GR translation: steel-blotched swan’s mouth

[Paul Mackin]

On 11/25/2011 10:38 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
> Back to Pynchon Day, (for not against)....
> I'm gonna try this so-interesting (aren't they all?) phrase Mike 
> brings us.
> Simple direct answer: "steel-blotched' means ...well, blotched with 
> steel. What and why blotched? Why---cause steel is
> predominantly (always)  a trope of bad shit in GR....steel and 
> glass--the Crystal Palace in collapse...the rails..all the
> industrial creations that mangled so many lives in the making of 
> ......(yes, standards of living rose for those who survived
> and/or came after...NOT Pynchon's theme...or, perhaps, maybe the full 
> collapse is still happening)
> Now to what? "swan's mouth".......exploring such a phrase as this is 
> where so much of Pynchon can be such an immediate
> education....and so show his genius.............
> Google it and google book explore it and you will see it can be slang 
> for a mouth organ; can mean something like 'from the horse's mouth'
> but about art or cultural stuff...expanding from the presence of swan 
> sculptures in fountains at theaters and such---seems there may be
> such at Stratford, England, from one very recent notice "from the 
> swans mouth"...
> But mostly it seems to be a description of small, slit-like openings 
> in things [see 'mouth organ]...and here I go.......wild scholarly
> insight or 90% bullshit...........
> I think this swan's mouth image is of an English gas meter, frozen on 
> the prvious page, now with "steam...["in tight brocade"--sheer 
> Shakespearean genius since one of the root meanings of brocade is 
> "small nail"! although now it 'means" what you know it means...but way 
> back the pattern was created by tight lines of small nails....] 
> starting to issue
> from it"............
> what fun it was to look up references to English gas meters, pre-war, 
> which were often above kitchen sinks.....had places
> to insert coins....[steel-blotched?] .....were long more old-fashioned 
> than US gas meters, which came w/ less steel somehow sez a gas 
> indusrty journal....
> (fewer coin deposit meters, I'd say, more 'meter readers'?)
> Let's translate ALL of Pynchon, what say?
I thought the steam was coming from the mouth of the tea kettle, the 
steel of which, not being stainless like the Chrysler Building  but 
carbon, tended to stain or blotch.

But who can really translate Pynchon. It's always just a guess.

P



The steel
>
> *From:* Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> *To:* Pynchon Mailing List <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> *Sent:* Thursday, November 24, 2011 12:59 PM
> *Subject:* GR translation: steel-blotched swan’s mouth
>
> P175.9-12  “You don’t see them,” steam in tight brocade starting to
> issue from the steel-blotched swan’s mouth, “the blacks and Jews, in
> their darkness. You can’t. You don’t hear their silence. You became so
> used to talking, and to light.”
>
> What is "steel-blotched"?
>
>


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