VV(18): La Jarretiere

[Dave Monroe]

"'Mlle. Jarretiere'; using her stage name." (V., Ch.
14, Sec. i, p. 395)

I'm going to go straight to J. Kerry Grant, A
Companion to V. (Athens: U of Georgia P, 2001), as he
covers my immediate references anyway ...

""the primary meaning is 'garter,' but it can also
mean 'picketing rope' and, according to Berressem,
'conductor-wire' ('Love' [Pynchon Notes, p.] 18) .... 
Dugdale finds a trace of the name of the French writer
Alfred Jarry, the creator of Ubu Roi, a forerunner of
the theater of the absurd, to which Yeats responded
with the comment, 'After us, the Savage God' ([The Art
of Allusion, p.] 97)."

And cf. "Itague" = "tie" or somesuch (can anyone
clarify that one for me?  Thanks ...) ...

But such one-name stagenames were apparently common in
prewar Paris, cf. La Goulue, "The Glutton" ...

http://www.sandiegomuseum.org/lautrec/goulue.html

http://www.allwall.com/images/PRODUCTS/shdws/large/10009000/10009111.jpg

http://www.allinsongallery.com/toulouse/lagoulue2.jpg

http://www.francescomorante.it/images/305e4.jpg

(the guy frugging in the poster foreground and so
forth  is one Valentin le Desosse, "The Boneless One")

http://192.41.13.240/artchive/t/toulouse-lautrec/toulouse-lautrec_la_goulue.jpg

Or cf. the aforementioned (albeit fictional) Satine,
for that matter.  Cher, Sting, Xuxa, RuPaul ...


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