<div dir="ltr">Still overwhelmed by your massive interest:<br><br>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Courier" lang="EN-US"><span>Â Â Â Â </span>If to the
moment I shall ever say:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Courier" lang="EN-US"><span>    </span>»Ah,
linger on, thou art so fair!«</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Courier" lang="EN-US"><span>Â Â Â Â </span>Then may
you fetters on me lay,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Courier" lang="EN-US"><span>Â Â Â Â </span>Then I
will perish, then and there!</span></p>
<br><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2014-05-07 21:12 GMT+02:00 jochen stremmel <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jstremmel@gmail.com" target="_blank">jstremmel@gmail.com</a>></span>:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div>The novel was first published (and first translated into German, reducing it by 50%) in 1975. For example, these two paragraphs were gone: <br>
<br>"The funerals of the old-timers who have lusted after power, and who may even have bedded her for a while, serve a useful purpose in the District of Columbia. They provide a kind of neutral watering hole where the political animals who inhabit the Washington jungle can gather to eye each other and to mark the absence of other old-timers whose strange alarums and mad excursions once echoed through what’s left of the rain forest that stretches along the banks of the Potomac. The old-timers, of course, are those who have lived in Washington for half a dozen years or so.<br>
 The President of the United States was such an old-timer. Although not an overly intelligent man, he finally had learned how to walk and chew gum at the same time although there were those who swore he had mastered the trick only after secret midnight practice. Still, he was smart enough to show up at Joseph Gawler’s Sons funeral parlor on Wisconsin Avenue where Crawdad Gilmore’s body lay, if not in state, at least on public exhibition."<br>
<br>And these three, too:<br><br>"Sixteen years later it was generally agreed around Glen Jean that »the Pope boy, he’s a wildun now, ain’t he?« It was consensus reached despite the twin facts that Jake Pope was valedictorian of his high school graduating class and that his astonishing good looks had yet to get any girl into serious trouble, although there had been one anxious moment earlier in the spring.<br>
  Jake Pope’s mother, Simmie Lee, was by then thirty-two and looked fifty-two or even more because she had let herself go and her teeth, never her best feature, had all fallen out, the last one going as she bit into a piece of angel food cake on her thirtieth birthday.<br>
 »She spent it all on that boy,« was the way the folks around Glen Jean judged it, especially the bachelors who, to a man, had gone courting the Widow Pope, not so much in hopes of sharing her bed, but rather the $10,000 in GI insurance that she had received on the death of her husband."<br>
<br></div>Before I tell you about the allusion I believe to have found another question. How many of the Pynchon listers have read Goethe's Faust in the American translation of George Madison Priest, what do you think?<br>
<br></div>And for your trouble another badly (by 80%)Â truncated passage:<br><br><span style="font-family:Courier" lang="EN-US">In fact it was only two months after he was
graduated that Jake Pope was parked about midnight on the side of a back road,
the one that led over to Mossy, in Corine Mask’s almost brand-new 1956
Chevrolet convertible that her daddy had given her as a graduation present.
Jake Pope was trying to get into Corine’s pants and he was making good progress
when a car without lights screamed by at close to 115 miles per hour. This was
a singular enough event to make Jake Pope raise his head from his labors.</span>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:1cm"><span style="font-family:Courier" lang="EN-US">»Sweet Christ, there goes Mamma!« he said. »Look
at her fly!«</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:1cm"><span style="font-family:Courier" lang="EN-US">»You sure?« Corine said, sitting up and
pulling her sweater down over her bare breasts out of deference to the Widow
Pope’s fleeting presence.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:1cm"><span style="font-family:Courier" lang="EN-US">»I’m sure. It’s Thursday, isn’t it?«</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:1cm"><span style="font-family:Courier" lang="EN-US">»Uh-huh.«</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:1cm"><span style="font-family:Courier" lang="EN-US">»Then that was Mamma and she’s sure got
somebody on her tail,« Jake Pope said.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:1cm"><span style="font-family:Courier" lang="EN-US">There was a moon that night, a three-quarter
moon, which shed enough light to lend a glisten to the winding strip of asphalt
that was the road that led over to Mossy. The boy and the girl watched as the
Ford disappeared around a curve.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:1cm"><span style="font-family:Courier" lang="EN-US">»No brake lights, you notice?« Jake Pope said.
»She had Billy Bolton fix it so her brake lights wouldn't show.«</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:1cm"><span style="font-family:Courier" lang="EN-US">»Uh-huh,« Corine said.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:1cm"><span style="font-family:Courier" lang="EN-US">Jake Pope caught a pair of approaching
headlights in the rearview mirror and turned. »Well, look at em come,« he said.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:1cm"><span style="font-family:Courier" lang="EN-US">Corine turned to look. »That's old J. T.
