{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 3==
3.01 '''A screaming comes across the sky''' 
These opening words are forever linked with the V-2 (German A4) rocket. They may bring associations with bombs whistling as they fall, or with the high whine of postwar jet engines. But they are not a description of the sound actually made in target zones by the V-2 rocket, which was typically -- depending on the auditor's location -- the sharp "cracking" explosion of the 750-kg warhead followed by a deeper, more or less extended sonic boom.

Within this opening nightmare, the "screaming" connects more strongly to the wailing of air-raid sirens and/or, more poetically, to the panic of the city dwellers seeking escape. For what it's worth, the audiobook of Gravity's Rainbow -- presumably approved by Pynchon or his wife and agent, Melanie Jackson -- begins with an audio montage of air-raid sirens and snatches of WWII radio broadcasts.

3.03 '''The Evacuation''' 
First instance in ''Gravity's Rainbow'' of a lifetime stylistic trait of Pynchon's: unpredictable use of Capitalization.
*In ''Mason & Dixon'', Pynchon employs capitalization of nouns widely in semi-accordance with the style of 18th-century written English.
*All nouns are capitalized in German. Worth noting because the country, language and history loom so large in ''Gravity's Rainbow'' as well as Pynchon's first two novels, so much so that Pynchon scholar David Cowart refers these novels as Pynchon's "German period."

3.03 '''theatre''' 
Besides the normal meanings, including "theater of war", 'theatre' is the name that fireworks' organizers call a sky display.

3.05 '''iron queen''' 
a queensize bed made of iron. Hardly made after 1900. Queen Victoria had a famous brass (and iron) one in the Crystal Palace! "Beds made of hollow tubes of steel, iron, and brass came to be manufactured in the mid 19th century.
These were to be used both by soldiers and civilians. Their main advantage at that time was that unlike wooden beds, these could not be infested with bedbugs. Queen Victoria's brass bed at the Crystal Palace has been the most famous antique brass bed. 
By the late 19th century, metal beds were nearly out of fashion." Antique beds [[http://www.bestinbeds.com/beds/antique-bed.html]]

Also, In The Odyssey, when Odysseus goes to the Underworld, he refers to Persephone as '''the Iron Queen'''. Of the four gods of Empedocles' elements it is the name of Persephone alone that is taboo, for the Greeks knew another face of Persephone as well. She was also the terrible Queen of the dead, whose name was not safe to speak aloud, who was named simply "The Maiden". Wikipedia
[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persephone]]

3.07 '''crystal palace''' 
See Alpha entry, especially this re cultural meaning: 
The Crystal Palace made a strong impression on visitors coming from all over Europe, including a number of writers. It soon became a symbol of modernity and civilization, hailed by some and decried by others.

In ''What Is to Be Done?'', Russian author and philosopher Nikolai Chernyshevsky pledges to transform the society into a Crystal Palace thanks to a socialist revolution. 
Fyodor Dostoevsky implicitly replied to Chernyshevsky in ''Notes from Underground''. The narrator thinks that human nature will prefer destruction and chaos to the harmony symbolized by the Crystal Palace.

When the first major international exhibition of arts and industries was held in London in 1851, the London Crystal Palace epitomized the achievements of the entire world at a time when progress was racing forward at a speed never before known to mankind. The Great Exhibition marked the beginning of a tradition of world's fairs, which would be held in major cities all across the globe. Following the success of the London fair, it was inevitable that other nations would soon try their hand at organizing their own exhibitions. In fact, the next international fair was held only two years later, in 1853, in New York City. This fair would have its own Crystal Palace to symbolize not only the achievements of the world, but also the nationalistic pride of a relatively young nation and all that she stood for. Walt Whitman, the great American poet, wrote in "The Song of the Exposition": 
http://www.ric.edu/rpotter/cryspal.html

That the Crystal Palace Exhibition "marked the beginning of a tradition of world's fairs" can remind that ''Against the Day'' starts at the Columbian Exhibition of 1893 in Chicago. More international optimism.

3.14 '''second sheep''' 
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]].

A wide symbology relates to sheep in ancient art, traditions and culture. Judaism uses many sheep references including the Passover lamb. Christianity uses sheep-related images, such as: Christ as the good shepherd, or as the sacrificed Lamb of God (Agnus Dei); the bishop's Pastoral; the lion lying down with the lamb (a reference to all of creation being at peace, without suffering, predation or otherwise). Greek Easter celebrations traditionally feature a meal of Paschal lamb. Sheep also have considerable importance in Arab culture; Eid ul-Adha is a major annual festival in Islam in which a sheep is sacrificed. 
Herding sheep plays an important historico-symbolic part in the Jewish and Christian faiths, since Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and King David all worked as shepherds. wikipedia
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheep] 

Sheep are often associated with obedience due to the widespread perception that they lack intelligence and their undoubted herd mentality, hence the pejorative connotation of the adjective 'ovine'. In George Orwell's satirical novel ''Animal Farm'', sheep are used to represent the ignorant and uneducated masses of revolutionary Russia. The sheep are unable to be taught the subtleties of revolutionary ideology and can only be taught repetitive slogans such as "Four legs good, two legs bad" which they bleat in unison at rallies. The rock group Pink Floyd wrote a song using sheep as a symbol for ordinary people, that is, everyone who isn't a pig or dog. People who accept overbearing governments have been pejoratively referred to as "sheeple". wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheep] 

3.19 '''half-silvered''' 
adj. (of a mirror) having an incomplete reflective coating, so that half the incident light is reflected and half transmitted: used in optical instruments and two-way mirrors. Collins Dictionary 
See the splitting of light all through ''Against the Day'', Pynchon's 2006
novel.

3.19 '''view finder''' 
as two words, this seems to refer to handheld devices in which slides were slid and viewed in 3-dimensions. Here is a version still being made
[http://porters.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=PCS&Product_Code=520098&Product_Count=&Category_Code= view finder]. "half-silvered" above seems most correct with this kind of device.

