Pig Bodine WAS Re: Drugs in Pynchon's fiction

[Paul Mackin]

On Tue, 26 Oct 1999, Doug Millison wrote:

> TRP makes it pretty clear in his SL intro that Bodine is based on a real
> person. Of Dennis Flange, in "Low-lands", he writes:  "Oddly enough, I had
> not intended this to be Dennis's story at all -- he was supposed to have
> been a straight man for Pig Bodine. The counterpart in real life to this
> unwholesome bluejacket was actually my starting point. I had heard the
> honeymoon story when I was in the navy, from a gunner's mate on my ship
> [...] As it turned out, my partner's drinking companion figured in a wide
> body of shipboard anecdote. Transferred before my time to shore duty
> someplace, he had become a legend. I finally did get to see him the day
> before I was discharged, mustering in the early morning outside a barracks
> at the Norfolk naval base. The minute I caught sight of him, before I heard
> him answer to his name, I swear I had the strange ESP knowledged that
> that's who he was. Not to overdramatize the moment -- but because I still
> like Pig Bodine so much, having brought the character in a time or two
> since in novels, it's pleasant to recall that our paths really did cross in
> this apparitional way."

Their paths cross in an apparitional way. I like that. Bodine-ness is the
stuff of Navy legend or Sea Stories as they are called. And by this
I do not mean that Bodine-like characteristics are (were) not to be found
in one's own shipmates, though not the majority of them hopefully. I think
it's partly a function of men living in close proximity to each other,
without many women around, at least women to whom they are at all morally
accountable. Everyone is handed  a nickname (like Pig) and the more
raucous and vulgar the better it is and the more likely it is to stick. In
turn the name inflicts a characterization on the individual that must be
lived up to, acted out.  It amuses the troops and without it the troops
would be very amusement deprived.

			P.