IVIV (12): Yakkin' Broads

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Don't see how this supports your assertion that IV is Pynchon's most feminist work.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
>Sent: Nov 2, 2009 2:22 PM
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: IVIV (12): Yakkin' Broads
>
>The change is evident after GR. This essay describes the GR position.
>VL marks a radical shift. Why would P write about women like DL & Co.?
>
>
>This masculinist gigantism can is by no means self-evidently
>pro-feminist. Gravity's Rainbow often reads like a male fantasy gone
>out of control: the phalli are a little too large, the female
>characters too eager to bed down with Slothrop, the victims of sadists
>far too eager about their own pain.  And because the narrative doesn't
>offer final readings, it is never quite clear how much really is
>mockery or disruption and how much is the residue of real assumptions
>about gender. These exaggerations self-consciously invite a feminist
>critique, from an outsider's perspective. But the novel itself does
>not supply that critique; it can only inflate or dislocate the
>discourses of its own crimes, and so at once gesture to a newly
>written self and reduplicate an old and tiresome one.
>
>http://www.iwu.edu/~wchapman/pynchon.html
>
>
>On 11/2/09, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net> wrote:
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: <kelber at mindspring.com>
>> To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Sent: Sunday, November 01, 2009 11:50 AM
>> Subject: IVIV (12): Yakkin' Broads
>>
>>
>>
>> > p. 197 – "'These broads are all itchin to talk, because nobody in their
>> home life wants to hear anything they have to say.  Sit still for two
>> seconds, and they’ll be yakkin your ear off.'"
>> >
>> > Layer one:  an accurate portrayal of the lives of housewives at the dawn
>> of the resurgence of activist feminism.
>> >
>> > Layer two:  an accurate portrayal of a misogynist viewpoint of the day.
>> Here's the problem, though.  There's nothing historical about the comment.
>> Bill Maher, whose viewpoints are often worth listening to, has a standard
>> misogynist riff running through his routines -- being driven crazy by
>> yakking females is a big part of this.  He's mostly a progressive, and it
>> only gets worse as you move rightward.  The image of women in films, TV and
>> the news is as bad or even worse than it's ever been.
>> >
>> > Layer three:  Pynchon's depiction of women in IV.  Oedipa Maas in COL49,
>> back there in 1965 California, is a housewife, a Young Republican, but she's
>> logical and intelligent  -- the essence of rationality.  Pynchon wrote that
>> book prior to the time he depicts in IV.  Assuming IV to be a mix of the
>> life and attitudes of LA-1970 Pynchon and the current NYC-2009
>> Pynchon-the-Elder/Family Man, well, where's Oedipa or anyone like her? Sure,
>> the male characters are all buffoonish – but we never forget who's in the
>> White House, the CIA, the Police Force, the Golden Fang.  Amidst the
>> housewives, the stewardii and bimbettes only two women modestly stand out:
>> Sortilege, the flaky New Ager, who stands out by virtue of having a steady
>> boyfriend so that she's not actively fucking everyone in sight; and Penny,
>> who's an ADA (sexually taken with Doc and certainly willing to, at least
>> metaphorically, put out for the FBI).  The reality is that a woman with
>> Penny's job back in early 1970, wo!
>> > uld have been relentlessly discriminated against and harassed, relegated
>> to chicken-shit assignments, etc.  Pynchon gives a very inaccurate,
>> anachronistic portrayal of her situation.
>> >
>> > The endless parade of mini-skirted bimbos starts to get really boring
>> after a while.  There's really zero even knee-jerk social commentary to be
>> gleaned from it about "(sob) the oppression of women."  For those of you
>> who've seen the TV show Madmen, about the advertising business in the early
>> '60s, the show does a helluva better job of showing us the roots of the
>> rebirth of feminism in the 70s.  Assuming then, that social commentary is
>> off the table, why is TRP depicting women this way in IV?  To paraphrase
>> (don't have the book handy) his description of a racy pinball machine in GR:
>>  "A little offensive to the ladies, but all in good fun."
>> >
>> > Laura
>> >
>>
>>
>> Half of me feels that Pynchon just can't help himself when it come to the
>> advisability of supressing his boyish tendency (perhaps based on a latent
>> fear) to make fun of women.
>>
>> Then I wonder is maybe the problem with the man's readers. Are they not
>> sophiticated enough to see that his portrayals are largely cautionary?
>>
>> Should we be Aristotelian about this rather than Platonic?
>>
>> I'm guessing that Alice is the former, which explains why she can say IV is
>> his most feminist novel.
>>
>> This does really fly for me.
>>
>> Do violent movies demonstrate the horror of it all or are they the horror
>> itself?
>>
>> The last couple of literary novels I've read  have strong women in
>> them--sometimes misguided but never trivial.
>>
>> Why can't Pynchon learn to write is a less silly manner?
>>
>>
>> P.
>>
>>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>