wallace on pynchon/: the brockengespenst

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

 + interviewed by david wiley for 'the minnesota daily' on 2/27/97, dfw uttered 
 among other things ("i'm not as big a pynchon fan as some other people are") 
 also the following: 

 "[q.] are the names mondragon and bodine (from infinite jest) allusions to  
 pynchon's kurt mondaugen and pig bodine?

 well, jethro bodine is from the beverly hillbillies. that's not a pig bodine  
 thing. but there were a few --- that thing in infinite jest where two  
 representatives (steeply and marathe) of two countries are on a cliff-side and 
 are making enormous shadows and playing with it --- and there's even the use of 
 the word brockengespenst, which comes out of slothrop and geli tripping (from  
 gravity's rainbow) fucking on the brockengespenst --- that's an outright  
 allusion. and i think there are a couple --- that's not supposed to be any kind 
 of inter-textual allusion. i just thought it was really cool. and i've been to 
 tucson, and you can actually do that with the shadows, and i thought it was 
 neat. but i'm not trying to lace the book with allusions to other texts. 
 there's nothing wrong with it. i'm just not particularly interested in it."

 the passage in 'infinite jest' (btw, 'girl with curious hair' and 'brief 
 interviews with hideous men' are very hot, too) goes like this:

 "marathe sat alone and blanket-lapped in his customized FAUTEUIL DE ROLLENT on 
 a kind of outcropping or shelf about halfway up, waiting, amusing himself with 
 his shadow. as the lowering light from behind came at an angle more and more 
 acute, goethe's well known 'BRÖCKENGESPENST' [sic] phenomenon (footnote 38: 
 ghostly light- and monster-shadow phenomenon particular to certain mountains; 
 e.g. q.v. part I of goethe's FAUST, the walpurgisnacht six-toed danceathon on 
 the harz-bröcken [sic], in which there's described a classic 
 'BRÖCKENGESPENSTPHÄNOM' [sic] (GESPENST means specter or wraith)) enlarged and 
 distended his seated shadow far out overland, so that the spokes of his chair's 
 rear wheels cast over two whole countries below asterisk-shadows, whose fine 
 black radial lines he could cause to move by playing slightly with the wheels' 
 rubber rims; and his head's shadow brought to much of the suburb west tucson a 
 premature dusk."  (pp. 88/994, abacus edition)

 & here come the samples from the holy rainbow rap:

                 "' ... have you been up to the brocken yet?'" (p. 293) 

 " ... the movies had not prepared him for this teutonic version here. your 
 kraut witch, for example, has six toes on each foot and no hair at all on her 
 cunt. that is how the witches look, anyhow, in the stairway murals inside the 
 one-time nazi transmitter tower up on the brocken here, and government murals 
 are hardly places to go looking for irresponsible fantasy, right? but geli 
 thinks the hairless cunt derives from the women von bayros drew. 'aw, you just 
 don't wanna shave YOURS,' crows slothrop. 'ha! ha! some witch!'

  'i'll show YOU something,' she sez, which is why they are now awake at this  
 ungodly hour, side by side, holding hands, very still as the sun begins to  
 clear the horizon. 'now watch,' geli whispers: 'out there.'

  as the sunlight strikes their backs, coming in nearly flat on, it begins  
 developing on the pearl cloudbank: two gigantic shadows, thrown miles overland, 
 past clausthal-zelterfeld [sic], past seesen and goslar, across where the river 
 leine would be, and reaching toward weser.... 'by golly,' slothrop a little bit 
 nervous, 'it's the specter.' you got it up around greylock in the berkshires 
 too. around these parts it is known as the brockengespenst.

  god-shadows. slothrop raises an arm. his fingers are cities, his biceps is a  
 province --- of course he raises an arm. isn't it expected of him? the  
 arm-shadow trails rainbows behind as it moves reaching eastward for a grab at  
 göttingen [hello mr. hilbert! when will the new pynchon-novel be published?  
 kfl]. not ordinary shadows, either --- THREE-DIMENSIONAL ones, cast out on the 
 german dawn, yes and titans HAD to live in these mountains, or under them....  
 impossibly out of scale. never to be carried by a river. never to look to a  
 horizon and think that it might go on forever. no trees to climb, no long  
 journeys to take ... only their deep images are left, haloed shells lying prone 
 above the fogs men move in....

  geli kicks a leg out straight as a dancer, and tilts her head to the side. 
 slothrop raises his middle finger to the west, the headlong finger darkening 
 three miles of cloud per second. geli grabs for slothrop's cock. slothrop leans 
 to bite geli's tit. they are enormous, dancing the floor of the whole visible 
 sky. he reaches underneath her dress. she twines a leg around one of his. the 
 spectra wash red to indigo, tidal, immense, at all their edges. under the 
 clouds out there it's as still, and lost, as atlantis.

  but the brockengespenstphänomen is confined to dawn's slender interface, and 
 soon the shadows have come shrinking back to their owners." (pp. 330f)        

 the german of wallace & pynchon is not flawless (neither is my stuttering  
 'american english'); zappa, however, he managed to make the german song on  
 'joe's garage' completely fehlerfrei: "fick mich, du miserabler hurensohn ..." 


KFL *