V---2nd, Chap 13, still.....on Schlemielness.

[Mark Kohut]

I'm going to say that I think one major problem with 
Chap 13 and perhaps with more than Chap 13 is 
this self-aware schlemiel stuff.......

I don't believe it. Of course, even a schlemiel can be 
selfish and irresponsible but maybe that is why we
get the 'confusion' of Benny's good deeds and acceptance
of responsibility yet his self-condemnation (as well as Rachel's)

Pynchon loaded the schlemiel concept onto a decent chapter 
about a young man confused about sex and love
and fearful of commitment----very universal and therefore
in much fiction. 

I'm going to throw out another unproveable suggestion: 
Pynchon made Benny Jewish not only to show him as
some kind of outsider but.........drum roll, gather ye 
banishing sticks, as an attempt to show on paper that
his pervasive Henry Adams influence for V. did NOT extend
to Henry's anti-Semitism. (Henry was)....

Maybe I'm stuck in MY projected stereotypes, having inhaled
 out of love and hopeful empathy so many Jewish-American writers
in my self-education.  

And, it is (too) easy to say non-Jewish Thomas
doesn't do schliemiel right when i know he isn't Jewish.......
 
But I'm saying it anyway. 



----- Original Message ----
From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sat, January 8, 2011 4:54:26 PM
Subject: Re: V---2nd, Chap 13, still.....on Schlemielness.

Complex figure, but in early P Benny is a symbol of work and religion.
His shooting the gator is the key. It's the moment of crisis, he must
act, do the job right, prove that a Jew works, a Jew bleeds, a Jew is
a Man, an American Man even, but some mysteries, some spiritual gift,
a revelation of parodic invesrions flips his toast.

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, they
used the Schlemiel as the model of 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”




On Sat, Jan 8, 2011 at 5:39 PM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Something else has been nagging me in reading and rereading V. that I finally
> self-articulated---"are you talking to me, ME?"---
>
> Schlemiel. Benny's self-understanding (and use) of.....
> To me, when heard and in my patchwork reading, I always thought Schlemiel
> meant bungler, hopeless incompetent....kinda a loveable loser....
>
> Which it does.........
> Never had I ever heard or read it as associated with the kind of selfishness 
>and
> inability to love or commit
> that Benny sez of himself...after Rachel's evisceration of his inability to
> love.....
>
> Any others have Schlemiel associations to explain why?
>
> From wikipedia:
> In the story, Schlemiel sells his shadow to the Devil for a bottomless wallet,
> only to find that a man without a shadow is shunned by human society. The 
woman
> he loves rejects him, and he spends the rest of his life wandering the world 
in
> scientific exploration.
>
> The Yiddish word Schlemiel—and its Hebrew cognate Shlumi'el—mean a hopelessly
> incompetent person, a bungler. Consequently, the name is a synonym of one who
> makes a desperate or silly bargain.
>
>
>
>