CoL49 Emotionality

[Mark Kohut]

and the huge-selling, generational-changing, cultural conversational
tsunami The Feminine Mystique was 1963.....

On Sat, Feb 6, 2016 at 9:26 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>
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