3.22 '''They pass in line''' 
A Pynchonian leitmotif. The linearity of lining up has resonances throughout his work, articulated most straightforwardly in ''Against the Day'', which starts with "Single up all Lines!", and perhaps dealt with
most profoundly in ''Mason & Dixon'', a novel about creating the "Mason & Dixon line".

3.25 '''Rain comes down''' 
Pynchon's first published story is called ''The Small Rain''. See his remarks on rain in fiction in ''Slow Learner''.

3.30 '''naptha winters''' 
Naptha is the flammable liquid obtained from the distillation of coal and used to fire gaslights and heaters. ...

3.32 '''rolling-stock absence''' 
Rolling stock is the collective term that describes all the vehicles which move on a railway.

3.35 '''Absolute Zero''' 
Theoretical state when no molecules move. [http://www.pa.msu.edu/sciencet/ask_st/012992.html..Absolute Zero]. State
of entropy, a key concept of Thomas Pynchon's. See the early story "Entropy" in ''Slow Learner''.

3.36 '''places whose ''names he has never heard''''' 
'secret cities of poor', deep under these fallen girders. Places
that have never been spoken of, yet exist. Lower than ''Low-lands''. 
Later in Pynchon's world,in other books, ''Mason & Dixon'' and ''Against the Day'', we will travel deeper underground, to places with no names we know, it seems. See a "progressive ''knotting into''", 3.26 in GR.

3.37 '''the walls break down''' 
See "wall of death" later in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. A-and in ''Against the Day''.

==Page 4==
4.01 '''getting narrower...cornering tighter and tighter''' 
Cf. the rationalization of choice and similar phrasing in ''Against the Day'', pynchon wiki p. [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_1-25 10]

4.03 '''It is a judgment from which there is no appeal''' 
What began as an evacuation from a city under attack is becoming, obliquely but unmistakably, the way to the death camps of the Third Reich.

4.05 '''caravan''' 
1) a procession, in single file, of merchants or pilgrims
2) a procession of mules, camels or certain other animals. Sources: Online dictionary and wikipedia. 
Pilgrim has Pynchonian resonances, especially in ''Against the Day''. A-And, once again, notice the singleing up of lines.

4.07 '''cockade''' 
1) n. An ornament, such as a rosette or knot of ribbon, usually worn on the hat as a badge. [Alteration of obsolete cockard , from French.] 

2) Operational code name for Allied deception operations intended to draw attention away from Normandy prior to D-Day
[http://www.secondworldwar.co.uk/glossc.html]

Cf. pun: cock aid, esp. as Slothrop's 'condition' within ''Gravity's Rainbow'' is revealed.

4.07 '''the color of lead''' 
cockades are usually brightly colored. Lead is not. 

Lead is a malleable toxic metallic element, bluish-white in color that
tarnishes to a dull gray. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead Lead] 

Lead is what bullets are made of.

4.12 '''corridors straight and functional''' 
More forced linearity.

4.31 '''But it is already light...light has come percolating in''' 
See also the opening lines of Pynchon's next book, 'Vineland', which begins with someone waking from a (possibly prophetic) dream, with light streaming in.

4.37 '''the different levels of the enormous room''' 
The transition from dream to waking is so subtle, and beautifully done, right down to little details, such as how the dreamer's real and dreamt surroundings cross over: the multi-levelled carriage of the dream becomes, on awaking, the room with many levels; the carriage's evacuees ('second sheep') become the room's 'drunken wastrels', etc.

==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 '''He is wrapped in a thick blanket, a tartan of orange, rust, and scarlet. His skull feels made of metal.''' 
The rust in the tartan goes well with the metal-feeling skull. And there's a lot of metal in the preceding pages - lead, girders, the iron queen, the metal train tracks, etc. So it's appropriate that Prentice wakes feeling metallic.

5.22-24 '''a maisonette erected last century, not far from Chelsea Embankment, by Corydon Throsp, an acquaintance of the Rossettis' who wore hair smocks and liked to cultivate pharmaceutical plants up on the roof''' 

Corydon is a stock name for a herdsman in Greek pastoral poems. One example is from Virgil's Eclogues, where a herdsman named Corydon falls in love with his master's lover, Alexis. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corydon_(character)]]

There appears to be no single maisonette near the Chelsea Embankment fitting the description of Pirate's: mullioned windows (p4), French windows, spiral ladder to the roof, parapets and a view of the Thames (p6), mediaeval windows (p93), roof ledges (p111), and of course a roof large and flat enough to hold a bananery, or some pigs. Rossetti, who we're told Throsp is on nodding terms with, and Swinburne lived at No. 16 Cheyne Walk; Rossetti kept a small zoo in the house, including peacocks (die Pfaue). Thomas Carlyle's house is nearby in Cheyne Row. There is a bust of Rossetti in the strip of park separating Cheyne Walk, where Keith Richards, not unfamiliar with Osbie Feel's kind of mushrooms, once lived, from the embankment.

Rossetti's wife died of a drug overdose, and he took to keeping wombats as pets; one of these wombats used to attend the dinner table, and was said to have provided the inspiration for the Dormouse character in Alice in Wonderland.

That Dormouse's advice - "feed your head" - was used at the end of Jefferson Airplane's mushroom flavoured, Alice-inspired song 'White Rabbit'. Way later on in the book, Slothrop has a dream in which a statue of the White Rabbit in Llandudno is giving him sage advice, but he loses it as he wakes. Oddly enough, the drug that killed Rossetti's wife was laudanum, which isn't very different from 'Llandudno'. Of course that's almost certainly just a coincidence, but all of the foregoing is the sort of stuff you find yourself digging up by chasing after the countless references Pynchon sews into the fabric of the book.

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

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=scumbled "To blur the outlines of: a writer who scumbled the line that divides history and fiction."

