Hector & Reg / Frenesi & Maxine

Sun Dec 1 09:16:50 CST 2013

I had seen this review, thanks again to Mr. Monroe, wonderful resource-- Dave, you are the best--
and thought of Laura Kelber's ..upsetness....

Yet, within the fictions it is true and worth much disagreement and discussion because
Yashmeen is also very true. And others......

My initial take, before having it refined by Laura and others, would be: the women who
fail massively, who are complicit in the diseased society do embrace the patriarchal
'fascism' that binds the society with sado-masochistic ropes. 

But there are other ways and women---and men--who do not.

From: Fiona Shnapple <fionashnapple at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Sunday, December 1, 2013 8:05 AM
Subject: Re: Hector & Reg / Frenesi & Maxine

Not sure if this Review has been posted. I tried to read them as Dave
Posted them but missed some, skipped some and gave up on a few. In any
event, we know that the Reviews are often surface swims, the the deep
diving is done in the critical literature, and, well, by the P-L crew,
though not on this novel, not yet. I post this to refute its claims
about Pynchon and woman, Jewish UWS woman, so forth...some of this has
been trotted out here and it is common in the Reviews.

see

Performing Gender and Comedy: Theories, Texts and Contexts

edited by Shannon Eileen Hengen

and,

Backlash

Introduction: Blame it on Feminism, Susan Faludi

And,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Chodorow

And,

http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/professional-development/childlit/books/CREW65.pdf

Pynchon’s state of mind – and his books – run the gamut

Saul Austerlitz

September 26, 2013

Bleeding Edge falls apart in its final third, with Maxine’s
psychosexual obsession with “neoliberal terrorist” Nicholas Windust
echoing the pull of equally loathsome DEA agent Brock Vond over the
female characters in Vineland, and the relationship between Lake
Traverse and her father’s killer in Against the Day. Of all Pynchon’s
manifold recurring themes, among the least satisfying is the unending
attraction of well-meaning women toward what can only be described as
evil men. “Women could protest from now till piss flowed uphill,” he
writes in Against the Day, “but the truth was, there wasn’t one didn’t
secretly love a killer.” This is Pynchon at his most irritable, his
sense of humor drowned in a sea of women-are-from-Venus
pseudo-philosophizing. The wondrous carousel of hackers and private
eyes and moguls and West Side yuppies falls away, ditching the
Gravity’s Rainbow trappings for a heaping helping of Vineland. This
does not, regrettably, make for great literature.

http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/pynchons-state-of-mind-and-his-books-run-the-gamut#full

