Austra and the sisters Vroom

[Mark Kohut]

I want to say that the vrooming Vroom girls--my major memory of my
first read was of the Vroom girls scampering around, again, like the
stereotype of young girls
and Monte's lines about the roles they half-understood, "advertising
their interest and availability" is tickling memories of Nabokov
writing about young Lo...not going to look it up
now but it's there, I think.

On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 11:03 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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