grgr (34): kazoo no fetish

[Lorentzen / Nicklaus]

 "... sly säure has had ex-peenemünde engineers, propulsion group people, 
 working on a long term story of optimum hashpipe design, and guess what --- in 
 terms of flow rate, heat-transfer, control of air-to-smoke ratio, the perfect 
 shape turns out to be that of the classical  k a z o o! 
 yeah, another odd thing about the kazoo: the knuckle-thread above the reed 
 there is exactly the same as a thread in a light-bulb socket. ...'you fools 
 think the kazoo is a subversive instrument? here---'" (745)  


  this is, imo, meant to "de-fetish" the novel's central symbol of dissidence 
  ... "counter-culture" is 'only' mirrowing the "totally socialized society" 
 (adorno), which it, as a "sub-culture"  i n s i d e  society, actually can 
  neither transcend nor ignore ... instrumental rationality reaches every little 
  recess of the globe & marks the historical standards ... you just want to 
  optimize your smoking &, all of sudden, you're playing  t h e i r  game ...   
  trp knows well about it ... & instead of letting a critic accuse him of, well, 
  "anachronistic romanticism", pynchon prefers to "disentchant" this central 
  symbol himself, so it cannot be damaged ... a-and right, just a few pages 
  later   - "... and even k a z o o s, in full disrepect for the prohibitions" 
  (756) - it comes back & is, through the author's clever symbolic   
  "self-destruction" that has taken place, now, imo, even stronger than before 
   ... no toy but an instrument ...  

 beep-beep: kfl //:: ps: very strange, in the german edition of col49 the 
 formulation "vivaldi kazoo concerto" (p. 6, picador edition) is, by wulf 
 teichmann, translated into "das kindergequäkkonzert von vivaldi" (p. 8). 
 though "kindergequäk" (- about: "children's twaddle") somehow fits to the 
 helplessness of the counterforce in gr, i actually see no proper reason to take 
 out the kazoo reference (- which here also hints back at v where benny profane 
 meets a "musicologist who has devoted his life to find the lost vivaldi kazoo 
 concerto", quoted after grant's col49 companion, p. 12). any ideas on that?