BtZ42 pages 72-73-74

[Mark Kohut]

"Why is everyone so concerned with the text?"--- a line, which is not in
the text, from *A Midsummer Night's Dream*, at the Globe and on BBC now.

One of my questions is always, Why, when this book could have been almost
infinitely different, like any book, did Pynchon write exactly what he did.
What does this little section w Pirate add to the density of meaning? Jamf
and kryrptosam, yes.
And a scene showing how caught, like all of us, Pirate is? yes, but how?



yeah, once again I may post a post without a difference but...

Our sexual desires, what turns us on, inevitably, is, it seems to me more
clearly presented
here thru Pirate's turn-on scene---and linked to Slothrop's sex acts
analogously
 and to "all kids growing up in England." Who also feel shame, like most of
us who grew up in Western Christian society?

And, in real life, I suggest we all feel the inevitability
of 'what turns us on' sexually. The things that caused boners, certain
hope-filled expectations and certain memories. This scene 'scared me',
first reading, more than trying to identify
with Slothrop did. All those girls w Slothrop = too comical with sex just
mentioned abstractly not enfleshed so to speak. And they may be fantasies
too!

The sex scene here in Pirate's mind is much easier to feel than we can feel
the complexity of other cultural conditioning. We can each react
differently to songs,
and do in scores of ways, and  the same with advertising, and movies, etc.
We *feel freer*, I suggest, and are freer
IF *every *mental act is not controlled too. Most social marxists allow
some aspect of mind to transcend
the 'false consciousness' of society, for example.

On Tue, May 31, 2016 at 4:20 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> WE are culture.  Yes, we are all makers of a web of influences, both
> giving and taking.  Some would be Kings or Masters.  Others just want to
> sell cigarettes or tickets to their latest movie.  And some just want to
> make art (and MAYBE sell it).  And some are trying to make things better,
> or less worse.
>
> The concept of a Mickey Finn of Culture being slipped into our
> movie-theater soda-pop, lulling us into loving Their Control relieves us of
> our own responsibility in this world's reality.  It gives Them too much
> credit by giving US to little credit.
>
> David Morris
>
> On Tue, May 31, 2016 at 2:57 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> > What a way to drive home the control by conditioning theme.
>>
>> Or one could notice the pop songs, movies, and brand / advertising
>> allusions throughout GR, often with a wink such as Roger & Jessica's "cute
>> meet". Culture -- any culture -- IS a web of conditioning. And the more
>> effective that conditioning is, the more "natural," universal, and
>> inevitable will seem the conditioned behavior or attitude.
>>
>> It's so cute when a world which puts thousands of times more resources
>> into advertising, PR, and propaganda than into psychological research finds
>> time for an anxiety attack  over hypnosis, behaviorism, subliminal prompts,
>> neuro-linguistic programming, and other threats posed by (what else?)
>> science.
>>
>> Auden: "Of course behaviorism works. So does torture. Give me a
>> no-nonsense, down-to-earth behaviorist, a few drugs, and simple electrical
>> appliances, and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed
>> in public."
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, May 31, 2016 at 6:42 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Some commentator says Pynchon 'deliberately' misspells *segway *on page
>>> 72 (Miller edition) Why?
>>> (that's my why?)
>>>
>>> p. 74 Why is Pirate's prostate aching after his ejaculation? Isn't that
>>> what unejaculating "blue balls" cause?
>>>
>>> "Like every man growing up in England, he was conditioned to, etc......
>>> fetishes...." When first read it hit me that my 'normal' sexual desires,
>>> previously understood as natural, universal--which I guess they are--are
>>> still culture-bound. What a way to drive home the control by conditioning
>>> theme. We've all been there in some way.
>>> Imagine any young person still reading this today for the first time??
>>>
>>
>>
>
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