Thomas Pynchon Wiki - User contributions [en]

Pages 3-7

2007-04-19T17:54:10Z

Bouleris: /* Page 5 */

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==Page 3==

'''second sheep''' 
3.14
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 [[Pages 549-557#555|555.29-31]].

==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.")

5.03 '''all got scumbled together, eventually, by the knives of the seasons, to an impasto, feet thick, of unbelievable black topsoil''' 

Didn't notice 'scumbled' first time round, I was going too fast. Second
read I looked it up. Scumbled? Isn't that some sort of painting
[technique? Pynchon make a mistake there? Mean to say scrambled?
Hmmmmmmmm. Then I thought of the 'knives' bit, wondered if artists might
use a [http://painting.about.com/od/paintingforbeginners/a/Painting_Knife.htm palette knife] to do this scumbling business. A Google search for
"scumble knife palette " found me this:

http://www.messums.com/sub_newsview.ink?nid=11191

"Hard impasto ridges left by the edge of the knife provided the texture
I needed to bring the waves crashing in."

[http://www.thefreedictionary.com/impasto Impasto] eh? I thought that just meant paste. So the knives in "knives of
the seasons" makes perfect sense. And Dictionary.com throws up another
interesting nugget:

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=scumbled

"To blur the outlines of: a writer who scumbled the line that divides
history and fiction."

Apt example!

 

==Page 6==

[[image:dna-molecule.jpg|thumb|100px|right]]6.09 '''a spiral ladder''' 
Suggests the double-helix structure of the DNA molecule that preserves the "living genetic chains" evoked at [[Pages 7-16#10|10.14]].

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Pages 3-7

2007-04-19T17:51:18Z

Bouleris: /* Page 5 */

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==Page 3==

'''second sheep''' 
3.14
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 [[Pages 549-557#555|555.29-31]].

==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.")

5.03 '''all got scumbled together, eventually, by the knives of the seasons, to an impasto, feet thick, of unbelievable black topsoil''' 

Didn't notice 'scumbled' first time round, I was going too fast. Second
read I looked it up. Scumbled? Isn't that some sort of painting
[technique? Pynchon make a mistake there? Mean to say scrambled?
Hmmmmmmmm. Then I thought of the 'knives' bit, wondered if artists might
use a palette knife to do this scumbling business. A Google search for
"scumble knife palette " found me this:

http://www.messums.com/sub_newsview.ink?nid=11191

"Hard impasto ridges left by the edge of the knife provided the texture
I needed to bring the waves crashing in."

[http://www.thefreedictionary.com/impasto Impasto] eh? I thought that just meant paste. So the knives in "knives of
the seasons" makes perfect sense. And Dictionary.com throws up another
interesting nugget:

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=scumbled

"To blur the outlines of: a writer who scumbled the line that divides
history and fiction."

Apt example!

 

==Page 6==

[[image:dna-molecule.jpg|thumb|100px|right]]6.09 '''a spiral ladder''' 
Suggests the double-helix structure of the DNA molecule that preserves the "living genetic chains" evoked at [[Pages 7-16#10|10.14]].

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Pages 7-16

2007-04-03T15:49:16Z

Bouleris: /* Page 13 */

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==Page 9==

9.03 '''Miss Grable''' 
Betty Grable actually became a pin-up favorite in '''1943''' (not 1944), when she had a photo series released. Although she had been featured in various films since the late 1920s, she first became a major box office attraction with the 1940 film ''Down Argentine Way''. The poster is also an example of the motif of the turning head that recurs throughout ''Gravity’s Rainbow''. Correspondent Hazen Bob Dixon notes that Grable was actually pregnant when the picture was taken, which is why her back was turned in the first place. The story is plausible, since Grable did give birth to a daughter (by her husband, band leader Harry James) in March 1944; however, there are other versions of how the image came to be taken.

9.05 '''Civvie Street''' 
In other words, Peacetime, when military personnel will again wear civilian clothes ("civvies"). George Formby had a postwar film titled George in Civvy Street (1946). See note at [[Pages 17-19#18|18.25]].

