Re: CoL49 group reading ch6 - then there’s this

[Mark Kohut]

Line 1...No....what she was pregnant with no gynecologist could know, or
close to that....is the text...

I can't read any more.

On Wed, Aug 7, 2024 at 12:11 AM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> Of course there is the possibility that she was pregnant and had a
> miscarriage. We really don’t know. Some of the ambiguities bother me and
> feel oddly unlike other Pynchon novel’s where those kinds of details are
> part of the narrative. There is part of me that thinks we are being led
> into unresolvable competing narratives because we are asking the wrong
> questions, questions that  Pynchon never intended us to take too seriously.
>
> The question is who is the rightful prince and heir:  a prince of the
> power of the air, or a prince of peace?
>
> Who does this proposed American legacy of freedom and abundance belong to?
> Who will have access to it?
>
> And who is  America , what kind of life will she give birth to? Is she an
> illusion of unity concealing unscrupulous criminal power struggles , an
> illusion of law and justice concealing racism, exploitation and sexism?
>
>  Or is some kind disrobing of false appearance needed, love that is not a
> b movie performance, not a drunken contest, but  naked love, the deepest of
> shared affinities,  love freed from the gravity of the past, where mercy
> kisses truth.
>
> Oedipa takes off layer after layer, leaving behind Young Republicanism,
> dropping millionaires with too much power and too little  humanity,
> dropping cute actor lawyer fakes,  dropping  militarism, dreams of
> technological magic, self righteous nuts who’s eyes are green with envy for
> fascist power, living behind the insanity of fascism,  leaving behind
> experts who invent facts , leaving behind a friend so wrapped up in the
> universal mind he can’t see the needs of the woman he married; but Oedipa
> is also finding along the way new affinities with those who refuse to be
> ruled,  a women painter, a Mexican anarchist, an old alcoholic sailor,
> young musicians looking for a vision and a voice, peace activists making a
> ruckus.
>
>
>
> > On Aug 4, 2024, at 5:08 PM, Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > They say it’s different every time you read a great story. I came into
> this
> > reading thinking that Oedipa had slept with at least one other person
> > besides Metzger, but it doesn’t seem she did.
> >
> > I also never noticed this paragraph before:
> >
> > “Waves of nausea, lasting five to ten minutes, would strike her at
> random,
> > cause her deep misery, then vanish as if they had never been. There were
> > headaches, nightmares, menstrual pains. One day she drove into L.A.,
> picked
> > a doctor at random from the phone book, went to her, told her she thought
> > she was pregnant. They arranged for tests. Oedipa gave her name as Grace
> > Bortz and didn’t show up for her next appointment.”
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > She picked a female doctor, that’s interesting, & in the early ‘60s
> > would’ve been slim pickin’s.
> > https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7784804/
> >
> >
> > Waves of nausea could be morning sickness though not just in the morning,
> > but menstrual pains? That’s interesting and ambiguous.
> >
> > Good Housekeeping says they can occur in the absence of a period:
> > https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/health/a41340417/cramps-but-no-period/
> >
> >
> >
> > Giving her name as Grace Bortz - that’s also interesting. Almost as if a
> > paucity of identity-affirming relationships in her own name has driven
> her
> > to try to take on Grace Bortz’s.
> >
> > One good reason for not showing up for a next appointment would be the
> > arrival of her period.
> > But that’s not specified explicitly.
> >
> > - when she gets drunk and drives, probably that shows she knows she’s not
> > pregnant?
> > --
> > Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>
>
>
> --
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>