GR translation: a cute little private yoo-hoo for 2-hoo

Mike Jing gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com
Wed Jan 27 17:36:55 CST 2016


Still mulling this one over a bit more.  Meanwhile, thanks everyone for
responding.

On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 4:28 AM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I find I'm siding with Laura on this one.  The "cute little private"
> yoo-hoo is most likely between Jessica and Jeremy.
>
> On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 1:46 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>> I read the "it" that Jeremy sees as Jessica's morning sickness.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>>
>> From: Monte Davis
>>
>> Sent: Jan 25, 2016 1:16 PM
>>
>> To: kelber
>>
>> Cc: Mike Weaver , Mike Jing , Pynchon Mailing List
>>
>> Subject: Re: GR translation: a cute little private yoo-hoo for 2-hoo
>>
>>
>>
>> "Tea for Two," definitely.
>> Yoo-Hoo chocolate beverage: very likely in TRP's mind c. 1970 (and quite
>> possibly in the mix he wanted us to get), but I'd be surprised if it had
>> enough UK presence in 1945 to be in Jeremy's
>> >Jeremy... assumes this is a... nest-building moment between him and
>> Jessica.
>> I can't make that work, as this is the same sentence that begins with
>> Jessica begging off a "romantic triangle" date --- so in "Jeremy seeing it
>> as a cute little private yoo-hoo for 2-hoo," the two can only be himself
>> and Roger.
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 12:44 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>> Yoo-hoo is also a chocolate drink, invented in New Jersey in the 1920s,
>> and bottled and more widely distributed at some point in the 1940s (the
>> history's a little murky). The slogan in the '60s was: "Me-hee for
>> Yoo-hoo." Has a ring of the old song from No No Nanette, Tea For Two -
>> specifically the lyrics - you for me and me for you, about setting up house
>> together. So yoo-hoo for 2-hoo could be a snappier (in the 40s) version of
>> "tea for two."
>>
>>
>>
>> The way I read the sentence, when Jessica seems to be suffering from
>> morning sickness, Roger assumes that since the baby is his, and he's on the
>> outs with Jessica, that she'll figure out the most spiteful course of
>> action (Abortion? Taunting him that his child will be raised by his
>> rival?). Jeremy, meanwhile, is oblivious to this and assumes this is a
>> cute, private tea/yoo-hoo-for-two nest-building moment between him and
>> Jessica.
>>
>>
>>
>> Laura
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>>
>>
>>
>> From: Monte Davis
>>
>>
>>
>> Sent: Jan 25, 2016 11:33 AM
>>
>>
>>
>> To: Mike Weaver
>>
>>
>>
>> Cc: Mike Jing , Pynchon Mailing List
>>
>>
>>
>> Subject: Re: GR translation: a cute little private yoo-hoo for 2-hoo
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Yes, this. Especially in  1945, "for 2-hoo" also carries a parodic hint
>> of saccharine pop-song lyrics ("a cottage for two," "just me and my gal,"
>> yada yada).
>>
>> Jeremy, victorious, can afford to think of the encounter as a bluff manly
>> best-man-won, let-bygones-be-bygones reconciliation.
>>
>> Roger, wounded and resentful, feels that's almost as far from the truth
>> as a romantic tete-a-tete would be.
>>
>> And they settle, as men often do, for talking about safely remote and
>> "objective" matters instead.
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 10:29 AM, Mike Weaver <mike.weaver at zen.co.uk>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Yoo-hoo is something said, by some, when attracting someone they know's
>> attention - a cheery hey there. So I'd hazard that P has made this an
>> ironic comment on Beaver and Roger's antipathy - the two hoo is just to
>> make the (cute) rhyme.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com> wrote :
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > V709.13-25, P723.15-27   Who saves him (or interferes with his orgasm)?
>> Why, Jeremy himself. Old Beaver shows up and waves off the heat, who go
>> surly, fangflashing back to masturbating into Crime Does Not Pay Comics,
>> gazing dreamy at guardroom pinups of J. Edgar Hoover or whatever it was
>> they were up to, and the romantic triangle are suddenly all to have lunch
>> together at the Club. Lunch together? Is this Noel Coward or some shit?
>> Jessica at the last minute is overcome by some fictitious female syndrome
>> which both men guess to be morning-sickness, Roger figuring she’ll do the
>> most spiteful thing she can think of, Jeremy seeing it as a cute little
>> private yoo-hoo for 2-hoo. So that leaves the fellas alone, to talk briskly
>> about Operation Backfire, which is the British program to assemble some A4s
>> and fire them out into the North Sea. What else are they going to talk
>> about?What is "yoo-hoo for 2-hoo" exactly?
>>
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>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
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