N
NAAFI
35; Navy, Army, Air Forces Institute; civilian support of war effort with entertainment, food, etc.; 134; NAAFI girls, 593, 710; [1]
"Was Our Side seeking to demoralize the German Beast by broadcasting to him random thoughts of the mad, naming for him [...] the deep, the scarcely seen" 74; "snare them in words," 99; "words are only an eye-twitch away from the things they stand for," 100; "No language meant no chance of co-opting them in to what their round and flaxen invaders were calling Salvation" 110; "before wishes were given a separate name to warn that they might not come true" 177; "stuffed paper illusions. . .between him and this truth," 234; "fear of having a soul captured. . .by a name," 302; "Can his name. . .break their power?" 321; "the act of," 322, 366; Nameless Thing, 341; "How alphabetic the nature of molecules," 355; German mania for name-giving, separating namer from named, 391; 443; "those names are not magic," 464; "verbal, ranked and uniformed," 478; "children at the threshold of language," 487; "words. . .only delta-t from the things they stand for," 510; "worded over," 589; "secret Function whose name. . .cannot be spoken," 590; "a screen of words between himself and the numinous," 668; "holy names of God," 734; "Names of Power," 734; See also NTA; Routinization of Charisma
Nancy
547; mentioned in Pirate's and Katje's How I Came To Love the People
Nansen, Fridtjof (1861-1930)
589; Norwegian explorer, oceanographer, statesman, and humanitarian who led a number of expeditions to the Arctic (1888, 1893, 1895-96) and oceanographic expeditions in the North Atlantic (1900, 1910-14).
naphtha
3; a colorless, volatile petroleum distillate, usually an intermediate product between gasoline and benzene, used as a solvent and as a fuel — Webster's; aka lighter fluid
Napolean Bonaparte (1769-1821)
French general who was first consul and then emperor of the French, carried out many far-reaching reforms and through military force attempted to expand France's dominion (though he left France smaller than it had been at the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789). Until the end of the Second Empire under his nephew Napoleon III he was hailed as one of history's great heroes; "hats with and without Ns on them" 664
narodnik
From "narod" - people. Idealistic movement among Russian intellectuals in the post-emancipation period of the 19th century. They quit their urban life and attempted to "go to the people". Establishing themselves in villages, they tried to be of use to the peasantry, to get them into motion, but the peasants were generally suspicious of outsiders from other orders of society. Their politics were greatly influenced by the works of Karl Marx; "No, they are making believe to be narodnik, but I know, they are of Iasi, of Codreanu" 11
narrative voices
"Well Respected Man" (by The Kinks), 167 ("And the crowds they swarm in Knightsbridge, and the wordless carols drone [&c.]"); Rod Serling ("The Twilight Zone"), 202 ("Shortly, unpleasantly so, it will come to him that [...]");
Närrisch, Klaus
456; German: "foolish, crazy"; "lumpy nose, stoop, week's growth of orange and gray whiskers"; worked with Achtfaden on S-gerät; at Peenemünde with Slothrop et al., 495; "guidance man," 516; "he worked in guidance, he was Schilling's best man, he knows more about integrating circuits than anybody" 527; under narcohypnosis - captured by Russians for his guidance knowledge, 563
National Research Council
84; gave Jamf a grant for his Infant Tyrone study; "depth studies [...] that indicated an unacceptable 36% of the male work force weren't paying enough attention to their cocks" 581;
Nayland-Smith, Sir Denis
83; Character in Sax Rohmer's (English, 1883-1959) Fu Manchu novels; first appeared in The Insidious Doctor Fu Manchu (originally titled The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu) (1913); Denis Nayland-Smith, nephew of Sherlock Holmes, was the detective who most commonly opposed the insidious schemes of Dr Fu Manchu. With the assistance of Dr Petrie he battled the devil doctor and his minions every time their evil reared it's ugly head.; 277-78, 592, 631; 751
Nazi Party
"For every government agency, the Nazi Party set up a duplicate" 421;
Neubabelsberg
364; location of the Havel in Berlin where Potsdam Conference was held; 371; See also Potsdam Conference
Neukölln
651; where Byron is taken, to "the home of a glassblower"
New Dealers
77; Started in 1933 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the "New Deal" program was set up to combat the Great Depression, by abandoning the gold standard, devaluing the dollar, state intervention in the credit market, agricultural price support, and the passage of the Social Security Act (1935) which provided for old-age and unemployment insurance.
