GR translation: Snake the remittance horse

[Michael Bailey]

Maybe Midnight was owned by the oil man or his cronies, and they didn’t
want the competition from Snake on the circuit?

According to Wikipedia, Midnight’s peak years were the 1920s & ‘30s -
mostly retired in 1933 due to “ringbone disorder” and perished in 1936.

Which fits with Tchitcherine’s Kirghiz posting during “early Stalin days.”


Midland, Texas triggers a reflex reference:

There’s a historic home in Midland, Texas where Bush 41 & family lived from
1951-55 even though that may not be super relevant.

He was an oilman…but not during the 1920s

>From Wikipedia, he doesn’t seem to’ve been super high profile either,
during the likely writing time of GR but ¿quièn sabe?

“Following an unsuccessful run for the United States Senate in 1964, he was
elected to represent Texas’s 7th congressional district in 1966. President
Richard Nixon appointed Bush as the ambassador to the United Nations in
1971 and as chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1973.”

I couldn’t find a Midland, Texas oilman from the ‘20s but I didn’t look
very hard…


On Sun, Jan 19, 2025 at 11:24 PM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> V342.10-18, P347.11-19   Tchitcherine’s horse is a version of himself—an
> Appaloosa from the United States named Snake. Snake used to be some kind of
> remittance horse. Year before last he
> was in Saudi Arabia, being sent a check each month by a zany (or, if you
> enjoy paranoid systems, a horribly rational) Midland, Texas oil man to stay
> off of the U.S. rodeo circuits, where in those days the famous bucking
> bronco Midnight was flinging young men right and left into the sun-beat
> fences. But Snake here is not so much Midnight-wild as methodically
> homicidal. Worse, he’s unpredictable.
>
> What's the rationale behind the Texas oil man's desire for Snake to stay
> off of the U.S. rodeo circuits? And what does it have to do with the famous
> bucking bronco Midnight? I'm just trying to get a better understanding of
> the underlying logic here.
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>