Thomas Pynchon Wiki - User contributions [en]

Pages 674-700

2021-11-19T03:33:08Z

Jing: /* Page 682 */

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==Page 674==
674.10 '''a City of the Future''' 
Evokes, again, the opening images of Lang’s ''Metropolis''. See [[Pages 482-488#Page 482|482.25]].

'''Travel here gets complicated -- a system of buildings that move, by right angles, along the grooves of the Raketen-Stadt's street-grid. You can also raise or lower the building itself, a dozen floors per second, to desired heights or levels underground, like a submarine skipper with his periscope'''... 
This imagery was appropriated for the set designs and special effects of the 1998 film
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118929/combined Dark City].http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_674-700&action=edit&section=1
Editing Pages 674-700 (section) - Thomas Pynchon Wiki | Gravity's Rainbow

==Page 675==
'''Marcel''' 
It's possible that Marcel signifies the great French novelist Marcel Proust in some way:

:"Am I positive that Marcel indicates Proust? No. But there's a lot of circumstantial evidence: he's named "Marcel," he's French, he's a genius. These three facts alone in a vacuum would point strongly to Marcel Proust. But Pynchon also gives Marcel shiny black hair, links him with the 19th century, and portrays him as extremely long-winded." - Erik Ketzan, [https://www.pynchon.net/owap/article/view/30 Pynchon Nods: Proust in Gravity’s Rainbow]

Since Marcel gets into a "long discourse on the concept of 'give'" and "Man," it could also be a nod to sociologist and anthropologist [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Mauss Marcel Mauss] (1872-1950) whose most famous work is entitled [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gift_(book) ''The Gift''].

'''Myrtle Miraculous...Maximilian...Marcel''' 

The 3 Ms in this Fantastic 4 could allude to the Minnesota-based, multinational conglomerate [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M 3M]. Founded in the early 1900s, the company (formerly known as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company) was run by one William L. McKNIGHT from 1929 to 1949 and expanded worldwide in the 1950s (to the UK, Germany and others). In the late '60s and early '70s, 3M published a line of board games that were marketed to adults. These games with simple rules but complex game play were ancestors of the German "Eurogames," and included [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ploy_(board_game) Ploy], a space-age strategy game, which is considered to be one of the better chess variations.

==Page 676==
675.33 '''at best they manage to emerge...''' 
The description of decisions emerging from a chaos of competing forces echoes Pynchon's letter to Jules Siegel in 1965, [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=The_World_is_at_Fault The World is at Fault], in which Pynchon describes the journey of our souls through "whatever obsolescenses, bigotries, theories of education workable and un, parental wisdom or lack of it, happen to get in its more or less (random) pilgrimage..."

==Page 682==
682.11 '''Jew-zeppy''' 
Nalline’s transliteration: "Giuseppe," for Joseph.

682.18 '''Ho-zay''' 
Another of Nalline’s transliterations: "Jose," for Joseph.

==Page 684==
[[image:william-bendix.jpg|thumb|William Bendix in ''Lifeboat''|150px|right]]684.31-32 '''William Bendix''' 
An appropriate supporting role for Bendix would be his part in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeboat_(film) Hitchcock’s ''Lifeboat''] (1944), in which he plays a lindy-hopping sailor whose leg has to be amputated.

==Page 685==
685.7 '''his finest sacramental kif''' 
''Webster's Third International Dictionary'' defines kif, which is a variant of kef, a "smoking material (as hashish) that produces a state of dreamy tranquility."

685.21-22 '''"My Prelude to a Kiss," "Tenement Symphony"''' 
The former song (actually titled just "Prelude to a Kiss") is a 1945 composition by Duke Ellington with Irving Gordon and Irving Mills; the latter was composed by Hal Borne, with words by Sid Kullen and Roy Golden, and sung by Tony Martin in the 1941 Marx Brothers movie ''The Big Store''.

685.26 '''sexcrime fantasy''' 
The term "sexcrime" was invented as a Newspeak word by George Orwell in 1984. It refers to sex used for pleasure instead of simple procreation, an offense in the totalitarian state of the book.

685.28 '''MY DOPER’S CADENZA''' 
The ''New World Dictionary'' defines "cadenza" as "an elaborate, often improvised musical passage by played by an unaccompanied instrument in a concerto, usually near the end of the first movement."

==Page 688==
[[image:fay-wray2.jpg|thumb|Fay Wray|120px|right]]688.36-37 '''Fay Wray . . . in her screentest scene with Robert Armstrong''' 
Ann Darrow’s (Fay Wray) screentest is only peripherally "erotic mugging." She is instructed by Carl Denham (played by Armstrong) to look up and react in fear (in anticipation of her first actual view of King Kong, of whom she knows nothing yet). She is so caught up in her performance that she actually faints. It is this scene that Jessica mimics with Roger earlier in the novel.

==Page 689==
689.26 '''a round black iron anarchist bomb''' 
Another reference to the Porky Pig cartoon "The Blow-Out." The Mad Bomber puts such a device, along with a lot of other explosives, into an alarm clock rigged to explode.

