INDG 401 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Permeation
9 Jun 2018
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ENGL 409, Lecture February 22, 2018
Beautiful Losers cont. The novel’s victims and what the novel offers victims
I and F continued
- One of the ways we need to understand F is in part, Cohen’s literary and satirical
response to 1960s fads
o He believes in free love, drug user, believes in political activism, he hates the
system, a kind of dramaturge of getting high and transcendence
o Emerging 60s trends and fads
o He is in his resistance to I’s phallo-centrism, he is arguably recognizing a
sexuality that is not phallocentric
o Potentially recognizing Edith’s unspecific sexuality in a way that is liberating
o A narrator of how it happens
▪ Always asking: “did you see how it happened”
o Not what happened but how it happened
- The ways in which I and F blur into the hold man at the end in to the old man at the end
at the epilogue
- All women converge in the female figure in the convertible at the end
- The old man in the treehouse when witnessed by people on st Laurent is portrayed as
pervert but at least is letting out his excrement
o Also is I and F
- P. 79
o Vision of cosmic unity – this is one of their cosmic errors, one of the stages in
their blurring
- p. 183
o F has a similar needle and thread and in some sense he sees a similar landscape
o He sees the holocaust dead in their millions
o Post-Holocaust landscape from Flowers for Hitler
o F understands something that I doesn’t, he is sewn into his own disaster
o He is making men badly and making himself badly in the process
o Likeness and distinctions in the two passages
- These are two of the moments that serve to blur I and F until they become the old man in
the final part
- Distinct individuality breaking down so that blurring with others becomes possible
o Can’t happen unless you’re clinging to yourself as a closed system
- Is this a good alternative to cohen’s system?
- Permeation by others
o Has a lot of different valences in the novel
Victims
- People who have not been historical victims but identify as one which is what I does
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Document Summary
The novel"s victims and what the novel offers victims. The ways in which i and f blur into the hold man at the end in to the old man at the end at the epilogue. All women converge in the female figure in the convertible at the end. The old man in the treehouse when witnessed by people on st laurent is portrayed as pervert but at least is letting out his excrement: also is i and f. P. 79: vision of cosmic unity this is one of their cosmic errors, one of the stages in their blurring. These are two of the moments that serve to blur i and f until they become the old man in the final part. Distinct individuality breaking down so that blurring with others becomes possible: can"t happen unless you"re clinging to yourself as a closed system. Permeation by others: has a lot of different valences in the novel.
