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Fw: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3457 cANTO 2
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----- Original Message -----
From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
To: <pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 9:17 PM
Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3457
> Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 12:05:05 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF -- Doubts on the incest business
>
> - --- Paul Mackin <paul.mackin@verizon.net> wrote:
> > On Wed, 2003-07-30 at 14:18, David Morris wrote:
> > >
> > > --- Paul Mackin <paul.mackin@verizon.net> wrote:
> > > > One reason to cast doubt on the "shocking theory"...
> > >
> > > ... is the fact that she's a lesbian.
> >
> > No one is necessarily just one thing.
>
> OK, but think about King Charles' attitude toward the nymphets that try to
> entice him. They leave him cold. And I can't think of any examples (real
or
> fictional) of a lesbian sexually abusing (or enticing) a boy. I'm not
saying
> that in the book she didn't sexually abuse Shade, but if that's VN story,
it
> makes no sense to me. I suppose she could be a Sadist... but still I
thinks
> they do that w/ girls too.
>
>
>
> __________________________________
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 15:49:25 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Michael Joseph <mjoseph@rci.rutgers.edu>
> Subject: child abuse in Pale Fire
>
> I second Paul M's suggestion - let's allow Keith to develop his theory, or
> concatenate references, and suspend our disbelief meanwhile. Whether we
> are ultimately convinced or not, the interpretive play will be fun. I
> would like to additionally note that it might help to distinguish the
> meanings of the terms we are using, and conceptualize what is alleged to
> have been done to John Shade in its appropriate terms. To wit, if Aunt
> Maud has engaged the poet in sating her sexual needs through oral
> stimulation, she and he have not committed an act of incest. Here is how
> the O.E.D. defines incest, which pretty nearly mirrors Websters.
>
> Incest
>
> .. a. The crime of sexual intercourse or cohabitation between persons
> related within the degrees within which marriage is prohibited; sexual
> commerce of near kindred.
>
> a1225 Ancr. R. 204 Incest..is bitwhwe sibbe, vleshliche oer gostliche.
> a1300 Cursor M. 27942 Incest, at es for to lij bi at i sibman has line bi,
> or if ou has don at sin wit ani of in aun kin. c1440 Jacob's Well
> (E.E.T.S.) 162 Neyther may be weddyd to oeres kyn, in-to e fyfte degre, ne
> medle wyth hem; for if ei don, it is incest. 1548 UDALL Erasm. Par. Luke
> iii. (R.), Thys holy man coulde not abide such incest and vnnaturalnesse
> of mariage in a king's house. 1603 SHAKES. Meas. for M. III. i. 139 Is't
> not a kinde of Incest, to take life From thine owne sisters shame? 1840
> MACAULAY Ess., Ranke (1851) II. 137 Its annals are black with treason,
> murder, and incest. 1868 FARRAR Seekers III. iii. (1875) 299 Hideous
> charges of cannibalism and incest.
>
> (There are other usages but they are not relevant.)
>
> On the other hand, here is the O.E.D. definition of child abuse (found as
> a special usage under abuse).
>
> 22. Special combs.: child abuse, maltreatment of a child, esp. by beating,
> sexual interference, or neglect;
>
> Keith has proposed that PF makes covert allusions to an abusive
> relationship, in which "sexual interference" was a prominent and recurrent
> feature, and not an incestuous relationship. I suggest that, as we
> proceed, we will lose sight of Nabokov completely if we ignore the
> distinction, unless we can determine that somehow Nabokov himself ignored
> it.
>
>
>
> Michael
>
> On 30 Jul 2003, Paul Mackin wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 2003-07-30 at 14:02, s~Z wrote:
> > > >>> But somehow I don't think
> > > child seduction resulting in serious trauma and lifelong complications
> > > would greatly interest an author who was capable of dealing with the
> > > subject as tragicomic love stories as in Lolita and Ada.<<<
> > >
> > > Two fine examples of Nabokov's lack of interest in child seduction and
> > > incest.
> > >
> >
> > Interesting examples, the operative word being interesting. (also heart
> > rending, disapprove what one will)
> >
> > Of course the incest suggestions in Pale Fire could TURN interesting.
> > We're only on Canto Two.
> >
> > P.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 13:23:58 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF - Maud
>
> - --- David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > Kinbote's take on her is unusual for a female. He gives her grudging
> respect, suggesting her homosexuality, calling her "far from spinsterish"
and
> with an "extrvagant and sardonic turn of mind"
>
> I just thought of something. How could K have known this much about Maud?
