The Feminization of American Culture: Ann Douglas: 9780374525583: Amazon.com: Books

[Paul Mackin]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/may/25/american-dream-great-gatsby

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gatsby_%282013_film%29



ography of Fitzgerald in the early 50s revived interest in the books.  A 
review in Time magazine hooked me. They became available in cheap 
paperbacks.  Except for Gatsby they'd probably been out of print.

The bio was entitled The Far Side of Paradise, a take off on the first 
of the  novels, This Side of Paradise.

P

On 10/2/2012 8:54 PM, alice wellintown wrote:
> And, there in the opening chapter of TN we have, what in The Pat Hobby 
> Stories will make for a play within a play within a plot within a plot 
> in a Hollywood movie lot, and the kind of plotting Pynchon will play 
> with, as writers morph into film makers and the lots they live in as 
> made for movies, and tv, as the lives or characters they play or take 
> their roles from. So Rosemary on the beach, not working, is called 
> into a plot. What plot?
>
> On Tuesday, October 2, 2012, alice wellintown wrote:
>
>
>     Suppose we apply that book, How to Read Novels Like a Professor to
>     TN, the first passage, the opening, so argues our prof, is worth a
>     second, close reading. And, of course, TN confirms this. The girl,
>     the description of the girl, so tender, so just on the cusp of
>     perfect beauty, not too young, just old enough, next to the fading
>     flower, her mother, now she springs, she is a dancer, out of the
>     hotel that merges with the sea under the high sun, the sun that
>     clips close her shadow, it is too bright to see. What has
>     Fitzgerald done?
>
>     And, as earlier we've peeped in on an early bather, when the sun
>     was only rising, we now visit the beach, a boy of 12 flashes by,
>     rosemary now, in the water, the hairy man drinks...sharks, dark
>     skin and light skin sit apart....
>
>     And here, the poetry, not quite as tender as that Fitzgerald uses
>     to describe the girl in the water; how it tenderly pulled her down
>     out of the heat.
>
>     Yes, TN passes the opening lines test with tender colors!
>
>     On Tuesday, October 2, 2012, wrote:
>
>         I like Fitzgerald- but then I'm partial to Keats. Two scenes
>         stand out
>         for me from the otherwise wonderfully masochistic
>         deconstruction of Dick Diver in Tender is the Night:
>
>         the scene in Switzerland  from the balustrade, looking out
>         into the
>         visto- It might have been something like this:
>
>         http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Lauterbrunnental_train.jpg
>
>         where the space is suddenly transected by filamentous tendrils of
>         lightening. It reminded me of GR, when Slothrop is on the
>         lamb, either
>         in Geneva or Zurich, I can't remember which, and the narrator
>         remarks
>         on how this Swiss venue is a magnet for genius: Joyce,
>         Einstein... He
>         could have listed others- Shelly, Jung, & etc.,  just
>         something about
>         the place.
>
>         And such a wonderful contrast- the cerebral north with the
>         warm, mellow
>         Riviera, and the dinner tables floating into the night.
>
>         Then there is another- quirky scene- where Dick is taken to a
>         "parlor"
>         of sorts, and clearly the people there are smoking hemp, and
>         suddenly
>         everything is very futuristic, not at all weighed down by The
>         Depression, despite  the impending horror of WW II. Very Mod.
>
>         It's not hard to see (and feel) the Fitzgeraldean influence on
>         Pynchon,
>         and that without even mentioning the intro to "Been Down So
>         Long...."
>
>
>
>
>         -----Original Message-----
>         From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
>         To: malignd <malignd at aol.com>; pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>         Sent: Mon, Oct 1, 2012 1:21 pm...
>         Subject: Re: The Feminization of American Culture: Ann Douglas:
>         9780374525583: Amazon.com: Books
>
>
>
>         > Gatsby is a marvel, but it's one small book.
>
>         While Gatsby always appeared symbolically overloaded to me -
>         "the green
>         light at the end of the pier" and everything -, I consider
>         Tender is
>         the Night to be one of the best American novels ever. Fitzgerald's
>         skills do better unfold on the long distance. The rhythm, the
>         experience of time. Here the author treats some of his basic
>         themes
>         like love, addiction and psychosis more convincingly than
>         anywhere else
>         in his work. And the book really breathes the Mediterranean aroma.
>         Although I read the novel carefully several times, I still
>         don't know
>         how Fitzgerald manages to evoke that positive feeling in the
>         reader
>         (the tenderness the title mentions) until the very end despite
>         everything - the second water-ski scene is simply heartbreaking -
>         falling into pieces. It's really magic (I know no other word
>         here).
>         Together with Gravity's Rainbow and Moby Dick it's my favorite
>         American
>         novel.
>
>         What is it that you don't like about it?
>
>         On 01.10.2012 00:15, malignd at aol.com wrote:
>
>         It's Faulkner for the 20th century; for the first half, in a rout.
>          Hemingway wrote great stories (so did Faulkner) but only one
>         great
>         novel, and that was his first.  Try to read Across the River and
>         Through the Trees without laughing.  Gatsby is a marvel, but
>         it's one
>         small book. Kerouac?  Please ....
>
>
>
>
>
>
>


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