The Moviegoer (was Rachel's hand jive)

[Carvill, John]

Just got back from a 2 week holiday, where I actually managed to get some books read, including Walker Percy's 'The Moviegoer', which is one of those (many) books I've been meaning to get round to for years. Actually, 'The Moviegoer' has been quite hard to get hold of here - unavailable on Amazon for a long time, never seen in second-hand shops, etc.

Anyway, I thought it was an enormously accomplished work, and would welcome p-listers' thoughts on it, as well as any pointers to worthwhile essays. A-and, it would be far from difficult to dig up a number of general Pynchon resonances, themes, etc. More specifcally, though, what particularly struck me as relevant - given the current p-list group read - was Percy's treatment of his protagonist's red MG, which in many instances is characterized as having animal (or maybe even human) aspects, with even a touch or eroticization here and there:

"We leave the MG in a glade (a good hard-used creature of red metal and fragrant worn leather; I run a hand over its flank of stout British steel as if it were a mare)"


I guess this is also as good a place as any to mention that I also finally got round to giving 'The Day of the Locust' a proper read. Now there's a book in which it would be difficult not to dig up a number of Pynchon resonances, themes, etc.

Cheers
J



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf Of Mark Kohut
Sent: 26 June 2010 12:54
To: pynchon -l
Subject: V-2nd. Rachel's hand jive. "I love to touch you."

P. 22 Rachel loves to fondle her MG gearshift and Benny, having just listened to Duke who 'almost but not quite made it' with Rachel, knew what she was doing. "He did not want to see anymore."
 
Hand Jive
"choreographer Patricia Birch mentions that the dance also went by the much more risque name "hand job", but the title was changed as Grease was aimed at a family audience."
 
Filmed by a young Ken Russell in Soho, London in 1957 and an R & B hit "Willie and the Hand Jive" in 1958 and more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_jive
 
TRP makes real our love of our cars. "We'll always be together" Rachel sez to her MG. 
 
P.S. p. 18 Notice that TRP gets right the fact that Rachel's MG is British-made with the steering wheel on the English side. Sitting next to her
he sees 'the harmonic motion of her left breast".....the closest one to him, the right one hidden by the left and distance.