Schoenmaker

[Bonnie Surfus (ENG)]

On Tue, 25 Jun 1996, Mr Craig Clark wrote:

> LOT64 at aol.com  wrote:
>  
> > I guess Schoenmaker is like 'sweet maker'? Making people's appearance
> > sweeter?
> 
> To which I replied
> > Unless I'm hideously wrong, Schoenmaker translates as "Shoe-maker" 
> > rather than "sweet-maker". Which I'd guess (I haven't read Carloddi in 
> > years) is a reference to Pinocchio and noses...
> 
> And Bonnie commented
> > I don't know, Craig.  Pynchon may have altered the spelling, but German
> > "schon" is "beautiful" (eng), which seems to make sense(?) for that
> > character.
> 
> ...which possibility had completely eluded me - thanks for pointing 
> it out. One thing which does occur though: why would Pynchon change 
> the spelling? Surely he intended not only to allude to the making of 
> "beauty" but also to the making of shoes. I'm not going to insist on 
> my Pinocchio reference (if only because a nagging inner voice tells me 
> Geppetto was a TOYmaker not a SHOEmaker?) - but the name would appear 
> to be a double-barrelled pun (and is thus not the only one of its 
> kind in Pynchon).
> 
> 
Why would he change the spelling?  As a couple of folks have pointed out,
Pynchon's version is anglocized, which point has particular currency here,
regarding poor Esther's nose, nicht wahr?