Unscrewing the navel allusion

[Mark Kohut]

Yes, others remember this joke from way back too....I just wondered speculatively whether Pynchon used it because he
heard it from Candida, first or repeated. Surprised me to read her use of it.

From: Henry M <scuffling at gmail.com>
To: Pynchon Liste <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Sunday, May 12, 2013 7:22 AM
Subject: Re: Unscrewing the navel allusion



When I was a young boy, my father told me the story of a young man who, upon discovering that his navel had a slot like a screwhead does, took a screwdriver to it and found that it unscrewed just like a screw does.  He kept at it until his ass fell off.  There are variations.


Yours truly,
٩(●̮̮̃•̃)۶
Henry Musikar, CISSP
http://astore.amazon.com/tdcoccamsaxe-20


On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 11:53 AM, Jeff Sunbury <jsunbury at gmail.com> wrote:

I love that story. The mental image conjures a cartoon by Don Martin (w/ MAD magazine 1956-1988) in which a man pulls an annoying hair from his shoulder with the sound effect "POINK" and his arm drops off. 
>
>
>inre the publication of V. - I re-read V. in March this year and came across a 2009 grad student thesis: (RE)VISIONS OF GENOCIDE:NARRATIVES OF GENOCIDE IN THOMAS PYNCHON’S V. AND GRAVITY’S RAINBOW that refers to an April 1962 typescript draft of V. in letters between Pynchon and his Lippincott editor, Corlies 'Corky' Smith, also, the ref. 'Smith, Shawn. Pynchon and History: Metahistorical Rhetoric and Postmodern Narrative Form in the Novels of Thomas Pynchon. New York: Routledge, 2005. I'm new to this P-list so this may be old news.
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>On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 9:45 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>It is 1958. "Candida was delighted by [Robert] Gottleib's [S & S editor] enthusiasm for the Catch--18 manuscript.[[only 75 pages]. Finally,
>>someone got it! "Ii thought my navel would unscrew and my ass would fall off, " she often said to describe her happiness
>>when negotiations went well with an editor."   She had also received a positive response from Tom Ginsberg at Viking. 
>>
>>S & S, we know, did publish Catch-22 and Ginsberg, a decade later, Gravity's Rainbow. 
>>
>>I think it is clear from the stuff about Candida from this bio that Pynchon woudda probably read Catch-18 while he was writing 
>>V. as, at least I hinted at,,\ I say proudly full of myself, when I think I found some echoes of Heller in the early parts of V....
>>Candida sent it, gave it, to about everybody. 
>>
>>Catch--22 was not published until October 1961,  approximately 6--9 months before V. would have been set to be published by 
>>Lippincott in early 1963. (We know part of V. was published in 1961, but I do not know when V., finished, was offered to
>>publishers, if it was...(that is, unless CD had made a deal early with Lippincott based on a major part of it.)
>>
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