SLSL "TSR" - Buttercup, part I

[pynchonoid]

The whole article is on the Web at Michel's useful Web
site, so I expect Charles Hollander won't mind a chunk
here.

I'm hoping that SLSL participants will be able to deal
with this material without engaging in the egregious,
ad hominem attacks on Hollander that have
characterized discussion of his work on Pynchon-L in
the past.  Given the attacks on an earlier article
excerpted here, that may be too much to hope for, but
a boy can dream... At any rate, even people who take
issue most insultingly with Hollander's method wind up
accepting the fruit of his close reading -- as in the
Buttercup/Gilbert & Sullivan connection he made in
this article 12 years ago.


http://www.vheissu.be/art/art_eng_SL_hollander.htm

Charles Hollander, "Pynchon's Politics: The Presence
of an Absence"
originally published in: Pynchon Notes, 26-27
(spring-fall 1990, pp. 5-59 )

[...]
"What's your name, in case I get hungry again," Levine
said. "I'm called little Buttercup," she answered,
laughing. "A comedian," Levine said. "Why don't you
get together with Rizzo. He's a college kid. You can
play Spot this Quote or something."	 

This bit of dialogue in "The Small Rain" calls
attention to Gilbert & Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore. It
also alerts the reader to look for other quotations.
And sure enough, along the way Pynchon quotes William
Tecumseh Sherman, "War is hell"; MAD magazine,
"ARRRGH"; English Protestant martyr John Bradford,
"There but for the grace of God"; and Guys & Dolls
author, Abe Burrows, "Why it's good old reliable
Nathan." There may be more.

But earlier in "The Small Rain," Pynchon writes:
 	"Levine's trouble," said Rizzo, "is that he is at
least the laziest bastard in the army. He doesn't want
to work and therefore he is afraid to let down roots.
He is a seed that casts himself on stony places, with
no deepness of earth."
"And when the sun comes up," Levine smiled, "it
scorches me and I wither away. Why the hell do you
think I stay in the barracks so much?"	 

By alerting us to "Spot This Quote" after he had
already rephrased Jesus's parable of the sower of
seeds (Mark 4.1-9), Pynchon lures us to attend to the
accurate quotations from Pinafore, Sherman, Bradford,
Burrows, and to ignore the slightly altered quotation
from the Bible. This, in his first story, published
while he was still an undergraduate, Pynchon leads the
reader by misdirection. Misdirection is an essential
Pynchonian device.

After the parable of the sower of seeds, the disciples
asked Jezus why he preached in parables. His answer
may as well have been Pynchon's: "To you has been
given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those
outside everything is in parables" (Mark 4.11); or, in
Pynchon's words, "Those Who Know, know."

Lest we think this mere fancy on Pynchon's part, we
should note that he gave Levine, this "almost me"
character, the first name Nathan. The Old Testament
prophet Nathan scolded King David for sending
Bathsheba's husband, Uriah, to certain death in battle
so the King could claim her. Nathan used yet another
parable, the parable of the ewe lamb (II Samuel
12.1-7). Later, at David's death, Nathan averted a
civil war by mediating the succession claims —there
was then no strict law of primogeniture— and insuring
that Bathsheba's son Solomon was made king over the
older Adonijah (I Kings 1.11-40).

After her introductory aria, "I'm called Little
Buttercup," Buttercup too speaks in parables. In her
Act II duet with Captain Corcoran, "Things are seldom
what they seem," she sings:
 	Though to catch my drift he's striving
I'll dissemble — I'll dissemble
When he sees at what I'm driving
Let him tremble — Let him tremble.	 

And later she will add:
 	But when is known
The secret I have to tell
Wide will be thrown
The door of his dungeon cell.	 

By revealing the secrets of true identities, Buttercup
mediates possibly disastrous marriage claims.

Pynchon could have called his college girl Yum-Yum,
after the ingenue of The Mikado; but Yum-Yum does not
speak in parables nor have any secrets to reveal. Name
selection is never casual or ingenuous for Pynchon;
and selecting particularly resonant names is another
essentially Pynchon penchant. By naming two characters
after others who speak in parables, and by quoting,
nearly, Jezus's parable of the sower of seeds, Pynchon
tells us he is writing in parables. As Jesus explains
to the disciples, "there is nothing hid, except to
made manifest; nor is anything secret, except to come
to light" (Mark 4.22). So by paraphrasing the parable
of the seed-sower, Pynchon is also alerting us to
secrets revealed, and by quoting, "I'm called little
Buttercup," he is alerting us that "things are seldom
what they seem."

What is essentially Pynchonian about this device?
First there is the diversionary feint, the apparently
casual allusions to Pinafore, Sherman, Bradford,
Burrows, that may satisfy the reader already set up to
"Spot This Quote." Then there is the somewhat altered
quotation from another source, usually less
recognizable, most often incomplete or pointing to yet
another nearby extra-textual passage. If readers spot
the quoted fragment, it will hang in mental space
(like his son's chord sequences the elder Mozart felt
compelled to rise from his bed to resolve), familiar
but perplexing, until they can associate the fragment
with its unquoted closing or related material. In
other words, by quoting Mark 4.11, Pynchon leads us to
Mark 4.22; by quoting Buttercup's Act I aria, he leads
us to her Act II arias. [...]

...more to come....


-Doug






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