AtD: Lew,a moral center

[Paul Mackin]

On 2/23/2012 1:49 PM, rich wrote:
> that whole bit in LA in the end is very strange
> not sure how it all fits or if it fits at all--
> beyond that weird rape scene is Deuce--i wasnt crazy about him turning 
> from a badass into some whining wheezy moron but then he turns into a 
> serial killer? its all rather much

It did feel a little tacked on. But wasn't it necessary to shift action 
to the far West and of course Hollywood, plus enabling a final contact 
with Lake, a pretty remarkable character in her own way?

Lake wasn't just the stereotypical woman who makes bad choices, falls in 
love with the wrong kind of men, etc. etc.  I remember conversations she 
had with other women in the book  and some with Deuce her monstrous 
husband to be as poignant as anything in the book.  Better than the 
Reef-Yashmeen relationship--which to me got really cloying.   I don't 
have a leg to stand on with regard to the goodness-badness axis but I 
decidedly don't care.

P


>
> rich
>
> On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 12:09 PM, Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net 
> <mailto:mackin.paul at verizon.net>> wrote:
>
>     For what it's worth, I remember it as being quite consensual, but
>     it's been a long time.
>
>     P
>
>
>     On 2/23/2012 10:28 AM, Michael Bailey wrote:
>>
>>      rich wrote:
>>
>>         if im not mistaken, lew rapes lake or thats how I read it
>>
>>
>>     yeah, it was Lew, not Merle, that's right!
>>
>>     rereading, a lot depends on imputing a certain throaty tone to
>>     "come on in" (p1051), and thinking about it later he's somewhat
>>     amazed too (and so should *we* be, because we've been thru 1000
>>     pages with this guy and he never did anything like that in front
>>     of us, even that weird crime in the beginning can't have been
>>     anything they actually put you away for, because they didn't
>>     hesitate to put people away in Chicago in the Gay 90s),
>>
>>     but when she says "You ain't fallin asleep back there, I hope"
>>     (1052( and makes him coffee...is that how a victim of rape
>>     behaves?  she's a tough cookie a-and she doesn't seem ruffled or
>>     offended, afterwards...
>>
>>     she certainly could have made a case, but, well, she didn't.
>>
>>     Still, it'd be crazy to think that a given reader of the passage
>>     could expect to get away with something like that.
>>
>>     Or that reading it would make anyone want to...
>>
>>     Inspiring imitation or glorifying rape is no part of Pynchon's
>>     vision - the scene is more the sort of imaginary identification
>>     he elicits in GR inviting us to share Pointsman's fantasies (or
>>     are they memories) of picking up children at a bus stop for
>>     nefarious purposes...
>>
>>     that said, there's a part of my mind, a part that doesn't often
>>     get a vote, that sometimes would be pleased if an attractive
>>     stranger overcame my reticence physically, and I don't believe
>>     it's completely impossible that I'm not the only one who ever had
>>     such thoughts... -- again, that part doesn't get a vote, like a
>>     convicted felon in Florida...
>>
>>     so that my parting thought on the scene, more righteously, is
>>     that her life is so messed up, maybe that's the best thing that
>>     happened to her all day -- but it doesn't make it right...
>
>

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