money harvest

[jochen stremmel]

Still overwhelmed by your massive interest:

     If to the moment I shall ever say:

     »Ah, linger on, thou art so fair!«

     Then may you fetters on me lay,

     Then I will perish, then and there!




2014-05-07 21:12 GMT+02:00 jochen stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>:

> 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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