==Page 691==
691.34-35 '''Paranoid . . . For The Day!''' 
The TV game show [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_for_a_Day ''Queen for a Day''] debuted as a radio show in 1945 with host Jack Bailey.

==Page 693==
'''MB DRO ROSHI'''
When discussing GR, the writer Alan Moore recalled this sequence as "the whole point of the novel... It’s just this bit of burnt paper that, if you put it together, talks about America dropping the atom bomb on Hiroshima. Which is of course, the end of the V bomb, which has been made obsolete. Gravity’s got a new rainbow." [http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/12/alan-moore-dodgem-logic/3/ source]. 

Note also that 'roshi' is Japanese for 'teacher': Rōshi (老師?) (Chinese pinyin: Lǎoshī; Sanskrit: ṛṣi) is a Japanese honorific title used in Zen Buddhism that literally means "old teacher" or "elder master" and sometimes denotes a person who gives spiritual guidance to a Zen sangha or congregation.(Wikipedia)

==Page 695==
695.25-28 '''Dungannon, Virginia . . . or Ellis, Kansas.''' 
[[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]]’s usual attention to geographical detail fails here. He does not find these towns on the borders of time zones in 1988 because the zones had been changed, shifting to the west, in the previous decades. All of the towns Pynchon names were on the borders of time zones in 1945 (and Murdo and Apalachicola still are). Kenosha itself borders Lake Michigan through which the Eastern-Central Time Zone border runs.

==Page 697==
'''American Hotchkisses are the guns that raked through the unarmed Indians at Wounded Knee.'''
Wounded Knee massacre was the last major armed conflict between the Dakota Sioux and the United States, subsequently described as a "massacre" by General Nelson A. Miles in a letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

On December 29, 1890, five hundred troops of the U.S. 7th Cavalry, supported by four Hotchkiss guns (a lightweight artillery piece capable of rapid fire), surrounded an encampment of Miniconjou Sioux (Lakota) and Hunkpapa Sioux (Lakota)[2] with orders to escort them to the railroad for transport to Omaha, Nebraska. The commander of the 7th had been ordered to disarm the Lakota before proceeding and placed his men in too close proximity to the Dakota, alarming them. Shooting broke out near the end of the disarmament, and accounts differ regarding who fired first and why.

By the time it was over, 25 troopers and 300 Dakota Sioux lay dead, including men, women, and children.

[[Pages 734-760#Page 752|Also, see note for p. 752]]; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre Wikipedia entry for Wounded Knee Massacre]
{{GR PbP}}

Pages 674-700

2021-11-19T03:32:50Z

Jing: /* Page 682 */

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 674==
674.10 '''a City of the Future''' 
Evokes, again, the opening images of Lang’s ''Metropolis''. See [[Pages 482-488#Page 482|482.25]].

'''Travel here gets complicated -- a system of buildings that move, by right angles, along the grooves of the Raketen-Stadt's street-grid. You can also raise or lower the building itself, a dozen floors per second, to desired heights or levels underground, like a submarine skipper with his periscope'''... 
This imagery was appropriated for the set designs and special effects of the 1998 film
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118929/combined Dark City].http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_674-700&action=edit&section=1
Editing Pages 674-700 (section) - Thomas Pynchon Wiki | Gravity's Rainbow

==Page 675==
'''Marcel''' 
It's possible that Marcel signifies the great French novelist Marcel Proust in some way:

:"Am I positive that Marcel indicates Proust? No. But there's a lot of circumstantial evidence: he's named "Marcel," he's French, he's a genius. These three facts alone in a vacuum would point strongly to Marcel Proust. But Pynchon also gives Marcel shiny black hair, links him with the 19th century, and portrays him as extremely long-winded." - Erik Ketzan, [https://www.pynchon.net/owap/article/view/30 Pynchon Nods: Proust in Gravity’s Rainbow]

Since Marcel gets into a "long discourse on the concept of 'give'" and "Man," it could also be a nod to sociologist and anthropologist [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Mauss Marcel Mauss] (1872-1950) whose most famous work is entitled [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gift_(book) ''The Gift''].

'''Myrtle Miraculous...Maximilian...Marcel''' 

The 3 Ms in this Fantastic 4 could allude to the Minnesota-based, multinational conglomerate [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M 3M]. Founded in the early 1900s, the company (formerly known as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company) was run by one William L. McKNIGHT from 1929 to 1949 and expanded worldwide in the 1950s (to the UK, Germany and others). In the late '60s and early '70s, 3M published a line of board games that were marketed to adults. These games with simple rules but complex game play were ancestors of the German "Eurogames," and included [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ploy_(board_game) Ploy], a space-age strategy game, which is considered to be one of the better chess variations.

==Page 676==
675.33 '''at best they manage to emerge...''' 
The description of decisions emerging from a chaos of competing forces echoes Pynchon's letter to Jules Siegel in 1965, [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=The_World_is_at_Fault The World is at Fault], in which Pynchon describes the journey of our souls through "whatever obsolescenses, bigotries, theories of education workable and un, parental wisdom or lack of it, happen to get in its more or less (random) pilgrimage..."