Newton, Isaac
555; "It was a little early for ~, but feelings about action and reaction were in the air"
Niederdorf
261; in Zürich
Niedersächsisch
465; Niedersachsen (Eng., Lower Saxony) is a north German state
Nielsen, Asta
415; Nora D-T's "long Asta Nielsen upper lip"
Nieman-Marcus
Nieman-Marcus is a higher-quality department store582; bowl from, at the Tracys' home
Night's Mad Carnival
133
nihilism
cheap nihilism, 57, 58, 129; Malcolm "the Unthinkable Nihilist," 64; "Nihilist transposition," 72; "nihilistic--pleasure," 96; Nora Dotson-Truck, "erotic nihilist," 149; "bones and heart alert to Nothing" 267; Tchitcherine "comes from Nihilist stock," 338; "Slothrop at the rail looking at nothing" 527; See also vacuum; Void; Zero
Nikolaikirche
398; "onion-topped" building at Zwölfkinder where Pökler is staying
1922 Committee
Within the British Parliament, members of the Conservative party are organized into a group known as the 1922 Committee (so called because it first met in 1922); "coming in the windows" 615
Nipple, Lloyd
374; from Slothrop's childhood
NISO
273; According to McGovern, NISO is the Scientific Research Institute for Airplane Equipment
Noble, Charlie
739; "A Raketen-Stadt Charlie Noble" 739
Norden device
151;
Nordhausen
240; city in central Germany in the Harz mountains, near which the Mittelwerke was located; given to Soviets per Yalta Agreement, 273; Americans crating out A4 rockets before Russians take over, 295; "Nordhausen means dwellings in the north. The Rocket had to be produced out of a place called Nordhausen." 322; 718 [MAP]
Norma
22; a Wren Slothrop is dating; 25
Norrmalm, Södermalm, Deer Park and Old City
141; all areas of Stockholm
Nosepicker, Neil
83; Book of 50,000 Insults
Notgeld
285; German: "Not" = "emergency" (issue of) "geld" = "money"
nouns used as verbs (and sometimes reconverted into nouns)
chevroning, 64; sinewaving, 67; historied, 71; fingernailed, 117; tendoning, 124; osmosed, 213; "paranoids from door to door" 254; palimpsested, 266; dopplering, 310; "water squeegeeing off" 460; sneaky-peteing, 508; gangstering, 518; "another shot rattlesnaking off of a bulkhead" 529; worded over, 589
Novi Pazar
The sanjak (district) of Novi Pazar is a primarily Moslem town in southwest Serbia; "Who'd ever think-it, could start such a flap? [...] the san-jak of Novi Pazar" 14-15; See also Balkan Intrigues
NSB credentials
95; Nationalsocialistische Bewegung, the Dutch national socialist movement; See also Rexist
339; New Turkic Alphabet; written language imposed on Central Asia by Russians; 341; Cyrillic NTA, 354; plenary session, 355; "first Central Asian fuck you signs," 355; See also naming; Routinization/Rationalization of Charisma
Nusselt heart-transfer coefficient453; One would have expected "heat-transfer," but this "typo," having persisted since Gravity's Rainbow's publication in 1973, may be intentional, perhaps indicative of Slothrop's state when he's thinking of it, falling for Katje while, post-coitus, she has him running down boundary-layer temperatures. But if you're really curious about Nusselt heat-transfer coefficients...
Nutria
38; a nutria is a web-footed South American aquatic rodent whose fur is used in the same way as, say, the more expensive beaver fur
NW7
344; IG office in Berlin to which its salesmen/spies reported; 630
Nymphenburg
Hunting lodge in Amalienburg, designed by Cuvilliés; "von Göll on his camera dolly [...] barrel-assing down the long corridors at" 750