VV(1) Suck Hour

[Doug Millison]

Thomas, continuing his fine job of hosting VV(1), said, "The scene at 
the Sailor's
Grave nevertheless makes me think more of a celebration than of satire."

It makes for a tender Christmas Eve celebration, too -- interesting 
that P begins his novel on that Christian note and ends this first 
episode on a Bacchic note.

Whatever the proportions of satire and celebration -- and I tend to 
agree with Thomas here -- Suck Hour is a great take on Happy Hour in 
any bar patronized by the U.S. military, and indicates, to me at 
least, that Pynchon didn't stay in barracks or on board ship all the 
time he was in the Navy. (Which is not to downplay in any way the 
genius of his creativity in transforming and transcending whatever 
experiences, emotions, ideas, hearsay, & etc. may have informed the 
writing of this novel.)

The scene at the Enlisted Man's snack bar/PX/beer tap at Fort Ord, CA 
circa July '72 -- training to go to Vietnam, but I, fortunately, was 
a draftee and remain forever grateful that towards the end of our 
combat training they decided you had to volunteer to go to Vietnam -- 
wasn't that different, although we had a Sgt. Gruffo instead of the 
lovely Beatrice Buffo to watch over our needs. All the same we 
attended well the whistle blown to mark the time when we could race 
from our boot camp barracks across the yard to suck down that 3.2 
percent "beer" (only enough alcohol to give you the shits and a 
headache but not a buzz) until they blew the whistle again, 
shuttered the joint, and forced us back to barracks for blanket 
parties and fire guard duty and midnight drill.

Closer to Pynchon's Suck Hour, perhaps, was the scene at the Enlisted 
Man's Club at Camp Howze, 6 km south of Panmunjom (sp?), the Peace 
Treaty Village at the border of N. and S. Korea inside the DMZ, in 
'73.  The Happy Hour drinks were real and 2 for a quarter, and they 
brought the "Beatrices" in from the ville by the carload. Dancing to 
the "songs" of a local cover band (which could neither pronounce the 
lyrics of the Top 40 songs they attempted nor keep their guitars in 
tune), fights over what kind of music would play next on the jukebox 
(when the band was on break -- would it be Soul, Rock 'n' Roll, or C 
& W? Why not fight about it.), wild fantasies about civilian life, 
drunken professions of love to the local "business girls" -- quite a 
scene, indeed.  (I watched M*A*S*H* for the first time at the Camp 
Howze movie theater with that same crowd that summer, and I first 
encountered GR, a crisp new copy of the just-published first edition 
-- a book I wish with all my heart I had stolen -- in the summer of 
'73 in the Camp Howze library.)


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