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

[alice wellintown]

I don't read the statement as P telling and not showing the reader,
not that I have any problem with authors telling as opposed to showing
or believe one method better or whatever, but I read the statement as
Larry telling us something about Larry and how he sees things. We've
come a long way since 1970, in terms of language and its use to
dominate, but changing things like body language, because we're not as
conscious of it as we are of verbal language and how our attitudes are
affected by words, has not changed much. So males still dominate with
looks and body movement, tone of voice, the number and kind of words
(curse words are very powerful and males get to use them and females
don't), the volume of conversations and the like. And males dominate
in sexual foreplay and in all heterosexual activities.  Penny is
trying; she's not gonna put on no Manson wig for Larry. But the risk,
again, to the female in the patriarch is em[hasized again and again in
this work. Penny's attraction to the vertical egalitarianism in
Manson, could put her in a pink prison and could put a world of hurt
on The NOW. She could lose her job for leaving that file on her desk.
She could lose what little she has gained and we know she works hard
for her money and is paid less than the boyz in the Treehouse. And,
those boyz ain't living off a salary they earn alone, but off
..."overtime pay."



On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 5:48 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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!"
>>>
>>
>