Pynchon: smoking string
Adam Funk
edition):
Gouverneur ("Roony") Winsome sat of his grotesque espresso machine,
smoking string and casting baleful looks at the girl in the next
room.
...
The string was from Bloomingdale's, fine quality.... The stuff was
highly valued by string smokers, on the same level as Chivas Regal
Scotch or black Panamanian marijuana.
Does "string" mean anything, or did Pynchon make it up?
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> From Chapter 5, section II of _V._ (page 123--124 of the Picador
> edition):
>
> Gouverneur ("Roony") Winsome sat of his grotesque espresso machine,
> smoking string and casting baleful looks at the girl in the next
> room.
>
> ...
> The string was from Bloomingdale's, fine quality.... The stuff was
> highly valued by string smokers, on the same level as Chivas Regal
> Scotch or black Panamanian marijuana.
>
> Does "string" mean anything, or did Pynchon make it up?
I would guess that it means marijuana, a plant related to hemp, which was a
common material for rope and twine.
Brian
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Donna Richoux
> From Chapter 5, section II of _V._ (page 123--124 of the Picador
> edition):
>
> Gouverneur ("Roony") Winsome sat of his grotesque espresso machine,
> smoking string and casting baleful looks at the girl in the next
> room.
> ...
> The string was from Bloomingdale's, fine quality.... The stuff was
> highly valued by string smokers, on the same level as Chivas Regal
> Scotch or black Panamanian marijuana.
>
> Does "string" mean anything, or did Pynchon make it up?
It's real, but it's not widely known now, and I see people making up
random guesses to explain a reference to Dill smoking string in "To Kill
a Mockingbird." It's a name for tobacco. From Google Books:
===
The Myth of Nathan Bedford Forrest - Page 167
Paul Ashdown, Edward Caudill - 2006
... a coarse-skinned, profane man who bathed in horse tanks and put
enough string tobacco in his mouth to clog a cannon,
The lost get-back boogie: a novel - Page 191
James Lee Burke, Christine Wiltz - 2004
"I told you about where they hanged Whiskey Bill Graves," he said,
rolling a cigarette out of his string tobacco,
Dimension: Volume 11
1978
The Great Lout [my grandfather] carries me on his shoulders up a path in
the woods, past a whitewashed church, through a leafy wood, and along
the edge of a small ravine through which a brook flows. The Great Lout
smokes string tobacco in a pipe. ...
===
I see two possible origins. There are a number of references to a kind
of tobacco called "shoe-string," undoubtedly from a narrow shape, and
"string" might be a shortening of "shoe-string." Example:
===
The bright-tobacco industry, 1860-1929
Nannie May Tilley - 1948
... A bright broad leafed tobacco, of fair length, is more approved than
a very narrow leafed or shoe string tobacco (as you sometimes term it...
Tobacco: a study of its consumption in the United States
Jack Jacob Gottsegen - 1940
In the New England States it wasn't until 1833 that new varieties, other
than the narrow leaf type called "shoe string" tobacco, were grown.26 In
the South, the dark fire-cured and air- cured typed predominated until
after the Civil ...
===
The other possibility is that the traditional method of curing tobacco
on a farm was to "string" it to long sticks and hang it up to dry. Maybe
the name for this process was used to describe the resulting tobacco.
Example:
Old Times in Horry County: A Narrative History - Page 98
Randall A. Wells, Charles (INT) Joyner - 2007
Just anyone wasn't chosen to string tobacco; it had to be done a certain
way -- neatly 'n tight so as not to fall out of the thread wrapped
around it because the tobacco was being heated, and gradually the stems
of tobacco would shrink and ...
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
Irwell
In my pipe smoking days a young lad started out with a mild
tobacco like Baby's Bottom, went onto stronger stuff like
St.Julien, then onto St.Bruno finally ending up with Thick Twist
and Thin Twist. The Thin Twist was much stronger than the
the Thick Twist.
Adam Funk
> Adam Funk <a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote:
>
>> From Chapter 5, section II of _V._ (page 123--124 of the Picador
>> edition):
>>
>> Gouverneur ("Roony") Winsome sat of his grotesque espresso machine,
>> smoking string and casting baleful looks at the girl in the next
>> room.
>> ...
>> The string was from Bloomingdale's, fine quality.... The stuff was
>> highly valued by string smokers, on the same level as Chivas Regal
>> Scotch or black Panamanian marijuana.
>>
>> Does "string" mean anything, or did Pynchon make it up?
>
> It's real, but it's not widely known now, and I see people making up
> random guesses to explain a reference to Dill smoking string in "To Kill
> a Mockingbird." It's a name for tobacco. From Google Books:
Aha, thanks!
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But it's hard to read through the rising smoke
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Adam Funk
That occurred to me when I read the first bit, but the second passage
I quoted (less than a page later) seems to indicate it's not.
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Adam Funk
> In my pipe smoking days a young lad started out with a mild
> tobacco like Baby's Bottom,
As in "soft as a ..."? They wouldn't get away with that today.
--
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CDB
> On 2010-10-07, Irwell wrote:
>
>> In my pipe smoking days a young lad started out with a mild
>> tobacco like Baby's Bottom,
>
> As in "soft as a ..."? They wouldn't get away with that today.
>
Irwell
I seem to recall the tobacco had a faint talcum powder
sort of perfume.
