IVIV (12): Yakkin' Broads

[alice wellintown]

On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 12:36 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> Assuming Doc to be the stand-in for Pynchon as at least the viewpoint of the narrator, Pynchon doesn't give Doc the "yakkin' broads" dialogue that some (though not all)of the other male characters display.  Then, too, there's an odd (and completely unrealistic) pussy-centric, female-pleasure focus to a lot of the sexual goings on.  Do we really believe that in the back seat of the car Denis is going down on Jade, rather than vice versa?  Was that really what car-sex was all about back then (or today?).  All of this seems to be Pynchon's way of apologizing for the male-pleasure focus of the Free Love culture.
>
> Laura

When we look at the three California works we certainly see a feminist
progression. IV is by far the most feminst work P has published to
date. Of course, it lacks the layers of VL, but it's an even more
agressive feminist project and that is one of the reasons the work
fails.