A-and the wonderful phrase, "knives of the seasons" embodies another lifelong deep theme in Pynchon's work: that the 'wheeling' of time [see later in ''Gravity's Rainbow'' and ''Against the Day''], the cycle of nature, is an ineluctable good thing, even as it knifes us, ravages, us. It thickens us, impasto-like, gives us topsoil in our characters, so to speak.
 

Recapitulated later in "...corrode in the busy knives of weather pushing relentlessly into all the rooms." (533.22)

5.41 '''the politics of bacteria... rings and chains in nets''' 
Along with "fragments of peculiar alkaloids" a few lines earlier, this begins a recurring use of chemical and biochemical language and perspectives. Sometimes it points toward synthetic industrial chemistry and the geopolitics of coal, oil and steel, sometimes toward the endless variety and vitality of life. Thomas R. Pynchon III (1823-1904), the author's great-great-uncle, was an eminent chemist and educator at Trinity College in Hartford, CT.

==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]]. 
Double-helix structure like a mandala, pervasive in GR: 
"Mandala" is an ancient Sanskrit word meaning "sacred circle that protects the soul." It also refers to the sacred cosmograms that serve as core symbols of all cultures. Westerners have been fascinated for centuries about the mandalas of the Hindu-Buddhist cultures of Asia, most often painted geometric diagrams of great beauty and sophistication, that draw the viewer into a realm of balance, harmony, and calm. But such diagrams are actually architectural blueprints of the purified realm of bliss that we can only realize through enlightenment. They represent three-dimensional spaces of personal and communal exaltation, palaces for the regal confidence of love, compassion, and universal satisfaction of self and other. Understanding their role in anchoring the world-picture of a culture or a person provides a new insight into the "mandalas" of our own culture – the national space anchored by the Washington monument and its environs, or the personal cosmological space anchored by the models of the solar system, '''the DNA double-helix molecule''', and the atom. [http://www.amazon.com/Mandala-Enlightenment-Denise-Patry-Leidy/dp/1585678503 Mandala]
 

A recent scientific magazine also had an essay [citation needed] on the similarity of the double-helix sructure and the structure of the mandala. A-and, GR, containing mandalas, has been argued to be structured like a mandala. SPOILER of upcoming GR tropes: "Slothrop finds mandalas, sees mandalas in the sky and all around him, and becomes a mandala himself".
"mandalas are part of a spiritual or mythic panoply"...
From ''Thomas Pynchon, The Art of Illusion'' by David Cowart, p. 126.

Cf. p. 209, ''Mason & Dixon'': " oblique angles with all meridians and that is a spiral coiling round the poles but never reaching them."...

Cf. ''V.'' where the isle of Malta is also likened to a sort of mandala.

6.12 '''The great power station and the gasworks beyond''' Pirate is looking at the Battersea Power Station. Built in 1937, the Station is well known for appearing below a giant inflatable pig on the cover of Pink Floyd's 1977 album Animals. It has been defunct since 1983. At the time GR is set the plant had two smokestacks; today it has four. According to the London Encyclopedia (ed. C. Hibbert and B. Weinreb) a plaque commemorating Michael Faraday hangs on one wall, but it's not possible to confirm this as the entire site is fenced off. "The gasworks beyond" is the still operational British Gas plant just southeast of the power station. Viewed from Pirate's stretch of the Embankment it seems to lie more to the right of the power station than "beyond" it.

==Page 7==
7.09 '''Pick bananas''' 
Pirate's decision after a paragraph on the inevitablity of the rocket's flight can remind one of a famous Buddhist sutra on picking a strawberry:

The Sweetest Strawberry 
Buddha told a parable in a sutra: 
:A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted! 
-Paul Reps, ''Zen Flesh, Zen Bones'' 
from ''Everyday Mind'', edited by Jean Smith
[[http://www.tricycle.com/issues/2_174/dailydharma/3192-1.html]]

'''seven squares''' 
The use of the squares to separate chapters was suggested by the production department or editors of GR, not by Pynchon himself. See Edward Mendelson, "Gravity's Encyclopedia," fn. 4.

Gerald Howard, [http://www.bookforum.com/archive/sum_05/pynchon.html Bookforum]: ''"It is generally thought that the line of seven squares that serves as a graphic device to separate the unnumbered chapters in the novel is meant to suggest the sprocket holes in film reels, indicating that the book is to be "read" cinematically as a kind of film in prose. Wrong. In one of his letters Kennebeck refers pointedly to the "oblong holes" in censored correspondence from World War II soldiers, then termed V-mail (there's that letter again), and in a letter to Donald Barthelme accompanying a finished copy of the book, Kennebeck makes jocular mention of the sprocket-hole theory, first floated in the Poirier review, and comments, "I little knew what I was contributing to the history of literature." Sometimes a rectangle is just a rectangle—or maybe a censor's mark."''

A further angle on the squares is this: they are ''vignettes''. Regard the etymology and definition of the word (from Wiktionary http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vignette)
:

''Etymology'':
First attested in 1751. From French vignette, diminutive of vigne (“vine”) < Latin vīnea < vīnum (“wine”).

''Definition'':

(architecture) A running ornament consisting of leaves and tendrils, used in Gothic architecture.

(printing) A decorative design, originally representing vine branches or tendrils, at the head of a chapter, of a manuscript or printed book, or in a similar position.

(by extension) Any small borderless picture in a book, especially an engraving, photograph, or the like, which vanishes gradually at the edge.

(by extension) A short story that presents a scene or tableau, or paints a picture.

The small picture on a postage stamp.

Lends new meaning to the line "Tonight they will shoot ''wine''."