==Page 682==
682.18 '''Jew-zeppy''' 
Nalline’s transliteration: "Giuseppe," for Joseph.

682.18 '''Ho-zay''' 
Another of Nalline’s transliterations: "Jose," for Joseph.

==Page 684==
[[image:william-bendix.jpg|thumb|William Bendix in ''Lifeboat''|150px|right]]684.31-32 '''William Bendix''' 
An appropriate supporting role for Bendix would be his part in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeboat_(film) Hitchcock’s ''Lifeboat''] (1944), in which he plays a lindy-hopping sailor whose leg has to be amputated.

==Page 685==
685.7 '''his finest sacramental kif''' 
''Webster's Third International Dictionary'' defines kif, which is a variant of kef, a "smoking material (as hashish) that produces a state of dreamy tranquility."

685.21-22 '''"My Prelude to a Kiss," "Tenement Symphony"''' 
The former song (actually titled just "Prelude to a Kiss") is a 1945 composition by Duke Ellington with Irving Gordon and Irving Mills; the latter was composed by Hal Borne, with words by Sid Kullen and Roy Golden, and sung by Tony Martin in the 1941 Marx Brothers movie ''The Big Store''.

685.26 '''sexcrime fantasy''' 
The term "sexcrime" was invented as a Newspeak word by George Orwell in 1984. It refers to sex used for pleasure instead of simple procreation, an offense in the totalitarian state of the book.

685.28 '''MY DOPER’S CADENZA''' 
The ''New World Dictionary'' defines "cadenza" as "an elaborate, often improvised musical passage by played by an unaccompanied instrument in a concerto, usually near the end of the first movement."

==Page 688==
[[image:fay-wray2.jpg|thumb|Fay Wray|120px|right]]688.36-37 '''Fay Wray . . . in her screentest scene with Robert Armstrong''' 
Ann Darrow’s (Fay Wray) screentest is only peripherally "erotic mugging." She is instructed by Carl Denham (played by Armstrong) to look up and react in fear (in anticipation of her first actual view of King Kong, of whom she knows nothing yet). She is so caught up in her performance that she actually faints. It is this scene that Jessica mimics with Roger earlier in the novel.

==Page 689==
689.26 '''a round black iron anarchist bomb''' 
Another reference to the Porky Pig cartoon "The Blow-Out." The Mad Bomber puts such a device, along with a lot of other explosives, into an alarm clock rigged to explode.

==Page 691==
691.34-35 '''Paranoid . . . For The Day!''' 
The TV game show [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_for_a_Day ''Queen for a Day''] debuted as a radio show in 1945 with host Jack Bailey.

==Page 693==
'''MB DRO ROSHI'''
When discussing GR, the writer Alan Moore recalled this sequence as "the whole point of the novel... It’s just this bit of burnt paper that, if you put it together, talks about America dropping the atom bomb on Hiroshima. Which is of course, the end of the V bomb, which has been made obsolete. Gravity’s got a new rainbow." [http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/12/alan-moore-dodgem-logic/3/ source]. 

Note also that 'roshi' is Japanese for 'teacher': Rōshi (老師?) (Chinese pinyin: Lǎoshī; Sanskrit: ṛṣi) is a Japanese honorific title used in Zen Buddhism that literally means "old teacher" or "elder master" and sometimes denotes a person who gives spiritual guidance to a Zen sangha or congregation.(Wikipedia)

==Page 695==
695.25-28 '''Dungannon, Virginia . . . or Ellis, Kansas.''' 
[[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]]’s usual attention to geographical detail fails here. He does not find these towns on the borders of time zones in 1988 because the zones had been changed, shifting to the west, in the previous decades. All of the towns Pynchon names were on the borders of time zones in 1945 (and Murdo and Apalachicola still are). Kenosha itself borders Lake Michigan through which the Eastern-Central Time Zone border runs.

==Page 697==
'''American Hotchkisses are the guns that raked through the unarmed Indians at Wounded Knee.'''
Wounded Knee massacre was the last major armed conflict between the Dakota Sioux and the United States, subsequently described as a "massacre" by General Nelson A. Miles in a letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

On December 29, 1890, five hundred troops of the U.S. 7th Cavalry, supported by four Hotchkiss guns (a lightweight artillery piece capable of rapid fire), surrounded an encampment of Miniconjou Sioux (Lakota) and Hunkpapa Sioux (Lakota)[2] with orders to escort them to the railroad for transport to Omaha, Nebraska. The commander of the 7th had been ordered to disarm the Lakota before proceeding and placed his men in too close proximity to the Dakota, alarming them. Shooting broke out near the end of the disarmament, and accounts differ regarding who fired first and why.

By the time it was over, 25 troopers and 300 Dakota Sioux lay dead, including men, women, and children.

[[Pages 734-760#Page 752|Also, see note for p. 752]]; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre Wikipedia entry for Wounded Knee Massacre]
{{GR PbP}}