Thomas Pynchon Wiki - User contributions [en]

Pages 735-760

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==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.

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==Page 47==
47.26 '''autoclave''' 
An autoclave sterilizes equipment and supplies by subjecting them to high pressure saturated steam at 121 °C for around 15–20 minutes depending on the size of the load and the contents. It was invented by Charles Chamberland in 1879, although a precursor known as the steam digester was created by Denis Papin in 1679. The name comes from Greek auto-, ultimately meaning self, and Latin clavis meaning key — a self-locking device. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoclave]

The "fine clutter of steel bones" inside the autoclave should sensitize us to other hot enclosures to come -- domestic, folkloric, and genocidal. This is reinforced at once by patients' cries of pain "as from cold metal."

47.34-35 '''run three times around the building without thinking of a fox and you can cure anything''' 
Pynchon's source may be folkloric, shared with Douglas Hofstadter -- who in Godel, Escher, Bach (1979) would illustrate paradox by citing "this surefire cure for hiccups: 'Run around the house three times without thinking of the word "wolf."'"

Note that an injunction not to think of something is a perfect example of anthropologist Gregory Bateson's "double bind." Pointsman's own thinking may have absorbed a bit too much of the "paradoxical state" and "idea of the opposite" he studies.

==Page 48==
48.13-14 '''sybilline cries arriving out of the darkness''' 
Copy editor napping: "Sybil" is a woman's given name. Sibyls were female oracles in classical times. The Sibyl, with frenzied mouth uttering things not to be laughed at, unadorned and unperfumed, yet reaches to a thousand years with her voice by aid of the god. - Homer [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibyl]

'''Abreactions of the Lord of the Night''' 
Abreaction is a psychoanalytical term for reliving an experience in order to purge it of its emotional excesses; a type of catharsis. Sometimes it is a method of becoming conscious of repressed traumatic events. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abreaction]

48.25 "''' . . . one of Lazslo Jamf’s subjects . . .''' " 
The name "Jamf" apparently derives from an acronym used by Charlie Parker: "'''J'''ive-'''A'''ss '''M'''other-'''F'''ucker"!

48.38 Transmarginal and Paradoxical phases 
see [[T#Transmarginal|here]]

==Page 49==

49.26-29 '''pain-voices of the... Lord of the Night's children... sooner or later an abreaction''' 
The quick repetition of these ideas within two pages, here, seems to dig at the idea that Pynchon is inferring that the aural psychical effects of the bombing victims come after the fact of death just as the bombs sound come after their delivery. In other words, because of the instantaneous nature of their death there is much psychic energy that is let off which affects the environment afterward, ie. all over the frost & harrowed city.

49.30 '''...as once again the floor is a giant lift.. the walls blown outward'''
This paragraph takes us into the drugged, traumatized dreams and memories of the "rocketbombed" patients, narrated in a second person that unites us with the victims: "your sudden paralysis...the sight of your blood spurting..."

We might later recall that voice and several of the fragmentary images --"The cinema kiss never completed... crying from the rows either side... the sudden light" -- if we find ourselves in another movie theater, if we remember, if there is time.

==Page 50==
50.10 '''mummery''' 
Strictly speaking, a mummer is an actor in a traditional seasonal folk play. The term is also humorously (or derogatorily) applied to any actor. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummer_%28disambiguation%29]

50.16 '''palimpsests''' 
A palimpsest is a manuscript, usually parchment or vellum, from which the text has been scraped off and which can be used again. Over time the earlier writing can re-emerge, creating multiple superimposed layers -- symbolic of the mind as well as history. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palimpsests]

50.22 '''Realpolitik''' 
Realpolitik refers to politics or diplomacy based primarily on power and on practical and material factors and considerations, rather than ideological notions or moralistic or ethical premises... Realpolitik is a theory of politics that focuses on considerations of power, not ideals, morals, or principles. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik]

==Page 51==
51.04 '''you are the Traveler's Aid''' 
The Travelers Aid organization began with an 1851 bequest from St. Louis mayor Bryan Mullanphy. Its efforts were directed first to settlers traveling West, and later became worldwide (including a role in the USO -- United Service Organizations -- supporting Allied troops in WWII.)[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelers_Aid_International]

One of Travelers Aid's early concerns was to protect stranded female travelers from the over-hyped "white slave trade." That gives ironic poignance to Pointsman's tenderness -- "for the moment," that is.