{{GR PbP}}

Talk:Pages 3-7

2025-01-22T01:01:46Z

Jkvannort: adding to Corydon Throsp entry

Pages 735-760

2024-12-27T00:11:20Z

Jkvannort:

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 738==
[[image:wuxtry.jpg|thumb|Wuxtry|60px|right]]738.19 '''Mickey Wuxtry-Wuxtry''' 
The last name is the archetypal newsboy’s cry: "Wuxtry! Wuxtry! [Extra! Extra!] Read all about it!" The spelling was commonly used in the 1940s: Jack Kirby’s ''Boy Commandos'', or ''The Newsboy Legion''; a painting by Albert Abramovitz (at the Harn Museum of Art); and articles in ''Time'' and ''Newsweek'', among others.

==Page 742==
742.29 '''The Fool''' 
In the March 21, 1969 ''Time'' cover story on astrology and the occult (see note at [[Page 29-37#31|31.28]]), the following reference to this otherwise-obscure group occurs: "A California rock group called The Fool has recorded several zodiacal songs not only because they believe only in astrology, but because they feel generally tuned in to the entire occult world (the Fool is the card in the fortunetelling Tarot deck that stands for Man)" [sic] (48).

==Page 750==
[[image:nymphenburg.jpg|thumb|Nymphenburg|120px|right]]750.11-13 '''on his camera dolly, whooping with joy, barrel-assing down the long corridors at Nymphenburg''' 
The palace, near Munich, was the birthplace of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Ludwig_II King Ludwig II of Bavaria] and also provided some of the sets for Alain Resnais’ ''Last Year at Marienbad'' (along with Ludwig's own Herrenchiemsee), one of several anachronistic references to postwar modernist films in the book, especially here towards the end. As viewers know, Resnais' film features long tracking shots down the corridors of these sets. (See also the reference to the "Bengt Ekarot / Maria Casares Film Festival" at [[Pages 735-760#755|755.3-4]]. As [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] notes, both actors played the role of Death, in Bergman’s [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seventh_Seal ''The Seventh Seal''] and Cocteau’s [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orph%C3%A9e ''Orpheus''], respectively.) See note at [[Page 392-397#394|394.22]].

==Page 752==
752.01-03 '''Philip Marlow [sic] . . . Bradbury Building''' 
Philip Marlowe did have his office in in the Bradbury Building in one film adaptation of Chandler’s works: ''Marlowe'' (1969), based on ''The Little Sister'', starring James Garner. The Bradbury, long neglected and probably best known as a major setting in Ridley Scott’s ''Blade Runner'' (1982), has been restored and recognized as one of the most remarkable pieces of architecture in Los Angeles.

[[image:submariner-1.jpg|thumb|Sub-mariner #1|160px|left]]752.04 '''Submariner and his multi-lingual gang will run into battery trouble''' 
Some corrections to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]]’s notes: ''Timely Comics'', ''Atlas Comics'', and ''Marvel Comics'' were all variant titles for the same company, known only by the last name since the 1950s. Sub-Mariner (pronounced "Sub-MARE-iner") was first created by Bill Everett for a one-time black-and-white giveaway comic called ''Motion Pictures Funnies Weekly''. The character made his first full appearance in issue #1 of ''Marvel Comics'' (published under the ''Timely Comics'' label). Prince Namor (not "Namore") was and remains an unusual hero, since he often has battled mankind and human/humanoid superheroes. As Prince of Atlantis, he was at first pledged to the destruction of humanity. By the time America entered World War II, he had become part of various teams working to defeat the Axis powers. He rarely, if ever, wore a cape. Pynchon’s use of the character here is puzzling for several reasons. First, the super-powered [[image:blackhawk.jpg|thumb|Blackhawk|100px|right]]Atlantean had no need for a battery-powered vehicle since he could breathe and swim underwater at high speeds (see picture on linked cover). Second, despite his team-ups with other groups during the war, he does not seem ever to have been part of a "multi-lingual crew." It may be that Pynchon never actually read the comic book. (His other superhero references including ''Superman'', ''Batman'', and ''Wonder Woman'' are mostly to heroes from Marvel’s publishing arch-rival, the DC publishing group.) Pynchon may, like many of the comics’ readers, have pronounced the hero’s name "Subma-REEN-er" and assumed that he actually commanded an underwater vehicle. He may have confused this character further with Blackhawk, the flying ace who did command a "multi-lingual crew" (including American, English, Dutch, Swedish, Free French, Polish, and a horrible, racist portrayal of a Chinese cook)!

752.07 '''The Lone Ranger will storm in . . .''' 
[[L#loneranger|''The Lone Ranger'']] began as a locally-produced program on Detroit radio station WXYZ (which also produced ''Sergeant Preston of the Yukon'' and ''The Green Hornet''). It began its television life (with Clayton Moore in the title role) in 1949 on the ABC network. The real name of the Ranger was John Reid. Dan (Jr.) was his nephew, son of John's murdered brother. Dan was featured in a number of radio and TV episodes (and would eventually be the father of Britt Reid, the secret identity of the urban vigilante The Green Hornet!). Here, the Ranger and Tonto are too late to save the nephew.

752.10 '''Tonto, God willing, will put on his ghost shirt ...''' 
A reference to the Ghost Dance movement among Native Americans in the 1870s. A Paiute known as Wovoka became a messianic figure as he preached that a dance would eventually restore American Indians to their rightful place in the world and cause the whites to disappear. Part of the movement involved the weaving and wearing of "ghost shirts," which it was believed would give the wearer immunity from soldiers’ bullets. White fear of these beliefs ultimately contributed to the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890 and the end of both the Ghost Dance movement and Native American resistance to white "manifest destiny." The reference to "cold fire" and the role of the shirt in relation to this passage remain unclear. Also see reference at [[Pages 674-700#697|p. 697]].

Presumably Tonto resharpens his knife to renew the Amerindian revenge against the white man, a fire which has gone cold. More failure for the Lone Ranger. God is mentioned six times on pages 751-753.

752.14 '''Yes, Jimmy''' 
Superman is speaking to his good pal, ''Daily Planet'' cub reporter Jimmy Olsen.

752.14 '''here, where everybody else walks around suntanned, and red-eyed from one irritant or another''' 
In a shift to the present, "here" is sunny, polluted Los Angeles.

