GR words question

[kelber at mindspring.com]

Gland pie?  Maybe a poor person's version of steak-and-kidney pie.  Smokeshriek?  Maybe a factory whistle.  "gentle beings..."?  Possibly some sort of whisperings about bed partners.

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Ya Sam <takoitov at hotmail.com>
>Sent: Feb 22, 2007 9:28 AM
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: GR words question
>
>I've been re-reading this beautiful passage, and ,to my horror, realised 
>that I don't get certain things, namely
>
>Who are these 'gentle beings from the country'? Someting out of folklore?
>
>'...thousands of children who pestled foam up out of soft mortars of mouths, 
>who lost easily a thousand times as many words among the chalky 
>bubbles--bedgoing complaints, timid announcements of love, news of fat or 
>translucent, fuzzy or gentle beings from the country under the counterpane 
>...'
>
>'gland pie'?
>
>'... the morning mouths growing with the day tobacco and fish-furred, dry 
>with fear, foul with idleness, flooded at thoughts of impossible meals, 
>settling instead for the week's offal in gland pies, ...'
>
>
>'smokeshriek linings'?
>
>
>'... heaps of dimly fragrant metal, phantoms of peppermint in the winter 
>shacks, each tube
>wrinkled or embossed by the unconscious hands of London, written over in 
>interference-patterns, hand against hand, waiting now--it is true return--to 
>be melted for solder, for plate, alloyed for castings, bearings, gasketry, 
>hidden smokeshriek linings the children of that other domestic
>incarnation will never see. '
>
>(p. 130, Peguin ed.)
>
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