NP: Naomi Alderman's The Power

[Mark Kohut]

I remember that Slothrop's change is into a full self-scattering. If I remember right, it is Simone Weil's "mystical" vision of what happens to us in Gravity & Grace. 

I can't forget that the ending of ATD, the "flying toward grace" is a long major historical fiction by the author who's next in historical time begins " a screaming comes across the sky". 

Now able to think of the two fog/ mist scenes of two of TRP's American novels at once because of the post, they now resonate w recent perception of America as always open-ended--the past, what has just happened, as seen thru a glass darkly.

The fog/ mist is like a compressed symbol for the Crying of the Lot; as that novel ends, we don't know what fog of truth we have just been thru. 

That fog/mist might be seen as Henry Adam's always confusing, murkily inadequate, no preparation for the future EVER thru which he/ we have always come. In America. 


Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 25, 2018, at 2:27 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> 
> I obviously see it differently. I don’t see what is particularly sketchy or dreamy about the picnic.  P has shown their family flaws and he is showing here the ties that bind and  passing of the torch. In ATD I see the Chums as a reflection in fiction of real events, so yes sorta happily ever…but I think P has done a lot to reify grace as more than delusion, so to me it isn’t a pie in the sky promise , but a real possibility of change. If the fictional mythos of a culture changes( positive roles for sexual love, racial inclusion, escape from paranoia and blindly following orders, then something is happening in the real). I can see your view of it though, this is the same Pynchon who wrote GR.  I just don’t think P is quite so adamant for doom I guess. 
>  One aspect of my response has to do with the comic tone of M&D and VL. They have a good bit of darkness but to me they are the funniest and least gloomy and I think it legitimate to consider that there might be a deeper change in P’s worldview.  I personally question Krav Maga as preparation for the future,  but hey.
>> On Jan 25, 2018, at 1:23 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> JT> a cycle of liberation and change... picks up steam in Vineland and continues
>> 
>> YMMV reader by reader. E.g. looking just at endings, for me there's something sketchy, dreamy, "and they lived happily ever after" about
>> 
>> - the family reunion/picnic at the end of Vineland (after a ride through fog/mist)
>> - the flight "toward grace" from the airborne dirigible/city at the end of AtD
>> - the ride through fog/mist at the end of IV
>> 
>> By contrast, I get more positive charge from the "envoi for children" that closes both M&D and Bleeding Edge -- even without knowing whether they get safely to America, or to school.
>> thing that 
>> On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 11:02 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
>> wow. yea.
>> 
>> and probably more men should read and male professors teach from the many excellent contemporary women writers.
>> 
>> Along with a cycle of use/abuse I see a cycle of liberation and change which begins  with Slothrop, picks up steam in Vineland and continues. Perhaps some of the critical negativity toward  Vineland is about this turn.   Is the preference for tragedy a kind of fatalist gnosticism? Is it a belief as much as a force of nature?
>> 
>>> On Jan 25, 2018, at 9:39 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> What keeps Pynchon alive and compelling is the perpetual tension between "empowerment," insurgency, a potentially better tomorrow...
>>> 
>>> ...and the "profound understander of every kind of dominance," the believer in original sin (at least as much Gnostic as Christian). Blicero uses Katje, who uses Slothrop, who uses Geli, who uses Tchitcherine, world without end. And the pale Virgin rising in the east over Hiroshima... isn't that our old friend, the merciful and merciless V.?
>>> 
>>> On Thu, Jan 25, 2018 at 7:37 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> The huge bestselling success of this book--my hidden premise being a book's sale is rarely just related to its quality; in fact is seldom related to it, --
>>> Is part of the huge cultural ongoing next wave of female empowerment and self-empowerment.
>>> 
>>> It's all around us, maybe most visible in the largest total marches around the US--some outside the US too--in the history of The Republic.
>>> 
>>> And the voices to try to end, and bring to justice the power dominance that is most sexual harassment , is thrilling.
>>> 
>>> Yes, more women should read Pynchon, (and join the Plist), a feminist and profound understander of every kind of dominance.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>> 
>>>> On Jan 24, 2018, at 7:27 PM, Richard Romeo <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> I enjoyed it though it’s a hard read at times (as a guy) which I guess is the point.
>>>> I like the way she structured the story
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> On Jan 24, 2018, at 6:17 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> I'm a third of the way into this glorious page-turner called The Power
>>>>> and was pleased to note that writer Naomi Alderman conversed with
>>>>> Ursula Le Guin while developing it (Margaret Atwood and Karen Joy
>>>>> Fowler, too).
>>>>> It begins with 15-year-old girls the world over discovering they have
>>>>> this ability to cause terrible pain and even death, and they quickly
>>>>> start teaching older women the power as well. In very short order the
>>>>> power dynamics of sex and gender are completely upended and the book
>>>>> very smartly teases out the implications. The section in which women
>>>>> storm the streets of Riyadh kept me reading late into the evevning
>>>>> last night and the book overall is that wonderful mix of genre
>>>>> satisfaction and fine intellectual playfulness.
>>>>> -
>>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>> -
>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
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>> 
>> -
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> 
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