Close Third & Why Channeling his inner Jewish Mother Works so well

[Fiona Shnapple]

There are several reasons why I love Maxine.



1. she is appropriate, given the context
2. she is a reliable guide to the world(s) of the novel
3. she is a reliable voice for the moral values of the world outside
the book. In other words, P uses her, in lots of ways, to comment on
the world
4. she provides unity and coherence
5. his choice of a female serves his major themes, though Maxine, like
Frenesi, may be misread, and thus misjudged by readers who fail to
understand how she functions as a symbol

a. if we turn back to Frenesi, as readers here have, we see that her
attraction to the uniform, to the police, to Brock, to fascists has
been interpreted as a fault in the author--some bias owed to his age
or generation or whatever

b.  is P's trope,  daughter of the Left (not Plath whose Daddy is a
fascist, recall Moody and DL) loves a fascist worn out or confusing?
Not really

c. because it is not about daughters, exactly, but technology, and
specifically, image technics.

d. Frenesi wants to expose, with light and camera,  to drag the truth,
naked before the world; she wants to force it out, her camera, a gun,
not a penis for love making, but a penis to rape, to force, with
violence, the truth out of a victim. Yes, even a fascist, a sadistic
fascist, can be tortured. But the truth, you GTAV fans know, is not
had with torture.

e. what drives Frenesi to do this? This is nothing about females,
though DL, the Sisterhood, the whole sick film crew, think, it does.
Frenesi's reading, that is, misreading, of men and how they use the
penis/gun, is not penis envy, or any anti-feminist bias in the author,
but part of complex trope that P has been using, and developing; it
has to do with technology and images---film, TV, rich media, lights,
camera, hollywood

f. and, of course, it's about work in consumer to late capitalism

g. so, Frenesi is made a slave, a medium of exchange

6. so, those offended by Maxine, by Pynchon's apparent bias against
New York's Jewish community,  and/or Females, are simply misreading
and finding fault with the author.

I. P has been interested in Jewish American fiction, and thus the
Jewish character (see his SL Introduction), from his youth

a. as a non-Jew living in the Upper West Side of NYC, his admiration
for and fiendship with Jewish people is nothing uncommon or something
we should doubt or suspect

b. that he channels his inner Jewish mother is appropriate and
complimentary, not anything to be embarrassed for
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l