VLVL 4: War, politics and love

[Don Corathers]

We're Pynchonite Nabokovians over here, Maria, and you're certainly welcome
to join us. Most of us who are reading Pale Fire are also reading Vineland
at the same time.

As for Terrence: how do you say "shucking" in Spanish?

Don


----- Original Message -----
From: "snarf" <snarf at montevideo.com.uy>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, September 01, 2003 11:58 PM
Subject: Re: VLVL 4: War, politics and love


> snarf wrote:
> >
> > Yeah, I assume P. knows spanish pretty well and the spanish translation
of
> > bush vet. as "veterano de la jungla" kind of imply a triple meaning:
> > somebody used to live in the woods, vietnam veteran and somebody used to
> > survive in the margins of society, although the veterinarian thing is
> missed
> > in the translation, as Terrance pointed out. I think we can fairly take
> that
> > RC may be all these.
>
>
> Terrance wrote:
> >It's difficult for me to imagine that native speakers of Spanish will
> >make sense of this phrase.  How would they? I don't have a copy of the
> >Spanish translation of Vineland. Is that really how the translators
> >dealt with this phrase? Veteranos de la jungla sounds kinda weird to me.
> >I'm thinking tour guide or something. And, hasn't "Bush", the Australian
> >Bush, has made it's way into Spanish just as it has made its way into
> >American English?
>
> If you meant that you don't understand how a spanish native speaker can
> understand "veterano de la jungla" in the triple meaning I'm pointing out,
> I'd say that "veterano de la jungla" is usually used metaphorically for
> "survivor". Somebody living in a farm, earning his living out of his kid's
> catching crawfish may be called "a jungle veteran", meaning both living in
> the woods and making his living by regretable means, and, for this reason,
> socially marginal. If "veteran" is taken in its military meaning is rather
> clear that "jungle veteran" may mean "vietnam veteran" (and you can fairly
> take this military reading since P. mentions the name changing "since the
> war"). RC may be a "survivor" of the war and still a "survivor" by any
means
> (making his kids work for him and depending on Zoyd to "distribute" the
> crawfish, living almost out of nothing).
> And no, the word "Bush" hasn't made its way into spanish and since George
> Sr. has only meant "dangerous moron" up today. Maybe "veterano de la
jungla"
> is not a literal translation of bush vet, but it is still a good one. And
> you are right that you can call, rather ironically, "veterano de la
jungla"
> a tour guide if the tour is pretty dangerous, maybe an Amazonas tour
guide.
>
> The spanish translation goes this way: "[Zoyd] se dirigía a una pequeña
> granja en la carretera del arroyo, donde tenía un negociete marginal de
> venta de cangrejos de río a medias con un veterano de la jungla y su
> familia"  (Note that the words "negociete marginal" -marginal
> pseudo-business-, reinforces the idea of the socially marginal means of
> living of RC).
>
> And, Terrance, I haven't understood a single word of your comment to Dave.
> Is it some kind of joke? Anyway, he was very kind encouraging me writing
> this posts although they may be full of mistakes and even hard to
> understand. I struggle to make myself clear and I'm sorry if I'm not. You
> can boo me out, whenever you want. If so, I'll start re-reading Pale Fire
> and try to be adopted by the nabokovians.
>
> Best
> Maria
>
>