Thomas Pynchon's schlmiels

[alice wellintown]

Since Jewry’s attitudes towards its own frailty were complex
and contradictory, the Schlemiel was sometimes berated for
his foolish weakness, and elsewhere exalted for his hard
inner strength. For the reformers who sought ways for
strengthening and improving Jewish life and laws, the
Schlemiel embodied those negative qualities of weakness that
had to be ridiculed to be overcome. Conversely, to the
degree that Jews looked upon their disabilities as external
afflictions, sustained through no fault of their own, the
used the Schlemiel as the model pf endurance, his innocence
a shield against corruption, his absolute defenselessness
the only gaurenteed defense against the brutalizing
potential of might.
     Ruth Wisse    “The Schlemiel as Modern Hero”

Switch the dialects, alter a few details, and most black
jokes can become Jewish Jokes or Irish Jokes with a minimum
of loss…When a Schlimazel’s bread-and butter accidentally
falls on the floor it always lands butter side down; with a
Schlemiel it’s much the same-except that he butters his
bread on both sides first.

    Sanford Pinsker    “The Schlemiel as Metaphor, Studies
in Yiddish and Jewish American Fiction”

What’s the difference between a Schmuck and a Puts?

A Schmuck gets out of the shower to pee.

Benny Profane is a parody of the picaro.   Slothrop's adventure may be
seen as combining the Benny Profane narrative in V.--parody of
picaresque and the narrative of Herbert Stencil in V.---a parody of
Romance quest.

In any event, P’s novels are part of the American strain of this
tradition: loking for a holy grail, conspiracy, the next job, bed,
girl, drink  . . .home, brain, heart, courage, the wizard,  the
witch's broom, then the ruby slippers, then  .... a J O B for Job.

  Harlem (although P invents a strange sort of Spanish Harlem in V.,
Fina & the Kids on the Subway, the homosexual gangs and the Holy Mary
Oedipus Jailbait ... ) is a little too close to Long Island for P to
deal with (Watts, once he's on the road, is a subject he can
un-Baedecker:  keep his peeling sun burned tourists mask on while
pretending to warn the world about what Bigger Thomas is gonna do if
we White folk don't start paying attention to the late late late show)
so P decides to put Benny (allusion to On the Road . …Benny and the
Jets—Drugs &  hallucinations ...Benny is also his Jewish name
Job/schlemiel/schlimazel,  Profane his Italian Catholic name) At the
end of ch-3 of On  The Road find   "I wanted to go West and here I've
been all day and into the night going up and down, north and south,
like something that can't get started.”   Human Yo-Yo!

 The bop and jazz of OtR is there in V. too. OtR takes the language
and the images of religion and makes new prophets and saints of those
who can be cool and talk (the WORD of cool).