BEg2 chapter 3 Joseph notions

[Mark Kohut]

I don't quite understand this request/desire. IF I have it right, I am not
opposed to
saying anything and everything we want to about all the characters but not
all now all at once
without having read the novel again closely as we are doing. Seems to me,
we stay on the chapter tracks
here and say what we see and circle back and flesh out whatever we can and
want about the characters.

I will just add as a perhaps small difference with Joseph---or not,
dunno--I take her thoughts about Horst as
more accurate than projecting he is more on her mind than even she thought.
I think the novel shows the
spontaneous, real feelings and thoughts of Maxine (and the others) in P's
excitingly-written phenomenological prose.
When she reflects that maybe he was more there than she thought, I think
she is discovering this anew AND P is
showing how those we have been close to--for human reasons--are always
there and can come back. It is true of
people I know; I have just read its virtual equivalent In Roth's* My Life
As a Man*. Even a person's obit will link married
persons for all eternity (almost). No matter how many years they may have
hated each other.

Which she never has Horst. There is no real resentment or jealousy in
adult Maxine---not since middle school slights which still surface. As we
have seen her
so far, she is honest, psychologically mature it seems and a normally
"good' mother and person in a fraudulent world.

What we see and read is what there is. The prose is so....alive with
nuanced observations and dialogue--not real but
pop-culture stylized--exchanges.

Speaking of P's City College pop culture joke, one way I hear it is this
way: Its whole history of admitting anyone made it a
kind of populist college. Attend, no matter your background or lack of one,
and pass and you have a degree....
Also, I just looked them up and Anthropology is their leading specialty.
The study of people in action in their lives.

On Fri, Nov 12, 2021 at 3:38 AM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Joseph Tracy wrote:
>
>  I tend to want to explore one or more of these 4 figures within the
> full dimensions of the novel as a way to respond to this chapter.
> Is anyone up for that?
> Intensely opposed? If not I will have more to say about one  or more
> tomorrow.
>
>
> Please do. I’m up for reading about it and I can’t rule out responding.
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>