On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 8:20 AM, Fiona Shnapple <fionashnapple at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've not looked too much into adultery in Pynchon...so....but I'm more
> interested in the waves feminism, capitalism, life, media, and  how
> Pynchon's Mothers fair in these waves. Motherhood, of course, is a
> topic that P critics have addressed in great depth, as it is a major
> question and theme in all of his novels and works. I won't bother the
> group with the works cited list, but Eddins, of course, and these two:
>
> The Naming of Oedipa Maas, Emma V. Miller
>
> "Take Me Anyplace You Want": Pynchon's Literary Career as a Maternal
> Construct in "Vineland",  Terry Caesar
>
> On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 7:13 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Frenesi---Free and Easy, remember?---is deeply implicated in VL's theme
>> of the failure of 60s ideals......
>>
>> Maxine comes later. She is post-sixties. She might be where
>> the second feminist wave left women......her fantasy life, sez BE
>> is meager THEREFORE her sex life is (emotionally)....she may be called
>> desperate??....
>> You left your -Ex cause he fucked around.....yet, he's back?...
>>
>> There was a time, it is a major fictional theme,
>>  that adultery ended things....for righteous reasons.
>> Gone.
>>
>> In her personal life, fraud detection fails....
>>
>>
>>
>> From: Fiona Shnapple <fionashnapple at gmail.com>
>> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Sent: Friday, November 29, 2013 10:18 AM
>>
>> Subject: Re: Hector & Reg / Frenesi & Maxine
>>
>> Yeah, that Hector is wired up. He's boiling over with his movie money
>> making madness, a detox patient on the run, at times he's a cartoon
>> cop bouncing off the walls and ceiling then racing through the painted
>> landscape.  Reg is not. P shifts the Brady Bunch obsession over to the
>> guru and give Reg a project in the works. But the key to the parallel
>> is in the waves of media technic and how the women are seduced by the
>> wave. Not creepy at all. Smart P.
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 10:58 AM, Fiona Shnapple
>> <fionashnapple at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>  Self-reliant, sort of, and while she may seem more stable, and more
>>> realistic, next to Frenesi and her context or the wild decades Frenesi
>>> experiences, Maxine is a postmodern poster child, a fucking mess, a
>>> tangled and crimped circuit board unplugged and disconnected from
>>> nature and life.
>>>
>>>  For starters, she is very insecure. And, forget about looking for
>>> love in all the wrong places, she's looking for Maxine in all the
>>> wrong faces and pages.
>>>
>>> On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 10:19 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>>>>  Important Parallels play out , but have different origins and take
>>>> different directions.
>>>>
>>>> Frenesi/Maxine. Lefty humanist parents , yes ; seduced by fascists, yes.
>>>> Certainly these are a reinforcing of some interesting notions on left /right
>>>> divisions that 5 or 6 Pynchon women have followed. To be honest it feels
>>>> creepy at this point..
>>>>  If you look closer after that there are powerful differences . Frenesi
>>>> is more intense, more idealistic, and her swings more profound. Her
>>>> seduction doesn't just lead to a new life and relationship, but  into a
>>>> life-long betrayal of friends, parents,  her child and husband .    Maxine
>>>> loves her parents  and having discovered something about  a "good marriage"
>>>> has her doubts but still fiercely loves her sons and still has a huge soft
>>>> spot for Horst. .  She is more stable and realistic and self reliant and is
>>>> seduced by the male intensity and danger of  Windust, but she is nowhere
>>>> near ideologically seduced by fascism just as she gently rejects Maxine's
>>>> take as going too far with not enough proof. She even  finds the human side
>>>> of Windust.    Of course one could argue about  what her embrace of
>>>> self-defence and its association with Israel  does mean, but it doesn't feel
>>>> ideological in an extreme sense.  Charmed by snakes with oil?  Or just likes
>>>> sex and to be desired. As far as snake -oil,  she seems to be pretty
>>>> discriminating about the evidence that comes her way and what it might mean.
>>>> Also she is not guessing as much as Oedipa but knows what she is about with
>>>> the tools of fraud investition.. Her only real reasons for this quest are
>>>> adventure and the moral/social  dimensions  of a case involving lots of
>>>> loot, the future of  the medium of modern communication and powerful players
>>>> .
>>>>
>>>> Reg seems real different from Hector.  Reg is laid back and rides his
>>>> luck.  Hector is anything but laid back and straight from the loony bin.
>>>> Reg moves on when the danger is high and warns Maxine.  Hector is
>>>> permanently lost in TV land. But there are many parallels too and they are
>>>> either intentional variations on a theme or stock characters in TP land.
>>>>
>>>> I'm not sure but it's hard to stop thinking about this dude's books.
>>>>
>>>> On Nov 27, 2013, at 6:52 AM, Fiona Shnapple wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> So there's all this chat about how BE is on the wavelength of CL, but
>>>>> we are also reminded of VL. In VL, one of the plots has Hector  out to
>>>>> make a film about Frenesi. She, of course, is not even around, so his
>>>>> mad quest, that has him grabbing her kid and playing good cop bad cop
>>>>> with her X, is mostly Tube-mania. But here, Reg, a film-man not unlike
>>>>> Hector in many respects, has Maxine in on his project. She vulnerable
>>>>> and so easily charmed by snakes with oil.
>>>>> -
>>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>>
>>>> -
>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
>>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
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