S K-B wrote: beside the play on
‘percha/percher’ we mustn’t forget the TRIPLE PUN embedded in ‘gutta/gutter.’
...as the chief constituent of the outer resilient plastic layer of GOLF
BALLS... the obvious puns of golf balls ‘perching’ (dangling) on or near
‘gutters’. GUTTER:From any kind of trough or groove, we also find gutters as the
white space between two pages on a book — and as the ultimate social insult:
“They were born in the gutter ... they speak gutter-English!!”
JM: Stan helped me find a TETRA PUN
in VN, not simply a triple one.
The word "gutter" in Portuguese is "sarjeta" and it applies, like the
French and the English perhaps, not only to the dirty-waters that run along
the sidewalk where drunks trip and fall, but it also to a
groovy trough or surgical incisions that cut channels in the skin for
blood-letting. These are very similar to the guttings made in
the Amazon rubber-trees extract the resin by letting
the rubber-milk flow into little cups.
Stan added that "the original Malaysian seems to
be ‘getah-percha’ which warns us against using the term ‘correct’ to any one of
the many plausible transcriptions or pronunciations." And yet, if we
should stop at the guttering word-plays with "Gutter-Perchers", the fourth
pun ( describing the incisions on the rubber tree) comes out quite
clearly! Still, the warning issued by Stan is fitting in another sense: the
word "gutter", if linked to the French "gouttiere", must also be related to
the French "goutte" (a drop). In Portuguese, the sound of "drops"("gotas") takes
us to "esgoto" ( sewage, gutter), to "goteira" ( dripping roof-gutters), to
"perdigoto" ( drops of saliva) but, apparently, not to "sarjeta"
(an insulting "cradle" ), nor to the surgical or
rubber-extractor's incisions!
Another word-play by VN in
KQK is not as elegant. He wrote ( Chapter 3, page 769):
"Franz
splurged: he purchased what the optician assured him was an American article.
The rims were of tortoise shell - allowing no doubt for the
well-known fact that chelonians are frequently and variously
mocked".
I couldn't help imagining
that the American article might not be a real "tortoise shell", but a
resinous imitation ( would VN be considering the resulting English
translation of his novel as a "mockery" of his
original Russian?). But, perhaps, we should lay stress on a possible
reference to Lewis Carroll's famous mock turtle soup. We know that "The
Mock Turtle" is a fictional character in "Alice's adventures in Wonderland"
(chapter 9):'Then
the Queen left off, quite out of breath, and said to Alice, "Have you seen the
Mock Turtle yet?"[ ...] "It's the thing Mock Turtle Soup is made from," said the
Queen.' The
Victorian dish called "mock turtle soup" was cooked from calf (
head,tail, hooves) to imitate turtle meat.