51.06 '''AWOL bag'''
AWOL = "away without [official] leave." An AWOL bag is a small unframed man's bag with handles, usually leather or canvas. It was named for its convenience as "grab and go" luggage into which a weekend's clothes could be hastily tossed.

[[image:lymer.jpg|thumb|150px|Cobb & Beach at Lyme Regis|right]]51.31-32 '''the Ick Regis jetty''' 
The name is Pynchon’s but evokes "The Cobb," the famous jetty at the city of Lyme Regis on the southern coast of England. 

Regis is the Latin genitive of Rex, "the King" thus, "of the king."
As William Safire notes, "The colloquial noun and interjection [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/25/magazine/25onlanguage.html?_r=1&oref=slogin ick], as well as its adjectival form, icky, are terms of disgust, distaste and revulsion." Oedipa Maas uses the term in [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_3 CoL49] in response to a grisly play. 

Combining Ick and Regis, could therefore render the anarchic sentiment "sick of the king."

Ick Regis, when spoken aloud, sounds like 'egregious'--perhaps a comment on the programs being run at the White Visitation?

Interestingly, for PISCES and White Visitation to be headquartered in a place named Ick Regis, brings associations with the fish sickness "ick" also known as [http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/FA006 the white spot disease], which is a severe dermatitis of freshwater fish caused by a protozoan of the genus Ichthyophthirius and is especially destructive in aquariums and hatcheries called also ichthyophthiriasis, ichthyophthirius. Hence, the "white visitation" could, again, be a sickness.

51.37 '''blastulablob''' 
Apparently a TRP neologism. More about blastulas [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blastula here.]
--[[User:Jpicco|Jpicco]]

==Page 52==
52.23 '''it's the damned Rundstedt offensive''' 
Pointsman ascribes his tight budget to high-level concerns over the German counteroffensive in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg (not Holland, per Weisenburger) that would be remembered as the Battle of the Bulge.
[http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Rundstedt+Offensive Freedictionary] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge Wiki].
--[[User:Jpicco|Jpicco]]

52.39 '''Deptford''' 
Deptford is a district of south London, England, located on the south bank of the River Thames. It is named after a ford of the River Ravensbourne, and from the mid 16th century to the late 19th was home to Deptford Dockyard, the first of the Royal Dockyards... Deptford experienced economic decline in the 20th century with the closing of the docks, and the damage caused by the bombing during the Second World War: one V-2 rocket alone destroyed a Woolworth's store outside Deptford Town Hall, killing 160 people. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deptford]

==Page 53==
53.03 '''"'One, little, Fox!'" 
Compare with Spectro's use of "fox" for patients (47.34), now recast as Pointsman's prey -- the ultimate lab animal. "Fox" recurs nearly twenty times in the novel, often with eerie connotations (e.g. 138.23).

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==Page 47==
47.26 '''autoclave''' 
An autoclave sterilizes equipment and supplies by subjecting them to high pressure saturated steam at 121 °C for around 15–20 minutes depending on the size of the load and the contents. It was invented by Charles Chamberland in 1879, although a precursor known as the steam digester was created by Denis Papin in 1679. The name comes from Greek auto-, ultimately meaning self, and Latin clavis meaning key — a self-locking device. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoclave]

The "fine clutter of steel bones" inside the autoclave should sensitize us to other hot enclosures to come -- domestic, folkloric, and genocidal. This is reinforced at once by patients' cries of pain "as from cold metal."

47.34-35 '''run three times around the building without thinking of a fox and you can cure anything''' 
Pynchon's source may be folkloric, shared with Douglas Hofstadter -- who in Godel, Escher, Bach (1979) would illustrate paradox by citing "this surefire cure for hiccups: 'Run around the house three times without thinking of the word "wolf."'"