==Page 755==
755.06 '''an inverted "peace sign"''' 
Nixon co-opted the "V" peace sign from the beginning of his 1968 Presidential campaign all the way through to his departure by helicopter from the White House after being forced to resign because of the Watergate scandal.

Popularized most in WW2 by Winston Churchill, it meant Victory and may have been the source of Nixon's use of it, most visibly when he won the national election in 1968,[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election%2C_1968],but perhaps even earlier. Sourcing needed for earlier use by Nixon.

The "V" hand sign: The first definitive known reference to the V sign is in the works of François Rabelais, a French satirist of the 1500s. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_sign]

Most interesting here from the author of ''V.'', of course.

==Page 756==
756.39-40 '''a mysteriously-canvased trailer rig and a liquid hydrogen tanker''' 
Trucks probably carrying, respectively, a shrouded nuclear missile and its fuel.

==Page 758==
758 '''Moving now...present''' 
Very reminiscent of the Zen saying: "Before Enlightenment chop wood carry water, after Enlightenment, chop wood carry water."

Ties in to the Zen parable (perhaps) behind Pick Bananas, [[Pages_3-7#Page_7|page 7]]?

Perhaps ties in to the meaning of the last word, "grace", in ''Against the Day'', [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_1063-1085#Page_1085 page 1085]? And therefore some of Pynchon's deepest visions of life?

==Page 760==
760.10 '''The screen... The film... old fans who've always been at the movies'''
See the anticipation at 49.30.

{{GR PbP}}

User:WikiAdmin

2024-12-26T13:49:13Z

Jkvannort:

I am sorry for adding title comments to the home page. I could not see an Edit button on the title section. I will not repeat anything like this.

Love the wiki. Thanks.

Mark Kohut

:No problem, Mark. Live and learn. [[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 09:18, 13 January 2007 (PST)

I've accidentally given an uploaded image the title example.jpg, but I can't seem to find the delete tab. Would you please delete it for me (and tell me where the delete tab is)? Thanks! [[User:Torerye|Torerye]] 02:30, 26 January 2007 (PST)

:After logging in, click on the image thumbnail in the image gallery (or wherever you can) and you'll see a "delete" tab at the top to delete the image. Make *sure* you want to delete, then do so. I deleted the example.jpg image. [[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 09:36, 26 January 2007 (PST)

I see that you deleted my addition to the Annotations by Page. If I want to add a comment and link about the von Braun quotation that begins on page 1, how would I do that?

I've made several edits to the CoL49 and V page without issues. What did I do wrong? [[User:Jkvannort|Jkvannort]]

User:WikiAdmin

2024-12-26T12:51:23Z

Jkvannort:

Pages 3-7

2024-12-25T18:42:33Z

Jkvannort:

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 3==
3.01 '''A screaming comes across the sky''' 
These opening words are forever linked with the V-2 (German A4) rocket. They may bring associations with bombs whistling as they fall, or with the high whine of postwar jet engines. But they are not a description of the sound actually made in target zones by the V-2 rocket, which was typically -- depending on the auditor's location -- the sharp "cracking" explosion of the 750-kg warhead followed by a deeper, more or less extended sonic boom.

Within this opening nightmare, the "screaming" connects more strongly to the wailing of air-raid sirens and/or, more poetically, to the panic of the city dwellers seeking escape. For what it's worth, the audiobook of Gravity's Rainbow -- presumably approved by Pynchon or his wife and agent, Melanie Jackson -- begins with an audio montage of air-raid sirens and snatches of WWII radio broadcasts.

3.03 '''The Evacuation''' 
First instance in ''Gravity's Rainbow'' of a lifetime stylistic trait of Pynchon's: unpredictable use of Capitalization.
*In ''Mason & Dixon'', Pynchon employs capitalization of nouns widely in semi-accordance with the style of 18th-century written English.
*All nouns are capitalized in German. Worth noting because the country, language and history loom so large in ''Gravity's Rainbow'' as well as Pynchon's first two novels, so much so that Pynchon scholar David Cowart refers these novels as Pynchon's "German period."

3.03 '''theatre''' 
Besides the normal meanings, including "theater of war", 'theatre' is the name that fireworks' organizers call a sky display.

3.05 '''iron queen''' 
a queensize bed made of iron. Hardly made after 1900. Queen Victoria had a famous brass (and iron) one in the Crystal Palace! "Beds made of hollow tubes of steel, iron, and brass came to be manufactured in the mid 19th century.
These were to be used both by soldiers and civilians. Their main advantage at that time was that unlike wooden beds, these could not be infested with bedbugs. Queen Victoria's brass bed at the Crystal Palace has been the most famous antique brass bed. 
By the late 19th century, metal beds were nearly out of fashion." Antique beds [[http://www.bestinbeds.com/beds/antique-bed.html]]

Also, In The Odyssey, when Odysseus goes to the Underworld, he refers to Persephone as '''the Iron Queen'''. Of the four gods of Empedocles' elements it is the name of Persephone alone that is taboo, for the Greeks knew another face of Persephone as well. She was also the terrible Queen of the dead, whose name was not safe to speak aloud, who was named simply "The Maiden". Wikipedia
[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persephone]]

3.07 '''crystal palace''' 
See Alpha entry, especially this re cultural meaning: 
The Crystal Palace made a strong impression on visitors coming from all over Europe, including a number of writers. It soon became a symbol of modernity and civilization, hailed by some and decried by others.

In ''What Is to Be Done?'', Russian author and philosopher Nikolai Chernyshevsky pledges to transform the society into a Crystal Palace thanks to a socialist revolution. 
Fyodor Dostoevsky implicitly replied to Chernyshevsky in ''Notes from Underground''. The narrator thinks that human nature will prefer destruction and chaos to the harmony symbolized by the Crystal Palace.

