Men Explain Lolita To Me
Mark Kohut
mark.kohut at gmail.com
Sun Dec 20 15:08:16 CST 2015
More autobiography: that scene is when I stopped reading V. when 21-22. I could not " identify" and thought I was supposed to.
pynchon consciously embeds in the text of M & D allusions to LOLITA. Meanings apply.
and what does Mason do?
Your great readings here.....you " explain" everything, you don't need no explaining to .....why
Do these weigh on you, rather than make you feel a writer, a white male writer gets it?
IT: the sexualization of young women in the West; men thinking with their dick; and more.
Sent from my iPad
> On Dec 20, 2015, at 3:14 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> More on Gottfried, Bianca, etc:
>
> In V., Chapter Six: Down in Little Italy, Profane sets his sights on Lucille, who "couldn’t be more than fourteen." Later, he supposes she must have been born in 1942 (the year is 1956). Profane assumes she has all sorts of world-weary experience, and she says she’s heard it all as she invites him to screw her on a pool table.
>
> In Mason & Dixon, Els Vroom, 12, is desperate for sex, trying to tempt Mason by sitting on his lap. Els "comes skipping over to Mason, and, without a word, lifting her skirts, sits upon his lap in a sinuous Motion, allowing the Lace Hems to drop again …"
>
> It's a nice excuse for statutory rape – the old "she threw herself at me."
>
> These two instances bother me because both Profane and Mason are, in the world of Pynchon's characters, "good guys." They're not Nazis or colonialists, like, say, Foppl (V.) or Weissmann/Blicero or Thanatz and Erdmann – "bad guy" rapists and abusers. These scenes where underage girls offer themselves up to older men are presented as pseudo-beatnik-hip (V.) or comical (M&D).
>
> There's also Pokler in GR - he's not sure if the girl who’s presented to him each year is actually his daughter, but can't help indulging in a fantasy of having sex with her (specifically as his daughter – paternal plow, filial furrow, etc.)
>
> The scenes of Blicero sexually abusing and ultimately killing Gottfried are deeply disturbing – but then Blicero's pretty much as bad as anyone can be – Nazi rapist technocrat murderer.
>
> But the most shocking scene, of course, is when Slothrop (our lovable protagonist) has sex with Bianca, the oppressed daughter of a child-murderer, with a rapist step-father. Bianca, described as 11 or 12, is forced by her mother to perform a Shirley Temple number, then: her mother "drags Bianca across her lap, pushing up frock and petticoats, yanking down white lace knickers … " [note the similarity to the comical description of Els sitting on Mason's lap]. This "erotic" scene launches the famous orgy scene.
>
> Later, Slothrop encounters Bianca alone, and, of course, SHE seduces HIM. While they’re having sex: "Now something, oh, kind of funny happens here. Not that Slothrop is really aware of it now, while it's going on - but later on, it will occur to him that he was - this may sound odd, but he was somehow, actually, well, inside his own cock."
>
> GR is filled with child abuse - as a metaphor, possibly, for the penile rockets that are abusing all of us. It's one thing when twisted Nazis like Blicero, and their fellow-travelers like Greta Erdmann and Thanatz rape and torture and abuse. But why is Slothrop doing this? On one level, there's a kinship between him and Bianca - both abused by adults with Imipolex tossed into the mix. Possibly the Imipolex itself is the attractor between them. Further, Slothrop inside his own cock directly links to the abused Gottfried inside the cock-shaped rocket: both are abused children, trapped inside a cock, raining destruction down on the abused, the innocent.
>
> OK, the metaphor is there, the theme is there. There are also influences: Lolita, A Clockwork Orange [in the novel, Alex rapes two 10-year-old girls - they’re portrayed as older teens in the quick sex montage in the film version]. But still… there are those other scenes with Lucille and Els, that are definitely not meant as metaphor or theme. All of these portrayals, metaphorical to comical, start to weigh on the female reader. It leads not to a rejection of the works, but to an internal sadness.
