CoL49 Emotionality

[ish mailian]

Lots of "Neglected" books that P may have read or browsed circa 1965.
Sue Kaufman is a good example, methinks.

A link to the neglected books page:

http://neglectedbooks.com/

On Sat, Feb 6, 2016 at 6:36 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> Steve points to:
> "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."
>
>
>
> yes, markedly..sensitive? (Remember Oedipa thought she might be a
> 'sensitive' as P adds his resonances.) Pynchon's feminism,
> perhaps, as we talked of before on this List? One might write an essay on
> the old-fashioned 19th century-like, shortened-Jamesian. psychological
> movements of Oedipa's mind, right?, hidden amidst her overt quest. We get
> this after she has been self-unwrapped with Metzger---too obviously a
> hidebound California Young Repub woman now loosening up? She cries after
> Metzger says, that  Pierce said "She wouldn't be easy?" Why did she cry?
> This is adultery she commits, against the man she is going to think about
> very soon in the way we see below ---has it happened before? but not like
> this time?
> Adultery was--is--usually a central act with the most far-reaching
> consequences, esp for women maybe, especially then and times before
> then---and esp in fiction!
> Brian Moore's fine The Doctor's Wife of the 70s or so was, as Anthony
> Burgess said,  a quietly revolutionary novel since it showed full bourgeois
> Anna Karenina-like real love adultery leading to a new self, a completely
> new emotional life and HAPPINESS beyond the wife's imagining. Madame Bovary,
> she dead. Perhaps as emotionally liberating in its fictional way as Fear of
> Flying was sexually liberating for many woman, all the good girls, on the
> page but in the life beyond that page too.
>
> Discuss and connect.
> Second post to come.
>
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 5, 2016 at 11:24 AM, Steven Koteff <steviekoteff at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> 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/?listpynchon-l
>
>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l