Posey, idn't it?« she said. »I betcha he’s got old Humor Hoyt with him.«</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:1cm"><span style="font-family:Courier" lang="EN-US">It was a Plymouth Sedan that swept past the
parked convertible, twin red lights flashing lewdly from behind its grille,
hidden there out of sight so that when not in use nobody, except 92 percent of
the adult population of Fayette County, would recognize the car as the property
of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Tax Division of the United States Internal Revenue
Service.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:1cm"><span style="font-family:Courier" lang="EN-US">And Corine Mask had been right, for inside the
car behind the wheel was old J. T. Posey with old Humor Hoyt right beside him.
They were Federal agents, moonshine warriors, and old J. T. was twenty-seven
while old Humor was thirty-one.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:1cm"><span style="font-family:Courier" lang="EN-US">Jake Pope started the convertible’s engine. »They’re
not gonna catch Mamma,« he said, »but let’s go see where they give up.«</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:1cm"><span style="font-family:Courier" lang="EN-US">»Weren’t you having fun?« Corine said with a
pretty pout.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:1cm"><span style="font-family:Courier" lang="EN-US">Jake Pope gave her a grin and her knee a pat,
although it was really more of a feel. »We’ll have some more fun later,« he
said. Corine replied with a dirty giggle.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:1cm"><span style="font-family:Courier" lang="EN-US">The Federal agents gave up their chase a mile
down the road. They gave up when they saw the explosion of gasoline and
185-proof corn whiskey light up the sky nearly three-quarters of a mile away,
which was where Simmie Lee Pope, or the car she was driving, failed to make an
S curve at 87 miles per hour. It was the car probably, because Simmie Lee hat
taken that same set of curves at 90 before. Lots of times.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:1cm"><span style="font-family:Courier" lang="EN-US">The two Federal agents were the first to
arrive and discover that the driver had been burned beyond recognition. But
they didn’t have to recognize much to know that it was Simmie Lee Pope, dead at
thirty-two. Humor Hoyt, who was thirty-one, had gone to school with her and he
knew it was Simmie Lee by the way she drove and he tried to say something that
would comfort her son who was now standing there at the edge of the gully,
whitefaced and trembling, but without tears, staring down at the twisted,
smoking wreckage of the 1953 Ford and at the burned thing that had been his
mother.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:1cm"><span style="font-family:Courier" lang="EN-US">»I went to school with your mamma, Jake,«
Humor Hoyt said awkwardly. »She sure was a good woman.« When the boy didn’t
respond, Humor Hoyt, Federal agent, tried to think of something else he could
say. Something nice. »And you know what else, Jake?« Jake Pope looked at him
then, or at least turned his head that way. Humor Hoyt blurted it out. »She was
the best goddamn whiskey driver we ever went after.«</span></p>
<div><br></div><div>Have a good day over there,<br><br></div><div>Jochen<br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2014-05-07 19:37 GMT+02:00 Mark Kohut <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mark.kohut@gmail.com" target="_blank">mark.kohut@gmail.com</a>></span>:<div>
<div class="h5"><br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Jochen,<br>
<br>
When was the novel published?<br>
Also, with characters named Easter and Pope, did the fine Ross Thomas<br>
have punning<br>
allusive ways with his names?<br>
<br>
Can find no Mrs. Hix in Google Books that could be an allusion, it<br>
seems. I probably would have thought<br>
of one of those smart women who sorta found herself by being involved<br>
in Washingtons social life....<br>
There is one in Henry Adam,s DEMOCRACY. Â Mrs. Averill Harriman,<br>
(fourth husband, I think) was famously another (If i remember her<br>
aright)...<br>
<br>
Does Ross have many literary allusions in his novels? (Only have read one).<br>
<div><div><br>
On Tue, May 6, 2014 at 11:42 AM, jochen stremmel <<a href="mailto:jstremmel@gmail.com" target="_blank">jstremmel@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
> Last year I translated a novel by Ross Thomas. (It was a happy time.)<br>
> There's a piece of dialog between two men I'd like to show you:<br>
><br>
> Â Â >>Maybe we both ought to get married.<<<br>
> Â Â >>Ah.<<<br>
> Â Â >>You sound like that fucking psychiatrist. What does ah mean?<<<br>
> Â Â >>I was thinking of the fair Mrs. Hix. With an x. She seems to be<br>
> lingering on in Washington.<<<br>
> Â Â >>I thought you were keeping her here.<<<br>
> Â Â Easter shook his head and sat down in a chair opposite Pope. >>Our<br>
> business has long since been concluded. Any further business we might have<br>
> could be just as well handled by phone. Or there's the mail. The mails are<br>
> still going through. But she lingers on. That's why I said ah. You mentioned<br>
> marriage. Mrs. Hix is still in town. My keen brain started working and I<br>
> said ah.<<<br>
><br>
> My question: Is there anybody in the Pynchon list to recognize a literary<br>
> allusion here if there is one?<br>
><br>
> Best wishes to all of you,<br>
><br>
> Jochen<br>
</div></div></blockquote></div></div></div><br></div>
</blockquote></div><br></div>