>
> Again, The Diary of a Teenage Girl gives a much-needed perspective on the subject. The protagonist, 15, is emotionally vulnerable but in control, and thrilled to be having sex with her mother's boyfriend. Shown solely from his viewpoint, it would be yet another sad story of a man preying on an underage girl. That's all Solnits is saying - different perspectives enrich us.
>
> Laura
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
>> Sent: Dec 19, 2015 11:58 AM
>> To: "kelber at mindspring.com" <kelber at mindspring.com>, pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Subject: Re: Men Explain Lolita To Me
>>
>>
>> Your answer is difficult to relate to.
>>
>> So let's just clarify that last point:
>>
>>> Gottfried being raped by Blicero doesn't negate Bianca being raped by
>> Slothrop.
>>
>> Nobody talked about "negating."
>>
>>
>>> On 19.12.2015 16:26, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
>>> Maybe boys in Sweden read Pippi Longstocking (do they?), but the books
>>> aren't widely read by either girls or boys anymore, and were certainly
>>> not read by the boys I grew up with back in the 60s. Personally, I
>>> couldn't stand them.
>>>
>>> Nowhere in her essay is Solnits exhorting anyone to read books by
>>> women and people of color. The essay is about women readers and their
>>> potentially different perspectives on male characters.
>>>
>>> Gottfried being raped by Blicero doesn't negate Bianca being raped by
>>> Slothrop.
>>>
>>> Laura
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> Laura:
>>>
>>>> Does anyone here truly believe that boys all over the world would
>>> have become obsessive fans of a "Harriet Potter" series? <
>>>
>>>
>>> How about Pippi Longstocking?
>>>
>>>> I know there are claims that the Bianca episodes are "thematic," and
>>> that male children are sexually abused in GR, but it all seems a
>>> little too obsessive on Pynchon's part. <
>>>
>>>
>>> Well, there is Gottfried and he's certainly not less important than
>>> Bianca.
>>>
>>> My more general points here are:
>>>
>>> Is not identity politics, no matter whether it relates to gender or
>>> ethnicity, always alien to art (including literature)? Art as such has
>>> nothing to do with democracy. We can and should improve the
>>> possibilities of people who, for reasons of being discriminated against
>>> because of their gender and/or ethnicity, do not have enough societal
>>> space to utter their aesthetic and political concerns. But there is, let
>>> me be perfectly frank on that, no moral obligation to like literature by
>>> women or people of color just because they are what they are. Period.
>>> Me, for example, I deeply enjoy the poetry of female writers like
>>> Ingeborg Bachmann, Elke Lasker-Schüler, Sylvia Plath, or the incredible
>>> Emily Dickinson (who, together with Georg Trakl, is for me the greatest
>>> poet on Earth!), but I rarely read prose written by women. And you know
>>> what? I do not even feel bad about it. Life's too short for reading
>>> along the standards of political correctness. (Women whose prose I like
>>> include Djuna Barnes, Pauline Réage, or Ingeborg Bachmann).
>>>
>>> Regarding the issue of child abuse in literature, I have to say that
>>> here the actual standards of political correctness are harder to ignore.
>>> When we talk about Nabokov, a hint to "Ada" is necessary, too. There is
>>> that passage about the brothel chain were they offer girls who have not
>>> even reached teenage. And stuff like that appears all over the best of
>>> world literature! Could Hamsun's "Pan," could Thomas Mann's "Death in
>>> Venice," both doubtlessly documents of the aesthetization of child
>>> abuse, be published in the 21st century? Should they? I have doubts
>>> about that.
>>>
>>>
>>>> On 18.12.2015 19:18, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
>>>> Did it occur to anyone that Solnits wrote this essay for women
>>> readers? I didn't find anything she said particularly new or
>>> earth-shaking, though it was well-phrased. Certainly nothing that
>>> should have ignited this hysterical, hostile response.