When the first major international exhibition of arts and industries was held in London in 1851, the London Crystal Palace epitomized the achievements of the entire world at a time when progress was racing forward at a speed never before known to mankind. The Great Exhibition marked the beginning of a tradition of world's fairs, which would be held in major cities all across the globe. Following the success of the London fair, it was inevitable that other nations would soon try their hand at organizing their own exhibitions. In fact, the next international fair was held only two years later, in 1853, in New York City. This fair would have its own Crystal Palace to symbolize not only the achievements of the world, but also the nationalistic pride of a relatively young nation and all that she stood for. Walt Whitman, the great American poet, wrote in "The Song of the Exposition": 
http://www.ric.edu/rpotter/cryspal.html

That the Crystal Palace Exhibition "marked the beginning of a tradition of world's fairs" can remind that ''Against the Day'' starts at the Columbian Exhibition of 1893 in Chicago. More international optimism.

3.14 '''second sheep''' 
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]].

A wide symbology relates to sheep in ancient art, traditions and culture. Judaism uses many sheep references including the Passover lamb. Christianity uses sheep-related images, such as: Christ as the good shepherd, or as the sacrificed Lamb of God (Agnus Dei); the bishop's Pastoral; the lion lying down with the lamb (a reference to all of creation being at peace, without suffering, predation or otherwise). Greek Easter celebrations traditionally feature a meal of Paschal lamb. Sheep also have considerable importance in Arab culture; Eid ul-Adha is a major annual festival in Islam in which a sheep is sacrificed. 
Herding sheep plays an important historico-symbolic part in the Jewish and Christian faiths, since Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and King David all worked as shepherds. wikipedia
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheep] 

Sheep are often associated with obedience due to the widespread perception that they lack intelligence and their undoubted herd mentality, hence the pejorative connotation of the adjective 'ovine'. In George Orwell's satirical novel ''Animal Farm'', sheep are used to represent the ignorant and uneducated masses of revolutionary Russia. The sheep are unable to be taught the subtleties of revolutionary ideology and can only be taught repetitive slogans such as "Four legs good, two legs bad" which they bleat in unison at rallies. The rock group Pink Floyd wrote a song using sheep as a symbol for ordinary people, that is, everyone who isn't a pig or dog. People who accept overbearing governments have been pejoratively referred to as "sheeple". wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheep] 

3.19 '''half-silvered''' 
adj. (of a mirror) having an incomplete reflective coating, so that half the incident light is reflected and half transmitted: used in optical instruments and two-way mirrors. Collins Dictionary 
See the splitting of light all through ''Against the Day'', Pynchon's 2006
novel.

3.19 '''view finder''' 
as two words, this seems to refer to handheld devices in which slides were slid and viewed in 3-dimensions. Here is a version still being made
[http://porters.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=PCS&Product_Code=520098&Product_Count=&Category_Code= view finder]. "half-silvered" above seems most correct with this kind of device.

3.22 '''They pass in line''' 
A Pynchonian leitmotif. The linearity of lining up has resonances throughout his work, articulated most straightforwardly in ''Against the Day'', which starts with "Single up all Lines!", and perhaps dealt with
most profoundly in ''Mason & Dixon'', a novel about creating the "Mason & Dixon line".

3.25 '''Rain comes down''' 
Pynchon's first published story is called ''The Small Rain''. See his remarks on rain in fiction in ''Slow Learner''.

3.30 '''naptha winters''' 
Naptha is the flammable liquid obtained from the distillation of coal and used to fire gaslights and heaters. ...

3.32 '''rolling-stock absence''' 
Rolling stock is the collective term that describes all the vehicles which move on a railway.

3.35 '''Absolute Zero''' 
Theoretical state when no molecules move. [http://www.pa.msu.edu/sciencet/ask_st/012992.html..Absolute Zero]. State
of entropy, a key concept of Thomas Pynchon's. See the early story "Entropy" in ''Slow Learner''.

3.36 '''places whose ''names he has never heard''''' 
'secret cities of poor', deep under these fallen girders. Places
that have never been spoken of, yet exist. Lower than ''Low-lands''. 
Later in Pynchon's world,in other books, ''Mason & Dixon'' and ''Against the Day'', we will travel deeper underground, to places with no names we know, it seems. See a "progressive ''knotting into''", 3.26 in GR.

3.37 '''the walls break down''' 
See "wall of death" later in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. A-and in ''Against the Day''.

==Page 4==
4.01 '''getting narrower...cornering tighter and tighter''' 
Cf. the rationalization of choice and similar phrasing in ''Against the Day'', pynchon wiki p. [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_1-25 10]

4.03 '''It is a judgment from which there is no appeal''' 
What began as an evacuation from a city under attack is becoming, obliquely but unmistakably, the way to the death camps of the Third Reich.

4.05 '''caravan''' 
1) a procession, in single file, of merchants or pilgrims
2) a procession of mules, camels or certain other animals. Sources: Online dictionary and wikipedia. 
Pilgrim has Pynchonian resonances, especially in ''Against the Day''. A-And, once again, notice the singleing up of lines.

4.07 '''cockade''' 
1) n. An ornament, such as a rosette or knot of ribbon, usually worn on the hat as a badge. [Alteration of obsolete cockard , from French.] 

2) Operational code name for Allied deception operations intended to draw attention away from Normandy prior to D-Day
[http://www.secondworldwar.co.uk/glossc.html]

Cf. pun: cock aid, esp. as Slothrop's 'condition' within ''Gravity's Rainbow'' is revealed.

4.07 '''the color of lead''' 
cockades are usually brightly colored. Lead is not. 

Lead is a malleable toxic metallic element, bluish-white in color that
tarnishes to a dull gray. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead Lead] 

Lead is what bullets are made of.

4.12 '''corridors straight and functional''' 
More forced linearity.

4.31 '''But it is already light...light has come percolating in''' 
See also the opening lines of Pynchon's next book, 'Vineland', which begins with someone waking from a (possibly prophetic) dream, with light streaming in.

