money harvest

Wed May 7 14:12:07 CDT 2014

The novel was first published (and first translated into German, reducing
it by 50%) in 1975. For example, these two paragraphs were gone:

"The funerals of the old-timers who have lusted after power, and who may
even have bedded her for a while, serve a useful purpose in the District of
Columbia. They provide a kind of neutral watering hole where the political
animals who inhabit the Washington jungle can gather to eye each other and
to mark the absence of other old-timers whose strange alarums and mad
excursions once echoed through what’s left of the rain forest that
stretches along the banks of the Potomac. The old-timers, of course, are
those who have lived in Washington for half a dozen years or so.
  The President of the United States was such an old-timer. Although not an
overly intelligent man, he finally had learned how to walk and chew gum at
the same time although there were those who swore he had mastered the trick
only after secret midnight practice. Still, he was smart enough to show up
at Joseph Gawler’s Sons funeral parlor on Wisconsin Avenue where Crawdad
Gilmore’s body lay, if not in state, at least on public exhibition."

And these three, too:

"Sixteen years later it was generally agreed around Glen Jean that »the
Pope boy, he’s a wildun now, ain’t he?« It was consensus reached despite
the twin facts that Jake Pope was valedictorian of his high school
graduating class and that his astonishing good looks had yet to get any
girl into serious trouble, although there had been one anxious moment
earlier in the spring.
   Jake Pope’s mother, Simmie Lee, was by then thirty-two and looked
fifty-two or even more because she had let herself go and her teeth, never
her best feature, had all fallen out, the last one going as she bit into a
piece of angel food cake on her thirtieth birthday.
  »She spent it all on that boy,« was the way the folks around Glen Jean
judged it, especially the bachelors who, to a man, had gone courting the
Widow Pope, not so much in hopes of sharing her bed, but rather the $10,000
in GI insurance that she had received on the death of her husband."

Before I tell you about the allusion I believe to have found another
question. How many of the Pynchon listers have read Goethe's Faust in the
American translation of George Madison Priest, what do you think?

And for your trouble another badly (by 80%)  truncated passage:

In fact it was only two months after he was graduated that Jake Pope was
parked about midnight on the side of a back road, the one that led over to
Mossy, in Corine Mask’s almost brand-new 1956 Chevrolet convertible that
her daddy had given her as a graduation present. Jake Pope was trying to
get into Corine’s pants and he was making good progress when a car without
lights screamed by at close to 115 miles per hour. This was a singular
enough event to make Jake Pope raise his head from his labors.

»Sweet Christ, there goes Mamma!« he said. »Look at her fly!«

»You sure?« Corine said, sitting up and pulling her sweater down over her
bare breasts out of deference to the Widow Pope’s fleeting presence.

»I’m sure. It’s Thursday, isn’t it?«

»Uh-huh.«

»Then that was Mamma and she’s sure got somebody on her tail,« Jake Pope
said.

There was a moon that night, a three-quarter moon, which shed enough light
to lend a glisten to the winding strip of asphalt that was the road that
led over to Mossy. The boy and the girl watched as the Ford disappeared
around a curve.

»No brake lights, you notice?« Jake Pope said. »She had Billy Bolton fix it
so her brake lights wouldn't show.«

»Uh-huh,« Corine said.

Jake Pope caught a pair of approaching headlights in the rearview mirror
and turned. »Well, look at em come,« he said.

Corine turned to look. »That's old J. T. Posey, idn't it?« she said. »I
betcha he’s got old Humor Hoyt with him.«

It was a Plymouth Sedan that swept past the parked convertible, twin red
lights flashing lewdly from behind its grille, hidden there out of sight so
that when not in use nobody, except 92 percent of the adult population of
Fayette County, would recognize the car as the property of the Alcohol,
Tobacco and Tax Division of the United States Internal Revenue Service.

And Corine Mask had been right, for inside the car behind the wheel was old
J. T. Posey with old Humor Hoyt right beside him. They were Federal agents,
moonshine warriors, and old J. T. was twenty-seven while old Humor was
thirty-one.

Jake Pope started the convertible’s engine. »They’re not gonna catch
Mamma,« he said, »but let’s go see where they give up.«

»Weren’t you having fun?« Corine said with a pretty pout.

Jake Pope gave her a grin and her knee a pat, although it was really more
of a feel. »We’ll have some more fun later,« he said. Corine replied with a
dirty giggle.

The Federal agents gave up their chase a mile down the road. They gave up
when they saw the explosion of gasoline and 185-proof corn whiskey light up
the sky nearly three-quarters of a mile away, which was where Simmie Lee
Pope, or the car she was driving, failed to make an S curve at 87 miles per
hour. It was the car probably, because Simmie Lee hat taken that same set
of curves at 90 before. Lots of times.

The two Federal agents were the first to arrive and discover that the
driver had been burned beyond recognition. But they didn’t have to
recognize much to know that it was Simmie Lee Pope, dead at thirty-two.
Humor Hoyt, who was thirty-one, had gone to school with her and he knew it
was Simmie Lee by the way she drove and he tried to say something that
would comfort her son who was now standing there at the edge of the gully,
whitefaced and trembling, but without tears, staring down at the twisted,
smoking wreckage of the 1953 Ford and at the burned thing that had been his
mother.

»I went to school with your mamma, Jake,« Humor Hoyt said awkwardly. »She
sure was a good woman.« When the boy didn’t respond, Humor Hoyt, Federal
agent, tried to think of something else he could say. Something nice. »And
you know what else, Jake?« Jake Pope looked at him then, or at least turned
his head that way. Humor Hoyt blurted it out. »She was the best goddamn
whiskey driver we ever went after.«

Have a good day over there,

Jochen

2014-05-07 19:37 GMT+02:00 Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>:

> Jochen,
>
> When was the novel published?
> Also, with characters named Easter and Pope, did the fine Ross Thomas
> have punning
> allusive ways with his names?
>
> Can find no Mrs. Hix in Google Books that could be an allusion, it
> seems. I probably would have thought
> of one of those smart women who sorta found herself by being involved
> in Washingtons social life....
> There is one in Henry Adam,s DEMOCRACY.  Mrs. Averill Harriman,
> (fourth husband, I think) was famously another (If i remember her
> aright)...
>
> Does Ross have many literary allusions in his novels? (Only have read one).
>
> On Tue, May 6, 2014 at 11:42 AM, jochen stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Last year I translated a novel by Ross Thomas. (It was a happy time.)
> > There's a piece of dialog between two men I'd like to show you:
> >
> >    >>Maybe we both ought to get married.<<
> >     >>Ah.<<
> >     >>You sound like that fucking psychiatrist. What does ah mean?<<
> >     >>I was thinking of the fair Mrs. Hix. With an x. She seems to be
> > lingering on in Washington.<<
> >     >>I thought you were keeping her here.<<
> >     Easter shook his head and sat down in a chair opposite Pope. >>Our
> > business has long since been concluded. Any further business we might
> have
> > could be just as well handled by phone. Or there's the mail. The mails
> are
> > still going through. But she lingers on. That's why I said ah. You
> mentioned
> > marriage. Mrs. Hix is still in town. My keen brain started working and I
> > said ah.<<
> >
> > My question: Is there anybody in the Pynchon list to recognize a literary
> > allusion here if there is one?
> >
> > Best wishes to all of you,
> >
> > Jochen
>
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