Femenist reading of IV

[alice wellintown]

I'm gonna stick with the Feminist thang for now, but Feminist theories
& Marxist theories, as I'm sure you know,  are connected. And, while
the various Marxists and Feminists don't agree on everything, they
have quite a lot in common. My point is that Pynchon has written a
book (IV) that is clearly, as VL is but more so,  a Feminist work. At
the same time, his Turn, not away from issues of race and gender, but
toward what he, since he published the SL Introduction, sees as a far
more important issue, that is Class, dominates his works published
after GR.

GR is much concerned with Race (Black & White).


That a narrator in GR calls Marx a racist is not P dissing Marx or a
Marxist critique of Late Capitalism. There is an historical thread,
that is, P is historisizing when Marx is mentioned in GR. Marx was a
racist.
In the passage, if not in the Text (GR), this seems ironic. Why did so
many Black intellectuals turn to Marx? Why did Baldwin dis Wright?
What was the Battle Royal about and why did Sonny's brother have the
Blues? Thw WHite Paint Factory? Invisible Man? Slothrop? The Whiteness
of the Whale? But GR is the masterpiece of a young P. A perfect time
to be young. But he's grown up.

When he looks back at his early works he is interested in the Class
issue. Now, it's not that issues of Work and Labor are not present in
SL tales or in V.; they are certainly there. But with VL and M&D and
AGTD, Lab or is more than, as you suggest, just one of many issues or
concerns.

It's 1970 and P picks up on the Feminist Movement. That movement was
much about work. How could Hope have any hope if she were responsible
for the children, including the fathers who refused to grow up?