4.37 '''the different levels of the enormous room''' 
The transition from dream to waking is so subtle, and beautifully done, right down to little details, such as how the dreamer's real and dreamt surroundings cross over: the multi-levelled carriage of the dream becomes, on awaking, the room with many levels; the carriage's evacuees ('second sheep') become the room's 'drunken wastrels', etc.

==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 '''He is wrapped in a thick blanket, a tartan of orange, rust, and scarlet. His skull feels made of metal.''' 
The rust in the tartan goes well with the metal-feeling skull. And there's a lot of metal in the preceding pages - lead, girders, the iron queen, the metal train tracks, etc. So it's appropriate that Prentice wakes feeling metallic.

5.22-24 '''a maisonette erected last century, not far from Chelsea Embankment, by Corydon Throsp, an acquaintance of the Rossettis' who wore hair smocks and liked to cultivate pharmaceutical plants up on the roof''' 

There appears to be no single maisonette near the Chelsea Embankment fitting the description of Pirate's: mullioned windows (p4), French windows, spiral ladder to the roof, parapets and a view of the Thames (p6), mediaeval windows (p93), roof ledges (p111), and of course a roof large and flat enough to hold a bananery, or some pigs. Rossetti, who we're told Throsp is on nodding terms with, and Swinburne lived at No. 16 Cheyne Walk; Rossetti kept a small zoo in the house, including peacocks (die Pfaue). Thomas Carlyle's house is nearby in Cheyne Row. There is a bust of Rossetti in the strip of park separating Cheyne Walk, where Keith Richards, not unfamiliar with Osbie Feel's kind of mushrooms, once lived, from the embankment.

Rossetti's wife died of a drug overdose, and he took to keeping wombats as pets; one of these wombats used to attend the dinner table, and was said to have provided the inspiration for the Dormouse character in Alice in Wonderland.

That Dormouse's advice - "feed your head" - was used at the end of Jefferson Airplane's mushroom flavoured, Alice-inspired song 'White Rabbit'. Way later on in the book, Slothrop has a dream in which a statue of the White Rabbit in Llandudno is giving him sage advice, but he loses it as he wakes. Oddly enough, the drug that killed Rossetti's wife was laudanum, which isn't very different from 'Llandudno'. Of course that's almost certainly just a coincidence, but all of the foregoing is the sort of stuff you find yourself digging up by chasing after the countless references Pynchon sews into the fabric of the book.

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

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=scumbled "To blur the outlines of: a writer who scumbled the line that divides history and fiction."

A-and the wonderful phrase, "knives of the seasons" embodies another lifelong deep theme in Pynchon's work: that the 'wheeling' of time [see later in ''Gravity's Rainbow'' and ''Against the Day''], the cycle of nature, is an ineluctable good thing, even as it knifes us, ravages, us. It thickens us, impasto-like, gives us topsoil in our characters, so to speak.
 

Recapitulated later in "...corrode in the busy knives of weather pushing relentlessly into all the rooms." (533.22)

5.41 '''the politics of bacteria... rings and chains in nets''' 
Along with "fragments of peculiar alkaloids" a few lines earlier, this begins a recurring use of chemical and biochemical language and perspectives. Sometimes it points toward synthetic industrial chemistry and the geopolitics of coal, oil and steel, sometimes toward the endless variety and vitality of life. Thomas R. Pynchon III (1823-1904), the author's great-great-uncle, was an eminent chemist and educator at Trinity College in Hartford, CT.

==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]]. 
Double-helix structure like a mandala, pervasive in GR: 
"Mandala" is an ancient Sanskrit word meaning "sacred circle that protects the soul." It also refers to the sacred cosmograms that serve as core symbols of all cultures. Westerners have been fascinated for centuries about the mandalas of the Hindu-Buddhist cultures of Asia, most often painted geometric diagrams of great beauty and sophistication, that draw the viewer into a realm of balance, harmony, and calm. But such diagrams are actually architectural blueprints of the purified realm of bliss that we can only realize through enlightenment. They represent three-dimensional spaces of personal and communal exaltation, palaces for the regal confidence of love, compassion, and universal satisfaction of self and other. Understanding their role in anchoring the world-picture of a culture or a person provides a new insight into the "mandalas" of our own culture – the national space anchored by the Washington monument and its environs, or the personal cosmological space anchored by the models of the solar system, '''the DNA double-helix molecule''', and the atom. [http://www.amazon.com/Mandala-Enlightenment-Denise-Patry-Leidy/dp/1585678503 Mandala]
 

A recent scientific magazine also had an essay [citation needed] on the similarity of the double-helix sructure and the structure of the mandala. A-and, GR, containing mandalas, has been argued to be structured like a mandala. SPOILER of upcoming GR tropes: "Slothrop finds mandalas, sees mandalas in the sky and all around him, and becomes a mandala himself".
"mandalas are part of a spiritual or mythic panoply"...
From ''Thomas Pynchon, The Art of Illusion'' by David Cowart, p. 126.

Cf. p. 209, ''Mason & Dixon'': " oblique angles with all meridians and that is a spiral coiling round the poles but never reaching them."...

Cf. ''V.'' where the isle of Malta is also likened to a sort of mandala.

6.12 '''The great power station and the gasworks beyond''' Pirate is looking at the Battersea Power Station. Built in 1937, the Station is well known for appearing below a giant inflatable pig on the cover of Pink Floyd's 1977 album Animals. It has been defunct since 1983. At the time GR is set the plant had two smokestacks; today it has four. According to the London Encyclopedia (ed. C. Hibbert and B. Weinreb) a plaque commemorating Michael Faraday hangs on one wall, but it's not possible to confirm this as the entire site is fenced off. "The gasworks beyond" is the still operational British Gas plant just southeast of the power station. Viewed from Pirate's stretch of the Embankment it seems to lie more to the right of the power station than "beyond" it.

