Disgusting things in GR

[Scott Weintraub]

On Sat, 25 Jan 1997, Jester wrote:

> It's funny.  Although I don't find S&M particularly exciting, find eating
> shit incredibly disgusting, and believe that pedophilia is dangerous and
> wrong, it's not those passages in GR I find the most revolting.  Even the
> passage through the toilet and the sewer is FUN!  To me, the single most
> disgusting and "PAINFUL" passage (and one of the most amusing ever written)
> is the English Jellies section.  Fun, yet incredibly NASTY.  YUCK!!!! (and I
> never laughed so hard)
> 

I had the same reaction to this passage.  It reminded me of when I was
younger and was eating dinner at a friend's house.  I hate cheese and his
mother was serving mac and cheese.  I had to eat a big ol' plate of the
stuff along with a heaping glass of frothy whole milk.  It was miserable.

I'm an undergrad creative writing major.  In my class, two semesters ago,
we had to bring in a passage by an author whom we admire.  The English
Jellies section was my pick.  It has a bunch of examples of why I love
this novel so much.  Annotatable references:  Florence Nightingale, Hop
Harrigan and Tank Tinker.  Hilarious and detailed description:  "Darlene
has brought a couple-three more candy jars down off of the shelf, and now
he goes plunging, like a journey to the center of some small, hostile
planet, into an enormous bonbon chomp through the mantle of chocolate to a
strongly eucalyptus-flavored fondant, finally into a core of some very
tough grape gum arabic."  Candid obscenity when the good morning V-2 hits:
"Slothrop's penis has sprung erect, aching."  Paranoid reader
participation:  "And who's that, through the crack in the orange shade, 
breathing carefully?  Watching?  And, where, keepers of maps, specialists 
at a surveilance, would you say the next one will fall?"

I thought it was the best way to give _GR_ a moderate amount of justice in
two or three pages.