GRGR31 Seaman Bodine: On The Phrase "Ass Backwards"

[jbor]

     "'Ass' is an intensifier," Seaman Bodine now offers, "as in 'mean ass',
   'stupid ass' -- well, when something is very backwards, by analogy you'd
   say 'backwards ass'."
     "But 'backwards ass' is 'ass backwards' backwards", Saure objects.
     "But gee that don't make it mean forwards," blinks Bodine with a
   sincere little break in his voice as if somebody's just about to hit him
   -- actually this is a bit of private fun for the spirited salt, it is a
   William Bendix imitation. Let the others do Cagney and Cary Grant, Bodine
   specializes in supporting roles, he can do a perfect Arthur-Kennedy-as
   -Cagney's-*kid-brother*, how about that? O-or Cary Grant's faithful
   Indian water-bearer, Sam Jaffe. He is a white-hat in the navy of life,
   and that extends to vocal impressions of the fake film-lives of
   strangers.  (684.6up)

Bodine, a supporting player himself throughout Pynchon's oeuvre, personifies
and immortalises the supporting players in history's cast. His idol is John
Dillinger, and he identifies with and mimics the comic foils in the movies,
like Bendix, kid brothers (like Tyrone), Hollywood Indians -- all of whom
are sending out alternative messages to those which their lead players
embody in the Hollywood propagandising of US Establishment versions of
history and morality.

Just after the exchange above Saure has launched into a cadenza from the
"long-suppressed Rossini violin concerto (op. posth.)", mimicking
"instrumental soloists" as Bodine mimics supporting actors. This links in
nicely with the suppressed Haydn kazoo quartet (711) played at the snot soup
dinner and it is not surprising that some of Saure's musical proteges
(Gustav and Andre 713.31) have infiltrated the planned cannibalisation of
Rog and Pig at Frau Utgartholoki's place. Again, art is the subversive
element, not politics or espionage. (This sort of thing exemplifies the
reflexive component of Pynchon's postmodern "art" also.)

I think that Bodine and Saure (and, Tyrone and Rog) are where the real
chances for a Counterforce or opposition are at in *GR* -- certainly Bodine
tries to educate and help Slothrop through his spiritual transition, and
later gives him the piece of Dillinger's blood-soaked shirt as a talisman
(741), just as he urges Rog to subvert the Utgarthaloki feast.

The narrative fragment above continues into the 'Shit'n'Shinola' one, where
Saure continues to quiz Pig about the illogicalities of American slang. Most
or all of the fragments in this final section can be pieced together like
this to construct a convergence of the various narratives (including a
narrative of the novel's author watching TV and reading Tarot cards as he
composes the final section of the novel). Also interspersed are narratorial
musings about the direction history might have taken had things gone
differently -- if, for example "white Jack" had seen, not "through to but
through *through*" the shiny blackness of Tyrone's shoes (688) to the
biological imperative staring back at him in the image of Red Malcolm's face
there, an unassailable truth about the shared humanity of black and white,
an imperative which he resisted so strongly when his time in public office
finally came along.

best