AtD excerpt - "got-damn pinkinroller"

[Paul Mackin]

On Aug 6, 2006, at 11:01 AM, Paul Nightingale wrote:

> Doug and Slim Pickens:
>
> Yes, the sound of it all is important. The narrative voice aligns  
> the text
> with Willis and Jimmy's 'common speak', rendered phonetically, is  
> offered as
> an alternative narration at the end of the scene-setting paragraph  
> onwards.
> Probably the first thing I noticed when reading the extract was the  
> way
> Jimmy's exclamation of pain ("Oh, pshaw!") had been censored ("or  
> words to
> that effect"). Jimmy-speak is offered as a textual intrusion, just  
> as Willis
> is seen by the gang as a territorial intruder. Throughout, Willis  
> doesn't
> have much to say for himself, so there is conflict between literary  
> and oral
> cultures, just as there is (or will be, one speculates) conflict  
> between
> 'proper doctoring' and osteopathy (and the joke is that Willis  
> introduces
> himself, not as a doctor, which would be understood, and might even  
> confer
> authority/respect, but as an osteopath, which would, if understood,  
> likely
> provoke hostility/ridicule).
>
> Paul and pinkinroller:
>
> We can argue on and on about what it means, of course. In and of  
> itself, out
> of context, your version is plausible, probably more so than mine  
> (too much
> work there, perhaps); but I still think the word refers, not to an  
> object in
> the hand, but to Willis himself. 'This is none of your business'  
> makes more
> sense than 'This is none of object X's business'. I can't find  
> anything
> remotely like it in the OED, and we have each based our guesswork on
> 'pinking' + 'roller'. Pynchon's joke at our expense, then, if it's  
> a word he
> has made up (underscoring the point above re oral cultures, that  
> words don't
> really 'exist' until sanctioned by the authority of something like  
> the OED).

Yes, I take your point.  But I allowed  myself to read the word as a  
metonym--an inanimate object standing for
the person it's identified with.

Like "what right does that cap gun (in other words Willis) have in  
the matter?"

Or conversely, "this  six gun says you better hand over the money."

Yes, I think it may well be a made up word whatever it means.
>
>
>