CoL49 group reading ch6 part1

[Mark Kohut]

F'in great stuff...

more from me later too...


On Thu, Jul 25, 2024 at 7:15 AM J K Van Nort via Pynchon-l <
pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:

> The sexualization of young girls has been an obsession in the United
> States for some time. Nabakov's Lolita brought it to light, as did
> Kubrick's movie version, and Pynchon takes it to another level of
> absurdity. Still this end of her relationship (superficial as it was)
> brings up another aspect of the patriarchal society that Pynchon continues
> to expose with his use of a female main character. Now we see that her
> "freedom" or "escape" leads to other limitations, as she ages, she becomes
> less desirable in a patriarchal society, where men leave their wives for
> trophy wives, and boys compete with grown men for the affections of their
> female peers.
>
> The TV brought Metzger and Oedipa together, as they watched his child star
> movie, and the further away from it they get, the less he seems interested
> in her interests.
>
> I find the scene with Winthrop Tremaine to touch on another American
> negative social ill, racism. He uses the N word with alacrity and has
> blacks making swastika bands for him to sell. They are both essential to
> his business plan and worthy only of contempt from him. The name is
> interesting because Winthrop is a name associated with colonial America and
> Tremaine, minus the e, alludes to Johnny Tremain, the novel about a boy
> during the American Revolution. Again hinting at the deep-seated social ill
> of racism and treatment of blacks in America. It also points to the
> California that has a racist history often belied by its supposed liberal
> status.
>
> Two of America's social ills brought forward with two short scenes. Why is
> this brought up now?
>
> Children and raising children get a brief play with Grace Bortz and her
> brood of malicious imps. A vision of what Oedipa might have become? Why
> does Grace recognize "a certain harassed style" in Oedipa?
>
> More later.
>
> In solidarity,
> James
>
> Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>