SLSL "A Small Rain"

[jbor]

on 30/11/02 4:26 AM, Paul Mackin at paul.mackin at verizon.net wrote:

>>> Why the cigar, by the way?


> The two (cap and cigar) are of a piece, seems to me. A
> withholding-of-self from the proceedings.  Not giving the girl his full
> attention.  Protective insulation? A security blanket? Was this Lardass,
> or Pynchon?

I think that Nathan "Lardass" Levine is more of a prototype for Seaman "Pig"
Bodine. Some of the other characters and/or names in the story likewise seem
to pop up again in later works too. Benny Picnic, for example, who has a
problem with the (inanimate) Coke machine (31-2).

As he admits in the 'Intro', the story is not specifically taken from
Pynchon's own experience: "A friend who'd been away in the army the same two
years I'd been in the navy supplied the details" (p. 4). It's "the
narrator", who isn't Levine, who possesses Pynchon's own "defective"
attitudes ("almost but not quite me" etc on p. 5).

But the cigar - "he puffing occasionally at the cigar throughout the
performance" (50) - is a touch of bravado on Levine's part, not totally
giving way, or not being seen to give way, to the love-making experience, as
you say. Cap and t-shirt probably likewise.

And on her side "little Buttercup" is a "never totally violated Pasiphae"
either (which makes of Levine a "white bull", by the way). Her racist or
elitist prejudices have already been exposed in the dismissive attitude she
betrays towards the locals killed in the hurricane: "Well, Creole" she says
(49), which is when Levine tests her accent. This links her directly back to
the company clerk, Dugan, whose racist beliefs are outlined on p. 29. (By
the way, in terms of 'Bad Ear', I'd say "oot" is more of a stereotypically
Canadian than Southern accent. That'd more properly be "aht", wouldn't it?)

I have a feeling that the "savage chorus" of "stupid frog cries" (50) which
reaches a crescendo with their lovemaking is meant to be symbolic of the
"great death" which is Nature.

There's a distance between the narrator and Levine, and the ending is quite
equivocal in terms of whether his new lease of life will stick, as is the
question of whether or not rain is good or bad.

best



> In the Hemingway passage Roberto refuses an arm around Maria.  Holding
> her hand is enough he sez. One might have thought this to be kind of
> ungallant. But in the totality of the passage it is not.
> 
> Not trying to make too much of the Hemingway thing. Just a thought.