GR translation: Seaman Bodine

[Charles Albert]

It represents the rank at which Pynchon probably spent the bulk of his time
in the US Navy. Can't recall how long Bodine had been in the service, but I
assume it was enough to have risen to a higher grade, but for "deficiencies
in his character".

My father was a Marine, rising, on occasion to the heights of PFC, only to
be busted back down to Private - and yet, because he was able to perform
trigonometric calculations in his head (for the purpose of guiding night
time interception in the Pacific), he was rated "Inexpendable".



love,
cfa

On Sun, Jul 14, 2013 at 6:55 AM, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com
> wrote:

> 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.
> >>
> >
>
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