MMV - Notes on names

[vze422fs at verizon.net]

on 3/23/03 8:17 PM, John Bailey at johnbonbailey at hotmail.com wrote:


> “Irving Loon” – Perhaps the lamest name Pynchon has come up with, err, I
> mean, the multivalent resonances of bird, moon and madness add an ambiguity
> to this figure. Insane, a force of nature or simply an aspect of it? Gazing
> down upon the party or rising up from within? Still, suggesting a form of
> psychosis and naming a character Irving Loon smacks of sloth.
> 
> 
> 
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Of course, Irving is a native American. The animal name would not be out of
character for a fictional Indian in American literature. Irving is a name
identified by Americans as Jewish. Pynchon is still playing with things
here. Irving is about to manifest some kind of violent paranoid
schizophrenic episode. Loon has a connotation in colloquial English that
links it lunatic, lunacy, Loony-tunes, etc.

Joe