Austra and the sisters Vroom

[David Morris]

Austra's complete willingness, compliance, with Vroom plans to breed her
like an animal, and to sell off her kennel's premium is ghastly.  That
complete submission and willingness to follow orders puts her into the
realm of monster. She is potential bomb. She has been morally engineered to
have no morals other than submission. Such engineering always has its blind
spot(s).  The Golem, Frankenstein, the Duck, Slothrup, their engineering
might go awry...

Let's hope so.

David Morris

BTW, I love the name Vroom.  The word is what you read in the puff of
exhaust in a cartoon.

On Thursday, February 5, 2015, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> But Mason is not able to be in Rome. He is deeply seated in his own
> unresolved inner and outer life which keeps him at a profound  distance
> from the world created by the Voc. Even the immediacy and appeal of Austra
> cannot bring him to abandon that inner pursuit.  There is something here
> also reminiscent of the biblical Sarah and Hagar her servant who she offers
> to Abraham. Johanna seems to want to bind Mason to a patriarchal role, but
> he is not much attracted to that.
>
> The sisters Vroom and Johanna are a study in middle class and even
> suburban domesticity and privilege. They have financial security and
> minimal work responsibilities, but a very small world within which to
> operate, and it's defined by the bland tastes and social concerns of
> Cornelius Vroom.  Their blondeness, (whiteness) and attractiveness are the
> tools they perceive realistically as key to social status. Tey serve as an
> advertisement for a life that is boring them to death.They are as colonized
> and in some ways more so than Austra who has access to the full range of
> music, food, sexual pleasure and conversation denied the sisters.  They may
> not even know how they are being used  regarding Austra since Johann seems
> to be the master manipulator there.
>
> On Feb 5, 2015, at 7:34 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:
>
> > Well-Chosen Quotes from GR and:
> >
> > "This is how it's done here - the heady mixture of sex, commerce and
> > power - sanctified in a way that brothels clearly aren't, can never
> > be. The link between master and slave is sex-slave, Austra's telling
> > him. When in Rome ...
> >
> > And with this sex-slave-power-commerce trip going on in a sea-port
> > populated by rowdy sailors, how can it not affect even the wives and
> > daughters?"
> >
> > Laura
> >
> >
> > This is a well-said, as usual, way I would read it too...to me most of
> > the scenes in M & D are very like many of the scenes in GR....that
> > irreal, idea-containing ahistorical novel.
> > -
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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