Bad Sneakers & a Fina Salada

[Albert Rolls]

> Then there's this painful underage girl thing: 14-year-old Lucille, 
> 12-year-old Bianca.  I'm not saying Pynchon's a Polanski, but I don't 
> think his constant references to sexualized teens [the almost sentimental 
> portrait of the child-molester earlier in this book, Zoyd fighting an 
> attraction to his daughter as he watches her sleeping, Merle encouraging 
> Dally's teen sexual initiation] are nothing more than a friendly nod 
> towards his one-semester teacher Nabokov.  Write what you know?  Write 
> what you feel?  I forgive Pynchon, I forgive Woody Allen; I admire 
> Polanski the artist, but I loathe the man, and think he should be locked 
> up.


Teens, one should note, are sexualized, regardless of the legality (if one 
is over 18, 17, or whatever the age of consent is where one lives and the 
teen under that age) or morality of adults getting sexually involved with 
them. Indeed, the adolescent stage is a twentieth century creation or 
recognition (depending on one's philosophical bent), G. Stanley Hall's 
Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Anthropology, Sex, Crime, 
Religion, and Education (1904) being an important text in the history of its 
emergence as a category of development. Recognizing the fact of teens’ 
sexuality doesn’t a pedophile make, and no concrete evidence, as far as I 
know, suggesting that the biographical Pynchon ran around after 12 to 16 
year olds exists; any references to girlfriends that have surfaced have been 
to adult women.