GW, hepcat

[MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu]

Good thought, Vaska, but the levels of qualification in *not quite the
 incompetent fool* seem, IMO, to leave lots of room for some middlin'
 foolishness.  The whole scene bet. GW and his main man Gershom is
 marked by a really deft balance of affection and misunderstanding
 between the two,  Gershom is clearly the *hipper* of the two, the more alert,
 but he  treats the Cunnel not with scorn, rather, tolerance. 
 It's a really interesting vignette which diminishes the master
 without stereotyping the slave.
So I don't see any ruinous contradiction in the two 
views you mention, though Iwould state them more moderately.

john m
********************
Vaska seeking the cowhorns of Dilemma
>
>So, on the one hand Pynchon writes: "If the Colonel serves not as a Focus of
>Sobriety, neither is he quite the incompetent Fool depicted in the London
>press."  Yet, on the other, he twists himself into a pretzel so that we may
>see GW as precisely one such?