Note that an injunction not to think of something is a perfect example of anthropologist Gregory Bateson's "double bind." Pointsman's own thinking may have absorbed a bit too much of the "paradoxical state" and "idea of the opposite" he studies.

==Page 48==
48.13-14 '''sybilline cries arriving out of the darkness''' 
Copy editor napping: "Sybil" is a woman's given name. Sibyls were female oracles in classical times. The Sibyl, with frenzied mouth uttering things not to be laughed at, unadorned and unperfumed, yet reaches to a thousand years with her voice by aid of the god. - Homer [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibyl]

'''Abreactions of the Lord of the Night''' 
Abreaction is a psychoanalytical term for reliving an experience in order to purge it of its emotional excesses; a type of catharsis. Sometimes it is a method of becoming conscious of repressed traumatic events. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abreaction]

48.25 "''' . . . one of Lazslo Jamf’s subjects . . .''' " 
The name "Jamf" apparently derives from an acronym used by Charlie Parker: "'''J'''ive-'''A'''ss '''M'''other-'''F'''ucker"!

48.38 Transmarginal and Paradoxical phases 
see [[T#Transmarginal|here]]

==Page 49==

49.26-29 '''pain-voices of the... Lord of the Night's children... sooner or later an abreaction''' 
The quick repetition of these ideas within two pages, here, seems to dig at the idea that Pynchon is inferring that the aural psychical effects of the bombing victims come after the fact of death just as the bombs sound come after their delivery. In other words, because of the instantaneous nature of their death there is much psychic energy that is let off which affects the environment afterward, ie. all over the frost & harrowed city.

49.30 '''...as once again the floor is a giant lift.. the walls blown outward'''
This paragraph takes us into the drugged, traumatized dreams and memories of the "rocketbombed" patients, narrated in second person: "your sudden paralysis...the sight of your blood spurting..."

We might later recall that voice and several of the fragmentary images --"The cinema kiss never completed... crying from the rows either side... the sudden light" -- if we find ourselves in another movie theater, if we remember, if there is time.

==Page 50==
50.10 '''mummery''' 
Strictly speaking, a mummer is an actor in a traditional seasonal folk play. The term is also humorously (or derogatorily) applied to any actor. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummer_%28disambiguation%29]

50.16 '''palimpsests''' 
A palimpsest is a manuscript, usually parchment or vellum, from which the text has been scraped off and which can be used again. Over time the earlier writing can re-emerge, creating multiple superimposed layers -- symbolic of the mind as well as history. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palimpsests]

50.22 '''Realpolitik''' 
Realpolitik refers to politics or diplomacy based primarily on power and on practical and material factors and considerations, rather than ideological notions or moralistic or ethical premises... Realpolitik is a theory of politics that focuses on considerations of power, not ideals, morals, or principles. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik]

==Page 51==
51.04 '''you are the Traveler's Aid''' 
The Travelers Aid organization began with an 1851 bequest from St. Louis mayor Bryan Mullanphy. Its efforts were directed first to settlers traveling West, and later became worldwide (including a role in the USO -- United Service Organizations -- supporting Allied troops in WWII.)[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelers_Aid_International]

One of Travelers Aid's early concerns was to protect stranded female travelers from the over-hyped "white slave trade." That gives ironic poignance to Pointsman's tenderness -- "for the moment," that is.

51.06 '''AWOL bag'''
AWOL = "away without [official] leave." An AWOL bag is a small unframed man's bag with handles, usually leather or canvas. It was named for its convenience as "grab and go" luggage into which a weekend's clothes could be hastily tossed.

[[image:lymer.jpg|thumb|150px|Cobb & Beach at Lyme Regis|right]]51.31-32 '''the Ick Regis jetty''' 
The name is Pynchon’s but evokes "The Cobb," the famous jetty at the city of Lyme Regis on the southern coast of England. 

