NP but banana meals

[rich]

I assume this is not part of the field reports Pynchon read for historical
accuracy when researching V?

interesting in any case

thx, Mark
rich

On Wed, Oct 27, 2021 at 6:18 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> In* Afterlives, *our male protagonist is now in the German colonialists'
> army in Africa,
> the askari army, the German East Africa schutztruppe (purposely not
> capitalized by Gurnah, I must believe)............
> It is the turn of the 19th Century and the only food mentioned
> so far for these soldiers in training is bananas & tripe.
>
> Not really this, but other substantive themes in *Afterlives *reinforces my
> very unscientific
> belief that the Swedish Academy loves so many of Pynchon's deepest, most
> originally done
> themes in history and life, that he would have been given that Nobel if
> only he would have shown up.
> I try to read some new (to me) Nobelists and since *Against the Day*,
> writers somehow indebted or with
> similar necessary universal themes, keep popping up, as I skewingly read
> them anyway. Ms. Jellinek, translator
> of *Gravity's Rainbow* is one obvious one.
>
> The major themes I am referring to here, in a very recent novel of
> Gurnah's, written in (mostly) English, are the meanings
> and effects of imperialism and colonialism, here by the Germans in Africa
> ala P's Herero use. In a section
> I've just read, the latent homosexuality of some German officers, in the
> novel's example, the medical doctor,
> who rubs our young hero's organ to start it enlarging, in order to declare
> that "everything is in working order" who
> is then said to, seemingly, not want to let go.
>
> And the scene where our almost-femininely beautiful young black boy is
> chosen to be the private servant of
> an officer, teased by the other soldiers in training even before this event
> as 'too pretty to be a soldier".
>
> The above coupled with fierce homophobia, of course, all over the place.
>
>
> https://www.google.com/books/edition/German_Schutztruppe_in_East_Africa/6E1xAAAACAAJ?hl=en
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>