V.--2nd, back to 1913

[Mark Kohut]

Well, as the saying goes, we disagree...........

I do try to read it in the universal ways I wrote,
since I do believe P. intended stuff like that and I'm
trying to 'get' it....

And, however P. could not portray or himself 'get' the opposite
sex in his fiction, I say he still idolized the opposite sex (in the ways he saw 
Woman)
in V....V is a woman, after all, with roots in Venus and The White Goddess.

However lame he was about women, P was even then, a feminist, I suggest
probably very controversially. Or, of course, thought he was and wanted to be.


----- Original Message ----
From: Richard Ryan <himself at richardryan.com>
To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>; braden.andrews at gmail.com
Sent: Sun, February 13, 2011 2:19:17 PM
Subject: Re: V.--2nd, back to 1913

Pynchon is a master comic stylist, which is another way of saying that
his use of language and ideas to produce disorienting comic effects is
superb.  However the tendency that a reader (naturally) has to say
that his characters "represent" something - a historical principle, a
conceptual entity, etc - is precisely what I would quarrel with in his
early writing.  Or ignore as indigestible.

It comes down to what one thinks a novel is supposed to do (if one in
face thought a novel needed to "do" anything in particular):  I enjoy
the play of language and ideas in Pynchon but I wish the inner
psychology of his characters (especially in this novel) were more
resonant.  Calling V. a handmaiden or a force of history - which is
certainly how Stencil and at least some of the other characters see
her - is valid at the level of textual criticism, but begs the
question of why a work in which women seem to appear only as objects (
of desire, of exegesis); or as fetishes; or as extras in adolescent
male dramas...should be regarded as much more than a bravura first
effort by a young man whose view of the opposite sex, at the time of
the writing of "V.", could charitably be described as "primitive."



On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 1:38 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> "but I drifted"----Mae West......
>
> I have just reread again [sic] Chapters 14 & 15 in the early morning dark
> quiet--another inadvertent metaphor.....
> and want to just opine:
>
> We might all agree that the piercing climax of Chap 14 is the most 
>unforgettable
> scene in V.
> It still makes me squirm, wanting to avoid it. I feel it in my bowels, 
>resonance
> intended.
>
> Contrary to Robin's dissing, this Chapter seems as key to the deep vision of
> History
> as the Mondaugen chapter. My feeling now is that its weakness may be
> overarticulation of too many crammed-in
> themes.  Modern social decadence is written of in prosey words. Fetishism as
> Kingdom of Death is stated.
>  As is tourism--a bit more suggestive and a newer theme, though. V.'s 'love' 
is
> "only another version of tourism", we learn.
> Of course, such fullness might be its strength.
>
>  I think of "It's Showtime' , that thematic refrain from ALL THAT JAZZ as a 
way
> to see V. portraying GR's line,
> "it's all theater".......Yet, it isn't. People die. & Millions soon will, P is
> also always saying.
>
> 1913 for P. is the summer before the Guns of August summer leading to the 
Great
> War,as is also said straight in this chapter. That
> Global horror hit the world, esp. writers of historical optimism, typified by
> Wells, & scores of others [see The Great War &
> Modern Memory] like a betrayal/refutation of all hope in historical progress 
>for
> the world. We know how important WW1
> is in all of P's fiction thru AtD...
>
> P. shows in Chap 14, a fictional work of (major) attempted Art portraying the
> horror horribly--music like bombs!---even before art intersected with a life 
to
> end it...
>
> And V herself is a handmaiden to this, a force of history. We learn she is 
>33--a
> mythic age---which means she was born in 1880.
> Street lights, those putrid yellow lights of anti-light.....see first page of 
>V.
> and Against the Day passim.....first went on in that
> year. This chapter remarks that she would be seventy-six now, 1956, the 
present
> tense of the novel, as Stencil imagines her having
> become fully inanimate. NOW.1956....her whole life is spread before us for
> understanding.........
>
> V. disappears at M.'s death. Lots of rumors. But, how it happened is never
> answered. From my first careless reading, I thought
> V. caused M's deah somehow. Reading all of the rumors on the page more
> carefully, I still wonder. And I mean literally caused it
> somehow, not just as is obvious, caused the death of Love in the Western World
> in P's vision...................
>
>
>
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-- 
Richard Ryan
New York and the World
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The remedy for unpredictability, for the chaotic uncertainty
of the future, is contained in the faculty to make and keep promises.
    -- Hannah Arendt



 
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