GR translation: Arab With A Big Greasy Nose

[Mike Jing]

Thanks for the reply, Smoke. I'm just grasping at straws here because
I can't find a way to translate it with the same kind of ambiguity,
but I guess I'll just have to try harder or leave the "to preform on"
part out altogether.

On Wed, Apr 26, 2017 at 9:27 AM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
> It doesn't read like 'perform a prank on' to me, exactly.
>
> Some of the grotesque interpretations seem to possibly make sense, given the
> recurrence of the grotesque throughout the book and in some of the pages
> (and verses) leading up to this sentence.
>
> Though I can imagine a translation that focuses on these possibilities might
> run the risk of over-specifying, choosing one possible meaning of many and
> eliminating others.
>
> I wonder to what extent the musical sense of performance, as Monte points
> out, is supported by the "all folklore broken down" line. Although this
> might also support a more scatological meaning as well.
>
> Some vagueness: who's doing the performing (PP, using/on the nose, or the
> Arab, on his own nose)?, in what sense is the word on used?
>
> Also, when you say someone plays a musical instrument, do you ever say they
> perform on it?
>
> To perform on, to my ear, suggests either a location (e.g. you perform a
> musical number on a stage) or that something is a more direct physical
> recipient of the performance (performance in this sense seeming to be either
> more technical, as in to perform a medical procedure on someone, or more
> euphemistic, as in like to jack off on, or I guess vomit on...)
>
> I guess you might colloquially describe someone as being on an instrument,
> e.g. "let's give it up for Craig on the keyboard," but it doesn't quite
> sound right to me to say, "let's give it up for Craig, who's performing on
> the keyboard."
>
> On Wed, Apr 26, 2017 at 2:25 AM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Resurrecting this thread yet again on my third pass. I have another
>> idea: could "to perform on" simply mean "to perform a prank on"? It
>> seems to make sense given the context, with Gary Grant larking in and
>> out and so on.
>>
>> 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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