==Page 7==
7.09 '''Pick bananas''' 
Pirate's decision after a paragraph on the inevitablity of the rocket's flight can remind one of a famous Buddhist sutra on picking a strawberry:

The Sweetest Strawberry 
Buddha told a parable in a sutra: 
:A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted! 
-Paul Reps, ''Zen Flesh, Zen Bones'' 
from ''Everyday Mind'', edited by Jean Smith
[[http://www.tricycle.com/issues/2_174/dailydharma/3192-1.html]]

'''seven squares''' 
The use of the squares to separate chapters was suggested by the production department or editors of GR, not by Pynchon himself. See Edward Mendelson, "Gravity's Encyclopedia," fn. 4.

Gerald Howard, [http://www.bookforum.com/archive/sum_05/pynchon.html Bookforum]: ''"It is generally thought that the line of seven squares that serves as a graphic device to separate the unnumbered chapters in the novel is meant to suggest the sprocket holes in film reels, indicating that the book is to be "read" cinematically as a kind of film in prose. Wrong. In one of his letters Kennebeck refers pointedly to the "oblong holes" in censored correspondence from World War II soldiers, then termed V-mail (there's that letter again), and in a letter to Donald Barthelme accompanying a finished copy of the book, Kennebeck makes jocular mention of the sprocket-hole theory, first floated in the Poirier review, and comments, "I little knew what I was contributing to the history of literature." Sometimes a rectangle is just a rectangle—or maybe a censor's mark."''

A further angle on the squares is this: they are ''vignettes''. Regard the etymology and definition of the word (from Wiktionary http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vignette)
:

''Etymology'':
First attested in 1751. From French vignette, diminutive of vigne (“vine”) < Latin vīnea < vīnum (“wine”).

''Definition'':

(architecture) A running ornament consisting of leaves and tendrils, used in Gothic architecture.

(printing) A decorative design, originally representing vine branches or tendrils, at the head of a chapter, of a manuscript or printed book, or in a similar position.

(by extension) Any small borderless picture in a book, especially an engraving, photograph, or the like, which vanishes gradually at the edge.

(by extension) A short story that presents a scene or tableau, or paints a picture.

The small picture on a postage stamp.

Lends new meaning to the line "Tonight they will shoot ''wine''."

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==Page 1==
'''Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death.'''

This quote establishes one of the major themes of the book, about eternity, as well as the blurring of lines between scientific and religious belief.

Wernher von Braun was a German aerospace engineer, who designed the V2 rocket for Nazi Germany. He was brought to the United States as part of Operation Paperclip, which brought about 1600 Nazi engineers and scientists to the United States to work with various elements of the military industrial complex. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun]

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==Page 114==
114.5 '''Section 8''' 
A category of discharge from the United States military for reason of being mentally unfit for service

114.8 '''onionskin''' 
A thin, lightweight paper that is usually translucent. Not actually made from onions but has similar texture as the onion's outer layers. It was used for military orders and other documents. Usually a secondary copy with carbon paper. Slothrop would need this paper to return to ACHTUNG. See wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onionskin.

==Page 115==
115.3 '''greensickness''' 
Chlorosis (also known as "green sickness") is a form of anemia named for the greenish tinge of the skin of a patient. Its symptoms include lack of energy, shortness of breath, dyspepsia, headaches, a capricious or scanty appetite and amenorrhoea. Today this disease is diagnosed as hypochromic anemia.

115.3 '''tetter''' 
A broad term for numerous types of skin diseases.

115.3 '''kibes''' 
An inflamed area on the skin, especially the heel; a chillblain

115.3 '''purples''' 
Bright splotches on the skin.

115.3 '''imposthumes''' 
A accumulation of pus; an abcess

115.4 '''almonds in the ears''' 
Swollen lymph glands, per Weisenburger

115.4 '''scurvy''' 
A disease resulting from a deficiency of vitamin C. It leads to the formation of spots on the skin, spongy gums, and bleeding from the mucous membranes.

115.19 '''Primo Scala's Accordion Band''' 
An English group, well-known by the mid-1930s, that consisted of four accordions, two pianos, bass, drums and guitar, under the direction of Harry Bidgood.

115.32-33 '''Compton Mackenzie novels''' 
British novelist, (1883-1972), both acclaimed and neglected, who wrote more than 100 novels, plays, and biographies

115.35 '''Sèvres vase''' 
Sèvres is a French porcelain manufacturer dating to 1740. It was originally a royal, then an imperial, factory, and is now run by the Ministry of Culture.

115.37 '''Wardour Street ''' 
A street in Soho, London.

==Page 116==
116.21 '''Lafitte Rothschild''' 
Château Lafite Rothschild (Pynchon adds an extra 't' in 'Lafite') is a wine estate in France, owned by members of the Rothschild banking family of France since the 19th century. The name Lafite comes from the Gascon term "la hite" meaning "small hill".

116.23 '''Bernkastler Doktor''' 
German vineyard along the Mosel

116.35 '''Gilbert & Sullivan''' 
Composer Sir Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) and librettist W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911) collaboratively developed a distinctive English form of the operetta.

==Page 117==
117.15 '''...exactly the sort of thing Hop Harrigan used to pull to get Tank Tinker to quit playing his ocarina...''' 
Both Hop and Tank are aviation heroes from DC comics. Hop is a pilot; Tank is his mechanic. More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hop_Harrigan
--[[User:Jpicco|Jpicco]] 09:20, 27 May 2009 (PDT)

==Page 118==
118.12 '''Cubeb? He used to ''smoke'' that stuff.''' 
Not an uncommon practice, apparently. "Edgar Rice Burroughs, being fond of smoking cubeb cigarettes, humorously stated that if he had not smoked so many cubebs, there might never have been Tarzan." More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubeb#Cigarettes_and_spirits
--[[User:Jpicco|Jpicco]] 09:24, 27 May 2009 (PDT)
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