GR translation: For all Slothrop knows he's an agronomist

[Monte Davis]

>From Norman Douglas' _South Wind_ (1917), about gossipy expatriates on a
Capri- or Corfu-like resort island:

"It was not true to say of Mr. Eames that he lived on Nepenthe because he
was wanted by the London police for something that happened in Richmond
Park, that his real name was not Eames at all but Daniels-the notorious
Hodgson Daniels, you know, who was mixed up in the Lotus Club scandal, that
he was the local representative of an international gang of white-slave
traffickers who had affiliated offices in every part of the world, that he
was not a man at all but an old boarding-house keeper who had very good
reasons for assuming the male disguise, that he was a morphinomaniac, a
disfrocked Baptist minister, a pawnbroker out of work, a fire-worshipper, a
Transylvanian, a bank clerk who had had a fall, a decayed jockey who
disgraced himself at a subsequent period in connection with some East-End
mission for reforming the boys of Bermondsey and then, after pawning his
mother's jewelry, writing anonymous threatening letters to society ladies
about their husbands and vice-versa, trying to blackmail three Cabinet
Ministers and tricking poor servant-girls out of their hard-earned wages by
the sale of sham Bibles, was luckily run to earth in Piccadilly Circus,
after an exciting chase, with a forty-pound salmon under his arm which he
had been seen to lift from the window of a Bond Street fishmonger.

"All these things, and a good many more, had been said. Eames knew it. Kind
friends had seen to that." 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Paul Mackin
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2012 12:00 PM
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: GR translation: For all Slothrop knows he's an agronomist

On 7/5/2012 11:19 AM, Monte Davis wrote:
> Correct: "For all X knows,  the world may be flat or tubular or pyramidal"
> means "X has no information that would help him choose among these 
> possibilities."


It may be too obvious to note (but I'll do it anyway) that, apart from the
strangeness of the stopwatch and notetaking, Slothrop himself--as far as we
are told--doesn't have a thought in the world about any of it?  The
paragraph is 90 percent about what S would NOT be able to fathom about Sir
Stephen, even if he were to try.

P
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On 
> Behalf Of Mike Jing
> Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2012 9:28 AM
> To: Pynchon Mailing List
> Subject: GR translation: For all Slothrop knows he's an agronomist
>
> P214.8-21  During the lessons he will often look over and catch Sir 
> Stephen Dodson-Truck consulting a stopwatch and taking notes. Jeepers.
> He wonders what that's all about. Never occurs to him it might have to 
> do with these mysterious erections. The man's personality was chosen- 
> or designed-to sidetrack suspicions before they have a chance to gather
speed.
> Winter sunlight hitting half his face like a migraine, trouser cuffs 
> out of press, wet and sandy because he's up every morning at six to 
> walk along the strand, Sir Stephen makes perfectly accessible his 
> disguise, if not his function in the conspiracy. For all Slothrop 
> knows he's an agronomist, a brain surgeon, a concert oboist-in that 
> London you saw all levels of command seething with these 
> multidimensional geniuses. But as with Katje, there hangs about 
> Dodson-Truck's well-informed zeal an unmistakable aura of the employee and
loser. . . .
>
> The part: "For all Slothrop knows he's an agronomist, a brain surgeon, 
> a concert oboist", this is just speculation, Slothrop does not know it 
> as a fact, is that correct?
>
> I am fairly certain the published translation is wrong again, but I 
> just want to be absolutely sure.
>
>