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

[Mark Kohut]

John B. quotes and then sez: 
"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.


I might say he does "tell" even a bit more than many writers, say in some of his riffs within the texts--on Rossini in GR, fer example--it his his encyclopedic style......

BUT i think your general observations here merit more discussion...anyone, anyone, Bueller?....I, too, have wondered about that page 5 line and, becasue it is Pynchon, feel he might be showing it more later on and I've---we've?---missed it so far?   I mean it can't just refer to Manson and his girls, can it? 

it does jar re the sexual revolution to me too......so, wha? 

--- On Thu, 12/3/09, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: IVing IV 'indict a bean burrito', p. 277
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Thursday, December 3, 2009, 5:48 PM
> 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!"
> >>
> >
>