>>>>
>>>> She says: "... the western world has held up a mirror to them [white
>>> men] for so long—and turns compliant women into mirrors reflecting
>>> them back twice life size, Virginia Woolf noted. The rest of us get
>>> used to the transgendering and cross-racializing of our identities as
>>> we invest in protagonists like Ishmael or Dirty Harry or Holden
>>> Caulfield." Is that really controversial? Girls all over the world
>>> were thrilled with Harry Potter. Does anyone here truly believe that
>>> boys all over the world would have become obsessive fans of a "Harriet
>>> Potter" series?
>>>>
>>>> Suppose a black male writer had made the same points about white
>>> readers, male and female? Would he be described here on the list as:
>>> "An angry [replace "bint" with some moderate racial epithet] with a
>>> bludgeon looking to make [his] bones Arkansasing the justifiably
>>> celebrated work of a dead white guy"? or "Great Googly Moogly but [he]
>>> is an insufferable, sanctimonious,
>>> hyper-inflated-with-a-sense-of-self-importance piece of work."?
>>>>
>>>> Much as Solnits doesn't like being "mansplained" to, I think there
>>> are men [not all men, as Solnits makes perfectly clear in her
>>> essay]who really can't hack having a woman stating an opinion they
>>> disagree with, and they pretty much flip out when they encounter it.
>>>>
>>>> I do think the essay is inconsequential in the sense that it was a
>>> response to the hostile response to a previous essay she'd written.
>>> She's a columnist, and has to churn this stuff out quickly. If she'd
>>> sat down to write a long, thoughtful literary analysis of Nabokov's
>>> work, this would not have been the result. Dammit, Jim, she's a
>>> cultural critic, not an academic literary professor. Sure, the phrase
>>> "privilobliviousness" is cringe-worthy. I guess she was just fed up
>>> with using the phrase "white male privilege" and wanted to save
>>> herself the two taps of the space bar it entails. Harpers doesn't have
>>> a huge readership, and most people are blithely unaware of the minor
>>> flame-war her essay launched.
>>>>
>>>> Do Brits and Yanks have different perspectives? Do black American
>>> and white Americans have different perspectives? Do men and women have
>>> different perspectives? Yes.
>>>>
>>>> Some female perspective:
>>>>
>>>> I've been extremely uncomfortable with the number of instances where
>>> Pynchon blithely depicts men having sex with girls, or just generally
>>> sexualizes young girls. Not just poor Bianca, but Lucille in V., the
>>> youngest Boer daughter in M&D, Merle joking about how young Dally
>>> should have sex [don't have the page-reference handy], and Japonica
>>> Fenway in IV. Nothing in BE (maybe Jackson's teenaged girlfriends made
>>> it too embarrassing to write about?). I know there are claims that the
>>> Bianca episodes are "thematic," and that male children are sexually
>>> abused in GR, but it all seems a little too obsessive on Pynchon's
>>> part. GR is still my favorite book, though. I identify with Slothrop.
>>>>
>>>> My mother adored Anna Karenina, and wore through a number of copies.
>>> But she decried the ending. She could pinpoint one sentence where the
>>> book "turned." Don't have the exact quote, but it involved Vronsky
>>> looking at "the dying woman," i.e. Anna. From then on, my mother said
>>> that the reader was distanced from Anna. Though Anna didn't die in
>>> that scene, Tolstoy had sentenced her to death. My mother mentally
>>> rewrote the final scene: Anna goes to the railway station and takes a
>>> train to Paris to start a new life. The End."
>>>>
>>>> I consider Kubrick one of the greatest directors of all time (who
>>> wouldn't?). But I've only seen Clockwork Orange once. In the theater,
>>> there was laughter during the Singing In the Rain rape sequence. My
>>> male date felt he had to "explain" what Kubrick was conveying in the
>>> scene. I didn't then and I don't now give a flying fuck what Kubrick's
>>> intentions were - I will never, ever watch that again.Life's too short
>>> to put myself through that kind of pain. I've seen 2001: A Space
>>> Odyssey (not what you'd call a chick flick) probably about 15 times.
