GR translation: as little finger sweat-cams off M-1 operating handle

[jochen stremmel]

Didn't you play with glass marbles – they came in bags if I remember
correctly? (Bigfooted bassett hounds – those I never saw before my 14th
year, I think.)

2015-03-01 13:00 GMT+01:00 Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>:

> I'm 99% certain I had never seen "cam" used as a verb before reading that
> line 42 years ago. i had (have) barely enough mechanical savvy to grasp
> that a cam (n.) is shaped to turn rotating or linear motion of one part
> into a specific path for another. I certainly had no image at all of an M-1
> rifle mechanism opened for inspection.
>
> But I had tinkered with things that required several fingers to hold
> several parts in place at once.  Spring-loaded parts had occasionally
> snapped down on a fingertip. And sweaty fingers slip on oiled metal. Until
> you asked, I didn't wonder how I'd understood that line without pausing.
> Language, the brain, and Pynchon dancing at their best.
>
> Now, "bags of chuckling glass"... *that* gives me trouble.
>
> On Sun, Mar 1, 2015 at 1:20 AM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> V584.5-19   If Katspiel had enough energy to leave the sun’s field
>> forever, then it has left these kind round beings in eternal exile, with no
>> chance of ever being gathered back home, doomed to masquerade as ball
>> bearings, as steelies in a thousand marble games—to know the great thumbs
>> of Keokuk and Puyallup, Oyster Bay, Inglewood—Danny D’Allesandro and Elmer
>> Ferguson, Peewee Brennan and Flash Womack . . . where are they now? where
>> do you think? they all got drafted, some are dead on Iwo, some gangrenous
>> in the snow in the forest of Arden, and their thumbs, first rifle
>> inspection in Basic, GI’d, driven deep back into childhood as little finger
>> sweat-cams off M-1 operating handle, thumb pushing down follower still deep
>> in breech, bolt sshhOCK! whacks thumb oh shit yes it hurts and good-by to
>> another unbeatable and legendary thumb, gone for good back to the summer
>> dust, bags of chuckling glass, bigfooted basset hounds, smell of steel
>> playground slides heating in the sun),
>>
>> What does "sweat-cams" mean?
>>
>
>
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