V.V. (18.5) Petard (hoist thereby?)

[jbor]

http://www.quinion.com/words/weirdwords/ww-pet1.htm

One of the guests at the Maryland line party is "an unemployed musicologist
named Petard who had dedicated his life to finding the lost Vivaldi Kazoo
Concerto, first brought to his attention by one Squasimodeo, formerly a
civil servant under Mussolini and now lying drunk under the piano, who had
heard not only of its theft from a monastery by certain Fascist music-lovers
but also about twenty bars from the slow movement, which Petard would from
time to time wander around the party blowing on a plastic kazoo." (419)

Not only do characters recur in Pynchon's postmodern novels, so does this
supposedly lost "Concerto" of the great composer's, finding its way into
both _Lot 49_ and _GR_ I think. (That Manx monoglot joke touches on another
theme which will be revived and expanded in _GR_; and what it might mean to
be a "civil servant" under a Fascist regime is obviously something which is
explored in elaborate detail in the later novel.)

The descriptions of the various partygoers (again, an Ayn Randesque style
listing), all engaged in absurd or futile endeavours, is a slapstick
counterpoise to the rather more grandiose futilities revealed in Stencil's
mind-meanderings through time and histories. In this brief throwaway there
is, however, a definite hint also of the collusiveness and intersections of
art, religion, and politics in Fascist Italy.

best