CoL49 Emotionality

[Steven Koteff]

In advance of the BtZ read, I am just starting a slow and hopefully deep, experiential reread of this book. Haven't read it in several years. 

The book is so much more emotionally complicated, and smart than I ever realized. I think as a reader accustomed to normaler fiction you have a hard time A) getting the emotion behind the uniqueness and occasional density of the prose, and B) processing a book that just doesn't spend its time working in scene/plot in conventional ways or at a conventional pace. Maybe you could call this a shortcoming of the book--GR and M&D, in my opinion, operate with much more immersive scenery. 

But still, this book is just really smart about human pain and loneliness. This is something TRP does not get enough credit for from non-Pynchontoligists.  

Here's Oedipa, contemplating sympathy for Mucho and his difficulty overcoming the fear of statutory rape prosecution with regards to his attraction to high schoolers (this is pp 32-3 of the HPMC paperback):

"She wondered then if worrying affected his performance. Having once been seventeen and ready to laugh at almost anything, she found herself overcome by, call it a tenderness she'd never quite go to the back of lest she get bogged. It kept her from asking him and more questions. Like all their inabilities to communicate, this too had a virtuous motive."

I mean I know he gets certain elements of relationship dynamics, especially sexual power maybe, very right. And that's on display here. But the other insights and complexities are not necessarily ones I was expecting. -
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l