Re: GR translation: It’s not the gentlemanly reflex that . . .

[Mike Jing]

Right. I just wanted to make sure I understood the difference between
then and now, which both the published translation and I got wrong,
until now.

Thanks, Monte.

On Sun, Jun 4, 2017 at 6:51 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I understand the reflex to have been "a gentleman ( or lady) doesn't tell,"
> i.e. does not reveal sexual partners. Now it's animal fear: if he and Katje
> could both be nameless, they might escape Their attention and control.
>
> On Jun 4, 2017 3:54 AM, "Mike Jing" <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> V302.25-39, P307.11-26   Double integral is also the shape of lovers
>> curled asleep, which is where Slothrop wishes he were now—all the way
>> back with Katje, even lost as he might feel again, even more
>> vulnerable than now—even (because he still honestly misses her),
>> preserved by accident, in ways he can’t help seeing, accident whose
>> own much colder honesty each lover has only the other to protect him
>> from. . . . Could he live like that? Would They ever agree to let him
>> and Katje live like that? He’s had nothing to say to anyone about her.
>> It’s not the gentlemanly reflex that made him edit, switch names,
>> insert fantasies into the yarns he spun for Tantivy back in the
>> ACHTUNG office, so much as the primitive fear of having a soul
>> captured by a likeness of image or by a name. . . . He wants to
>> preserve what he can of her from Their several entropies, from Their
>> softsoaping and Their money: maybe he thinks that if he can do it for
>> her he can also do it for himself . . . although that’s awful close to
>> nobility for Slothrop and The Penis He Thought Was His Own.
>>
>> As I understand it, when Slothrop was telling stories to Tantivy back
>> in the ACHTUNG office, he edited the narrative by switching names and
>> inserting fantasies, and that was due to a "gentlemanly reflex" . But
>> now with Katje, it's something quite different. Am I getting this
>> right?
>> -
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