V ch. 5 part 2 Imaginary Alligators, Real buckshot

[alice wellintown]

On Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 1:24 AM, Michael Bailey
<michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
> Joseph Tracy  wrote:
>> I can certainly understand that discomfort. Guys are definitely more
>> insulated from the sense that a a male character represents general gender
>>  notions.

so much of P's critique of characterization (the technique authors
employ to make characters) and of P's use of characterization (james
wood...cartoon...etc.) is complicated by his pretzleing irony (s~Z's
term) and by his daisy chain historisizings (that letter to Seed
includes that S&M--master and slave theme evinced in post-colonial
fictions like Joyce's and Achebe's) and by his use of parody--and here
in V. we have seen an example of all three in the chapter under
discussion. compounding all of this, is P's use of film and tv. and,
of course, as has been suggested, his obsessive use of doubles and
twins and dopple gangsters.

the types and archie bunker and jug headed archy-types P is fascinated
with are often Homers wandering far from home having adventures and
Homers driving home from the nuke plant to a wife with more gray
matter. not sure that should make the male folk more comfortable.

> Rachel and Esther are a lot cooler, if that's any help, Rachel singing
> in the shower eg

Rachel is not even close to kool; she has nothing to worry about so
she takes on the troubles of the kids in the crew. she needs to grow
up and stop playing mommy. on the other hand, her daddy, name is
stuyvesant? that famous anti-semite who didn't let the Jews into the
liberal Dutch colony, who wears, no sharkskin suits, but, as does our
ivory jazz man, J Press suits, a wasp's suit if ever an irish brother
brooked his brother, is paying for her doll's house and sporty barbie
coup.

P's Jews are victims in a vacuum turning the daisy chain. As I said,
not joking, P learned some bad shit out there on the guy-land and it
took some time for him to work it out. TSI, his wonderful tale that
sufferes from some surreal experiements and his still paternailistic
and latent racist views and his misreading of Twain, is a giant step
toward his mind lit up like tesla's tower and that tower of art with
ohmmmmes and  watts, but until we get to GR, where Marvy, a southern
pig tossed from a train by the african (american?) with long but not
unlimted patience, we have a young author showing off and exposing his
slow learnings about the complexity of this devine architecture, this
mortal coil, this YOU Man. But, what saves the book, V., are several
aming things. The first one is the stroke of genius that P had when he
decided to read and re-read Henry Adams.