VLVL(12) pgs 261 - Pynchon at his most "Mailer-esque"?

[Richard Ryan]

The citation of Harlot's Ghost's strikes me as particularly apt: HG appears (1991) the year after VL; each work presents as its author's retrospective meditation on the interplay between repression, subversion, and secrecy in American life.  

The common themes/memes could be worth exploring at length, but to cite only one boldface connection: it's hard (for me, anyway) not to compare and contrast Brock Vond with HG's Dix Butler. Mailer's avatar of exuberant state-sponsored violence and predatory sexuality - modeled, seemingly, on legendary CIA renegade Eddie Wilson - could easily be Brock's demon-twin in Mailer's baggier and weirder door-stopper. Kudos to both authors for making us (and their heroines) love the detestable....    

--- On Sat, 3/7/09, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: VLVL(12) pgs 261 -
> To: "P-list" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Saturday, March 7, 2009, 3:59 PM
> Bekah wrote:
> 
> > What the film projects however,  is "her mother's
> real face."
> >
> 
> something she's inflicted on others (the projection of
> their real faces)
> 
> > (pg 265)  Mirage built a computer data base to
> keep in touch with the old
> > 24fps  group and other matters through astrology
> -  Pluto returning  - "as
> > if repeatedly running into trouble at the 'frontier'
> negotiating with
> > caretaker governments (?) that scarcely recognized
> him, Pluto had been
> > shifting, direct to retrograde and back again, stuck
> within a few degrees of
> > the cusp,  trying to get out of Libra...
> 
> - they are doing Ptolemaic, not sidereal (Krishna having
> wandered off
> without apparently having a chance to turn them onto
> sidereal since
> that is the style in India)
> 
> - Pluto in Libra a few astrological vagaries:
> http://www.the11thcontinuum.com/pluto_and_the_418_cycle.htm
> 
> "Pluto’s transit through 418 started in 1971 when it
> entered Libra and
> then in September 1972 it was established at 2 degrees of
> the sign.
> Accordingly, humanity was judged in the 70’s, and
> spiritual
> consciousness died in the 80’s, in Scorpio. It was said
> in 1984 that
> God was dead. [?]... By February 2009 Pluto will be
> established in
> Capricorn at 2 degrees."
> 
> > Vond is a Scorpio -
> 
> but do  we ever learn what is Frenesi's sign?
> 
> > (Iran-Contra scandal - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Contra_Affair
> > http://www.democracynow.org/2004/6/8/reagan_was_the_butcher_of_my
> >
> 
> great link.
> 
> >
> > And Prairie really doesn't understand why or how
> Frenesi could have done
> > what she did,  but then  neither does anyone
> else.   Do we?
> 
> the great imponderables...
> 
> why is Brock like he is? next chapter...
> why does she fall for him?
> why can't she co-opt him instead of the other way around?
> any famous instances of similar stuff in real life?
> the spy lore of, like, The Spy who Came in from the Cold,
> or Harlot's
> Ghost, suggests that it's fairly easy to turn people in
> general...
> 
> tryin' to think (but nothin' happens) of famous lady
> counterculturists
> who were co-opted...
> Jane Fonda married Ted Turner?  (saw her in Hill
> Auditorium in Ann
> Arbor in 1974)
> Angela Davis became a prof?
> Patty Hearst?  Stockholm Syndrome in a general
> sense...
> 
> heck, tryin' ta think of famous lady counterculturists at
> all ... I
> know there were lots...
> Mother Jones?  Gloria Steinem?  (remember Time
> magazine reporting her
> falling in love and saying she liked being dominated, can't
> remember
> the year)
> Emma Goldman?  Cokie Roberts?  Grace Slick? 
> Janis Joplin?
> 
> (but I might know more about women's viewpoints soon -
> serendipity,
> got totally incontrovertibly hooked on Linda Perry singing
> What's Up
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXcQGsoDkDk a few days
> ago, and found a
> feminist collection edited by a person with the same name,
> http://tinyurl.com/cegkgk (link is to Amazon because I
> apparently
> bought Powells last copy) which looks to be really good)
> 
> is there an intention of comparing Zoyd who only has a kind
> of
> personal toughness with Frenesi - like the pedigreed
> leftist with the
> Berkeley education and a cadre doesn't hold out against
> the
> establishment?  but the forces brought to bear on her
> were a lot
> stronger...
> 
> I skimmed some of the Molly Hite gender stuff, and feel she
> brings a
> valuable perspective. My warp of that vision, is to see
> Frenesi as an
> Everywoman who does start out with a unique and penetrating
> viewpoint
> but is forced by Men in general to capitulate to their
> unfair thought
> processes, Zoyd being in some ways capable of being just as
> much of a
> dick (the scream-fests alluded to, eg) as Vond though
> lacking the
> power to enforce it (although I still think the gender
> reversal of
> Zoyd with his tears and housekeeping duties is also a
> motif), Weed
> being unsuitable for a long term commitment because of
> being so
> promiscuous as well as, eventually, dead...
> 
> another subtheme being the validity of long term commitment
> in general...
> (where is it in the book about how what America calls love,
> the rest
> of the world calls male adolescence?)  movements and
> unions and all
> those good things being built on long term commitments...
> 
> but also oppressive gov'ts are built on long term
> commitments too -
> steady paychecks, reliance on psychological quirks
> (propensities to S
> and to M) - and the counterculture's use of short-term
> thrills to do
> its share of co-optation (mentioned in next chap.) perhaps
> was like
> using a nuclear option, since commitment is not in fact
> built on those
> (or is it - maybe a little...?)
> 
> anyway, famous turnings of coat?  I will be pondering
> on this...
> ...
> also, you [Bekah] wondered why there was an asterisk at the
> top of one
> page denoting a section break - maybe a very special
> section break?
> I can't shed any light on that, but it does remind of an
> Isaac Asimov
> joke, about Nathan Hale's last words being, "I regret that
> I have only
> one * for my country"
> 
> >
> >
> 
> lastly, found a typo somewhere in the section you just
> covered. BFD.
> 
> -- 
>  - "Be groovy or B movie" - the old 24fps signoff
> 
>