MDMD(8) Questions

[Dennis Grace]

Sojourner quotes Jean's:
>>     Isn't "glaur" how Woolf spells "gloire" in "Orlando?" Meaning, glory, 
>>     empire, glorious French colonialism, what have you.
>>     
>>     Back to hibernation now.

And replies:
>Never read Orlando so wish I could help but
>I caint.

Well, you should read it.  Marvelous text, loads of fun for the entire
family.  Jean is correct.  Orlando's professional writer friend (don't have
the text here to hand, and I don't recall his name off-hand) uses the term
"gloire" (which he mispronounces "glaur") in reference to what he considers
peripheral, surface embellishment in writing--prettification that hides the
lack of depth or meaning in a text.  This writer friend, as you can see, is
quite full of himself.  He's also the only other character in Orlando who
survives from the seventeenth century on into the twentieth.  This usage
was my first thought when I came across it in M&D, too.

>Per some people on this list closer to Scotland, they
>suggest that the Scottish usage of "glaur" as mud or
>slime (per OED) is probably the one meant by
>TRP.
>
>Hope this helps.

Probably not. As for your "probably the one meant by TRP," I think you're
unfairly constraining Mr. Pynchon's allusion.  A good allusion has more
than one meaning readily at hand.  In fact, if TRP's allusions each have
only one decipherable meaning, the whold text becomes little more than a
Roman a clef. Now, I'm not saying I know for certain that TRP has read
_Orlando_, but if he has, wouldn't that knowledge affect his use of the
word "glaur"?

Dennis