Narrative Distance "the price of developing any real life shared with an adult woman" (SL.10)

[Mark Kohut]

Two threads in response here:

One, on the immaturity of the males in Pynchon: you forgot M & D AND the growth of the chums in AtD....they seem to be one of P's perspectives on 
grwoing out of immaturity, per SL....

Two: we have to explore what is satirized in Doc, how it affects his 'reliability' as narrator and what Doc therefore IS in the novel.
Sportello means door or window in Italian....
Why did P give him that name?

--- On Tue, 8/18/09, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Narrative Distance "the price of developing any real life shared  with an adult woman" (SL.10)
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Tuesday, August 18, 2009, 7:46 PM
> We want to like Doc. The narrative
> technique and the use of
> characterization and all the other elements of fiction that
> surround
> Doc make him a protagonist we want to like. Other reasons,
> like
> sympathy and empathy and indentification are not reasons to
> like or
> dislike a character in a Pynchon novel. But we need to see
> that he is
> no Native Son and this is no protest novel. This is a
> parody and Doc,
> while the central Bigger Thomas figure, is an ironic figure
> and the
> satire turns on our understaning this fact.
> 
> 
> On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 7:20 PM, Monte Davis<montedavis at verizon.net>
> wrote:
> > alice wellintown sez:
> >
> >> We need to read Doc as a target of harsh satire.
> >
> > But of course. One of Pynchon's Dantean traits is his
> pitilessness, even
> > toward those we (and he) might simultaneously admire,
> or sympathize with, or
> > be.
> >
> >
>