Crying of Lot 49, Group Read 2024

[J K Van Nort]

I didn’t find it funny. The scene in the bathroom with the aerosol can, funny. The Paranoids asking if this was some British thing, funny. 
I never equated this with love, just lust and sex. Consensual SEX is continuous and consenting. That being said, I go back to my point that this is not a good Pynchon sex scene. Not b/c of the question of consent, but just not realistic, unlike the sex between Roger Mexico & Jessica, Slothrop and nearly any encounter, or even the brutal sex between Lake with Deuce & Sloat. 
One last question on this point: why does Oed cry at the end before returning to Metzger?
In solidarity,
James


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On Wednesday, May 15, 2024, 17:30, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

The sex scene with Metz is pure Pynchon slapstick-farce. It’s more like a comic duel. It’s by no means anything about love. Its erotic value is more comic-kink than hot fetish.  It’s really more a battle of wit 
On Wed, May 15, 2024 at 5:17 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

I've read the scene closely again..."his radiant eyes flew open, pierced her"---"an enormous sigh that carried all rigidity like a mythical fluid from her".....WTF parody of Romance novels is one slant.........."she couldn't help him undress her.  {She's a puddle of melte emotion]  ......then the Barbie doll metaphor and she falls asleep "once or twice".....
Notice that Oedipa says "as if, she thought, he were......[a] little girl"....

On Wed, May 15, 2024 at 4:40 PM J K Van Nort <jkvannort at yahoo.com> wrote:

Does that include having sex with someone who is asleep that they just met?

I’m fine with Oed having WTF sex, and she wants to have it. In Metzger’s situation, I wouldn’t continue if the woman had passed out. Using sex to wake her up is presumptuous at best.
In solidarity,
James

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On Wednesday, May 15, 2024, 16:15, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

Men have WTF sex all the time.  It’s not “real” or love. It’s SEX

On Wed, May 15, 2024 at 4:02 PM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> The sex Oed has with Metz is a guarded WTF sex.  He initially flashed his
> sexuality so expertly that Oed figured he must be an actor setting her up,
> maybe hidden camera. He turns her on. He doesn’t APPEAR gay… He’s annoying,
> but her hair-down mode is powerful. So she feels up for the challenge
>
> David Morris
>
> On Wed, May 15, 2024 at 3:29 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Speaking again of sex, Oedipa and Metzger,
>> when I wrote about bad sex--not fully conscious, engaged, loving
>> Lawrentian sex--there is the countertruth (if I am right)...that
>>
>> They came together, satisfyingly.
>>
>> The need? The meaning?
>>
>> Oedipa's bite, thru the sharkskin suit into M's arm? Not normal. WTF?
>> And I was led to these words in Margaret Atwood's early poetic
>> narrative *The Journals of Susannah Moodie. *A Canadian woman
>> on the prairie, struggling, in the mid-nineteenth century.
>>
>>  "you dangle on the leash of your own longing; your need grows teeth."
>>
>> No, no influence on Pynchon, maybe the reverse?  1970
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>
>






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