BE Spoiler (if that's possible now)

[Fiona Shnapple]

I don't know about Pynchon but Maxine is paranoid. As in the prior
novels, there are several types of paranoia in this novel, not all of
the negative.

Maxine is aware of her positive and negative paranoia and sometimes
she can use it, like garlic, to deal with Vampires like Ice.

But at other times her paranoia, though seemingly positive, causes
suffering, unnecessary and avoidable conflict, opportunity loss, cross
cultural confusion  and miscommunication, and self-destruction.

Maxine is brave and daring. She models herself after superheroes
(Wonder Woman) and heroes of film and TV and history. She has a quick
wit and tough and stiff lip and she can dish it out and take it, even
when she's eating a danish.

Maxine's friends are not the kind of friends I would have. Maxine's
negative paranoia is wrapped in an insecurity blanket. Her sitcom.com
buddies, like Heidi and Vyrva are nuts she holds on to though she sees
through their shallowness, their insecurities, their madness. They are
members of her whole sick crew, each with fetishes and media saturated
ideas about the real people in their lives, each with a propensity to
treat human relationship like sitcom relationships  and so on. With
March, a mother figure Maxine so desperately needs, Maxine makes
something of breakthrough. She realizes that March only plays the
role, co-opts the role of the crazy old Lefty, with the camouflage and
Red snood to keep her self in the cool with the younger generations,
even going so far as to give her her traditional Marching and move her
show online to get her message out.   In Daytona she has the
opportunity for friendship. But Daytona is playing the part of the
black lady who is loyal to the white one who has the degree and the
invisible backpack but doesn't know it till the end when, like a TV
trope we've seen in Blaxploitation films, Flip Wilsons out of it and
gets smart (get it?).

Maxine is psychologically Borderline and she knows it. I guess shrinks
like Shawn, or much bigger names that have been brought into literary
criticism and, well, literature and art generally, might say that
she's taken what AA=people call the step before the first step: she
knows she has a problem.

But the problem she has is very useful to her work. Like garlic in the
kitchen. Though who ever it was who made the claim that you can ever
have too much garlic was not a cook and probably ordered in from take
out menus far too often to know.

On Fri, Dec 27, 2013 at 5:36 AM, Michael Bailey
<michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
> David suggests apology for previous paranoia and I wonder...
> We've mentioned paranoia a few times on the list (-;
>
> ..functionally (& simplistically - Lacan's treatment, which Pynchon shows
> signs of being interested in, is much more involved) isn't it being
> inappropriately worried about danger, specifically dangers created
> purposefully by agencies outside one's control, to the point where it
> hampers one and creates states of mind that may be amusing to read about but
> unpleasant to experience or encounter in a friend or acquaintance?
>
> Maxine, unlike Oedipa (whose tale is arguably an explication of paranoia and
> how to confront it), isn't giving off paranoid vibes at all.  Wariness,
> sure, but not any kind of crippling, twisted fear of conspiracies.  So if
> the "stages of life as successive mental illnesses" theory propounded early
> on applies to the author, perhaps he's reached an accommodation with the
> causes for fear. Or something.
>
> If in V. we find an unwillingness to lapse into paranoia (as evidenced by
> Eigenvalue's "no cabals but random caries") and a message that after sifting
> leaves the possibility of keeping cool but still caring...
>
> ...if in CoL49 we encounter a mindset and inquiry of a more dire nature -
> post "offing of President 35" - and if Oedipa's dawning awareness leads into
> investigation and a determination to keep learning and networking as
> evidenced by her attendance at the auction...
>
> ...if in GR various ways of viewing real and fancied dangers, their sources,
> and the inefficacy of known strategies other than whimsy and luck are
> encyclopedically displayed with keys to the various and sundry
> scriptures...and paranoia looked in the eye till it blinks...
>
> ...if in AtD the real-world forces of economy and so forth are personified
> as they developed, and people's imaginative and emotional responses, back
> then, shown in a variety of characters and what befell them, in intriguing
> enough detail to perhaps indicate that v (gently batting paranoia away) to
> c49 (resolving to investigate) to gr (manifesting the causes of paranoia in
> antic yet clear and rational view) like tinker to evers to chance, or Miles
> running the voodoo down, dealt with it fully and there's no more needing to
> be said on the topic....
>
> So then when Doc stumbles and staggers his way to a deeper appreciation of
> who They are and what They might be about, his detecting is perceptive
> enough that even They appreciate it...
>
> And Maxine carries the torch further, empowered but incompletely official -
> with the saving grace of having lost her credential through doing a favor
> for a friend - stepping with confidence when she can or withdrawing
> prudently when advisable, such as on Ice's cellar stairs...networking,
> seeking and finding clues, being cool but caring better than Benny Profane
> or Stencil ever could.
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l