V-2nd - Farewell to Chapter 6

[Ian Livingston]

> I don't disavow the book, though I recoil from such things as Benny's musings
> about whether Fina wants or deserves a gang-bang.  I was 18 when I first read
> the book, and I absolutely loved it.  Don't recall recoiling from any of it.
> Either Benny's attitudes were more in keeping with the (creeps) I knew (though I
> don't think so), or I was the perfect audience for young Pynchon. I accepted
> Benny's/Pynchon's attitudes at face value, and oddly, didn't care, perhaps
> because I was as naive about these things when I read the book as Pynchon was
> when he wrote it. I disagree, Mike, that Pynchon was deliberately trying to make
> us dislike Benny, or at least, trying to show us how flawed Benny was.  I found
> Benny's yoyoing and rootlessness, and everything else about him, completely cool
> at that young age, and I'm guessing Pynchon did too.  I'm sure he recoils along
> with the rest of us now.
>

I incline to agree with you here, Laura, except for the recoiling
part. I would not endorse this sort of depiction from someone writing
in these days, but I think, yes, that the yo-yo aspect, especially, is
very Kerouacky-cool. It was right to the audience at the time, because
in those days, the women's movement was just finally beginning to take
on serious momentum. Only a few fringe elements gave it any credence
at the time. Men were defined as men by their sexual indiscretions.
The war against Rosie the Riveter was still simmering, as women were
subdued into barefoot-and-pregnant status, resulting in many of us
here on the liste. Raquel Welch, Mary Tyler Moore, and Lucille Ball
portrayed the American Woman. There are some folks out there who long
for a return to those values--to the days when men were men and women
were slaves. You can find them in the Dupes for Plutes Party, going
for broke on Sunday morning at the Church of the Holy Regression.
Point is, it was real, at the time, so, few of us saw anything to
resent in it. Hell, the whole Hippie movement was all about Happy Jack
and his ole lady, etc. The 'sexual revolution' was cool for guys who
wanted to get laid a lot, but the women didn't come out so well from
the deal. So the other point is, we have come a long way since then. I
don't recoil. I look back and think how glad I am we have learned so
much in the intervening time.



On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 4:36 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Benny does a lot of worrying, too, about Fina and stuff..worrying that might be
> called having a conscience.
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: "kelber at mindspring.com" <kelber at mindspring.com>
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Sent: Tue, September 14, 2010 7:31:31 AM
> Subject: Re: V-2nd - Farewell to Chapter 6
>
> I don't disavow the book, though I recoil from such things as Benny's musings
> about whether Fina wants or deserves a gang-bang.  I was 18 when I first read
> the book, and I absolutely loved it.  Don't recall recoiling from any of it.
> Either Benny's attitudes were more in keeping with the (creeps) I knew (though I
> don't think so), or I was the perfect audience for young Pynchon. I accepted
> Benny's/Pynchon's attitudes at face value, and oddly, didn't care, perhaps
> because I was as naive about these things when I read the book as Pynchon was
> when he wrote it. I disagree, Mike, that Pynchon was deliberately trying to make
> us dislike Benny, or at least, trying to show us how flawed Benny was.  I found
> Benny's yoyoing and rootlessness, and everything else about him, completely cool
> at that young age, and I'm guessing Pynchon did too.  I'm sure he recoils along
> with the rest of us now.
>
> Laura
>
> -----Original Message-----
>>From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
>>Sent: Sep 14, 2010 1:19 AM
>>To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>Subject: Re: V-2nd - Farewell to Chapter 6
>>
>>egads, is it 7 already?  time to make the donuts...
>>
>>working backward in order to work forward, Benny's sickening behavior
>>is not (I'd say, in my finite wisdom) just an excrescence of
>>post-adolescent cleverness on the part of the author, but a deliberate
>>and well-written depiction of the sort of failure that he's trying to
>>depict...
>>
>>...all too well-depicted, I'd say (from my amateur viewpoint), in that
>>just about all our readership (and we *like* Pynchon) recoil from the
>>text and disavow the book...
>>
>>there's a phrase in a Wayne Dyer book, or one of those guys (yes, I
>>read self-improvement books - in my defense, a friend put me onto that
>>one), where he says something like, "Don't cut off my finger, look
>>where I'm pointing!"
>>
>>who's that drummer guy, in _Vineland_, who talks about, "That's what I
>>do, take the rude buffets of life and give them a beat" or something
>>like that?
>
>
>
>



-- 
"liber enim librum aperit."