IVIV Hope Harlingen: a wacky theory (possible spoilers)

[Mark Kohut]

No grown-up story told Amethyst. Yes, TRP saying something about the 'narrative', the mythic meaning for the next generation. Not there.

No teeth in the pot-fogged lack of a mythos? 

Doc admits to abusing the kindness that came along rarely and was too precious.  An inherent vice? 

--- On Thu, 9/10/09, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: IVIV Hope Harlingen: a wacky theory (possible spoilers)
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Thursday, September 10, 2009, 6:25 AM
> pg. 39 Juicegirl rises from a nap
> and, after grabbing her juice from
> the fridge, sits next to Larry. While Hope "poured more
> coffee."
> 
> Is Coffee the standard beverage of ex-Junkies? Hope does
> draw quite a
> few comparisons here of Junk users and booze abusers and
> coffee is the
> standard for ex-boozehounds. Not exactly what I would
> recommend here
> but ...I'm not here AA or NA sponser and it's Larry who
> will have to
> put up with the reambling rationalizations and paranoia.
> 
> I want to focus on Juicegirl. Does her mother, Hope
> continues to
> neglect/abuse her here?  Now, that's harsh, right? BUt
> all is not
> right in this world where the text keeps pointing to Hope's
> teeth.
> Doesn't smack rot more than teeth. Why the focus on the
> teeth? Hope is
> standard issue California chick. But for those choppers.
> That she
> looks like every other California chick, a copy if you
> will, and we've
> seen such duplicate women going all the way back to V.,
> where an
> ex-sailor may suck a brew from a rubber breast and the
> barmaids are
> named Beatrice (Dante), must cause Pynchon readers to, at
> least
> question her role a allegorical Hope. Maybe not. But those
> teeth
> bother me. That the California standard issue chick is
> described
> through Larry's narrative is also quite important, I
> suppose. And,
> Juicegirl sits on the couch next to Larry. Why? It's cute.
> I mean, she
> is. What does this kid want? Well, she wants a grown-up to
> tell her a
> story. Tell here a story. Jeeeeeez. How cute. And, Hope?
> She "poured
> more coffee."
> 
> Juicegirl has her juice, Hope and Larry have their coffee.
> The kid is
> waiting, we might say, hoping for, a story from a grown-up.
> Are there
> any grown-ups in the room?
> 
> Next, we get a stream of Larry's thoughts, thoughts that
> are a
> response to Hope's question about Coy and Shasta and Larry,
> thought
> about his business: "kindness without a pricetag cam ealong
> only
> rarely, and when it did usually it was too precious to
> accept, being
> too easy, for Doc anyway, to abuse, which he was bound
> to."
> 
> Larry's view is that he needed to take care of business but
> he failed
> to. p.40 Is that why Shasta is in the mess she's in? She's
> an adult.
> She's free to Fall same as Adam, Eve, Larry, Hope. She's
> mot a child.
> 
> And, what is that **Business" exactly?
> 
> Is it Mankind?
> 
> Juicegirl, realizing that these grown-ups are not telling a
> story, at
> least not one that is "her idea of entertainment," 
> climbs off the
> couch and heads for her kind of entertainment---The TUBE.
> 
> Read her a story, Hope. Engage the kid a bit. Juice and
> Tube is all
> the kid gets so off to the Tube she goes. Her form of
> etertainment is
> not made for kids. Mightmouse, although marketed to
> children from
> 1955-1966 is about as violent as the Tube can get.
> 
> Look Momma, Books!
> 
> In the Dickens tale, “A Christmas Carol”, the ghost of
> Jacob Marley
> visits Ebeneezer Scrooge to warn him of his ultimate fate
> if he
> continues on his current path. Marley bemoans his actions
> taken while
> in life that led to his precarious circumstances after his
> death. As
> he explained to Scrooge the faults of his own selfish
> actions done
> while alive, Scrooge attempted to console him by saying
> “You were a
> good man of business.” To this attempt, Marley responded
> emphatically
> “Mankind was my business!!”
> 
>