IVIV (12): Yakkin' Broads

[alice wellintown]

The Chapman article provides an excellent read of the Feminist
direction P took after GR. Read it with several excellent articles on
Feminism in VL, such as Molly Hite, Feminist Theory and the Politics
of Vineland, along with Cowart's Attenuated Postmodernism (after
McHale's Zapping), and a few others and we can begin to flesh out the
direction P has taken and fit it to your insightful reading of the
feminist project in IV. Again, I don't think it works well for P. That
won't stop clever readers from writing creative and sometimes
brilliant articles about IV, however.


On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 2:56 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> 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.
>>>
>>>
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>>
>>>
>>
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