Not all messages are displayed:
show all messages (250 of them)
re poster dow's post: it's not that I think CL49 should have a scene with OM's mother (though it could have been interesting for sure, and reminds me of another question: what was Oedipa Maas's maiden name?) -- rather that in 120 pages in which we feel intimate with this character and experience all her concerns, hopes and traumas, it's odd that she never once thinks of the existence or non-existence of any of her family (save her husband).
My general observation, again, is that there is an element of smoke & mirrors in the fictional process, in which OM feels quite a full and compelling character, but in some ways isn't; is a facade with less depth then we might think, who exists as a function and role ('actant'?) in the fiction and is less fully thought through and realised than she may seem.
I also reflected that the one novelist who WOULD, for good or ill, have thought through family backstory and brought it in, is ... Franzen.
― the pinefox, Sunday, 30 October 2022 15:43 (one year ago) link
Maxine Tarnow in Bleeding Edge is possibly TRP compensating for the underwritten aspects of Oedipa - she's a much more fully drawn mum-gumshoe. Though funnily enough Mike Davis thought this was a virtue of CoL49 in comparison to Didion - he praised the novel for "wasting no time grappling with the alienation of its subject".
― Piedie Gimbel, Sunday, 30 October 2022 15:50 (one year ago) link
That sounds a good comment from Davis (whom I've almost never read).
I agree that Bleeding Edge comes over like a return to CL49 territory (I suspect that INHERENT VICE did too), though I also thought it was dire.
― the pinefox, Sunday, 30 October 2022 17:03 (one year ago) link
four months pass...
Part of the attraction to Wendell "Mucho" Maas ("Mucho baby," as she addresses him at one point, indicating that he may well have mucho sex appeal)
"Mucho" means "Lot." Oedipa is Lot's wife.
― alimosina, Wednesday, 1 March 2023 15:09 (one year ago) link