GRGR: Those Frenchmen

[DudiousMax at aol.com]

Yo,
                Thanks.  This is, not to put too self-serving a point on it, 
yet another example of Pynchon's "misdirection."  He gives us something in 
the text, the fur-henchmen pun, slightly altered, that leads us to something 
outside the text (the song) which happens (in 1927!) to be IMHO a criticism 
of U.S. Gov't intervention in realms of personal behvior (kissing on the 
street), dress codes, censorship, book suppression, prohibition, and even 
homosexual cops.  Sung by an American.  The elaborate set up of the 
fur-henchman pun is, like the Disgusting English Candy Drill, a joke on the 
surface.  On the subtextual level, it is thematically related to the major 
threads of the book, totalitarianism.  I know there are those who will say it 
is too great a stretch: but they are those who think the black licorice 
bazooka is the main thread.  But what do I know?  I'm only...
                Max