CoL49(6): Humbert Humbert Cats

[Michael Bailey]

rich wrote:
> Pynchon's mea culpas about his past attitudes is pretty annoying (and
> hardly enlightening or original) ; his labored attempts to make up for
> it in Vineland and AtD (w.r.t. to the ladies) weaken those books (who
> can stand Yasmeen Halfcourt)
>

I rather like her...
first, the name.  Halfcourt like half court basketball, also like Half
- couer (French for heart) which name she inherited from the
halfheartedly colonizer, who was half-hearted in his colonization
because he *has* a heart

Yashmeen, it's got a good combination of sounds, I'll leave it at that...

Then, making her a mathematician with the sexual adventuresomeness of
James Bond, just a really nice touch. A counter not only on the
feminist plane (Yashmeen cuts a swath leaving her loves as devoted and
damaged as 007's playmates)

but also on the choice-of-professions plane - why should only the
spies get the wild sex life?
Just got David Foster Wallace's math monograph, and he refers often to
math concepts as being "sexy"...pretty good book so far anyway...

> why do so many men hate women? answer that instead of spouting
> half-baked feminist crap
>

maybe IV will address that one...


-- 
"My God, I am fully in favor of a little leeway or the damnable jig is
up! " - Seymour Glass