Back to AtD. "you will believe". p878

[alice wellintown]

There is, in the end, nothing sexual about this. Pynchon, like so many
others his age, experiemental novelists who have woven ideas, in this
one, feminist ones, into the Dream. To read, say Bottom (and, here I
am influenced by Harold Bloom's essay on Bottom as an early Falstaff)
as a Wewaver of sexual shocks, rides on beasts and horny
pertrubernaces erected in every phrase, like some sick and perverted
shrink who sees only the darker shades of salt and light in the
Beatitudes, is to misread and to miss most of the joy.

> When my love swears that she is made of truth
> I do believe her, though I know she lies,
> That she might think me some untutor'd youth,
> Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
> Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
> Although she knows my days are past the best,
> Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:
> On both sides thus is simple truth suppress'd.
> But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
> And wherefore say not I that I am old?
> O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,
> And age in love loves not to have years told:
> Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
> And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.
>
>
> Like as a huntsman after weary chase,
>  Seeing the game from him escaped away:
>  sits down to rest him in some shady place,
>  with panting hounds beguilèd of their prey.
> So after long pursuit and vain assay,
>  when I all weary had the chase forsook,
>  the gentle deer returned the self-same way,
>  thinking to quench her thirst at the next brook.
> There she beholding me with milder look,
>  sought not to fly, but fearless still did bide:
>  till I in hand her yet half trembling took,
>  and with her own goodwill her firmly tied.
> Strange thing me seemed to see a beast so wild,
>  so goodly won with her own will beguiled.
>
> But why has Pynchon put his old dick in this vice?
>
> On 5/20/12, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> I want to see the 'violence' in consensual sex mostly as
>> I do see it in GR---a sadomasochistic 'perversion' largely
>> the result of the pressures of our inhuman world.
>>
>> Same in AtD, with Cyprian except he moves into non-violence
>> if not non-humiliation. Isn't some--most?--of his relationship
>> with Yashmeen an achievement, some kind of relationship
>> ideal for a guy like Cyrprian was---and for Yashmeen?
>>
>> What's with that humiliation? Self-effacement as an ideal.
>>
>>
>>
>> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
>> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Sent: Sunday, May 20, 2012 8:00 AM
>> Subject: Re: Back to AtD. "you will believe". p878
>>
>> http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article05161201.aspx
>>
>>
>> On Sat, May 19, 2012 at 6:35 PM, alice wellintown
>> <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Oh sure, lotz from Beyond. The Math & Religion, the failed analysis of
>>> what constitutes violence in consensual sex. Sure.
>>>
>>> On Sat, May 19, 2012 at 11:27 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>> I agree that whatever it is, and I'm rereading Paul's words, it is
>>>> somethi9ng beyond
>>>> what we call--what was--feminism..
>>>>
>>>> From: Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at verizon.net>
>>>> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>>>> Sent: Saturday, May 19, 2012 10:30 AM
>>>> Subject: Re: Back to AtD. "you will believe". p878
>>>>
>>>> On 5/18/2012 9:05 PM, alice wellintown wrote:
>>>>> And, what kind of feminism is Tom toaking here? It's rather
>>>>> mainstream. I guess. So the trick is in the movies again. Yeah, he's a
>>>>> regular Shakespeare, you know, like the way he does the....what is it
>>>>> that Eliot took from Dickens? Or was that something Tom took after he
>>>>> got ridd of his bad one. Not an ear but a voice? Never did pay much
>>>>> attention to that elements of style, but that part that commands that
>>>>> we Be Clear. The tongue in the stone is no smoother than the sole.
>>>>
>>>> Feminism? I duuno, is Yashmeen's principal interest one of establishing
>>>> or
>>>> fighting for women's equality? Or is her role something else?
>>>>
>>>> The scene is some kind of crazy enactment of the Coming of Modernity.
>>>>
>>>> I can see here an Annunciation--an announcement of things to come--with
>>>> Cyprian's Angel Gabriel playing opposite Yashmeen's Blessed Mother, only
>>>> this time its her tell him what's going to happen.  (a touch of feminism
>>>> after all)
>>>>
>>>> Reef of course is the Most Chaste Spouse Joseph, kept out of a physical
>>>> role
>>>> in the blessed conception by Angel Cyprian's Lucky Pierre intervention.
>>>>
>>>> Is this a serious possibly?
>>>>
>>>> P
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>>> And when, a bit later, Yashmeen says "We are the future" how
>>>>>>>> far into the future did you think she--TRP?--meant...
>>>>>>>> 20s and Bloomsbury and wild 20s Jazz age permissiveness, etc..
>>>>>>>> Or, to the present, lossely speaking?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> I think Yashmeen is foreseeing the vast changes coming in the postwar
>>>>>> world. Her cavorting with Cyprian, the role reversals, she sees in
>>>>>> these
>>>>>> prophetic terms, all the while realizing that her work on Cyp is only
>>>>>> scratching the surface in things to come.  (couple of puns got worked
>>>>>> in
>>>>>> there somewhere)
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>