Femenist reading of IV

[Mark Kohut]

Here's the beginning of an argument---from the post this morn quoting Martin Amis---for the feminist reading of IV:  self-empowered women....
they have all changed A LOT from Oedipa, no? Not to mention most other novels of the 60s.

"Like any revolution, this one delivered more than just what was promised at the outset. “The first clause in the revolutionary manifesto went as follows: There will be sex before marriage.” The second item: “Women, also, have carnal appetites.” Point three “was a kind of sleeper clause,” Amis writes: “Surface will start tending to supersede essence.”"







--- On Thu, 2/18/10, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Femenist reading of IV
> To: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Thursday, February 18, 2010, 10:29 PM
> Well, you have to dive a little
> deeper into that muff. This stuff
> ain't floating on the surface.
> 
> On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 9:21 PM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > more like a Semenist reading in my book
> >
> > On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 3:36 PM, alice wellintown
> > <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> Perhaps nothing Pynchon has written to date tells
> us more about how he
> >> developed as an author than his Introduction to
> the Slow Learner
> >> stories. The stories are, as P admits, novice
> attempts that expose his
> >> juvenile prejudices and influences. With the
> exception of "The Secret
> >> Integration", an apprentice's tale that P admits
> suffers from his
> >> abuse of the surreal, a problem compounded by his
> then semi-conscious
> >> though largely latent and unexamined racist views
> of Black Americans,
> >> is P first turn toward seeing the Other. Lot49
> explores and GR is a
> >> far more mature and complex product of this turn.
> Of course P
> >> continues to develop a more mature view of the
> Other in his more
> >> mature works. After VL was published  critics
> gave serious
> >> consideration to the feminist P. M&D, AGTD can
> be read as feminist
> >> works. And IV, P's last published work, is is most
> feminist to date.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> This dynamic — of eroticized male exclusion
> from, and investment in,
> >> female relationships — was the defining feature
> of a handful of
> >> women-in-prison films from the 1970s. In these
> movies, female
> >> sisterhood, generally in the face of oppression,
> is itself fetishized
> >> — feminism is turned into a kind of masochistic
> male wet dream. How
> >> this unlikely cathexis occurred, and how it
> functioned, is the subject
> >> of this essay.
> >> http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/61/61womeninprison.html
> >
> >
>