BEER Group Read. Meeting cute

[Mark Kohut]

Nice point, Jochen....anyone, anyone?

One thing is, is the way most mysteries are told, yes? The Detective
finds things out as he goes as we accompany his/her mind and actions. 

This presentness involves us with immediacy of feeling, so to speak, yes? 

So, in this book are we complicit in a way we weren't in others? Complicit
in the culture Maxine swims within? 




Our host: "back and forth in time in the narrative...."

What I find (!) quite astonishing: that until now as far as I see (not
very far, i readily admit) nobody here or in the reviews I very
parsimoniously took note of mentioned that BE is the only Pynchon
novel except M&D told mostly in the present tense and even in
flashbacks falls easily back into it. Shouldn't a group read
acknowledge that? Follow that? Ask what it means for the story - in
relation to Inherent Vice for example?

O-only asking.


2013/10/17 Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>:
>
> Yes, I say yes and I would add from the televisual culture lens, it
> assimilates everyone, he sez.
> From: Fiona Shnapple <fionashnapple at gmail.com>
> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Thursday, October 17, 2013 4:07 AM
>
> Subject: Re: BEER Group Read. Meeting cute
>
> How could p write a book about ny, set during the great wave of immigration,
> and not address immigration and assimilation to some extent? The fixing of
> teeth has been mentioned and the dentists, but the nose job, there inV., the
> changed names, could Dylan make it with a name like his?, for celebrity and
> business...for success, Amy tan' waverly, shiksas, modeled by entertainers,
> the erasure of ethnicity, the melting into the pot, these are, in part,
> responses to racism, to anti-semitism in these examples. No? So immigrants
> master the very difficult art of comic language in a new culture. This is
> something to admire. No? And p is not Roth, or the other great Roth, both
> have been accused, as p gas been even here, of getting it wrong, of
> embarrassing, latent racism. So p takes a big risk commensurate with that of
> the Jewish comedian, and succeeds. No? What would Lenny Bruce do?
>
> On Wednesday, October 16, 2013, Mark Kohut wrote:
>
> 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?
>
> -
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>
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