Fwd: VL p 341 F1 2

[Fiona Shnapple]

Sometimes P is so slick he loses everyone. So, he has characters say
things that we have a great deal of difficulty understanding. Here, it
is real tough to get at what Hector is talking about not because he
mixes in a slang or dialect of Spanish. As has been established, it's
not Spanish or any dialect of Spanish or English that causes confusion
here. It is a type of malapropism that P is fond of and other factors
that confuse us.

Turn back to 336 and the Tube Song.

Hector is crazy. Out of his mind.

Hector  is an addicted tuber.

His natural disposition is a factor too. His normal state, ironically,
is misdiagnosed.

So on. All these characterizations are important.

Now to 337

There we have Hector with his Agreement.

And we learn that Hector is an innocent in show-biz matters. He is on
the wrong side of the box office. He misses millions of cues, terms,
references, etc.....so that he is not a Hollywood insider but an
outside, a viewer, not a producer, but a consumer.

How's that for Late Late Late Show Capitalism?

So Hector (through a malapropism of sorts), is alluding to curtains.
But all that Tube consumption doesn't help him get the inside meaning
of the theater connotations of the word curtains. So he talks a kind
of nonsense here. Of course, P expects us to know what Hector thinks
this means in this context. And that's too slick. Or not.

Sometimes I feel like Pynchon is pulling the Bates (1960) curtain only
to expose the Wizard of Puns (1939), to allude to Hitchcock films, so
pulling is now Tearing the Curtain (1966) and it's curtains for You,
dear reader, as Edward G. Robinson's famous lines are given to a
rabbit in a cartoon.



On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 4:45 AM, Max Nemtsov <max.nemtsov at gmail.com> wrote:
> thanks for taking care of the issue
> no, in the scene Hector speaks with two producers who are apparently jewish
> ok, will have to think some more, but drapes so far seems the only plausible
> theory
> Mx
>
>
> On 19.10.2013 5:04, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
>
> I was sort of assuming that it was a feminine diminutive form of the word
> "corta" - short. Thus, "little shorties," i.e. short hairs. But I asked a
> couple of Mexican friends and they'd never heard the phrase. Doesn't seem to
> be on any list of Chicano slang that I could find. I can't find my copy of
> VL, so I don't know the context. The only other idea I can come up with was
> that "curtain" could also mean "shade." Was Hector talking to a couple of
> black guys? Was he using the Spanish translation of a derogatory word for
> black people? I doubt that's it. Your interpretation would make a lot of
> sense, if only cortinas were pants. Drat!
>
> LK
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Bailey
> Sent: Oct 18, 2013 8:48 PM
> To: P-list
> Subject: Re: Fwd: VL p 341 F1 2
>
> Actually none of the results from the link corroborates me, but doesn't the
> context?
>
>>
>> The producer is on his knees supplicating, holding onto Hector's pants
>>
>> http://www.google.com/m?hl=en&gl=us&source=android-browser-type&q=cortinas+spanish+slang+for+pants
>
> - Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=nchon-l
>
>
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l