NP except tangentially. More remarks on Anniversaries. if interested.

[Mark Kohut]

A public Thanks Jochen.

I hoped you might answer the question and you
took the time to give the whole list some bonus German lines and a
translation.

On Sat, Feb 16, 2019 at 7:09 AM Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:

> re: your question in PS. At the end of the entry for November 14, 1967 for
> example the whole little dialog between the wolf and Cresspahl (the
> italicized part, that is not *kursiv* in the original) is in dialect (
> *niederdeutsch*):
>
> Dat's nich üm mintwillen: secht de Wulf / – Oewest so'n Schap schmeckt
> doch gaud: secht he.
> Das geschieht nicht um meinetwillen, sagt der Wolf. / – Aber  so ein Schaf
> schmeckt doch gut, sagt er.
>
> The translator chose to give only the "secht" an equivalent in English.
> A-and Schap is Schaf, as you see, and not "a little lamb". That's no small
> difference if you consider the historical and ecological dimension.
>
>
> Am Sa., 16. Feb. 2019 um 10:47 Uhr schrieb Mark Kohut <
> mark.kohut at gmail.com>:
>
>> There is a fine scene in the book occasioned by a NYT article
>> on the completion of whole new aspects and line arrangements
>> of the subway system. The thematic bandwidth here is that the
>> 10 year-old girl in the novel is so smart and self-confident she
>> can navigate the whole subway system better than anyone.
>>
>> But the narrator, who is her mother, the one who journalizes the NYT
>> stories blended with an overarching narrator-- that stylistic
>> free indirect discourse kind of narrator who is Johnson effectively--
>> writes of wanting to debunk some subway myths that others---he/she is from
>> Germany, of course---
>> have about NYC. That everyone is always in a hurry, always rushing about,
>> is not true in the subways, he sez. He describes people getting off and on
>> and the description can remind Pynchon readers of the dance of anarchy
>> under the bridge scene in CoL49. Ways: like a massive dance of entrance
>> and
>> egress. No one collides. It's 1967. All self-organize at
>> a steady pace to come off flowing around those waiting to go on. The
>> finding
>> a seat or a place to stand inside allows lots of freedom to flow around
>> other people. (Of course,
>> contact does often happen here but it's all good usually. {he does have an
>> unknown to us friend of Gesine
>> report she once found semen on her coat---but we seem free to disbelieve
>> that since no substantiating
>> details are ever offered.)) Maybe she too partakes of the 'myths' of NY
>> subways.
>>
>> Another comparison beyond the anarchic dance is, of course, the
>> description
>> of the traffic leaving LA
>> going up that famous--to locals--major highway hill in Inherent Vice and
>> merging as smoothly as if such self-organizing, no
>> contest of wills, no aggression, is operable. Or was at the end of the
>> sixties anyway.
>>
>>
>> PS: And, the English of this book has, occasionally, Pynchon's 'sez' for
>> "says' and I'd love to know how
>> the translator arrived at that use.
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>
>