You never did the Kenosha Kid?

[jbor at bigpond.com]

> "Follow? Red, the Negro shoeshine boy, waits by his dusty leather 
> seat. The Negroes all over wasted Roxbury wait. [...]" (63)

Just like in New Orleans.

On 04/09/2005 Ghetta Life wrote:

> I fully agree that the Kenosha Kid mantra is intensely related to his 
> journey down the toilet.  Shit
> hole is the place to find one's demon alter-ego, and Slothrop's 
> shit-hole is exposed for retribution.  He knowingly offers it up in 
> search for his harp.
>
> The Kenosha Kid mantra seems to me to act as a way to focus on 
> nothing/everything via a small portal, a small set of words to be 
> infinitely explored, and this a portal to deeper understanding.
>
> (back to) Ghetta

Yes. From Slothrop's backstory we know that his parents weren't wealthy 
and had to find ways to be able to afford to send him to Harvard 
(Slothrop's is quite a bit like Pynchon's backstory I'd say), which 
heightens his feeling of imposture there in the Roseland Ballroom I 
guess. I take it that the woman who "turns to look at him from a table" 
is African American, one face amidst those "[b]lack faces, white 
tablecloths, gleaming *very sharp knives* lined up by the saucers" that 
Slothrop has already noticed (62). So, after she has confronted him 
with what he is, he has to head for the toilets to purge himself, to 
vomit (and maybe he vomits in the interrogation too at this point, or 
feels nauseous, which is a symptom of the drug I'd imagine), and, 
"PLOP", his harmonica goes down the toilet (63), which is sort of 
symbolic of what he has just realised about himself.

As a personification of America Slothrop must decide whether or not to 
seek to recover his harp, whether or not to try to reunite himself with 
"his silver chances of song", whether or not to dive into society's 
sewers to empathise with the true African American experience, whether 
or not to attempt to reconcile his whiteness with blackness. And, cf. 
Pynchon's own (excellent) 'A Journey Into the Mind of Watts' (1966).

best

P.S. Yes, my reading of Slothrop's conscious resistance is a 
hypothesis, but it's a workable one in terms of the text. Similarly, 
Paul's hypothesis that it is a conscious recollection of a dream is not 
contradictory with the text either.

>> From: jbor at bigpond.com
>>
>> Don't know that the Native American placenames theory holds as a 
>> total(ising) explanation. The PISCES interrogator begins by reminding 
>> Slothrop of the last session:
>>
>> "You recall that we were talking last time about the Negroes, in 
>> Roxbury. Now we know that it's not all that comfortable for you, but 
>> do try, won't you." (62 -- The interrogator, patronising, could 
>> almost be talking directly to the white American reader there, eh?)
>>
>> And the placenames and dancenames in Slothrop's conscious 
>> pre-injection riffs on the Kenosha Kid story and sentence are a 
>> mixture: Kenosha, Charleston, Philadelphia, Rochester, Joliet, 
>> Charlottesville, Forest Hills, Laredo (61-2 - Same with the 
>> placenames in the hallucinatory narrative that follows the injection, 
>> e.g. Red River Valley, Rancho Peligroso, Newton Upper Falls.)
>>
>> He's brought to a sudden realisation of his condescension and 
>> complicity in the racial inequalities of the society by the 
>> expression on a nearby woman's face, the harmonica in his pocket then 
>> become just "[a] jive accessory" (62-3):
>>
>> "Follow? Red, the Negro shoeshine boy, waits by his dusty leather 
>> seat. The Negroes all over wasted Roxbury wait. [...]" (63)
>