Why Windust & Maxine?

[Fiona Shnapple]

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/461843?uid=3739832&uid=2460338175&uid=2460337935&uid=2&uid=4&uid=83&uid=63&uid=3739256&sid=21103131949161



Maxine with a boys-to-men cock between her feet, a spunky condom, the shoe
shopping foreplay...etc.

On Monday, December 16, 2013, Joseph Tracy wrote:

>
> On Dec 16, 2013, at 2:14 PM, Markekohut wrote:
>
> > Lusting after cars is a very different universal than lusting after a
> son or father.
> But it is funny way of getting at one of the themes of V and GR which is
> our relationship with tools, machines , capital, and how a culture merges
> with these things and becomes/begets a new kind of creature.
> > Sadomasochism is, definitionally, sick
> but we see it all the time with people who vote and act against their own
> welfare, often seduced by a false image of themselves and their power.  it
> is not something I see as healthy but it's not isolated to sexual practice.
>
> My feeling is that P. uses an extreme example with a loaded name, who has
> credibility as a character to get at and explore the relationship between
> human psychology and a larger pattern.  I think that the extremity of the
> behavior is satirical provocation to ask why about  that behavior and its
> larger meaning, and that he tries to point at some answers.
> > And lusting/ needing strong men, fascists is a confession of character
> in some way. A confession
> > That power has corrupted......esp in P's hyper real fictional framework.
> But is it just individual character? Why is there such a long history of
> approval for strong men, colonizers, warriors, dominators even in a
> democratic society, or an educated society.   I feel P is asking that and
> suggesting that part of it is sexual and primitive and hardwired as a
> default response.
> >
> > All the qualities around Cyprian, Yashmeen, Paola, Malta, just for a
> start, are dichotomously different. Values the author's vision proclaims.
> >
> > It is too simplistic in my estimation to start and virtually stop with
> his insights/uses of universal cultural patterns......and then spread them
> over the characters......
> Well I'm giving examples of the range of characters and the range of
> behaviors, to show how they don't follow strict gender patterns, but there
> is usually more to P than any one critical POV can cover.
>
> Some of this gender discussion may be kind of a question of whether P is
> more of a Freudian or more of a Jungian or has he been working out his own
> eclectic ideas?
> >
> >> From V. ( and earlier) one key question is WHAT IS THE FULLY HUMAN?
> ...and how has it been
> > Lost, warped, changed. The qualities of the " fully human" derive much
> more from Adams' Virgin
> > implications  than Shakespeare's historical masculine explorations.
>
>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Sent from my iPad
> >
> > On Dec 16, 2013, at 12:13 PM, Laura Kelber <kelber at mindspring.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> Very astute, Joseph, to put Enzian in the same category as Frenesi and
> Maxine. It does add a more interesting slant to the lust-for-fascists
> trope. It's not a female rape/submission fantasy, it's the dance between
> the colonialist and the wily subject, who strives to survive, or even
> flourish, by manipulating -- via sexuality, the mystique of the non-Western
> culture, or pure, dark-eyed charm -- the oppressor for wealth, power,
> position, or inside information. Frenesi is the big loser, Enzian gets
> position, Maxine gets insight.
> >>
> >> LK
> >>
> >> On Dec 16, 2013, at 1:30 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> 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
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