All
> he knew was whatever Shade told him and what he could see from her
artwork. Is
> that enough to make these pronouncements about her?
>
> DM
>
> __________________________________
>
>>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: 30 Jul 2003 16:58:24 -0400
> From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin@verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF - Maud
>
> On Wed, 2003-07-30 at 16:23, David Morris wrote:
> >
> > --- David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Kinbote's take on her is unusual for a female. He gives her grudging
> > respect, suggesting her homosexuality, calling her "far from
spinsterish" and
> > with an "extrvagant and sardonic turn of mind"
> >
> > I just thought of something. How could K have known this much about
Maud? All
> > he knew was whatever Shade told him and what he could see from her
artwork. Is
> > that enough to make these pronouncements about her?
>
> Jane Provost may have told him things.
>
> Fellow outsiders.
>
>
> P.
> >
> > DM
> >
> > __________________________________
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 16:21:57 -0700
> From: "Glenn Scheper" <glenn_scheper@earthlink.net>
> Subject: NPPF Canto two - A thimbleful of bright metallic tea
>
> L 260 "A thimbleful of bright metallic tea"
>
> http://myweb.cableone.net/subru/Orphic.html
> THE ORPHIC THEOGONY
>
> And Servius (on Ecl., iv.4) says: 'The
> Cumaean Sibyl divides the ages according to the metals; she
> also tells us which is to be ascribed to each metal, the
> last being that of the Sun, meaning by that the tenth. . . .
>
> I do have one other idea about that small measure: thimbleful.
>
> Yours truly,
> Glenn Scheper
> http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
> glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
> Copyleft(!) Forward freely.
>
>
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-pynchon-l@waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l@waste.org] On
> > Behalf Of David Morris
> > Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 1:35 PM
> > To: glenn_scheper@earthlink.net; pynchon-l@waste.org
> > Subject: Re: NPPF Canto two - ln 500 - crackling, gulping swamp
> >
> >
> >
> > --- Glenn Scheper <glenn_scheper@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > [...]> That makes a coincidence of oral functions with gulping; and a
> > bird
> > reference, which to me suggests AF reference.
> >
> > What DOESN"T suggest AF for you (and incest for s~Z)?
> >
> > David Morris :)
> >
>>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 21:17:14 -0700
> From: "Glenn Scheper" <glenn_scheper@earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF -- Doubts on the incest business
>
> > Didn't psychiatrists--following Freud's example--tend to
> > pass tales of such things off as screen memories and
> > fantasies deriving from psychoanalytic theory?
> > It was only in the seventies or later when Freud's so
> > called rejection of the seduction theory was brought
> > forcefully into question and Oprah and Roseanne took up the
> > challenge with a vengeance that this type of child abuse
> > moved to the front burner of national interest.
>
> I have _The Freud Reader_ out under my car seat,
> so I can read a few pages on each commute, where
> my contemplation does not pique the wife's wrath.
> I went to Walmart and came back with a few notes:
>
> Freud, 40, presented _The Aetiology of Hysteria_
> giving his infant seduction theory in April 1896.
>
> ---
>
> "We have learned that no hysterical symptom
> can arise from a real experience alone,
> but that in every case the memory of earlier
> experiences awakened in association to it
> plays a part in causing the symptom."
> ....
>
> "I therefore put forward the thesis that
> at the bottom of every case of hysteria
> there are one or more occurrences of
> premature sexual experience,
> occurrences which belong to the
> earliest years of childhood
> but which can be reproduced
> through the work of psycho-analysis
> in spite of the intervening decades.
>
> I believe that this is an important finding,
> the discovery of the caput Nili
> {source of the Nile} in neuropathology."
>
> ---
>
> 1.5 years later, he abandoned this "seduction theory",
> writing to Fliess that he has understood the gripping
> power of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex: the tragedy enshrines
> the universal experience of the boy loving his mother
> and being jealous of his father.
>
> ---
>
> Now I recall to your attention my often testimony,
> that in the day of the onset of my acute psychosis,
> I was intent on killing my father (but discussed it
> with him) and to rape my mother (but was frozen up).
>
> I have since been looking for the roots of my ideas
> in religion, mythology, and a few poets and authors.
> I have also latched onto an infant seduction theory,
> but allow that there might arise better hypotheses.
