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

[Michael Bailey]

Yes, thanks both - thanks Mark for remembering that quote which occurs a
couple pages later

And thanks Joseph because I didn’t know it was a quote till I read your
reply

Here’s the sentence:
“Your gynecologist has no test for what she was pregnant with.”

So, is she pregnant?

Rather than veering off into “Rosemary’s Baby” territory (a book which
didn’t come out till 1967) I’ll take that as a “no” and leave it there



 - except to note a slightly odd use of “your”
- (Tremaine’s use of “your niggers” pops up as a cognate but doesn’t seem
very relevant)

- often in the book, the prose dips into the vernacular with a “your”:

“…this illusion of speed, freedom, wind in your hair…”

“There was your Mucho….”

“One of your endless repetitions.”

“[one of Mucho’s teen queens’] eyes ultimately, statistically would meet
Mucho’s and respond, and the thing would develop then groovy as it could
when you found you couldn’t get statutory rape really out of the back of
your law-abiding head.”

“…the early crowd tends to dig your Radio Cologne sound.”

“A few of your more affluent type members….”

“…fractions of brain current your most gossamer microelectrode is yet too
gross for finding.”

(Et alia)

- a rendering of a parlance still in use and slightly comical (Cliff Clavin
on “Cheers” would modify nouns with a “your” quite frequently, as did
Schneider on “One Day at a Time”)

-  in order to sometimes personalize, and other times lighten the mood?




On Sat, Aug 10, 2024 at 10:31 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> Good reminder. It’s a little vague as a description of her state, but
> pretty clear as the author’s comment on not being pregnant.I had forgotten
> it by the time she made the appointment. It was my original thought that
> she not pregnant but reading the text Michael commented on made me wonder
> if that was sure.
>
> > On Aug 7, 2024, at 3:00 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > 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 <mailto:
> 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 <mailto: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
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>