IVing IV 'indict a bean burrito', p. 277

[John Bailey]

I don't buy that Doc is some kind of sensitive role model - he's at
the business end of plenty of unrequested fellatio but the hysterical
tone surrounding pussy eating in IV, and the fact he has to be
prompted to it (by Luz)... and his former subscription to Teen Nymphos
or whatever it was called... and the way so many women are
cartoonishly available to screw him...

It all seems distinctly at odds with that peculiar early line -
"Anyone with any claim to hipness 'loved' everybody, not to mention
other useful applications, like hustling people into sex activities
they might not, given the choice, much care to engage in."

Where does this notion disappear to after page 5? Never gets picked up again.

Yet it's a rare example of tell-don't-show in P's work. It's an
argument regarding the sexual revolution that jars.

There have been plenty of more straightforward arguments along these
lines - Linda Grant's terrific "Sexing the Millennium" reckons that
the sexual revolution was like most revolutions, finally reasserting a
new power structure just as limiting as the old:

It "had turned out to be a history of radical ideas repackaged for the
mass market... If anyone had benefited, it was often asserted, it was
men. Where before there had existed a restraining morality that put
wives, mothers, virgins, and children off-limits, a double-standard
that could work in women's favour, now all women were fair game."

On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 9:23 AM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> The same gesture--looking at another---can indicate deference and
> submission. P certainly knew this long before feminists published
> studies on the gaze(s). That females look away or lower or avert their
> gaze when a male looks at them, as submissive animals do, is science.
> But, human context is complex. Moreover, if we add speaking and
> listening to the mix, to the context (where, when, the power
> relationships--education, employment, age, level of expertise) and to
> gazing,  we complicate things considerably.
>
> P is writing with these things, stage direction descriptions. Is it working?
>
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 12:27 PM, Michael Bailey
> <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
>> oh Mark, perish forbid (as my grandmother used to say:
>>>
>>>  Might P be hinting that, like Frenesi, women (many women) in the new America of relationships that is beginning here, WANT submission?
>>>
>>>
>>
>> I'll buy that maybe he's hinting that men like Zoyd, whose best shot at
>> non-domineering relationships somehow misses the hoop
>> (maybe distracted by all those shoes squeaking on the floor)
>> and who see the person to whom they directed the not-Mesmeric-enough passes
>> apparently looking in other guys for that quality they deliberately excluded,
>> will occasionally wonder if that isn't the key...but they can't
>> bring themselves to regress that much...
>>
>>
>> --
>> - "The doctor said give him jug band music; it seems to make him feel
>> just fine!"
>>
>