>
> Yours truly,
> Glenn Scheper
> http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
> glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
> Copyleft(!) Forward freely.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of pynchon-l-digest V2 #3457
> ********************************
>
From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
To: <pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 9:17 PM
Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3457
> Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 12:05:05 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF -- Doubts on the incest business
>
> - --- Paul Mackin <paul.mackin@verizon.net> wrote:
> > On Wed, 2003-07-30 at 14:18, David Morris wrote:
> > >
> > > --- Paul Mackin <paul.mackin@verizon.net> wrote:
> > > > One reason to cast doubt on the "shocking theory"...
> > >
> > > ... is the fact that she's a lesbian.
> >
> > No one is necessarily just one thing.
>
> OK, but think about King Charles' attitude toward the nymphets that try to
> entice him. They leave him cold. And I can't think of any examples (real
or
> fictional) of a lesbian sexually abusing (or enticing) a boy. I'm not
saying
> that in the book she didn't sexually abuse Shade, but if that's VN story,
it
> makes no sense to me. I suppose she could be a Sadist... but still I
thinks
> they do that w/ girls too.
>
>
>
> __________________________________
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 15:49:25 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Michael Joseph <mjoseph@rci.rutgers.edu>
> Subject: child abuse in Pale Fire
>
> I second Paul M's suggestion - let's allow Keith to develop his theory, or
> concatenate references, and suspend our disbelief meanwhile. Whether we
> are ultimately convinced or not, the interpretive play will be fun. I
> would like to additionally note that it might help to distinguish the
> meanings of the terms we are using, and conceptualize what is alleged to
> have been done to John Shade in its appropriate terms. To wit, if Aunt
> Maud has engaged the poet in sating her sexual needs through oral
> stimulation, she and he have not committed an act of incest. Here is how
> the O.E.D. defines incest, which pretty nearly mirrors Websters.
>
> Incest
>
> .. a. The crime of sexual intercourse or cohabitation between persons
> related within the degrees within which marriage is prohibited; sexual
> commerce of near kindred.
>
> a1225 Ancr. R. 204 Incest..is bitwhwe sibbe, vleshliche oer gostliche.
> a1300 Cursor M. 27942 Incest, at es for to lij bi at i sibman has line bi,
> or if ou has don at sin wit ani of in aun kin. c1440 Jacob's Well
> (E.E.T.S.) 162 Neyther may be weddyd to oeres kyn, in-to e fyfte degre, ne
> medle wyth hem; for if ei don, it is incest. 1548 UDALL Erasm. Par. Luke
> iii. (R.), Thys holy man coulde not abide such incest and vnnaturalnesse
> of mariage in a king's house. 1603 SHAKES. Meas. for M. III. i. 139 Is't
> not a kinde of Incest, to take life From thine owne sisters shame? 1840
> MACAULAY Ess., Ranke (1851) II. 137 Its annals are black with treason,
> murder, and incest. 1868 FARRAR Seekers III. iii. (1875) 299 Hideous
> charges of cannibalism and incest.
>
> (There are other usages but they are not relevant.)
>
> On the other hand, here is the O.E.D. definition of child abuse (found as
> a special usage under abuse).
>
> 22. Special combs.: child abuse, maltreatment of a child, esp. by beating,
> sexual interference, or neglect;
>
> Keith has proposed that PF makes covert allusions to an abusive
> relationship, in which "sexual interference" was a prominent and recurrent
> feature, and not an incestuous relationship. I suggest that, as we
> proceed, we will lose sight of Nabokov completely if we ignore the
> distinction, unless we can determine that somehow Nabokov himself ignored
> it.
>
>
>
> Michael
>
> On 30 Jul 2003, Paul Mackin wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 2003-07-30 at 14:02, s~Z wrote:
> > > >>> But somehow I don't think
> > > child seduction resulting in serious trauma and lifelong complications
> > > would greatly interest an author who was capable of dealing with the
> > > subject as tragicomic love stories as in Lolita and Ada.<<<
> > >
> > > Two fine examples of Nabokov's lack of interest in child seduction and
> > > incest.
> > >
> >
> > Interesting examples, the operative word being interesting. (also heart
> > rending, disapprove what one will)
> >
> > Of course the incest suggestions in Pale Fire could TURN interesting.
> > We're only on Canto Two.
> >
> > P.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 13:23:58 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF - Maud
>
> - --- David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > Kinbote's take on her is unusual for a female. He gives her grudging
> respect, suggesting her homosexuality, calling her "far from spinsterish"
and
> with an "extrvagant and sardonic turn of mind"
>
> I just thought of something. How could K have known this much about Maud?
