"Maxine, whistling 'Help Me Rhonda' through her teeth" (p. 7)

[Fiona Shnapple]

I was going to say that; she's carrying a torch for the father of her
two boys; she tries to get him out of her heart through work and the
boys-to-men she meets through the job, high school regression to young
Nerdy men with the brains and skills to make mad money or the
bad-asses of mafia and espionage,  but the kids are made into temps,
the bad men leave her holding the bag, the check, her own collar and
chain, but in the end, it's her on again off again X and Y that
balances the equation.

On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 2:52 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> Couldn't it also be a reference to her mixed feelings about Horst? Who is she trying to get out of her heart? The pronouns and roles played  in these tunes always seem gender reversible. Maybe the point isn't this interaction but telling us more about Maxine.
> On Dec 7, 2013, at 4:42 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:
>
>>
>> Why this song? I don't see any relevance of the lyrics for the interaction of Dizzy and Maxine. And when the song appeared in 1965, Maxine was still a toddler. So it cannot be 'her song' in the emphatic sense of the phrase since it wasn't hot when she was a teenager or twen.  Neither is it likely that she associates early family memories with it, because Ernie and Elaine are opera fans. So my guess about this song here in the novel is that it is Pynchon's way to even out the very first musical reference. Earlier on the page we read "Oops, I did it again, as Britney always sez", which refers to a rather trashy smash hit. To me it seems that Pynchon did not want to finish the first chapter without balancing this out with a reference to a song of quality, a song he really likes. In the 1960s Pynchon met Brian Wilson personally and Beach Boys songs do pop up in Vineland as well as in Inherent Vice. The only reason for Maxine, who's not especially fond of Cali culture, to whistle 'Help Me Rhonda' seems to be that the song is, like so many from the Beach Boys, easy to whistle and fun. Or is there something happening on page 7 that I simply do not get?
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Te_lCF69Aw
>>
>> -
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>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
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