Regis is the Latin genitive of Rex, "the King" thus, "of the king."
As William Safire notes, "The colloquial noun and interjection [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/25/magazine/25onlanguage.html?_r=1&oref=slogin ick], as well as its adjectival form, icky, are terms of disgust, distaste and revulsion." Oedipa Maas uses the term in [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_3 CoL49] in response to a grisly play. 

Combining Ick and Regis, could therefore render the anarchic sentiment "sick of the king."

Ick Regis, when spoken aloud, sounds like 'egregious'--perhaps a comment on the programs being run at the White Visitation?

Interestingly, for PISCES and White Visitation to be headquartered in a place named Ick Regis, brings associations with the fish sickness "ick" also known as [http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/FA006 the white spot disease], which is a severe dermatitis of freshwater fish caused by a protozoan of the genus Ichthyophthirius and is especially destructive in aquariums and hatcheries called also ichthyophthiriasis, ichthyophthirius. Hence, the "white visitation" could, again, be a sickness.

51.37 '''blastulablob''' 
Apparently a TRP neologism. More about blastulas [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blastula here.]
--[[User:Jpicco|Jpicco]]

==Page 52==
52.23 '''it's the damned Rundstedt offensive''' 
Pointsman ascribes his tight budget to high-level concerns over the German counteroffensive in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg (not Holland, per Weisenburger) that would be remembered as the Battle of the Bulge.
[http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Rundstedt+Offensive Freedictionary] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge Wiki].
--[[User:Jpicco|Jpicco]]

52.39 '''Deptford''' 
Deptford is a district of south London, England, located on the south bank of the River Thames. It is named after a ford of the River Ravensbourne, and from the mid 16th century to the late 19th was home to Deptford Dockyard, the first of the Royal Dockyards... Deptford experienced economic decline in the 20th century with the closing of the docks, and the damage caused by the bombing during the Second World War: one V-2 rocket alone destroyed a Woolworth's store outside Deptford Town Hall, killing 160 people. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deptford]

==Page 53==
53.03 '''"'One, little, Fox!'" 
Compare with Spectro's use of "fox" for patients (47.34), now recast as Pointsman's prey -- the ultimate lab animal. "Fox" recurs nearly twenty times in the novel, often with eerie connotations (e.g. 138.23).

{{GR PbP}}

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==Page 47==
47.26 '''autoclave''' 
An autoclave sterilizes equipment and supplies by subjecting them to high pressure saturated steam at 121 °C for around 15–20 minutes depending on the size of the load and the contents. It was invented by Charles Chamberland in 1879, although a precursor known as the steam digester was created by Denis Papin in 1679. The name comes from Greek auto-, ultimately meaning self, and Latin clavis meaning key — a self-locking device. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoclave]

The "fine clutter of steel bones" inside the autoclave should sensitize us to other hot enclosures to come -- domestic, folkloric, and genocidal. This is reinforced at once by patients' cries of pain "as from cold metal."

47.34-35 '''run three times around the building without thinking of a fox and you can cure anything''' 
Pynchon's source may be folkloric, shared with Douglas Hofstadter -- who in Godel, Escher, Bach (1979) would illustrate paradox by citing "this surefire cure for hiccups: 'Run around the house three times without thinking of the word "wolf."'"

Note that an injunction not to think of something is a perfect example of anthropologist Gregory Bateson's "double bind." Pointsman's own thinking may have absorbed a bit too much of the "paradoxical state" and "idea of the opposite" he studies.

==Page 48==
48.13-14 '''sybilline cries arriving out of the darkness''' 
Copy editor napping: "Sybil" is a woman's given name. Sibyls were female oracles in classical times. The Sibyl, with frenzied mouth uttering things not to be laughed at, unadorned and unperfumed, yet reaches to a thousand years with her voice by aid of the god. - Homer [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibyl]

'''Abreactions of the Lord of the Night''' 
Abreaction is a psychoanalytical term for reliving an experience in order to purge it of its emotional excesses; a type of catharsis. Sometimes it is a method of becoming conscious of repressed traumatic events. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abreaction]

48.25 "''' . . . one of Lazslo Jamf’s subjects . . .''' " 
The name "Jamf" apparently derives from an acronym used by Charlie Parker: "'''J'''ive-'''A'''ss '''M'''other-'''F'''ucker"!

