GR translation: Arab With A Big Greasy Nose

[Monte Davis]

I take the "wistful classic" to be a comic song. I don't know the song, or
know that Pynchon had any existing song in mind rather than a tease. So
"perform" is wide open to your suggested definition... or to a musical
performance (like squeezing a clown's rubber nose)... or to a sexual
performance (details depending on culture, other organs involved, and how
one feels about noses).

On Mon, May 23, 2016 at 11:54 AM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Resurrecting this old post nobody replied to back in 2011. A search in
> the archives shows that this has been asked a few times, but no one
> had an answer. The problems is that I still have to figure out how to
> translate "perform on". From the OED:
>
> 6. intr.
> b. euphem. Esp. of a child or a pet: to urinate or defecate.
>
> Does this make sense to anyone else given the context?
>
> On Fri, Dec 9, 2011 at 4:19 AM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > P14.5-13   In 1935 he had his first episode outside any condition of
> > known sleep—it was during his Kipling Period, beastly Fuzzy-Wuzzies
> > far as eye could see, dracunculiasis and Oriental sore rampant among
> > the troops, no beer for a month, wireless being jammed by other Powers
> > who would be masters of these horrid blacks, God knows why, and all
> > folklore broken down, no Gary Grant larking in and out slipping
> > elephant medicine in the punchbowls out here . .. not even an Arab
> > With A Big Greasy Nose to perform on, as in that wistful classic every
> > tommy’s heard . . .
> >
> > What is this classic with "an Arab With A Big Greasy Nose"?  And what
> > do they want to perform on him?
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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