Bad Sneakers & a Fina Salada

[Mark Kohut]

TRP did need to apologize for Laura's first observation--and for more in V.

Nice to be learn of "the creation of adolescence" within that crucial time 
period in Pynchon's oeuvre.....

But, in the later fiction, I've generally thought P was presenting his youthful 
girls---who do not explore sex with same-age peers---as
more of the very diseased, very decadent, relationship breakdown of our 
time........(to express it lamely)

Unhealthy sex pervades Pynchon---to show the healthy in relief, so to speak? 



----- Original Message ----
From: Albert Rolls <alprolls at earthlink.net>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Tue, September 7, 2010 2:22:32 PM
Subject: Re: Bad Sneakers & a Fina Salada

> 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.