48.38 Transmarginal and Paradoxical phases 
see [[T#Transmarginal|here]]

==Page 49==

49.26-29 '''pain-voices of the... Lord of the Night's children... sooner or later an abreaction''' 
The quick repetition of these ideas within two pages, here, seems to dig at the idea that Pynchon is inferring that the aural psychical effects of the bombing victims come after the fact of death just as the bombs sound come after their delivery. In other words, because of the instantaneous nature of their death there is much psychic energy that is let off which affects the environment afterward, ie. all over the frost & harrowed city.

49.30 '''...as once again the floor is a giant lift.. the walls blown outward'''
This paragraph takes us into the drugged, traumatized dreams and memories of the "rocketbombed" patients. Several of the fragments ("The cinema kiss never completed... crying from the rows either side... the sudden light") might be recalled later, if we find ourselves in another movie theater, if there is time.

==Page 50==
50.10 '''mummery''' 
Strictly speaking, a mummer is an actor in a traditional seasonal folk play. The term is also humorously (or derogatorily) applied to any actor. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummer_%28disambiguation%29]

50.16 '''palimpsests''' 
A palimpsest is a manuscript, usually parchment or vellum, from which the text has been scraped off and which can be used again. Over time the earlier writing can re-emerge, creating multiple superimposed layers -- symbolic of the mind as well as history. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palimpsests]

50.22 '''Realpolitik''' 
Realpolitik refers to politics or diplomacy based primarily on power and on practical and material factors and considerations, rather than ideological notions or moralistic or ethical premises... Realpolitik is a theory of politics that focuses on considerations of power, not ideals, morals, or principles. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik]

==Page 51==
51.04 '''you are the Traveler's Aid''' 
The Travelers Aid organization began with an 1851 bequest from St. Louis mayor Bryan Mullanphy. Its efforts were directed first to settlers traveling West, and later became worldwide (including a role in the USO -- United Service Organizations -- supporting Allied troops in WWII.)[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelers_Aid_International]

One of Travelers Aid's early concerns was to protect stranded female travelers from the over-hyped "white slave trade." That gives ironic poignance to Pointsman's tenderness -- "for the moment," that is.

51.06 '''AWOL bag'''
AWOL = "away without [official] leave." An AWOL bag is a small unframed man's bag with handles, usually leather or canvas. It was named for its convenience as "grab and go" luggage into which a weekend's clothes could be hastily tossed.

[[image:lymer.jpg|thumb|150px|Cobb & Beach at Lyme Regis|right]]51.31-32 '''the Ick Regis jetty''' 
The name is Pynchon’s but evokes "The Cobb," the famous jetty at the city of Lyme Regis on the southern coast of England. 

Regis is the Latin genitive of Rex, "the King" thus, "of the king."
As William Safire notes, "The colloquial noun and interjection [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/25/magazine/25onlanguage.html?_r=1&oref=slogin ick], as well as its adjectival form, icky, are terms of disgust, distaste and revulsion." Oedipa Maas uses the term in [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_3 CoL49] in response to a grisly play. 

Combining Ick and Regis, could therefore render the anarchic sentiment "sick of the king."

Ick Regis, when spoken aloud, sounds like 'egregious'--perhaps a comment on the programs being run at the White Visitation?

Interestingly, for PISCES and White Visitation to be headquartered in a place named Ick Regis, brings associations with the fish sickness "ick" also known as [http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/FA006 the white spot disease], which is a severe dermatitis of freshwater fish caused by a protozoan of the genus Ichthyophthirius and is especially destructive in aquariums and hatcheries called also ichthyophthiriasis, ichthyophthirius. Hence, the "white visitation" could, again, be a sickness.

