GW, hepcat

[Vaska]

John, you describe that scene with such exquisite feel for nuance, including
the "middlin' foolishness" bit, that your message is a joy to read.  So I'll
admit it now: maybe I'm just irrationally stubborn -- always a possibility
with a Taurus -- but both the first and the second time 'round I scratched
my head and thought: is P. relying on our ability to spot GW's goof with a
Yiddish term to signal any of this to us?  Is that why it's there?  

A-and, as I've said before [twice dammit], even if it's a *Pynchon* goof, it
ain't the end of the world.  It ain't, and it ain't and it ain't.  

Vaska, that stubborn old cow of a reader

Mascaro wrote:
>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?  
>
>
>