Benny's job ("kook"

[jbor]

----------
>From: <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
>

> And this clearly represents a cultural/linguistic
> propensity. And it makes sense that this propensity is also
> apparent in the  "coco/cocodrilo" example. And isn't it the
> case that cultural/linguistic propensity also explains why
> "Alligator" is translated as "cocodrilo" in paragraph two of
> chapter 5? Of course.  So Coco has nothing to do with
> Nicaragua or Vietnam. The military setting is all part of
> the bosses dream. With Benny involved here, we have two
> decades at play, the 1930s and the 1950s. It's the Cold War
> here in V. that P is mocking.

It's certainly the "hall monitor" mentality of the U.S. politbureaucracy
which puts armbands on its employees and calls them "patrols" that Pynchon
is parodying. The bureaucracy itself is both phallogocentric and WASPish (cf
Dwight D. and Mamie, the HCUAA, and recall "Secretaries James and Foster and
Senator Joseph" from _Lot49_), and its enlisted minions, such as Zeitsuss
have been seduced to believe in the myth of order that such a bureaucracy
embraces and embodies. But along with that the actual drones who do the
dirty work are a multicultural crew: vagrants like Benny, Puerto Rican kids
etc, the disaffected, *preterite* groups. It is this sort of "hall monitor"
mentality which will *eventually* translate into U.S. military involvement
in Vietnam, of course.

The WSC is, in fact, in many respects a prototypical counter-culture. I like
the way that the gang rally to Stencil's aid when he is shot, and the vague
fear that Stencil has of being spotted by that "cop off duty" in the
*Hungarian* coffee shop.

I also wonder about the usage of the word "Sick" in the Crew's name, which
has come to pass in the contemporary vernacular as a synonym for outstanding
or excellent.

I don't think that the names "Kook" or Cucarachito, when used by his friends
and family, are either meant or taken offensively. The sympathy that Angel &
co feel for the poor old blind alligators is simply fellow-feeling for
another group of large preterite beings (cf Slothrop and trees), and the
words they use which both lure and assuage the beasts have a certain cooing
gentleness about them. The tenor of the word "gook", however, was and is
that of a racial slur. It does not appear in this text.

best