IVing IV, a touching touch

[Mark Kohut]

Alice wrties:
"Penny, a flat land lady just sold his ass to the feds and she got nothing for doing it."

I think you are missing the clear insight of Doc's that she is protected from the Feds doing something shitty TO her. Doc got it. Feds are to Penny
a They with a mysterious "something on her". Who knows what? busting her for dope? 

And, Doc only trusts her enough for info and sex when it sprung up. You are
holding more extratextual resentment against Penny than Doc is, and as TRP is (in this case), in my judgment. 

Yet, there are clear tender moments....they remind me of the exhortation that resounds at the end of GR.............





--- On Tue, 12/1/09, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: IVing IV, a touching touch
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Tuesday, December 1, 2009, 10:24 AM
> On 12/1/09, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > ok right,
> >
> > alice wrote:
> > >As if Penny is an empty vessel that must be filled
> with a male's love
> > >or whatever? Penny don't need no Doctor; she's a
> healthy gal. When
> > >Penny touches Doc, she communicates something that
> has nothing to do
> > >with traditional marriage, but with business; it's
> professional.
> >
> > it's the little touches like that, though, that light
> up
> > the romantic side of the tale.
> 
> This touch is about power. She disarms him by touching
> his.
> 
> >
> > You're right, how many married guys' wives call them
> Doc anyway?
> > (probably not even too many real doctors I would
> imagine)
> >
> > So they would have to put that nickname to bed
> somehow.
> >
> > But that there isn't a romantic streak in the most
> professional
> > of career women including Penny, and a similar plexus
> operative
> > in Doc, is an assumption that seems disproven by
> certain tender moments
> > when the possibility arises like a crystal palace.
> 
> Certain tender moments?
> 
> Polonius speaks tenderly to his children, but he doesn't
> trust them. A
> rotten Denmark is rotten to the heart and core. Penny, a
> flat land
> lady just sold his ass to the feds and she got nothing for
> doing it.
> 
> She's still down at the bottom of the treehouse, where the
> only privy
> she is privy to is what the boyz piss down upon her. But
> she keeps on
> trying to get a look inside that treehouse, to climb its
> rope ladder,
> to look down on the world from up there, even if she has to
> sell Larry
> out again and again to prove she's one of the boyz. She
> sleeps with
> him, feels something, I wouldn't call it "tenderness", the
> weed helps,
> even prolongs the "tender" moment, but it ain't tender,
> it's just
> earning her stripes. I'd call that fucking, 
> sucking,  and smoking the
> pain, the guilt away.
> 
> >
> > Can people can be so public-minded (external locus of
> control)
> > that career subsumes individual yearnings even in
> semi-private interactions?
> >
> > Not saying it doesn't happen:
> > Roger and Jessica play this out but Beaver wins. 
> His role in society
> > trumps whatever private closeness Roger is able to
> develop with Jessica.
> > But Roger's mother is the War.
> >
> > Doc's real parents provide him with a childhood he
> doesn't want to escape from.
> > It's something worth passing on.  Perhaps Vehi
> will one day
> > send him on a trip provoking meditations upon his
> Larryhood.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > - "The doctor said give him jug band music; it seems
> to make him feel
> > just fine!"
> >
>