9.29 '''Jungfrau''' 
Correspondent Igor Zabel notes that the name of the famous mountain actually means "Virgin." Matthias Bauer adds:
"The name of the mountain means ''virgin`` in 20th century German. Translated from Kluge ''Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache``, 23th edition, de Gruyter, Berlin, New York, 1999: ''originally meaning young lady, later generalized to young (unmarried) woman. Mysticism used the word for the Virgin Mary, and the meaning shifted towards young (virgin) woman."

9.14-19 '''Bartley Gobbitch, DeCoverley Pox . . . SNIPE AND SHAFT, Teddy Bloat''' 
"Gobbitch" comes from the archaic word "gobbet," which Webster’s New World Dictionary defines as "a fragment or bit, especially of raw flesh." The names "Pox" and "Bloat" are obvious enough, but "DeCoverley" comes from Sir Roger Decoverley, the prototypical country squire created by Addison and Steele for the Spectator and named in turn for a country reel dance. Overall, the names suggest another version of the "Whole Sick Crew" of Pynchon’s V. "Snipe" (backbite, take potshots) and "shaft" (undercut, screw over) are what these men are presumably assigned to do to others in their various bureaucratic jobs and what they do in conversations at the eponymous pub.

==Page 10==

10.28 '''C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre''' 
It's magnificent, but it's not war. The "French observer" was Marshal Pierre Bosque.

10.41 '''like a rude metal double-fart''' 
Telephones in the UK use a double-ring, sounding like bzzt-bzzt.

==Page 11==

11.25 '''his batman, a Corporal Wayne''' 
[[image:batman.jpg|thumb|100px|right]]Weisenburger correctly defines "batman" (an aide assigned to a British officer) but misses Pynchon’s joke: Any "batman" with the last name of "Wayne" must have the first name "Bruce"! (Alfred Appel in Nabokov’s Dark Cinema also missed the joke, claiming that Pynchon was poking fun at John Wayne by demoting him to a "mere" corporal!)

==Page 13==

13.20 '''during his Kipling period, beastly Fuzzy-Wuzzies''' 
Contrary to Weisenburger, the Fuzzy-Wuzzies were actually the Sudanese natives fighting '''against''' (not conscripted for) the British. Here, Pirate is thinking not of the novels of the arch-apologist for Empire but of such Kipling poems as "Fuzzy-Wuzzy" in which a British soldier declares his grudging admiration for the natives’ fighting spirit.

13.34 '''No Cary Grant . . . medicine in the punchbowls''' 
[[image:gunga-din.gif|thumb|100px|right]]The reference here is not to the anachronistic Howard Hawks film Monkey Business but to George Stevens’ Gunga Din, the 1939 film loosely inspired by Kipling’s famous poem. It refers specifically to a scene where Cary Grant (and only cary Grant) is indeed "larking in and out" of the tables of a regimental ball "slipping elephant medicine in the punchbowls." He even has to warn one of his compatriots (Victor McLaglen and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) to not drink the punch as he is larking in and out. See Weisenburger's note at V684.31-35.

==Page 14==

14.07 '''H.A. Loaf''' 
As in "Half a loaf is better than none"?

14.30-31 '''It was a giant Adenoid!''' 
Correspondent Erik Johnson adds the following in relation to the references to the Adenoid here and at 754.38:
"An adenoid is an enlarged mass of lymphoid tissue at the back of the pharynx characteristically obstructing breathing--usually used in plural. I believe it's likely that Pynchon is also making reference to 'Adenoid Hynkel,' the character of the dictator (and mockery of Hitler) played by Charlie Chaplin in the film The Great Dictator.

14.34 '''Lord Blatherard Osmo''' 
To "blather" is to talk on foolishly (the reason for his mysterious death?). "Osmo" suggests "osmosis," the process by which the giant Adenoid would absorb its victims.

14.04 '''Redcaps''' 
[[image:redcap.jpg|thumb|100px|right]]Web correspondent Stephen Remato comments: " . . . Those serving in the British Army use the term to refer to the Military Police (in the American parlance 'snowdrops' in reference to the white helmets and gaiters); the term 'red caps' refers to the red band around the standard British Army officer's cap, what one might call the headband, which is usually khaki, with the exception of the red of the MPs. This makes much more sense in context, when the ownership of a narcotic cigarette is under scrutiny; why would one care if any Sudanese troops discovered this secret?"

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