You never did the Kenosha Kid?

jbor at bigpond.com jbor at bigpond.com
Sun Aug 28 17:23:15 CDT 2005


On 29/08/2005 David Meury wrote:

> Remember that prior to the Kenosha Kid mention, an
> Orson Welles interpretation had already been primed
> (intentionally or not) by the giant adnoid section
> with its resemblance to the _War of the Worlds_
> broadcast.
>
> I'm not arguing for the Welles = Kenosha Kid
> interpretation, or against it.  I think it's
> interesting that we are trying to find a context for
> "Kenosha Kid" that will somehow determine its meaning
> -- the very thing that is being played with in the GR
> section and the central organizing device in _Citizen
> Kane_.

Mm. Well, *something* is happening there (in terms of plot) for 
Slothrop to be at St Veronica's, and he's doing *something* there at 
the beginning of the scene, just before he gets injected on p. 61. 
That's the starting point I guess. Mystery and conjecture surrounded 
the identity of the 'Kenosha Kid' -- who or what it stood for or 
related to (just like "Rosebud") -- until the rediscovery of the story 
by Forbes Parkhill. So that's the new data to figure into the mix. I 
agree that "meaning" and significance are being played with in the 
riffs on the phrase or sentence in question here, but I'm arguing that 
it's Slothrop who's doing it. Deliberately. And for a reason.

"These changes on the text 'You never did the Kenosha Kid' are 
occupying Slothrop's awareness as the doctor leans in ... " (61)

Interesting choice of words, there, "occupying Slothrop's awareness".

Your mention of the Giant Adenoid brings up Pirate Prentice, who, with 
his telepathic "talent" being used by Allied military intelligence, is 
another character who definitely would have known something about the 
death camps. I think that it's in this way that we can read those 
echoes of Jewish prisoners being transported to a Nazi death camp in 
Pirate's dream of "The Evacuation" with which Pynchon opens the novel. 
Again, Pirate has tried to deny the horrors of what he has seen in his 
psychic flights, but it seeps into his dreams the way that the "Oven 
Game" has seeped into Katje's and Blicero's psyches and lives.

Of course, Slothrop can refer to his tongue as a "hopeless holocaust" 
after eating a particularly unpleasant lolly at Mrs Quoad's (118) 
without any irony or conscience -- we as readers can't help but prick 
up our ears at the absolute inappropriateness of the description in the 
context, but Slothrop uses the term innocently because he has 
absolutely no idea whatsoever about the Nazi death camps.

best





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