51.37 '''blastulablob''' 
Apparently a TRP neologism. More about blastulas [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blastula here.]
--[[User:Jpicco|Jpicco]]

==Page 52==
52.23 '''it's the damned Rundstedt offensive''' 
Pointsman ascribes his tight budget to high-level concerns over the German counteroffensive in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg (not Holland, per Weisenburger) that would be remembered as the Battle of the Bulge.
[http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Rundstedt+Offensive Freedictionary] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge Wiki].
--[[User:Jpicco|Jpicco]]

52.39 '''Deptford''' 
Deptford is a district of south London, England, located on the south bank of the River Thames. It is named after a ford of the River Ravensbourne, and from the mid 16th century to the late 19th was home to Deptford Dockyard, the first of the Royal Dockyards... Deptford experienced economic decline in the 20th century with the closing of the docks, and the damage caused by the bombing during the Second World War: one V-2 rocket alone destroyed a Woolworth's store outside Deptford Town Hall, killing 160 people. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deptford]

==Page 53==
53.03 '''"'One, little, Fox!'" 
Compare with Spectro's use of "fox" for patients (47.34), now recast as Pointsman's prey -- the ultimate lab animal. "Fox" recurs nearly twenty times in the novel, often with eerie connotations (e.g. 138.23).

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 47-53

2016-05-07T14:14:02Z

Modavis: /* Page 49= */

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 47==
47.26 '''autoclave''' 
An autoclave sterilizes equipment and supplies by subjecting them to high pressure saturated steam at 121 °C for around 15–20 minutes depending on the size of the load and the contents. It was invented by Charles Chamberland in 1879, although a precursor known as the steam digester was created by Denis Papin in 1679. The name comes from Greek auto-, ultimately meaning self, and Latin clavis meaning key — a self-locking device. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoclave]

The "fine clutter of steel bones" inside the autoclave should sensitize us to other hot enclosures to come -- domestic, folkloric, and genocidal. This is reinforced at once by patients' cries of pain "as from cold metal."

47.34-35 '''run three times around the building without thinking of a fox and you can cure anything''' 
Pynchon's source may be folkloric, shared with Douglas Hofstadter -- who in Godel, Escher, Bach (1979) would illustrate paradox by citing "this surefire cure for hiccups: 'Run around the house three times without thinking of the word "wolf."'"

Note that an injunction not to think of something is a perfect example of anthropologist Gregory Bateson's "double bind." Pointsman's own thinking may have absorbed a bit too much of the "paradoxical state" and "idea of the opposite" he studies.

==Page 48==
48.13-14 '''sybilline cries arriving out of the darkness''' 
Copy editor napping: "Sybil" is a woman's given name. Sibyls were female oracles in classical times. The Sibyl, with frenzied mouth uttering things not to be laughed at, unadorned and unperfumed, yet reaches to a thousand years with her voice by aid of the god. - Homer [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibyl]

'''Abreactions of the Lord of the Night''' 
Abreaction is a psychoanalytical term for reliving an experience in order to purge it of its emotional excesses; a type of catharsis. Sometimes it is a method of becoming conscious of repressed traumatic events. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abreaction]

48.25 "''' . . . one of Lazslo Jamf’s subjects . . .''' " 
The name "Jamf" apparently derives from an acronym used by Charlie Parker: "'''J'''ive-'''A'''ss '''M'''other-'''F'''ucker"!

48.38 Transmarginal and Paradoxical phases 
see [[T#Transmarginal|here]]

==Page 49==

49.26-29 '''pain-voices of the... Lord of the Night's children... sooner or later an abreaction''' 
The quick repetition of these ideas within two pages, here, seems to dig at the idea that Pynchon is inferring that the aural psychical effects of the bombing victims come after the fact of death just as the bombs sound come after their delivery. In other words, because of the instantaneous nature of their death there is much psychic energy that is let off which affects the environment afterward, ie. all over the frost & harrowed city.

