re Re: SLSL "TSR" - "plowboy"

[William Zantzinger]

--- Doug Millison <millison at online-journalist.com>
wrote:
> "William Zantzinger" <williamzantzinger at yahoo.com>
> >As far as I'm concerned very little has been said
> >about this particualr tale.
> 
> What do you think needs to be said, Bill?

I was talking about the critical stuff. Actually, what
I was trying to say is that I hope that we talk about
the tale and not assume that the critical literature
has exhausted the discussion and therefore we need
only talk about the critical stuff.  
 
> >I was hoping for a good old fashioned summary of
> the
> >tale.
> 
> One has been provided.  Please supplement it as you
> feel necessary.

My Bad! I guess you changed the schedule or I got
confused with my dates and I missed a good portion of
the discussion including your summary.  I'll try to
read them in the archives. My bad, my bad, my bad. So,
my comments here may be redundant and a complete waste
of your time so feel free to delete them now. Just
gonna scribble a bit anyway….

"Although cast in literary terms, Lardass Levine's
conflict in the story is about where to put his
loyalties." SL.6.28

Like Pynchon, I find the "class angle" (SL.6.15)
interesting. I think there are several problems or
flaws in the tale that muddy up the class angle stuff,
but overall it's really quite a wonderful and
insightful treatment.  Pynchon mentions the bad ear.
Robert's post on race and accent makes a good deal of
sense to me. I think the example ("oot" SL.49) is
exactly what Pynchon has in mind when he talks about
how he made the accent stuff part of the plot. The
fact that some readers will miss this even after
reading the Introduction might be proof that Pynchon
messed it up. Maybe not.   It is certainly a tough
thing to pull off. Pynchon almost makes it work. Note
that Little Buttercup, Levine discovers, has a REBEL
accent (my emphasis, SL49.14). Robert's reading of the
racism in the tale is spot on. 

In the bar scene, I notice that Levine is back to
drinking Scotch-the drink of choice for
Northerners-but that he continues to talk with a
Southern drawl. The loyalties conflict is complicated.
I think that Hollander's comment on the
Jewish/Northern brotherhood has merit.  

As the tale shifts to the campus the loyalties
conflict shifts as well. Even on the base Levine's 
loyalty conflict is not simple because his conflict is
not simply a matter of class or education:  Should
Levine go to OSC or not? His conflict is complicated
by his character traits: He's a college graduate and
an enlisted man, but he is also a Northerner, a New
Englander, a Jew. 
Nathan is called Lardass on base because he has a big
fat ass and he's become an inert figure in the
wasteland of  southern slothfulness at Fort Roach.
He's been getting into trouble. His company clerk
(Dugan) is a stereotypical white paranoid white
supremacist southern racist and anti-Semite. His
lieutenant (Pierce) is an MIT graduate from New
England who has given up on Levine. 
 Once off the base, Levine begins to change. In fact,
all the men change a bit as the environment (campus)
and the tragedy change the social dynamics.  Note that
the previously apathetic men, even slothful Levine,
race to set up the communication equipment and that
they banter and razz about the college boys (Joe
college, Rizzo and Levine) being back (or not etc.) 
at "home" on a campus and so on. 

Levine's loyalty conflict is changed or complicated
somewhat off base. Rizzo becomes an important
character in the tale because he is a college guy and
this fact influences how he interacts with Levine and
Little Buttercup on the campus. Rizzo and Levine are
smart guys and so their humor, their banter, is a bit
more "intellectual" and Joe college. Levine calls
Rizzo a "bum dope artist." Some of the best bum dope
artists I met in the navy were kicked out of school in
the 6th grade, but to be a bum dope artist one needs
to be swift, smart, sharp-witted if not cerebral.
Anyway, Rizzo is sharp and he's aware of Levine's
loyalty conflict. He empathizes with Levine and hasn't
given up on him as Pierce (the New Englander, MIT,
Beacon-Hill, OCS) has.  And he plays along. Therefore,
Rizzo, a college guy and intellectual, quips that
Levine, a college graduate who has repudiated his
college days, is "just a plowboy."  But the Joe
college humor and swiftness of wit is only part of
what Levine and Rizzo and Little Buttercup have in
common. They also share the campus sexual experience.
So, Rizzo's quip has a sexual connotations: to "plow"
is to have sex. Little Buttercup can play along too.
The "plowboy" description can traced back to Levine's
City days when he had the body of a plowboy and when
he was, presumably,  doing a bit of plowing. At City
he had a plowboy's physique, rawboned and taut-muscled
and certaon co-eds took note of his plowboy like body.
When Buttercup quips that she is called "Little
Buttercup" (Levine, Rizzo, and the reader are supposed
to get this allusion) Levine says that Buttercup
should get together with Rizzo (a college kid)  and
play Spot This Quote or something.
Rizzo, playing along says that Levine is "just a
plowboy." 

Tom needs Levine to be a college graduate and a
plowboy. How is he going to make his Jewish graduate
of City from the Bronx a plowboy? Give him a plowboy's
physique and have the co-eds at City notice this and
when the plowboy has become a Lardass bring the
Company intellectual and bum dope artist onto the
campus scene with Little Buttercup and give him the
quip-"He's just a plowboy." 

Now why does Tom need a plowboy? 

Is Hollander on to something with that parable stuff?
Do all those names add up to something? Does Tom speak
in parables? No.  And I don't think Hollander explains
why the names are important. He makes some vague
connections to general themes like civil war and
disinheritance. 

But parables are important to this tale. And there is
religious thing going on that is interesting too. 
Eliot and Hemingway and Joyce are in there too. Yes,
these are the guys Pynchon is stealing from most in
this tale. What is he stealing or what is he alluding
to? Rain, fertility, death, wasteland, wandering Jew,
seasons, plowing, virginity, death and love. So the
bible is just as important as these others. It may not
be more important than Brando movies and Westerns and
swamp wench novels… But these are the obvious
connections I make so…Pynchon's class angle is also a
labor angle.  Labor is an important theme in Pynchon's
works. And Pynchon has this way of connecting labor
and religion. Like writing about the labor or writing
in an essay on deadly sin of Sloth and alluding to
Melville's Bartleby-a tale that is loaded up with
religious allusions, parables, themes.  

Our tale is not set in March, but here is our Plowboy:


http://humanities.uchicago.edu/images/heures/march.jpg

Septuagesima: 

 "So run that ye may obtain." I Corinthians 9:24

You old alter boys and Catholics will recall that the
designation of this cycle of three
Sundays-Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima-as
a preparation for Lent, originated with the great
disaster which finally brought the declining Roman
Empire to an End. 

And you will no doubt recognize the passage from I
Corinthians, the Gospel on Sep Sunday. It is a parable
about labor. 

Gotta go, be back soon…Billy Z. 




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