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

[Mark Kohut]

Alice sez:
I read the statement as
Larry telling us something about Larry and how he sees things.

Virtually the same questions apply.

--- On Thu, 12/3/09, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: IVing IV 'indict a bean burrito', p. 277
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Thursday, December 3, 2009, 6:25 PM
> 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!"
> >>>
> >>
> >
>