Pages 3-7

Page 3

second sheep

V3.14 Compare the narrator’s discussion of William Slothrop’s heretical tract "On Preterition," which argued for the holiness of the preterite, and Weisenburger’s note at V555.29-31.

Capt. Geoffrey ("Pirate") Prentice

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Page 5

5.03 His name is Capt. Geoffrey ("Pirate") Prentice.
Pirate’s name derives from Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta The Pirates of Penzance, in which the hero’s nurse has made a fateful error in carrying out her employer’s instructions: Instead of having the boy apprenticed to a (ship’s) pilot, he was apprenticed to a pirate, hence a "pirate ‘prentice." The name, though, is not simply a fortuitous pun: In her error, the nurse has lost a message, like the hare of Herero myth, and thus guaranteed her young charge’s preterition. (There are also connections here to the theme of "communications entropy," which is central to The Crying of Lot 49 and the short story "Entropy.")

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V6.09 a spiral ladder
Suggests the double-helix structure of the DNA molecule that preserves the "living genetic chains" evoked at V10.14. [1]