V-2nd - Chap 8 / I have really never read this book this closely before

[Mark Kohut]

MB...fine............

I say Benny does represent ...our, America's, the young's .....present and 
future..........

Oedipa, in a few short years, is we of the Silent Majority, Middle 
Class.............


----- Original Message ----
From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wed, September 29, 2010 1:31:50 PM
Subject: Re: V-2nd - Chap 8 / I have really never read this book this closely 
before

On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 11:55 AM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> Good analysis, MB.

Thanks!  It's never really gelled that way for me before.

Of course, this is only one overlay.

>You've succeeded in convincing me that there's more to Fina's rape than simple 
>>snarky frat-boy-ism.  Does Benny, in some way, represent us, the Americans who 
>>enjoyed the post-war prosperity and turned away in horror from what they didn't 
>>want to see?

Could quite well be.  "The country's in the very best of hands!"

> This would explain Benny's attraction to and revulsion for the inanimate - the 
>>classic guilty consumer.  Stencil, then, is someone who's willing to stare down 
>>history and accept whatever grim lessons and metaphors it has to offer.
>
> Laura
>

Yes, but I so much do not want V. (the book)'s lesson to be a grim one!

The growing number of objectors to at least the ugliest implications
of militarism/imperialism/capitalism, with Benny as their American
exemplar, and Stencil as the British one...

easy to liken to the Counterforce in GR, but one heard something about
a compare 'n' contrast with AtD, a two-body problem so to speak...

well, see here Robin, why should I not think AtD just that little bit
grayer/browner and grittier, what with actual bombers and beatings in
the here-and-now rather than sepia-toned and Stencilized as in V.,
a-and lifestyle-anarchism as something Reef backslides into from
bombing and revenge-killing!! rather than something that we glimpse
the author not-quite-but-almost nudging the characters away from in
the general direction of steady work and wedded bliss as in V.

eh? eh?  Ok, I'll grant you there's nothing like the balloon-boys in
V. (except of course the balloon-girl back in Chapter 3...)



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