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PN: Horace is caught up in this web of imagined plots, whereas Helen and Gwen function with ‘no plan, no plot’ (C, 160), they pursue no ideal or truth, they are a ‘new breed’ (C, 147). Again it seems relevant that Horace tries to understand Helen in terms of ‘some family tragedy’ (C, 97), and that the graffiti in her room reads ‘OEDIPUS WRECKS’. Has the ‘new breed’ achieved some sort of freedom from the Oedipal guilt-trip? LT: This is from Horace’s point of view… PN: He’s trying to embed them in an Oedipal plot that the reader can see they somehow evade. Especially in Helen’s case because she does disappear. LT: She disappears and we don’t know what her history is. We do know in the sense that everyone has a father or mother, we know there’s an Oedipal drama. Can we avoid that? No. The question is how do you work with that in a story. How conscious of that are you in your own story-telling and in your life? PN: Horace says, ‘I also believed that in our souls we were in deep and profound unity…she was, I assumed, like me’ (C, 148). But the reader knows they really have nothing in common, and Horace’s fantasy about Helen’s ‘special androgynous quality’ (C, 148) is actually more Platonic than it is postmodern… LT: One of the problems in Horace’s life is that he would believe that he should not experience any kind of lack. He would think that there was a wholeness there for him to have. Whereas, in my mind, a Helen or a Gwen would understand that that’s always an illusion. Let’s say, no cure. PN: Are you suggesting some sort of fundamental difference between this fantasy of androgyny—as original, prior to sexual difference— and the sort of thing Warhol and the Factory explored? Gwen, for example, ‘admires Warhol precisely because of the falsity of his work, which actually makes it true, to her way of seeing and thinking, which is not mine’ (C, 155). LT: I subscribe more to a notion of bisexuality than to one of androgyny. I was also trying to think about homosexuality not as a fixed sexual position, so that a man who was a homosexual could also have desire for a woman at some moment, just the way a heterosexual man might have a desire for homosexual experience. Desire is pretty wild, and can move around, and be very unsettling. Horace wants to think she’s androgynous rather than thinking that he might be more bisexual—unfixed—than he thinks. In other words, rather than seeing it—instability—in himself he’s seeing it in her.
DOI link for PN: Horace is caught up in this web of imagined plots, whereas Helen and Gwen function with ‘no plan, no plot’ (C, 160), they pursue no ideal or truth, they are a ‘new breed’ (C, 147). Again it seems relevant that Horace tries to understand Helen in terms of ‘some family tragedy’ (C, 97), and that the graffiti in her room reads ‘OEDIPUS WRECKS’. Has the ‘new breed’ achieved some sort of freedom from the Oedipal guilt-trip? LT: This is from Horace’s point of view… PN: He’s trying to embed them in an Oedipal plot that the reader can see they somehow evade. Especially in Helen’s case because she does disappear. LT: She disappears and we don’t know what her history is. We do know in the sense that everyone has a father or mother, we know there’s an Oedipal drama. Can we avoid that? No. The question is how do you work with that in a story. How conscious of that are you in your own story-telling and in your life? PN: Horace says, ‘I also believed that in our souls we were in deep and profound unity…she was, I assumed, like me’ (C, 148). But the reader knows they really have nothing in common, and Horace’s fantasy about Helen’s ‘special androgynous quality’ (C, 148) is actually more Platonic than it is postmodern… LT: One of the problems in Horace’s life is that he would believe that he should not experience any kind of lack. He would think that there was a wholeness there for him to have. Whereas, in my mind, a Helen or a Gwen would understand that that’s always an illusion. Let’s say, no cure. PN: Are you suggesting some sort of fundamental difference between this fantasy of androgyny—as original, prior to sexual difference— and the sort of thing Warhol and the Factory explored? Gwen, for example, ‘admires Warhol precisely because of the falsity of his work, which actually makes it true, to her way of seeing and thinking, which is not mine’ (C, 155). LT: I subscribe more to a notion of bisexuality than to one of androgyny. I was also trying to think about homosexuality not as a fixed sexual position, so that a man who was a homosexual could also have desire for a woman at some moment, just the way a heterosexual man might have a desire for homosexual experience. Desire is pretty wild, and can move around, and be very unsettling. Horace wants to think she’s androgynous rather than thinking that he might be more bisexual—unfixed—than he thinks. In other words, rather than seeing it—instability—in himself he’s seeing it in her.
PN: Horace is caught up in this web of imagined plots, whereas Helen and Gwen function with ‘no plan, no plot’ (C, 160), they pursue no ideal or truth, they are a ‘new breed’ (C, 147). Again it seems relevant that Horace tries to understand Helen in terms of ‘some family tragedy’ (C, 97), and that the graffiti in her room reads ‘OEDIPUS WRECKS’. Has the ‘new breed’ achieved some sort of freedom from the Oedipal guilt-trip? LT: This is from Horace’s point of view… PN: He’s trying to embed them in an Oedipal plot that the reader can see they somehow evade. Especially in Helen’s case because she does disappear. LT: She disappears and we don’t know what her history is. We do know in the sense that everyone has a father or mother, we know there’s an Oedipal drama. Can we avoid that? No. The question is how do you work with that in a story. How conscious of that are you in your own story-telling and in your life? PN: Horace says, ‘I also believed that in our souls we were in deep and profound unity…she was, I assumed, like me’ (C, 148). But the reader knows they really have nothing in common, and Horace’s fantasy about Helen’s ‘special androgynous quality’ (C, 148) is actually more Platonic than it is postmodern… LT: One of the problems in Horace’s life is that he would believe that he should not experience any kind of lack. He would think that there was a wholeness there for him to have. Whereas, in my mind, a Helen or a Gwen would understand that that’s always an illusion. Let’s say, no cure. PN: Are you suggesting some sort of fundamental difference between this fantasy of androgyny—as original, prior to sexual difference— and the sort of thing Warhol and the Factory explored? Gwen, for example, ‘admires Warhol precisely because of the falsity of his work, which actually makes it true, to her way of seeing and thinking, which is not mine’ (C, 155). LT: I subscribe more to a notion of bisexuality than to one of androgyny. I was also trying to think about homosexuality not as a fixed sexual position, so that a man who was a homosexual could also have desire for a woman at some moment, just the way a heterosexual man might have a desire for homosexual experience. Desire is pretty wild, and can move around, and be very unsettling. Horace wants to think she’s androgynous rather than thinking that he might be more bisexual—unfixed—than he thinks. In other words, rather than seeing it—instability—in himself he’s seeing it in her.
ABSTRACT
PN: Horace is caught up in this web of imagined plots, whereas Helen and Gwen function with ‘no plan, no plot’ (C, 160), they pursue no ideal or truth, they are a ‘new breed’ (C, 147). Again it seems relevant that Horace tries to understand Helen in terms of ‘some family tragedy’ (C, 97), and that the graffiti in her room reads ‘OEDIPUS WRECKS’. Has the ‘new breed’ achieved some sort of freedom from the Oedipal guilt-trip?
