Airship of Fools

[alice wellintown]

Bay Bee Ah Ma Fool tou Crrr Eye...and it make me wonder why  ....see
the Hipster...and see what has become of the Hipster and the Bad-Ass
in Tom Wolfe's "I Am Charlotte Simmons" (2004).

The Hipster, the Hero, and the Psychic Frontier in "One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest"
Thomas H. Fick
Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature
Vol. 43, No. 1/2 (1989), pp. 19-34


On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 5:29 AM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> In Pynchon, the journey to knowledge, maturation of
> the  protagonist, is part of the Parody of Menippen satire. Following
> Twain, whose most famous narrator, Huck, doesn't learn a thing after
> his adeventures with Jim, and Henry Adams who likewize, learns nothing
> from his Education, Pynchon makes fools questers, of Oedipa Maas, a
> parody of the Greek Tragic Quest for identity, for Man, for Waste. In
> GR, Slothrop, like Dorothy in Oz, is both running from and to Home, is
> both bait and
> baited, the protagonist's obsession with V. or Tristero is
> now a universal obsession with Slothrop and V-2.
> Slothrop's picaresque adventures and romantic obsession with the Rocket can be
> seen as combining Benny (the picaro) and Stencil (the
> quester).
>
> And ....
>
>
>
> 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”
>
> Lears Fool ...sez
>
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 1:41 AM, Michael Bailey
> <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
>>  Bled Welder wrote:
>>>
>>> Any characters in Pynchon's work that can be said to represent the Madman,
>>> the Fool, the Simpleton, Folly?
>>>
>>
>> there's a strong case to be made for both Benny Profane and Slothrop
>> wearing the fool's cap; Denis in IV has a small but juicy "fool" role
>> as well...
>>
>> what is a fool then?  great Foucault quote, goes a long way toward
>> explaining why the BP and Slothrop characters are so satisfying in the
>> type of book they are in...