IVIV: Rhus Frothington

[Mark Kohut]

nice, I say.

--- On Sat, 12/12/09, kelber at mindspring.com <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:

> From: kelber at mindspring.com <kelber at mindspring.com>
> Subject: IVIV: Rhus Frothington
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Saturday, December 12, 2009, 1:28 PM
> Many apologies for falling so far
> behind in the reading -- still straggling in Chapter 16.
> 
> Anyway, thought of something regarding Rhus Frothington,
> Penny's office-mate.  She appears to be a caricature of
> a humorless, anti-male, frothing-at-the-mouth feminist
> (golly, I've never met anyone like that!).  The
> Frothing-ton is pretty overt, but I'm wondering if the Rhus
> might refer to Joanna Russ:
> 
> http://www.nndb.com/people/553/000029466/
> 
> She's a feminist sci-fi writer who was a contemporary of
> Pynchon's at Cornell, where she majored in English. 
> I've read and enjoyed her book The Female Man. It's easy
> enough to imagine that, had she rubbed shoulders with
> Pynchon back in their college days, her attitude towards him
> might have been similar to Rhus' attitude to Doc.
> 
> Laura
>