GR translation: Seaman Bodine

[alice wellintown]

His first name is Pig. Though Pig is surely not his real first name,
the name given him at birth, it is what everyone call him. We can
assume that someone in the stories knows his given name, but I don't
think it is ever used. Does Pynchon have a birth name for Pig? Maybe
not. He is a sailor, often AWOL, or recently seperated from the
service, so he is also called Seamen Bodine or Seamen Pig Bodine. The
name seems typical of Pynchon, drop the "a" from Seamen and you get
(circa 1950)every teenage boy's favorite pun, Semen, or scum. Bodine,
in the teenage slang of the same decade, translates as bad or
dangerous situation, a bodine is an event that portands no good.

Seamen Pig Bodine arrives in P's juvenile Lowlands, is given a part in
the Whole Sick Crew in V., where his actions live up to his names. P
keeps him around, in later works, and discusses him in SL Intro.

Pynchon's comic characters are quite important, but names are not that
significant. Many a reader, fixated by names and the act of naming
finds herself chasing rabbits in another book.

On 7/14/13, jochen stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:
> Are you sure? I mean, you wouldn't translate that in any other language as
> well, as you wouldn't translate Colonel, for example.
>
>
> 2013/7/14 Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
>
>> The published translation treated "Seaman" as Bodine's first name.  That
>> can't be right, can it?  I thought I'd ask just to be absolutely sure,
>> since I'm often wrong.
>>
>