Welcome To Kenosha Mr. Slothrop We Hope You Enjoy Your Stay Here

[matthew.percy at utoronto.ca]

On the subject of Kenosha.  I don't think anyone's brought up the 
colonel for Kenosha whose "horrifying haircut" begins and ends the Byron 
the Bulb episode.  And no, I'm not sure what this means- but I do have 
some ideas.  I'm kinda more into the idea of "You never did the Kenosha 
Kid" as a jazz motif, but I also think its significant that Pynchon 
chooses to discuss Kenosha, Wisconsin at all.  I always tend to think of 
Kenosha as symbolizing the ultimate bland white-bread middle America, 
given its privileged position in the Midwest...  So it does seem 
significant that Pynchon takes this (inanimate) or sterile form (Kenosha) 
and try to poeticize it, reclaim it via a dialogic (Bakhtin)  poetry.  Which 
would seem to link Kenosha to Byron the Bulb, whose movements around the 
grid also remember jazz, and who is engaged in a dialogic subversion of 
"their" form (Phoebus's light cartel).  It's fairly significant that 
the colonel from Kenosha dies under Byron's light...but I'm going to have 
to follow up on this point later, when I have my copy of _GR_ handy.

-Matt