BEER Group Read. Meeting cute

[Mark Kohut]

My first take is that the ethnicity of maxine, of the middle-aged foax in this novel is.....reduced to an echo of
itself, so to speak....assimilation as virtual elimination.....Maxine jokes Jewish but..........
 
Her parents are. 
 
Same with the Wasps....also joked about as the wasp gene or inheritance..........
 
 

From: Fiona Shnapple <fionashnapple at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Wednesday, October 16, 2013 7:23 PM
Subject: Re: BEER Group Read. Meeting cute



But she is not, as the schlemiel is not, really chosen. The schlemiel is one sent away from G-d, and the schlimazel, also a P protagonist, is born under a bad star.  So, Jewish, chosen, but not elect but a castaway. This puts them in good company in American fiction. See CLR James on Melville.  

http://www.clrjamesinstitute.org/pequod.html

So, a web de bios double consciousness, Jewish in religion or ethnicity, is doubled by the comic assimilation. 

The s, and the s, find a common scapegoat, the mother. And, the Jap, etc, but the females, though, of course, the Jap, a assimilated ghetto girl is a commodity, marketable, as and for old and new Jews and consumers of Jewish stereotype tv, film, etc. so George is "Jewish" as are jerry and jason. The parents are the old Jewish, in tv land where the actors slide into roles that the audience has been taught is Jewish, and  in the Jewish community. Of course, P, is playing the Simpsons card, a bag gag Joak, that 
Woody Allen must find an Oedipus wreck. 

On Wednesday, October 16, 2013, Robin Landseadel wrote:

It sez that on an instinctual level, Maxi is one of the "Chosen People". The Catholic/Calvinist matrix of Pynchon's points to Elect/Preterite, the Jewish sense of these things is sorta different, sorta not. The Jewish People know they are "Chosen", chosen for what, how am I supposed to know  SERENITY NOW!!!
>
>But being "Chosen" precludes the possibility that Maxi's Preterite [Hint Reg's a preterite], so her sexual radar will have to land with a "Suitable Mate". One of the things that makes "BE" so perplexing for long-time readers of Pynchon is that for once—[catches breath al la Lee Strasberg as Hymie Roth in Godfather II, (1974)]—for once, the protagonist's not some freakin' schlemiel.
>
>Leaving Maxi to wonder why she she's been with such "winners" if you catch my drift. In that regard, more than anything else, she reminds me of Elaine.
>
>On Oct 16, 2013, at 3:19 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:
>
>
>But what Maxine does on her grief-reducing cruise is to
>>fuck "the real estate obsessive"........Symbolic I'd say (as well as real enough)
>>
>>"Friendship?" Reg is puzzled..."You didn't even like hiim."
>>"A technical term".......[sez Maxine].
>>
>>Sex happens. What does THIS say about Maxine?
>>About fucking?
>>About friendship?
>>-
>Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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