GR translation: It will if they let you

[Mark Kohut]

Dear Mike,

Unintended consequences. Your posting of the other meaning of "let",
let me read this line from TRUE GRIT correctly.

"Blackie, a horse, held his head high and ran like the wind, perhaps
sensing the urgency
of the mission. Rooster [Cogburn] spurred and whipped him without let."

Without your definition, I probably would have thought there was a missing
"up". but
that should have puzzled me since this later edition has every reason and
the company every
reputation for get it right.

Thanks.



On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 4:20 AM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> V174.29-175.2, P177.25-34   Then the Germans dropped a rocket just
> down the street from the theatre. A few of the little babies started
> crying. They were scared. Gretel, who was just winding up with her
> broom to hit the Witch right in the bum, stopped: put the broom down,
> in the gathering silence stepped to the footlights, and sang:
>        Oh, don’t let it get you,
>        It will if they let you, but there’s
>        Something I’ll bet you can’t see—
>        It’s big and it’s nasty and it’s right over there,
>        It’s waiting to get its sticky claws in your hair!
>
> I found the second "let" in the song puzzling. It turns out the word
> "let" has an entirely different meaning:
>
> let, v.2
> arch.
> 1. a. trans. To hinder, prevent, obstruct, stand in the way of (a
> person, thing, action, etc.).
>
> Is this the correct meaning here?
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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