49.30 '''...as once again the floor is a giant lift.. the walls blown outward'''
This paragraph takes us into the drugged, traumatized dreams and memories of the "rocketbombed" patients. Several of the fragments ("The cinema kiss never completed... crying from the rows either side... the sudden light") might be recalled later, if we find ourselves in another movie theater.

==Page 50==
50.10 '''mummery''' 
Strictly speaking, a mummer is an actor in a traditional seasonal folk play. The term is also humorously (or derogatorily) applied to any actor. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummer_%28disambiguation%29]

50.16 '''palimpsests''' 
A palimpsest is a manuscript, usually parchment or vellum, from which the text has been scraped off and which can be used again. Over time the earlier writing can re-emerge, creating multiple superimposed layers -- symbolic of the mind as well as history. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palimpsests]

50.22 '''Realpolitik''' 
Realpolitik refers to politics or diplomacy based primarily on power and on practical and material factors and considerations, rather than ideological notions or moralistic or ethical premises... Realpolitik is a theory of politics that focuses on considerations of power, not ideals, morals, or principles. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik]

==Page 51==
51.04 '''you are the Traveler's Aid''' 
The Travelers Aid organization began with an 1851 bequest from St. Louis mayor Bryan Mullanphy. Its efforts were directed first to settlers traveling West, and later became worldwide (including a role in the USO -- United Service Organizations -- supporting Allied troops in WWII.)[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelers_Aid_International]

One of Travelers Aid's early concerns was to protect stranded female travelers from the over-hyped "white slave trade." That gives ironic poignance to Pointsman's tenderness -- "for the moment," that is.

51.06 '''AWOL bag'''
AWOL = "away without [official] leave." An AWOL bag is a small unframed man's bag with handles, usually leather or canvas. It was named for its convenience as "grab and go" luggage into which a weekend's clothes could be hastily tossed.

[[image:lymer.jpg|thumb|150px|Cobb & Beach at Lyme Regis|right]]51.31-32 '''the Ick Regis jetty''' 
The name is Pynchon’s but evokes "The Cobb," the famous jetty at the city of Lyme Regis on the southern coast of England. 

Regis is the Latin genitive of Rex, "the King" thus, "of the king."
As William Safire notes, "The colloquial noun and interjection [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/25/magazine/25onlanguage.html?_r=1&oref=slogin ick], as well as its adjectival form, icky, are terms of disgust, distaste and revulsion." Oedipa Maas uses the term in [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_3 CoL49] in response to a grisly play. 

Combining Ick and Regis, could therefore render the anarchic sentiment "sick of the king."

Ick Regis, when spoken aloud, sounds like 'egregious'--perhaps a comment on the programs being run at the White Visitation?

Interestingly, for PISCES and White Visitation to be headquartered in a place named Ick Regis, brings associations with the fish sickness "ick" also known as [http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/FA006 the white spot disease], which is a severe dermatitis of freshwater fish caused by a protozoan of the genus Ichthyophthirius and is especially destructive in aquariums and hatcheries called also ichthyophthiriasis, ichthyophthirius. Hence, the "white visitation" could, again, be a sickness.

51.37 '''blastulablob''' 
Apparently a TRP neologism. More about blastulas [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blastula here.]
--[[User:Jpicco|Jpicco]]

==Page 52==
52.23 '''it's the damned Rundstedt offensive''' 
Pointsman ascribes his tight budget to high-level concerns over the German counteroffensive in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg (not Holland, per Weisenburger) that would be remembered as the Battle of the Bulge.
[http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Rundstedt+Offensive Freedictionary] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge Wiki].
--[[User:Jpicco|Jpicco]]

52.39 '''Deptford''' 
Deptford is a district of south London, England, located on the south bank of the River Thames. It is named after a ford of the River Ravensbourne, and from the mid 16th century to the late 19th was home to Deptford Dockyard, the first of the Royal Dockyards... Deptford experienced economic decline in the 20th century with the closing of the docks, and the damage caused by the bombing during the Second World War: one V-2 rocket alone destroyed a Woolworth's store outside Deptford Town Hall, killing 160 people. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deptford]

==Page 53==
53.03 '''"'One, little, Fox!'" 
Compare with Spectro's use of "fox" for patients (47.34), now recast as Pointsman's prey -- the ultimate lab animal. "Fox" recurs nearly twenty times in the novel, often with eerie connotations (e.g. 138.23).

