AtD: Lew,a moral center

[Mark Kohut]

You're forgetting:
Lake flees home. She prostitutes herself, after her father's rejection, seemingly happy enough. She chooses her man
and defies her mother too to marry him. She accepts --and likes ---that threesome they move into. 
 
Since we are on Lake and as an example of what to take seriously or not and why----
the narrator says she was a virgin bride when she married Deuce. 
WTF? or did the narrator mean it in a special way? 
(Narrator writes she wanted to be the wind; to feel herself refined to an edge of unknown length. )
 
I suggest this is the narrator---Pynchon in this case---showing a belief in women's living for marriage---
deuce had said she 'lived for love".....a little prostituition means nothing thereby........
 
And whatever those poetic lines about being the wind and refined to an edge mean, the narrator seems to
see them as something women in love feel making love.....
 
Any thoughts on their meaning?  Women, women, anyone? 

From: Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org 
Sent: Thursday, February 23, 2012 4:37 PM
Subject: Re: AtD: Lew,a moral center

On 2/23/2012 3:58 PM, David Morris wrote:
> You both have a much better recollection of the details, but at a very
> basic level Pynchon has his twisted sisters (starting w/ VL, for me)
> making choices that aren't explained much by personal histories.  I
> think his women (maybe all his characters) are constructs in his take
> on power dynamics, and as such we don't really feel their motives:
> they are too abstracted/theoretical.

I certainly felt that way in the case of Katje, another twisted sister, 
who got almost no chance to step outside her war-assigned role.  The 
exception might have been her brief hook up with Slothrop.

Lake does get relegated to some pretty oppressive roles, 
power-dynamics-wise, and, while she  accepts these roles in a manner 
some might see as docile,  she is pretty adept at talking  back to her 
oppressors. Don't remember if she fights back in any way beyond the verbal.
P


>
> David Morris
>
> On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 2:05 PM, Paul Mackin<mackin.paul at verizon.net>  wrote:
>> 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
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