AtD translation: too fair to be alone, too crazy for town/exploding into the dark
David Morris
fqmorris at gmail.com
Wed Jan 12 02:58:31 UTC 2022
Fair sex
>From a word-origin angle, "fair" in that usage means *not coarse* (not
rough). The historical 'claim' was that women in the English-speaking world
used to be lighter-coloured in hair or skin than men. That then got
extended with the sense of being more genteel. The phrase "the fairer sex"
refers to looks.
https://www.quora.com › Why-are-...
Why are women called the fairer sex? - Quora
<https://www.quora.com/Why-are-women-called-the-fairer-sex>
<https://www.quora.com/Why-are-women-called-the-fairer-sex>
On Tue, Jan 11, 2022 at 8:16 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> noun
>
> - 1.a beautiful woman:archaic"pursuing his fair in a solitary street"
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 11, 2022 at 7:46 PM David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> OK, sorry. I’m back with a little more sleep and patience than last
>> night. It’s really not so obscure.
>>
>> As it says, Stray considers herself lucky to have survived to this point
>> through lots of dangers. But she has the humility and bigger perspective
>> to feel her luck was bought at the expense of a number of other girls
>> who weren’t so lucky, who didn’t survive, “who’d gone down before their
>> time, Dixies and Fans and Mignonettes” [names of “types” (stereotypes?) of
>> girls]
>>
>> *These generically named Girls, now dead, failed to survive because they
>> were:*
>>
>> 1) “*too fair to be alone*,” But they *died alone anyway*, because they
>> were “too fair to be alone.” Look up the definition of a “fair” young
>> lady, and pick an aspect of that definition that would make her in
>> mortal danger if left alone in a dangerous place. “Weak (physically)” as
>> in “the fairer sex,” is the obvious possibility for that word in this
>> context.
>>
>> 2) “*too crazy for town,*” which implies that her living in that town was
>> the cause of death, because her “craziness” put her in some dangerous
>> town location or situation that hastened her death. The possible scenarios
>> are endless.
>>
>> 3) *And other examples and reasons for their deaths*: “ending their days
>> too soon in barrelhouses, in shelters dug not quite deep enough into the
>
> unyielding freeze of the hillside, for the sake of boys too stupefied with
>> their own love of exploding into the dark, . . .”
>>
>> David Morris
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 10, 2022 at 11:04 PM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com
>> >
>> wrote:
>>
>> P651.23-29 . . . yet she couldn’t see her luck as other than purchased
>> > in the worn unlucky coin of all those girls who hadn’t kept coming back,
>> > who’d gone down before their time, Dixies and Fans and Mignonettes, too
>> > fair to be alone, too crazy for town, ending their days too soon in
>> > barrelhouses, in shelters dug not quite deep enough into the unyielding
>> > freeze of the hillside, for the sake of boys too stupefied with their
>> own
>> > love of exploding into the dark, . . .
>>
>>
More information about the Pynchon-l
mailing list