fascinating. you're right I'd never read it. Speaking of Stunt Reading I feel compelled to ask you if you've read Gravity's Rainbow (There's another 'stack doing a reading group thing). That novel obv. has a bit more than just extreme porn, but it has a lot of that, and Id wonder what thoughts or advice you'd have for readers who don't read this kind of thing on the reg and want to understand just what pynchon is doing making us slog through pages and pages of shit-eating BDSM and pedophelia.
It's impossible to dissociate sex from power in a lot of literary fiction. In Pynchon's case I think that's particularly true. Gravity's Rainbow, at it's heart, is a book about war. Of course, war is about power. And the types of sex Pynchon centers in his book are also about power -- who has it, who doesn't, who takes it and who give it. So I think what he's attempting to do is show how large and uncontrollable conflicts that affect our lives can be internalized in our intimate relations. The global machinations filter down into the most intimate and secret parts of our lives.
fascinating. you're right I'd never read it. Speaking of Stunt Reading I feel compelled to ask you if you've read Gravity's Rainbow (There's another 'stack doing a reading group thing). That novel obv. has a bit more than just extreme porn, but it has a lot of that, and Id wonder what thoughts or advice you'd have for readers who don't read this kind of thing on the reg and want to understand just what pynchon is doing making us slog through pages and pages of shit-eating BDSM and pedophelia.
It's impossible to dissociate sex from power in a lot of literary fiction. In Pynchon's case I think that's particularly true. Gravity's Rainbow, at it's heart, is a book about war. Of course, war is about power. And the types of sex Pynchon centers in his book are also about power -- who has it, who doesn't, who takes it and who give it. So I think what he's attempting to do is show how large and uncontrollable conflicts that affect our lives can be internalized in our intimate relations. The global machinations filter down into the most intimate and secret parts of our lives.