V.--2nd, back to 1913

Sun Feb 13 14:23:52 CST 2011

Before second wave feminism, as some historians refer to it, started to happen
around this time in the 60s---The Feminine Mystique was 1963 too---

Pynchon had come to see women, Woman, in terms of lots of (now older-fashioned, 
admittedly)
great qualities....starting with Love, Venus, the opposite of Mars, god of War; 
with compassion, as in Henry Adams'
Virgin historically in Christianity; nurturing--see Rachel caring for even 
Rooney--receptive, never like Pig always
like Oedipa (Mafia an exception for anti-Randian reasons). Caring, always 
caring, in the Keep Cool but Care theme, see Paola and Rachel....some women
in AtD, the mom in Inherent Vice and more.....

Here in V. I suggest he had decided, from reading as much as anything, that 
History was a nightmare
run by powerful heartless men--see GR everywhere---and women were NOT that....

Thanks for Asking. 

----- 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 2:55:12 PM
Subject: Re: V.--2nd, back to 1913

That's an interesting proposition.  What characteristics of his
writing make you think TRP is a feminist Mark?

Curious about your analysis and conclusion.

On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 2:29 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 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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-- 
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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