MDDM23: A Curious Accent

[jbor]

on 27/2/02 8:44 AM, s~Z at keithmar at msn.com wrote:

>>>> My point was that the description of the "linguo-beccal
> Fricatives" and
> "spray" (375.19) fit Daffy rather than Donald.<<<
> 
> Then why, when I do my Donald Duck impression, does my daughter
> always ask if I serve towels with my impersonations.
> 

Haha. I guess there's the distinct possibility of a saliva-shower from
either duck, but it's just that, unlike Daffy, Donald's speech impediment
seems to derive from somewhere at the back of the palate and the sides of
the mouth rather than in the beak region, and Daffy certainly has trouble
articulating those fricative consonants in particular. And the style of the
duck's opening verbal parry - "So, the terrible Bluebeard of the kitchen ...
Not so brave now, eh?" etc is very much a Daffyism rather than a Donaldism I
think.

But I really do think that the Daisy e Donald connection which Dave Monroe
elicited holds up. I'm just not sure why Pynchon has his duck morph from the
one into the other, or others. And up until the duck's admission to being
female at 377.11 I'd just been assuming that "she" was a drake. The "Bec de
la Morte", the instinct for revenge, the assertiveness ... all seem very
masculine traits to me, particularly circa 1765.

It's a very funny scene, though, full of the same sorts of improbabilities,
anti-climaxes, parody and highbrow-lowbrow juxtapositions, exaggerations,
self-referentiality, and double entendres (eg. 374.10 "those old Canards")
as the old Warner Bros cartoon classics.

best