AtD translation: read us off your list of complaints

[Raphael Saltwood]

https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/read+somebody+out

Says that “to read out” is to upbraid, scold, or sometimes also to “hear someone out” (as in an online forum)

I’ve never encountered that before, either.

Another idiom that springs to mind is “to write (somebody or something) out” as out of a script

Which conceptually rhymes with what Mayva is saying, & since it’s a dream, works just fine as an allusive alternate subtext.


P481.5   “You do your best,” she cried out at her mother, “to wreck us,
> >>> and
> >>> then you run away, out of reach, behind the wall of death.”
> >>>        “You want to come out after us, out there beside the old dark
> >>> river,
> >>> find us, read us off your list of complaints? Somebody sooner or
> later’ll
> >>> be happy enough to help you do that. Swear, Lake, you’ve gone sour in
> >>> your
> >>> old age.”
> >>>        Lake woke up, but so slowly it seemed for a while that Mayva was
> >>> really there in the room.
> >>>

At this point in the book, Mayva is actually not dead, is she? - but pre-cell-phones, Lake in her unhappy marriage dyad might I guess feel so isolated that it feels to her like she is…and of course, Webb is (as the Ted Bundy character says in the biopic of his victims) “way dead” and it wouldn’t be the first time a mother came in for abuse more deservedly applied to the father.

But who is the somebody who will sooner or later be happy enough to help her chase down her family beside the old dark Lethean river?

Lake doesn’t really have haters, but maybe Mayva is observing that if she keeps complaining, putting that out there in the world, she will be reifying that attitude & attract likemindedness in others?

Also, like, yeah kid, your day will also arrive…

Probably some others besides myself have had parental commentary of a similar nature: “you’re sure getting cynical in your old age” (when one was still a teenager)

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________________________________
From: Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, May 10, 2021 10:02:05 PM
To: Raphael Saltwood <PlainMrBotanyB at outlook.com>
Cc: pynchon-l <Pynchon-l at waste.org>
Subject: Re: AtD translation: read us off your list of complaints

That's what I thought at first, but I thought to ask just in case. Now I have to think it over a bit more.


On Mon, May 10, 2021 at 12:09 PM Raphael Saltwood <PlainMrBotanyB at outlook.com<mailto:PlainMrBotanyB at outlook.com>> wrote:
maybe it’s colloquial where I grew up, but to “read something off” is just to read it out loud, as in “read it off a piece of paper”

I have never ever encountered “reading something off a list” as taking action to remove it - you might “scratch” it off a list…

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