VL--IV Passivity, more active thoughts

[kelber at mindspring.com]

There's clearly a dialogue between Lake Traverse and Frenesi.  The sins of the Great-Grand-Aunt are visited on the Great-Grand-Niece?  Their shared behavior transcends politics.  Turn against your heritage and suffer the consequences, TRP seems to be saying, more than anything.  ATD and VL are part of his "family" period of books, after all.  Even in GR, though, he paid his respects to his own heritage via William Slothrop.

Whether we can have any empathy for Lake or Frenesi is an issue.  In the ATD group read, some people (Mark?) seemed to feel that Webb had brought on Lake's disloyalty by being an absent father.  Frank had pretty harsh words for his sister, while Reef and Kit remained neutral.  Zoyd still loves Frenesi.  Sasha's a little angrier.  There's a lot of call for forgiveness on the part of their families.  But both women end up in pretty rootless, agonizing situations:  Lake cut off from motherhood, Frenesi cut off from any semblance of a normal life.  Personally, I don't hate either of them, and I'm extrapolating from this that TRP doesn't mean for us to hate them, and doesn't hate them either.

Laura




-----Original Message-----
>From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>

>
>Considerations:
>a) to what extent are Z and F presented as typical, normative?
>
>b) are my liking of, and admitted likeness in some ways to, them
>unique to me?  Am I the only person who gloms tips for living from
>them?
>
>c)  F being an informer, and a paid informer utilizing sex at that,
>hater of her baby during post-partum depression, surprisingly easily
>turned by Brock Vond,
>do all those things kill the possibility of sympathy for her, of
>something to learn from her, of partial validity and/or
>understandability in her choices?