Re: GR translation: each man’s wind

[Michael Lee Bailey]

Hi,

Are you familiar with the vernacular phrase somebody is a “windbag”?
Or, long-winded?
Meaning loquacious

You don’t hear it as often isolated as “wind” but occasionally excess verbiage is referred to as “wind”

This is what I think Pynchon means in context: all the people working there are “behind” Pervitin - that is, they are taking those amphetamines

Which give them the tendency to rattle on and on, and
Talk through each other’s “wind”

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On Tue, Jul 22, 2025 at 6:46 AM, Mike Jing <[gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com](mailto:On Tue, Jul 22, 2025 at 6:46 AM, Mike Jing <<a href=)> wrote:

> I'm not sure, it just seems strange to me that breath would be loud enough
> to interfere with conversation. Or maybe it's not loudness that's at issue
> here?
>
> On Tue, Jul 22, 2025 at 5:32 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> If it is anything else, how does the analogy with motor work?...."wind and
>> motor"???
>>
>> On Mon, Jul 21, 2025 at 8:38 PM Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> V521.41-522.5, P530.36-41 Well, this is stimulant talk here, yes
>>> Enzian’s
>>> been stuffing down Nazi surplus Pervitins these days like popcorn at the
>>> movies, and by now the bulk of the refinery—named, incidentally, for the
>>> famous discoverer of Oneirine—is behind them, and Enzian is on into some
>>> other paranoid terror, talking, talking, though each man’s wind and motor
>>> cuts him off from conversation.
>>>
>>> What does "wind" mean here? The published translation interpreted it as
>>> "breath", which doesn't seem right to me.
>>> --
>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>>
>>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l