VLVL Mucho and "The Natch"

joeallonby vze422fs at verizon.net
Wed Apr 21 18:35:12 CDT 2004


on 4/21/04 6:13 PM, jbor at jbor at bigpond.com wrote:

> Mucho meets up with Zoyd in "real time", referring to the day that he and
> the baby dropped by after the drug bust, sometime in 1970-1. In yet another
> reinvention of himself, Mucho is a born-again anti-drug crusader: "The
> Natch" (311) he preaches about is a natural high. (He preaches about it to
> the point of being "a source of rectal discomfort on the subject"; i.e. he's
> a pain in the ass and this is yet another example in _Vineland_ of Pynchon
> playing around with register, tone and lexis, recasting a slang expression
> in deliberately excessive formal language, trying for humour -- and failing
> miserably -- but that's a separate issue.)

"source of rectal discomfort " for "pain in the ass" sounds a lot like
military humor. Service people will often use slang that is deliberately
excessively formal in parody of "report speak". "Sir, the defecation has
negatively impacted the oscillating rotary climate control unit." If you
hang out in a neo-celtic libations dispersal center with a bunch of
ex-marines and cops, it sounds perfectly natural.

Peace,
Joe




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