CoL49 Emotionality

[Steven Koteff]

But this goes on at the same time as all the other stuff that seems to be, cat-to-mouse, both torturing and benignly toying with people. Mr. Thoth, remembering is own grandfather (and after Oedipa has just been tuned to the postal motif): "He rode for the Pony Express, back in the gold rush days. His horse was named Adolf, I remember that."

> On Feb 6, 2016, at 9:43 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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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