Contre-jour

Chapter OneIn which Benny Profane,a schlemihl andhuman yo-yo,gets toan apo-cheirV Christmas Eve, 1955, Benny Profane, wearing black levis, suede jacket, sneakers and big cowboy hat, happened to pass through Norfolk, Virginia. Given to sentimental impulses, he thought he'd look in on the Sailor's Grave, his old tin can's tavern on East Main Street. He got there by way of the Arcade, at the East Main end of which sat an old street singer with a guitar and an empty Sterno can for donations. Out in the street a chief yeoman was trying to urinate in the gas tank of a "54 Packard Patrician and five or six seamen apprentice were standing around giving encouragement. The old man was singing, in a fine, firm baritone: Every night is Christmas Eve on old East Main,Sailors and their sweethearts all agree.Neon signs of red and greenShine upon the friendly scene,Welcoming you in from off the sea.Santa's bag is filled with all your dreams come true:Nickel beers that sparkle like champagne,Barmaids who all love to screw,All of them reminding you It's Christmas Eve on old East Main. 'Yay chief," yelled a seaman deuce. Profane rounded the corner. With its usual lack of warning, East Main was on him. Since his discharge from the Navy Profane had been roadlaboring and when there wasn't work just traveling, up and down the east coast like a yo-yo; and this had been going on for maybe a year and a half. After that long of more named pavements than he'd care to count, Profane had grown a little leery of streets, especially streets like this. They had in fact all fused into a single abstracted Street, which come the full moon he would have nightmares about. East Main, a ghetto for Drunken Sailors nobody knew what to Do With, sprang on your nerves with all the abruptness of a normal night's dream turning to nightmare. Dog into wolf, light into twilight, emptiness into waiting presence, here were your underage Marine barfing in the street, barmaid with a ship's propeller tattooed on each buttock, one potential berserk studying the best technique for jumping through a plate glass window (when to scream Geronimo? before or after the glass breaks?), a drunken deck ape crying back in the alley because last time the SP's caught him like this they put him in a strait jacket. Underfoot, now and again, came vibration in the sidewalk from an SP streetlights away, beating out a Hey Rube with his night stick; overhead, turning everybody's face green and ugly, shone mercury-vapor lamps, receding in an asymmetric V to the east where it's dark and there are no more bars. Arriving at the Sailor's Grave, Profane found a small fight in progress between sailors and jarheads. He stood in the doorway a moment watching; then realizing he had one foot in the Grave anyway, dived out of the way of the fight and lay more or less doggo near the brass rail. 'Why can't man live in peace with his fellow man,"wondered a voice behind Profane's left ear. It was Beatrice the barmaid, sweetheart of DesDiv 22, not to mention Profane's old ship, the destroyer U.S.S. Scaffold."Benny,"she cried. They became tender, meeting again after so long. Profane began to draw in the sawdust hearts, arrows through them, sea gulls carrying a banner in their beaks which read Dear Beatrice. The Scaffold-boat's crew were absent, this tin can having got under way for the Mediterranean two evenings ago amid a storm of bitching from the crew which was heard out in the cloudy Roads (so the yarn went) like voices off a ghost ship; heard as far away as Little Creek. Accordingly, there were a few more barmaids than usual tonight, working tables all up and down East Main. For it's said (and not without reason) that no sooner does a ship like the Scaffold single up all lines than certain Navy wives are out of their civvies and into barmaid uniform, flexing their beer-carrying arms and practicing a hooker's sweet smile; even as the N.O.B. band is playing Auld Lang Syne and the destroyers are blowing stacks in black flakes all over the cuckolds-to-be standing manly at attention, taking leave with me and a tiny grin. Beatrice brought beer. There was a piercing yelp from one of the back tables, she flinched, beer slopped over the edge of the glass. 'God," she said, "it's Ploy again." Ploy was now an engineman on the mine sweeper Impulsive and a scandal the length of East Main. He stood five feet nothing in sea boots and was always picking fights with the biggest people on the ship, knowing they would never take him seriously. Ten months ago (just before he'd transferred off the Scaffold) the Navy had decided to remove all of Ploy's teeth. Incensed, Ploy managed to punch his way through a chief corpsman and two dental officers before it was decided he was in earnest about keeping his teeth. "But think," the officers shouted, trying not to laugh, fending off his tiny fists: "root canal work, gum abscesses...." "No," screamed Ploy. They finally had to hit him in the bicep with a Pentothal injection. On waking up, Ploy saw apocalypse, screamed lengthy obscenities. For two months he roamed ghastly around the Scaffold...

L'homme qui apprenait lentement, c'est évidemment Thomas Pynchon lui-même. Il s'en explique longuement dans l'introduction du volume, avec à la fois humilité - dénigrant mine de rien, pourfendant même tel ou tel aspect du texte - et minutie. Non seulement il y met en perspective les cinq nouvelles qui forment ce recueil, publiées de manière échelonnée dans des revues entre 1959 et 1964, et rassemblées ici dans l'ordre où elles furent écrites, tissant d'invisibles fils qui relient divers personnages ou bien des actions, des situations dont la complexité forme comme des "noeuds" dans son oeuvre, mais il appuie également ses considérations par des réflexions d'ordre stylistique ou des aperçus sur ce qui se passait alors aux Etats-Unis, dans une large frange émotionnelle qui mêle le monde déjà mythique du rock, la grande levée poétique des premiers livres du mouvement beat (On the Road, de Kerouac, est de 1957) et certaines passions très particulières à Thomas Pynchon lui-même et qui brassent aussi bien monde de l'enfance (Intégration secrète fait penser à Tom Sawyer), celui de l'espionnage (il dit avoir dévoré les livres de John Buchan, l'auteur des Trente-neuf Marches), les guides Baedeker, la mer sur les côtes de Long Island où Pynchon est né (en 1937), les journées de dérive et de beuverie des jeunes soldats, le T. S. Eliot de La Terre vaine, et enfin les lois de la thermodynamique et notamment celle de l'entropie, qui donne son titre à l'un des textes les plus célèbres de Pynchon. Les lecteurs de V. , ce monument littéraire des années 60 que nous rééditons en même temps que le présent volume, reconnaîtront dans la nouvelle intitulée Sous la rose une première version du futur chapitre 3 de V. C'est dire qu'ici nous avons affaire aux prémisses des oeuvres de la maturité, en compagnie d'un jeune écrivain qui cherche à savoir ce que l'intelligence qu'il a de son oeuvre lui réserve dans un proche avenir : V. est déjà en train de s'écrire, Vente à la criée du lot 49 n'est plus très loin. Ni non plus la formidable rumeur de folie de L'Arc-en-ciel de la gravité. Traduit de l'anglais (Etats-Unis) par Michel Doury.