IVing IV, a touching touch

[alice wellintown]

It's not a matter of how I'm reading Penny; our disagreement, and it
has been here from the start, has to do with my reading of Larry. I'm
with the lady cats.

On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 10:46 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 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!"
>> >
>>
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