3rd Cue's a Charm?

Dave Tallman · 18 Jan 2009, 10:15 · from 2009-January.txt.gz

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From: davetallman at msn.com (Dave Tallman)
Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2009 03:15:19 -0700
Subject: (urth) 3rd Cue's a Charm?
In-Reply-To: <716789.48139.qm at web34405.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <716789.48139.qm at web34405.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <49730137.6050004 at gmail.com>

>
> Guys, come on.  I mean, really.  A two page scat joke by Wolfe?
> After everything the man has written, after all the forum's discussions
> about his religious beliefs and how these pervade his stories, after
> considering his generally serious nature and how when he does display humor
> it is sometimes dry but almost always clean -- I really can't bring
> myself to believe Wolfe would do such a thing.  I can picture Wolfe 
> rolling his eyes at that interpretation.
>   
But he does have a sense of humor, and a pretty strange one. I think 
it's a mistake we Wolfe interpreters make sometimes, to fail to use our 
sense of humor.

> Besides, those connections ARE extremely weak.  <snip> And to go from "chair" to "throne"...and then leap
> to "toilet"?
>   
Borski's key to many of these references is to look for words that sound 
like "cue": coot, cootie, cutie, queue, etc. Toilets are often jokingly 
called thrones, so that's no extra leap at all.

> Consider the sex change of BB1 in the penultimate paragraph.
> What in the world does this have to do with a scatological reading?  Why
> would Wolfe bother with this detail if his intention was to tell a crap
> joke?
>   
The sex-change makes perfect sense as part of a toilet joke, and no 
sense otherwise. From what point-of-view are a male and female body 
identical? The person attached to BB1 was female, but from the 
perspective of the cootie it didn't matter. The "bed" pun suggests the 
cooties will be spread further by sex. The "quarter" suggests the coins 
used to enter a pay toilet.

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