>>>>
>>>> What this shows is that feminists [Solnits, me, my mother,etc.] can
>>> call out sexism where they see it, even in their favorite works of
>>> art, but still understand its context and appreciate, or even love the
>>> work it's contained in.
>>>>
>>>> Final question: Who here has seen Diary of a Teenage Girl? I
>>> consider it the best film of the year. How would the story play if
>>> written from the man's POV?
>>>>
>>>> Laura
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>
>>>> From: matthew cissell
>>>>
>>>> Sent: Dec 18, 2015 4:39 AM
>>>>
>>>> To:"kelber at mindspring.com"
>>>>
>>>> Subject: Re: Men Explain Lolita To Me
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I don' think it inconsequential, on the contrary the conversation
>>> and topic strike me as quite important. I just don't think it's the
>>> best way to procede, in part because dehistorcizing the novel and then
>>> generalizing the male comments and extending them to all men is not
>>> accurate or useful.
>>>> No nerves struck here, just incredulous that this is what gets over
>>> the bar. Where is Simone De Beauvoir? Or even bell hooks?
>>>> One may sympathize with her experience and sentiments, but that does
>>> not gain agreement.
>>>> What do you think of the piece?
>>>> ciaomcps I'm not wearing my panties right now, still in my nightgown
>>> which does get rumpled sitting in this chair.
>>>> On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 5:37 AM,kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
>>>> With so many guys getting their panties in a twist over an
>>> inconsequential essay, it seems the writer must have hit a nerve.
>>>> Laura
>>>>
>>>> Mark Thibodeau wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Punishing myself by reading this latest Solnit on men "explaining"
>>>> Lolita to her and I've come across what must be the most painfully
>>>> awful neologism of an era and a medium that is stuffed to the bursting
>>>> with awful neologisms: "privelobliviousness". Sweet Christ what a
>>>> mediocre, one-track mind this person has.
>>>>
>>>> J
>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 10:00 PM, David Morris wrote:
>>>>> HH wasn't empathetic because he was obsessive. One usurps the
>>> other, ergo
>>>>> failure. HH failed in scores of other traits for the same root
>>> cause. The
>>>>> beauty of Lolita is HH's ability to elist our empathy with his
>>> obsession.
>>>>>
>>>>> David Morris
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Thursday, December 17, 2015, John Bailey wrote:
>>>>>> Solnit praises Lolita and calls it "that masterpiece of Humbert
>>>>>> Humbert’s failure of empathy". Which someone would Arkansas my work
>>>>>> that way.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 1:11 PM, Charles Albert
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>> An angry bint with a bludgeon looking to make her bones
>>> Arkansasing the
>>>>>>> justifiably celebrated work of a dead white guy?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Don't see that every day.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> If you want a truly stimulating and exquisitely balanced
>>> investigation
>>>>>>> of
>>>>>>> the same question I recommend Byatt's Possession.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> love,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> cfa
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Dec 17, 2015 8:59 PM, "John Bailey" wrote:
>>>>>>>> If you approach pop literary criticism with the same standards you
>>>>>>>> expect of Kantian philosophy you may end up with a reasonable amount
>>>>>>>> of stomach trouble.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 12:24 PM, Tommy Pinecone
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>> I had originally extended that message to cover that point but then
>>>>>>>>> decided
>>>>>>>>> to take it away.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> To show the weight of thought that needs to go behind a conclusion.
>>>>>>>>> Kant
>>>>>>>>> is
>>>>>>>>> astoundingly painstaking, as you likely know. That's why I
>>>>>>>>> recommended a
>>>>>>>>> short introduction, the excerpts can be shocking to someone not
>>> used
>>>>>>>>> to
>>>>>>>>> it,
>>>>>>>>> it is an education you are not likely to find anywhere else apart
>>>>>>>>> from
>>>>>>>>> first
>>>>>>>>> hand in Kant. I could just as easily recommended some of
>>> Aristotle's
>>>>>>>>> work,
>>>>>>>>> but Kant is more illustrative of the point.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Wittgenstein's big ideas and posthumous work are constructive in a
>>>>>>>>> similar
>>>>>>>>> way.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> On 18 Dec 2015 01:09, "Danny Weltman"
>>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> What in Kant's first critique do you find helpful for hitting
>>> on "a
>>>>>>>>>> fast
>>>>>>>>>> track way to make someone who is uneducated aware of the blatant
>>>>>>>>>> flaws
>>>>>>>>>> in
>>>>>>>>>> certain ideas and movements that are just unsustainable, and
>>> somehow
>>>>>>>>>> having
>>>>>>>>>> their day the past few years?"
