BEg2 Chapter 3 Maxine's age, sisterhood, etc.

[Mark Kohut]

I hope women do answer and I will say McMurtry has even more fully-rounded
women in the novels that are not *Lonesome Dove. (*which I could brag about
my minor role
in making a bestseller). And how can I, a man, say that believably. Well,
if it is true anyone can say it.  Patsy from* Moving On*...the woman
in *Leaving
Cheyenne---the Desert Rose--*

BUT---some circumstantial street cred from women:

When I was a publisher rep, a new then, legendary now, feminist bookstore
in Chicago, Women and Chilldren First---which 'did not take novels by men,
only women, because men
could hardly ever do women right so they had that buying rule.....but,
after we talked about how masculine was the canon of Amer lit.....name 'em
all, all, you'll see.....Kate Chopin was still being
rediscovered; Nora Hurston had NOT even been yet. Joyce Carol Oates had
just relaunched *The Dollmaker, *for example, so I said to her......just
read McMurtry, this one or an earlier and judge.
Next thing I heard (from female rep friends) was that Larry "Jeff" McMurtry
was the only male writer of fiction being carried.

I am f'in proud of that, in case you want to know.

Maxine is the fullest woman character in all of Pynchon, amirite?

On Sun, Nov 14, 2021 at 10:27 AM Allen Ruch <quail at shipwrecklibrary.com>
wrote:

> Because Maxine is compared to Rachel Weisz, who was born in 1970, I always
> placed Maxine in her early thirties. I figured she’d probably be a little
> older—two young boys, burned through a career already, etc.—but I don’t see
> her as being much older than that.
>
> And regarding her friendship with Heidi—it seems pretty realistic to me!
> I’ve known plenty of women who’ve had long-term friendships they’ve
> described in terms of sisterhood. Sometimes you love them, sometimes you
> hate them, you do things to piss each other off, but you have an
> unbreakable bond, so to speak. Maxine and Heidi seem very familiar to me in
> that regard. They also seem very authentically New York City.
>
> I think Maxine is one of Pynchon’s most fully-developed characters, male
> or female. However—I am curious. Often in literature you can tell when a
> male author is writing a female character, or a female author is writing a
> male character. Being a middle-aged man, I’m pretty good at calling out,
> “OK, this male character has been totally written by a female author.”
> Jamie in “Outlander” comes to mind! Not that this is necessarily a bad
> thing, more amusing, really. And for what it’s worth, I think Jennifer Egan
> writes male characters pretty well, especially in “Goon Squad.”
>
> But it’s harder for me to determine if what I *think*  is a well-written
> female character (created by a male author) actually rings authentic. I
> mean—sometimes it’s obvious (Heinlein and a lot of genre fiction comes to
> mind, but so does Franzen.) But sometimes I just can’t tell. (I had this
> discussion recently with a friend over “Lonesome Dove.” She felt the female
> characters were pretty darn good, but still not *completely* authentic.)
>
> So my question is—what do female readers think about Maxine? Does she
> “pass,” is she “close,” or is she *clearly* penned by a male?
>
> —Quail
>
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>