Disgruntled ...

[Dave Monroe]

By the way, seeing as we're ostensibly at Ch. 3 (maybe
somebody oughtta repost that host list, easy to miss
your slot seeing as how fast they're whizzing by),
bypassing for the moment the Scope about which I'm
sure the early Radio Cologne crowd et al. here will
have a littel something to say, and noting along the
way that, of course, Peter Pinguid = "greasy prick" =
"Tricky Dick" (not to mention "Slick Willie") = "Sick
Dick" = "Richard M. Zhlubb" = RMN ...

Note Mike Fallopian's (Armenian-sounding, at least,
cf. "Yossarian," but why? Of course, an Armenian might
have a little somthing to hold against the Russians
...) story of the Confederate man-o-war "Disgruntled"
(always theese great ship name ...).  "What happened
on the 9th March, 1864, a day now held sacred by all
Peter Pinguid Society members, is not too clear" (p.
49).  Indeed ...

"... either the corvette 'Bogatir' or the clipper
'Gaidamak' [...].  Off the coast of either what is now
Cramel-by-the-Sea, or what is now Pismo Beach, around
noon or possibly toward dusk [...].  One of them may
have fired, if it did then the other responded; but
both were out of range so neither showed a scar
afterward to prove anything." (pp. 49-50)

"Popv did send out a ship" (p. 49), but ... but this
is nigh unto Beckettian here, cf., the final lines of
Molloy (1947) ...

"Then I went into the house and wrote, it is midnight.
The rain is beating on the windows. It was not
midnight. It was not raining."

But even Beckett provides certainties, albeit
contradictory ones, there.  Pinguid/Pynchon's story
reads almost like a computer program, albeit in past
tense, note the IF/THEN statement, "One of them may
have fired, if it did then the other responded ...."

"In the morning the Russian ship was gone.  But motion
is relative.  If you believe an excerpt from the
'Bogatir' or 'Gaidamak' log [...] it was the
'Disgruntled' that had vanished in the night." (p. 50)

Historical documentation more trustworthy here? 
"Bogatir's" log or "Gaidamak's"?  Either/or? 
Comments?  Let me know ...


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