some serious evil doing
> > as a
> > child. His father, who had a problem with womanizing,
> > was brutally
> > murdered. A young neighbor friend was raped. He heard
> > stories of
> > this sort when he was in Siberia.
> >
> > I think perhaps you could be right about Coetzee seeming to
> > suggest
> > that D. dabbled in order to find out - as an authenticating
> > artistic
> > experience.
>
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