All
> he knew was whatever Shade told him and what he could see from her
artwork. Is
> that enough to make these pronouncements about her?
>
> DM
>
> __________________________________
>
>>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: 30 Jul 2003 16:58:24 -0400
> From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin@verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF - Maud
>
> On Wed, 2003-07-30 at 16:23, David Morris wrote:
> >
> > --- David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Kinbote's take on her is unusual for a female. He gives her grudging
> > respect, suggesting her homosexuality, calling her "far from
spinsterish" and
> > with an "extrvagant and sardonic turn of mind"
> >
> > I just thought of something. How could K have known this much about
Maud? All
> > he knew was whatever Shade told him and what he could see from her
artwork. Is
> > that enough to make these pronouncements about her?
>
> Jane Provost may have told him things.
>
> Fellow outsiders.
>
>
> P.
> >
> > DM
> >
> > __________________________________
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 16:21:57 -0700
> From: "Glenn Scheper" <glenn_scheper@earthlink.net>
> Subject: NPPF Canto two - A thimbleful of bright metallic tea
>
> L 260 "A thimbleful of bright metallic tea"
>
> http://myweb.cableone.net/subru/Orphic.html
> THE ORPHIC THEOGONY
>
> And Servius (on Ecl., iv.4) says: 'The
> Cumaean Sibyl divides the ages according to the metals; she
> also tells us which is to be ascribed to each metal, the
> last being that of the Sun, meaning by that the tenth. . . .
>
> I do have one other idea about that small measure: thimbleful.
>
> Yours truly,
> Glenn Scheper
> http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
> glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
> Copyleft(!) Forward freely.
>
>
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-pynchon-l@waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l@waste.org] On
> > Behalf Of David Morris
> > Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 1:35 PM
> > To: glenn_scheper@earthlink.net; pynchon-l@waste.org
> > Subject: Re: NPPF Canto two - ln 500 - crackling, gulping swamp
> >
> >
> >
> > --- Glenn Scheper <glenn_scheper@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > [...]> That makes a coincidence of oral functions with gulping; and a
> > bird
> > reference, which to me suggests AF reference.
> >
> > What DOESN"T suggest AF for you (and incest for s~Z)?
> >
> > David Morris :)
> >
>>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 21:17:14 -0700
> From: "Glenn Scheper" <glenn_scheper@earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF -- Doubts on the incest business
>
> > Didn't psychiatrists--following Freud's example--tend to
> > pass tales of such things off as screen memories and
> > fantasies deriving from psychoanalytic theory?
> > It was only in the seventies or later when Freud's so
> > called rejection of the seduction theory was brought
> > forcefully into question and Oprah and Roseanne took up the
> > challenge with a vengeance that this type of child abuse
> > moved to the front burner of national interest.
>
> I have _The Freud Reader_ out under my car seat,
> so I can read a few pages on each commute, where
> my contemplation does not pique the wife's wrath.
> I went to Walmart and came back with a few notes:
>
> Freud, 40, presented _The Aetiology of Hysteria_
> giving his infant seduction theory in April 1896.
>
> ---
>
> "We have learned that no hysterical symptom
> can arise from a real experience alone,
> but that in every case the memory of earlier
> experiences awakened in association to it
> plays a part in causing the symptom."
> ....
>
> "I therefore put forward the thesis that
> at the bottom of every case of hysteria
> there are one or more occurrences of
> premature sexual experience,
> occurrences which belong to the
> earliest years of childhood
> but which can be reproduced
> through the work of psycho-analysis
> in spite of the intervening decades.
>
> I believe that this is an important finding,
> the discovery of the caput Nili
> {source of the Nile} in neuropathology."
>
> ---
>
> 1.5 years later, he abandoned this "seduction theory",
> writing to Fliess that he has understood the gripping
> power of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex: the tragedy enshrines
> the universal experience of the boy loving his mother
> and being jealous of his father.
>
> ---
>
> Now I recall to your attention my often testimony,
> that in the day of the onset of my acute psychosis,
> I was intent on killing my father (but discussed it
> with him) and to rape my mother (but was frozen up).
>
> I have since been looking for the roots of my ideas
> in religion, mythology, and a few poets and authors.
> I have also latched onto an infant seduction theory,
> but allow that there might arise better hypotheses.
>
> Yours truly,
> Glenn Scheper
> http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
> glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
> Copyleft(!) Forward freely.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of pynchon-l-digest V2 #3457
> ********************************
>