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

[Rich Clavey]

I am about a third of the way through Kushner's The Flamethrowers, set in the mid-70's and am getting that same feeling. I think a lot has to do with the authors attempting to recreate the times.
Rich


________________________________
 From: Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
To: Jamie Anderson <jamiek.anderson at gmail.com> 
Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Thursday, October 10, 2013 12:24 PM
Subject: Re: Close Third & Why Channeling his inner Jewish Mother Works so well
 

And I agree - I think P's  "feminism" is not apparent in V.,  the stories of Slow Learner,  GR,  or IV.   But I have a strong sense of it in CoL49,  Vineland,  M&D  and AtD.   IV  might well have had more to do with the times than with Pynchon - probably true of SL and GR, too.   T.C. Boyle showed the attitude pretty well in Drop City (pub. 2003 but set in the early 1970s) - Boyle is generally sympathetic toward feminism. 

Bekah 


On Oct 10, 2013, at 11:56 AM, Jamie Anderson <jamiek.anderson at gmail.com> wrote:

> Completely agree with you, Fiona. Maxine and Frenesi are like many of TRP's women characters: the same as men in terms of complexity. I've always felt Pynchon, particularly later Pynchon, but also in CL49, is a feminist in that he creates women characters the same way that he creates men characters: they have faults, they have flaws, they make good and bad decisions, but they are overall human. 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 11:48 PM, Fiona Shnapple <fionashnapple at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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

> 

-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20131010/40b8be8a/attachment.html>