GR translation: Arab With A Big Greasy Nose

[Laura Kelber]

I've searched in vain for any images from  Loonie Tunes available on YouTube for an image of someone playing their own nose like a horn. So easy to picture, but if it exists, I couldn't find it. Perusing some of Kipling's ballads, "beating" sounds like the most likely interpretation of "performing on." I don't read any Weissman-style sexual subtext. So if ambiguity isn't an option, I'd go for the beating up meaning.

Laura

Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE DROID

Paul Mackin <mackin.paul at gmail.com> wrote:

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>According to the well known ballad, the act performed on the native water boy would be one of deference and thanksgiving, even if Sam Jaffe wasn't wearing boots you could lick or much of anything in the movie. Brown nosing comes to mind, Don't remember  if this has already been said, probably I don't understand the problem. I know it's difficult to translate stuff based on American pop culture.  Anyway, good luck.
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>But when it comes to slaughter
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>You will do your work on water
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>And you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's go it.
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>Kipling
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>On Fri, Apr 28, 2017 at 5:34 AM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com> wrote:
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>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
>>
>>
>-
>Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
>
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