V.--2nd, back to 1913

Mon Feb 14 04:03:30 CST 2011

It's striking that you do not mention Vineland, which is --- along with 
the fishing for compliments
in the SL-intro --- the only text by Pynchon I know that could be called 
'feminist'.

Don't you like that book?

Kai

On 13.02.2011 21:23, Mark Kohut wrote:

> 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...................
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ____________________________________________________________________________________
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> 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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