SLPAD - 38 - colloquy w/company clerk / Hiss

[Mark Kohut]

I might think more like Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer, full of 'loose",
easy women that GI's might have
called whores. Which TRP name-checked once, amirite?

Peyton Place ripped the lid off hidden sexualtiy in small towns and suburbs
(by small town extension).
Was the fastest-selling novel in America EVER for a long period. Published
by an 'educational' non-major
division of Simon & Schuster....not the "Trade' major bookstore, major
division, of Simon & Schuster,
to become famous in the sixties for the promotion of 'scandalous' novels
like those of Jacqueline Susann.......The Peyton Place
division did NO promotion...they got lucky, riding to huge success on
articulated Puritan outrage after someone read it......

I learned of the Peyton Placeness of the small-town like suburb I came to
age in from 10 years old only after I was grown and
it was over. So, Grace Metalious knew something major. Amazing, Grace, who
seemed to keep writing the same basic book.




On Sat, Apr 1, 2023 at 1:09 AM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Not a magazine, no, it’s a paperback which Levine’s reading. I said
> otherwise, & apologize.
>
> 3 years of avoiding work details resulted in Levine’s physique, and
> nickname.
>
> Twinkletoes Dugan, company clerk - several degrees of likeability removed
> from Radar O’Reilly was my first impression.
>
> He interpellates the orderly leaning against the wall:
> “Capucci, you worthless bastard“
>
> So, if we’re keeping track of the melting pot nature of the Army, going by
> surnames, in all likelihood we’ve got an Italian, an Irishman, and a Jew -
> &, if they walk into a bar, the beginning of a joke.
>
>
> [Dugan] “…with an ill-natured pout on his lips. “Who’s got that whore book
> after you, Levine,” he said. Levine, who was using his helmet liner for an
> ashtray, flicked his cigarette. “The GI can I reckon,” he smiled.”
>
> So, not a magazine, maybe _Peyton Place_ - #1 NYT bestseller in July of
> 1957?
>
> Something scurrilous & sex-drenched, would be the natural imputation from
> Levine reading it in his bunk, and of Dugan requesting dibs - and of
> Levine’s plans for it -
>
> Taking it into the GI can (lavatory, right?) either for his own morose
> delectations there, or to leave for the next comer…
>
> Company clerk & whatever Levine is are both specialists, right? So why
> wouldn’t they use the same can? Dugan is probably miffed that Levine won’t
> promise it to him?
>
> No love lost betw these two, seems to be the case.
>
> Dugan utilizes the insulting part of Levine’s nickname in relaying a
> summons from the Lieutenant.
>
>
>
> — more about Nathan Levine -
>
> Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury.
>
> Weird how that worked:
> - Whittaker Chambers testified before HUAC in 1948 that both he and Hiss
> were Communists during the 1930s
> - the statute of limitations for espionage had expired
> - didn’t know there was a statute of limitations on espionage
> - Hiss sued Chambers for libel
> - Chambers produced evidence during pre-trial discovery
> - Hiss got indicted for 2 counts of perjury
> - first trial ended with a hung jury
> - second trial sentenced him to 2 concurrent 5-year terms in prison
> - he served 3 1/2 years
> - in the ‘90s former Soviet spymasters claimed to have found nothing in
> their archives about Hiss
> - but in 1995, the final round of declassification of the Venona Papers
> (sort of America’s Bletchley Park) did yield some evidence
> - Hiss maintained his innocence till he died
> - I found & read a library book by his son, who took the time and made the
> effort to try to buttress Hiss’s claims (filial devotion) - can’t remember
> much, but it seemed convincing at the time
>
>
> (But wait, there’s more!)
>
> Dept of Tenuous Connectionz & Wispy Tendrils
>
> - now, if, as Whitaker Chambers’ lawyer, Nathan Levine could be said to
> represent conservative opposition to activist government efforts to
> “provide for the general welfare” by tarring prominent figures in FDR’s
> alphabet soup of agencies with the “communist” brush…
>
> - then, by putting an instantiation of Nathan Levine into a military
> cleanup after a storm
>
> - the disastrous effects of which had been aggravated by infrastructure
> shortfalls of the type that New Deal programs had been designed to remedy
>
> - this Nathan Levine is confronted with an adventure here which could be an
> early version of “karmic adjustment” as later practiced by Takeshi in VL.
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>