Austra and the sisters Vroom

[Monte Davis]

As B4, note the parallels (allowing some latitude) between the Vroom girls
on the stoep (80-82) and the scene in V., ch. 6, in which Benny Profane and
his fellow alligator-hunters "cruise for con~o" during a street fair in
Little Italy:

"Chinese and Italian residents sat out on the stoops as if it were summer,
watching the crowds, the lights, the smoke from the zeppole stands which
rose lazy and unturbulent up toward the lights but disappeared before
it reached
them....  Together on the stoop they [the guys and the girls they've picked
up] hammered together a myth. Because it wasn’t born from fear of thunder,
dreams, astonishment at how the crops kept dying after harvest and coming
up again every spring, or anything else very permanent, only a temporary
interest, a spur-of-the-moment tumescence, it was a
myth rickety and transient as the bandstands and the sausage-pepper booths
of Mulberry Street.
Geronimo came back with beer. They sat and drank beer and watched people
and told sewer stories. Every once in awhile the girls would want to sing.
Soon enough they became kittenish. Lucille jumped up and pranced away.
'Catch me,' she said.
'Oh God,' said Profane.
'You have to chase her,' said one of her friends. Angel and Geronimo were
laughing.
'I have to wha,;'said Profane. The other two girls, annoyed that Angel and
Geronimo were laughing, arose and went running off after Lucille."

Both scenes have their songs, spicy foods and scents, allusions to Madame
Butterfly (foreign sailor and geisha). I really like your "sisters Vroom
who do not seem to know that they are little more than choice cuts in a
devil's butcher shop." Pynchon doesn't merely contrast love/intimacy and
the brutality of commerce: he interweaves them, boys and girls in both
scenes acting out romantic roles they half-understand, "advertising" their
interest and availability. And Lucille, "who couldn't be more than
fourteen," will soon be spread-eagled on the Playboys' pool table. Power
and domination are often just offstage in the lightest, sweetest moments.


On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 10:27 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> I agree it is ghastly what she is forced into. Both slavery and absolute
> obedience are cancerous. But I am trying to see things from the POV of
> Austra who seems to have chosen to enjoy as much of her life as she can and
> has a kind of clarity and breadth of experiience that gives her a certain
> freedom of spirit. I do not envy her, but am compelled to admire her more
> than the sisters Vroom who do not seem to know that they are little more
> than choice cuts in a devil's butcher shop.
> On Feb 5, 2015, at 9:25 PM, David Morris wrote:
>
> > 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
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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