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 5:03 PM, Tommy Pinecone
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>> This is why I make it a deliberate priority not to go on
>>> Twitter or
>>>>>>>>>>> to
>>>>>>>>>>> follow any new intellectual voices.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Every time it is some unfamiliar, alleged authority voicing a
>>> loud
>>>>>>>>>>> opinion that's appointed a flashy title; for some reason
>>> Twitter is
>>>>>>>>>>> frequently mentioned along the way.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> I hope the majority of you can see through this pettiness. It's
>>>>>>>>>>> unfortunate that we are swamped with the hack work and profound
>>>>>>>>>>> blanketed
>>>>>>>>>>> hate in modern academia, it is however a fortunate thing that we
>>>>>>>>>>> can
>>>>>>>>>>> merely
>>>>>>>>>>> look away and concentrate on human issues instead of coining new
>>>>>>>>>>> derogatory
>>>>>>>>>>> terms and stirring up the rabble with a short article.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> I often wonder how different these outlooks would be if these
>>>>>>>>>>> people
>>>>>>>>>>> were
>>>>>>>>>>> introduced to literature in a different way, free from
>>> ideology and
>>>>>>>>>>> identity-that is an unbiased, philosophical way. I make it a hard
>>>>>>>>>>> point with
>>>>>>>>>>> any aspiring student to start off with a short introduction to
>>>>>>>>>>> Kant's
>>>>>>>>>>> primary Critique and a short introduction to Wittgenstein's
>>>>>>>>>>> thought;
>>>>>>>>>>> no
>>>>>>>>>>> doubt it is an anomalous approach, but it's a fast track way to
>>>>>>>>>>> make
>>>>>>>>>>> someone
>>>>>>>>>>> who is uneducated aware of the blatant flaws in certain ideas and
>>>>>>>>>>> movements
>>>>>>>>>>> that are just unsustainable, and somehow having their day the
>>> past
>>>>>>>>>>> few
>>>>>>>>>>> years.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> We shouldn't have to pause to think of these things when
>>> there are
>>>>>>>>>>> bigger
>>>>>>>>>>> issues than female characters not being put in the center of the
>>>>>>>>>>> stage. What
>>>>>>>>>>> if I wanted to pen an article on how I wasn't happy with the lack
>>>>>>>>>>> of
>>>>>>>>>>> empathy
>>>>>>>>>>> Beckett shows in all of his works, to individuals of both genders
>>>>>>>>>>> no
>>>>>>>>>>> less?
>>>>>>>>>>> Sure, the circumstances are different here, but not dramatically.
>>>>>>>>>>> It's
>>>>>>>>>>> simply absurd. I struggle to believe these type of things when I
>>>>>>>>>>> see
>>>>>>>>>>> them
>>>>>>>>>>> being taken so seriously by so many. Makes one feel hopeless,
>>>>>>>>>>> especially
>>>>>>>>>>> when these are still the early years of the internet and the
>>>>>>>>>>> loudest
>>>>>>>>>>> voices
>>>>>>>>>>> are reaching aspiring students through social media poisoning
>>> their
>>>>>>>>>>> nascent
>>>>>>>>>>> opinions and thoughts.
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> On 17 Dec 2015 20:51, "Matthew Taylor"
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>> Thoughts on Rebecca Solnit's latest?
>>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> http://lithub.com/men-explain-lolita-to-me/
>>>>>>>> -
>>>>>>>> Pynchon-l /http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>>>> -
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>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> -
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>>
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