Mam'selle Hepzibah (née LaFrance) Hits Fort Mudge

[Sherwood, Harrison]

>From: 	Ted Samsel

>Whew! I was afraid it was Churchy LaFemme....

"Do you herd sheep?" ol' Gramma cried... My Grampa leapt in fright!
"That grammar's wrong!" to me he sighed, "_Have_ you heard sheep.... is
right!" 
>
Land sakes... The things this list do dredge up! 

Faced with the choice between icky German closet-case fluid-sharing
rituals on the one hand and bulging-forehead, woah-heavy Yeastern
religio-philosophical terminology on another and craniorectal Jesuit
dogma on a third (anatomical wonder-boy, that's me!), I think I'll just
hunker down beneath this bodhi tree, slit my wrists, and contemplate
Walt Kelly until Mom sez it's dinnertime.

Say, gang: will anybody within earshot admit to having done any Deacon
Structional analysis, hermeneutical exegesis, or cobwebby,
Doctor-Subtilis-style close reading of the Canon (complete with
yellow-highlighter markups and teensy-weensy notes in the margin)
looking for the Hand of Kelly? Or am I going to have to do it myself? (I
would _so_ hate to repeat scholarship that's already been
peer-reviewed.)

Think on't: Walt Kelly flourished late 40's, early 50's--just the period
when Our Fair (if greasy)-Haired Boy would have been devouring the daily
comical funnies and soaking up your Spike Joneses and your Warner
Brothers cartoons and your Raymond Scotts and all tha'. Given his
excellent taste in Mid-Century American Commercial Junk Surrealism I
can't believe TRP wasn't thigh-deep in the Okeefenokee Swamp over his
morning coffee and New York Herald for the duration of his teens and
twenties. Everybody else was.

And even the most cursory listen to the Pogo Songbook album (Tragically,
my nearly unplayable copy was appropriated by a rabid sister back in the
Mists. Rhiiiino? Where arrre you?) will provide you blinding flashes of
insight in re. Pynchon's lyric technique and influences, especially in
GR.

I am convinced of it.

Oh, roar a roar for Nora
Nora Alice in the night
For she has seen Aurora
Borealis burning bright!

Oh, roar a roar for Nora
And for Borealis seen!
Where throughout the summer has
Our Borealis been?

Harrison "Not The Bob, but like the aliases idea" Sherwood

P.S. ObSwear-to-God: I just received a piece of work-related e-mail that
was cc'd to one Joann Vroom. 

P.P.S. Frerotte to Westbrook on a slant to the coffin corner breaks the
back of the Jags. You heard it here first.