Gold, Man, Sax and Violins CH 6 V-2

[Robin Landseadel]

On Sep 9, 2010, at 2:59 PM, Mark Kohut wrote:

> Okay Robin (and Dave by proxy),

No need to count me in with his lot. For the record, I can see  
connections to the Romantic movement/tradition as espoused by Hawthorn  
and Melville. What one might call the American Romantic movement if so  
inclined. On the other hand, the element of overt joke making / gag  
writing skews more towards Satire than Romance.

> I'll fold on this one, as the Fla Koran-burner has........

Yaaaay!

> with some position-saving qualification, maybe...
>
> Robin chose a terrif example with Gulliver's Travel's,

I read the unexpurgated Gulliver's Travel's when I was eight, along  
with Candide and Taming of the Shrew. I moved on down from there to  
Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley, all the time memorizing lines from  
Rocky & Bullwinkle episodes and [later]  Firesign Theater records.

What can I say? I come from a family of sthicky tumlers.

> although Heather below
> would not convince me. Anyone can say such these days, but see below
>
> I have felt Pynchon is illuminated by being read like Gulliver's
> Travels.........................

I'd say that's the tradition that Mason & Dixon comes out of.

> my current findable edition of Gulliver sez about what Robin wants  
> to analogize
> with by a scholar summing up a lot of considered reading. Yes, "all  
> facts"
> lemuel encounters are 'interpretative' and part of Swift's genius--- 
> as it is
> TRP's...............I came down too heavily on a stodgy  
> reading.....always
> richer, always shimmering w meaning is TRP.....

If you're good with words this sort of thing is bound to happen. But  
make no doubt about it, Pynchon is actively working the room, trying  
to wring a laugh out of almost anything that crosses his path.

	"No ketchup, no ketchup," the hirsute bluejacket searching
	agitatedly among the cruets and salvers, "seems to be no ...
	what th' fuck kind of a place is this, Rog," yelling down slantwise
	across seven enemy faces, "hey, buddih you find any ketchup
	down there?"

	Ketchup's a code word, okay-

	"Odd," replies Roger, who clearly has seen exacdy the same
	thing down at the pit, "I was just about to ask you the same
	question!"

	They are grinning at each other like fools. Their auras, for the 	
	record, are green. No shit. Not since winter of '42, in convoy in a
	North Adantic gale, with accidental tons of loose 5-inch ammo
	rolling all over the ship, the German wolf pack invisibly
	knocking off sister ships right and left, at Batde Stations inside
	mount 51 listening to Pappy Hod tell disaster jokes, really funny
	ones, the whole gun crew clutching their stomachs hysterically,
	gasping for air-not since then has Seaman Bodine felt so high
	in the good chances of death.

	"Some layout, huh?" he calls. "Pretty good food!" Conversation
	has fallen nearly silent. Politely curious faces are turning.
	Flames leap in the pit. They are not "sensitive flames," but if
	they were they might be able now to detect the presence of
	Brigadier Pudding. He is now a member of the Counterforce,
	courtesy of Carroll Eventyr. Courtesy is right. Seances with
	Pudding are at least as trying as the old Weekly Briefings back
	at "The White Visitation." Pudding has even more of a mouth on
	him than he did alive. The sitters have begun to whine:

	"Aren't we ever to be rid of him?" But it is through Pudding's
	devotion to culinary pranksterism that the repulsive stratagem
	that follows was devised.

	"Oh, 1 don't know," Roger elaborately casual, "I can't seem to
	find any mot soup on the menu .... "

	GR, P729

> Where I came from is the rock-bottom stuff like Lemuel 'coming home'  
> and still
> feeling ten feet tall, (like Alice) bends lower than his wife's face  
> cause he is
> sure he is so much taller...........For me,rock-bottom reality is  
> that.......we
> have to understand that she is normal in order to feel the  
> unreliable reactions
> of lemuel.............

Lemuel Gulliver has been far too long at sea, like a couple two three  
Pynchon characters I could mention.

> In the Menippean Satire book about Pynchon, Tololyan is quoted as  
> saying of
> GR......an historical phantasmagoria wrapped around fragments of  
> reality........

Funny, I always though of Pynchon as more of a song & dance man.

> I guess I want to believe in those fragments of reality in V.  
> too.....(like
> pincher martin clinging to his rock).....Benny hunted alligators BUT  
> the rest is
> interpretive..elaboration,.full of fiction even within this real
> fantasy............

I think that satire as practiced by Pynchon and his ilk -- I'd include  
Termite Terrace and Jay Ward among his ilk -- has a very strong  
component of Parody, thus rendering the level of verisimilitude of his  
depicted situations beholden to reality only insofar as it mocks  
reality.

> part of Pynchon's insights into our time......

Coming soon to an e-reader near you!