Why Windust & Maxine?

[David Morris]

The reproductive power of the female has from ancient times made her a
power, a dark mystery.  If any gender is expendable, it is the male.
 Female solo reproduction is possible now.  Biodiversity, chance, is what
will be lost if reproduction is chained to the machine.  Fragility of the
species will be unavoidable.  But species might soon be a past barrier.
 1984's Proles and Brave New World's Injuns are not only a wild card, they
are the diversity needed for long term survival.

David Morris

On Monday, December 16, 2013, Fiona Shnapple wrote:

> But what about sex? Sex, that is, male or female, is not culturally
> assigned, is not a gender role. Maxine is a female and the mother of two
> males. Zoyd is male, and not, as Prairie insists, her mother. So, while the
> common and universal power structures and gender roles often collapse, fail
> to predict what characters will do, motivation, etc., the universal is not
> in the gender role, but in the sex, the female can reproduce, can give
> birth to a son or daughter, or both, even in one labor. Not so the male.
> This makes a world if difference in the world, though technology, as P
> notes in his essay on 1984, is moving to make the female obsolete.
>
> On Monday, December 16, 2013, Joseph Tracy wrote:
>
> Far too simplistic in my view.  First of all these are universally common
> power structures and culturally assigned  gender roles , but they break
> down as predictors of individual  patterns both in the world and in P's
> fictions.. Many  males in P's work  don't fit this pattern, and neither do
> the females universally follow this pattern.  DL & Takeshi interdependent,
>  Zoyd is nurturing, Prairie , Ditzha & Zippi ? Sister Rochelle ( head
> ninja) Miles Blundell, Yashmeen, Hunter Penhollow, Slothrop,  Cyprian,
> Victoria V
> It seems to me that  almost none of P's main characters easily fit this
> mold and those characters that do are used to define achetypal patterns of
> disfunction and  human need more than the gender patterns you lay out.
>
> There is a distinct shortage of credible women in Pynchon which is a large
> flaw. I know few women who fit his patterns and many who do not.
>
> My feeling is that he uses these gender roles and particularly the
> unlikely sexual  attractions to describe more universal cultural
> attractions and habits: Vibe lusts to have a worthy son, Kit lusts to find
> a worthy father.  Rachel Owlglass lusts for the car, Lake Traverse is
> seduced by the Bad Boys and masochism,  Frenesi, Maxine, Enzian  secretly
> lust after the position  and security of  the
> cop/soldier/fascist/strongman.   These are psychological patterns that are
> real,  have had survival benefits for the gamewinners but also allow the
> darkest colonial patterns of abuse, waste and trivilialization.  For
> Pynchon they are the story matrix for a large variety of individual actions
> which seem increasingly irrelevant to the possibility of altering the
>  globally dominant patterns of abuser/abused regardless of the tendency of
> these patterns  toward outward-inward, forward-backward, personal-global
> all-inclusive  destructiveness .  P. also seems to me to sadly note the
> antipathy of these psychological diseases to our actual biospheric natural
> spiritual matrix- a matrix which our games relegate to background for the
> wonderful drama of psycho-social war.
>
>
> On Dec 15, 2013, at 10:51 PM, David Morris wrote:
>
> > It really doesn't matter which P novel you want to pick.  The power
> structure is the same.  Details vary, but Fiona has got the main points
> correct.  Male is War, Dominance, the Construct of Insecurity. Female is
> its counter: Survival, Embracing Security, Accommodation.  There are many
> other dichotomies in P's novels, but these are biggies.
> >
> >
> > On Sunday, December 15, 2013, Joseph Tracy wrote:
> >
> > On Dec 15, 2013, at 7:43 AM, Fiona Shnapple wrote:
> > >
> > > This novel, BE is Pynchon's 1984.
> > >
> > > Not trying to confuse matters but some of the major themes about
> > > family, family values, what Brock calls the un-holy triangle,
> > > Frenesi's children (her daughter, the Protagonist of the novel, and
> > > her son) are continued here in BE.
> > I would say that Vineland was closer to being P's 1984 , and more really
> of a compare and contrast with both1984 predictions and BraveNew World
> predictions.  Turns out you don't need feelies , regular TV will do. And
> drugs are hard to control. Some people can be reprogrammed ( Frenesi?) but
> it's harder than it looks. TV is about as good as it gets if what you want
> is a nation of Zombies. Brock dreams of becoming the Minister of Truth but
> the 1984 vision is incompatible with market theories and is canned as he is.
> >
> > >
> > > So, Big Brother,  Brock and Raygun and the rest are keen to capitalize
> > > on the family and how it is produced and kept, both productive for Big
> > > Brother and anti-productive for the family and for life of Proles.
> >  Yes,  so they put out variations on Father Knows Best and  Cop shows.
> But market forces are offering too many options and families, communities,
>  are morphing accordingly. Totalitarianism has so much to keep track of
>  and loses a lot of sex appeal  and kindly but firm  father appeal when
> gunning down Bishops and nuns and blowing up tree lovers and college
> students.
> >
> > >
> > > See, there is one huge difference in Pynchon's 1984, and that is that
> > > the Proles are not entirely ignorant. In 1984, the Proles are all
> > > there is left of hope that one day Big Brother will be overthrown, but
> > > they are ignorant of their power, and Orwell makes this power
> > > explicitly sexual, the production of more proles, the fertility of the
> > > Proles and their family values as opposed to the States.
> > Well part of the point of 1984  is how hard it is to enforce that
> ignorance  and that the entire function of a totalitarian  state revolves
> around enforcing that ignorance.   Brave New World proposes that
>
>
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