GRGR(3): Jessica and Roger, Mind-to-mind

[Doug Millison]

At 1:51 PM -0400 6/8/99, Terrance F. Flaherty wrote:
[snip]
> Roger says his
>mother is the war, but he says the same thing of others, including "dear old
>Nutria."

If I remember correctly from my now too-long-ago southwest Louisiana
childhood, the nutria is a pest species that was introduced from somewhere
else and went on to dominate the ecosystems -- a sort of nouveau upstart
upsetting the local social balance, you might say. When I was a boy, my
friends and I used to take our .22 rifles out and shoot them from the
levees -- big, slow-moving, much easier to hit than squirrels.  They look
like big rats (rats the size of cats). Frodeaux will have seen one more
recently than I. Nutria have always been trapped and eaten by the Cajuns
who, like the Cantonese, will eat just about "anything with four legs
except the table, anything that flies except an airplane" -- when you start
with a roux and a decent bouillon it's hard to go wrong no matter what you
put in later. I heard sometime in the past few months that there is yet
another campaign on to make the nutria attractive as another gourmet "just
like chicken" delight, let the Market do what Nature hasn't been able to do
in thinning out the rank ranks.

At the very least, calling this character Beaver would seem to be something
of an insult, following the slang of the day that would be like calling him
"Pussy." Mutating that to Nutria adds insult to injury.

I just remembered the "Were-beaver" from M&D, too, and maybe that's another
intertextual link with GR.  What would this Beaver change back into, do you
think? After the War?  (Although, I don't think the War that Pynchon writes
about ever does end, and it stretches all the way back at least to the 18th
century.)



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