Re: GR translation: each man’s wind

[Laura Kelber]

And a motor mouth is someone who talks incessantly, so wind and motor add
up to a lot of verbiage.

On Wed, Jul 23, 2025, 12:19 AM Michael Lee Bailey via Pynchon-l <
pynchon-l at waste.org> wrote:

> 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”
>
> Sent from [Proton Mail](https://proton.me/mail/home) for iOS
>
> 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
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>