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 47-53

2016-05-07T14:12:03Z

Modavis: /* Page 48 */

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 47==
47.26 '''autoclave''' 
An autoclave sterilizes equipment and supplies by subjecting them to high pressure saturated steam at 121 °C for around 15–20 minutes depending on the size of the load and the contents. It was invented by Charles Chamberland in 1879, although a precursor known as the steam digester was created by Denis Papin in 1679. The name comes from Greek auto-, ultimately meaning self, and Latin clavis meaning key — a self-locking device. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoclave]

The "fine clutter of steel bones" inside the autoclave should sensitize us to other hot enclosures to come -- domestic, folkloric, and genocidal. This is reinforced at once by patients' cries of pain "as from cold metal."

47.34-35 '''run three times around the building without thinking of a fox and you can cure anything''' 
Pynchon's source may be folkloric, shared with Douglas Hofstadter -- who in Godel, Escher, Bach (1979) would illustrate paradox by citing "this surefire cure for hiccups: 'Run around the house three times without thinking of the word "wolf."'"

Note that an injunction not to think of something is a perfect example of anthropologist Gregory Bateson's "double bind." Pointsman's own thinking may have absorbed a bit too much of the "paradoxical state" and "idea of the opposite" he studies.

==Page 48==
48.13-14 '''sybilline cries arriving out of the darkness''' 
Copy editor napping: "Sybil" is a woman's given name. Sibyls were female oracles in classical times. The Sibyl, with frenzied mouth uttering things not to be laughed at, unadorned and unperfumed, yet reaches to a thousand years with her voice by aid of the god. - Homer [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibyl]

'''Abreactions of the Lord of the Night''' 
Abreaction is a psychoanalytical term for reliving an experience in order to purge it of its emotional excesses; a type of catharsis. Sometimes it is a method of becoming conscious of repressed traumatic events. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abreaction]

48.25 "''' . . . one of Lazslo Jamf’s subjects . . .''' " 
The name "Jamf" apparently derives from an acronym used by Charlie Parker: "'''J'''ive-'''A'''ss '''M'''other-'''F'''ucker"!

48.38 Transmarginal and Paradoxical phases 
see [[T#Transmarginal|here]]

=Page 49==

49.26-29 '''pain-voices of the... Lord of the Night's children... sooner or later an abreaction''' 
The quick repetition of these ideas within two pages, here, seems to dig at the idea that Pynchon is inferring that the aural psychical effects of the bombing victims come after the fact of death just as the bombs sound come after their delivery. In other words, because of the instantaneous nature of their death there is much psychic energy that is let off which affects the environment afterward, ie. all over the frost & harrowed city.

49.30 '''...as once again the floor is a giant lift.. the walls blown outward'''
This paragraph takes us into the drugged, traumatized dreams and memories of the "rocketbombed" patients. Several of the fragments ("The cinema kiss never completed... crying from the rows either side... the sudden light") might be recalled later, if we find ourselves in another movie theater.

==Page 50==
50.10 '''mummery''' 
Strictly speaking, a mummer is an actor in a traditional seasonal folk play. The term is also humorously (or derogatorily) applied to any actor. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummer_%28disambiguation%29]

50.16 '''palimpsests''' 
A palimpsest is a manuscript, usually parchment or vellum, from which the text has been scraped off and which can be used again. Over time the earlier writing can re-emerge, creating multiple superimposed layers -- symbolic of the mind as well as history. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palimpsests]

50.22 '''Realpolitik''' 
Realpolitik refers to politics or diplomacy based primarily on power and on practical and material factors and considerations, rather than ideological notions or moralistic or ethical premises... Realpolitik is a theory of politics that focuses on considerations of power, not ideals, morals, or principles. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik]

==Page 51==
51.04 '''you are the Traveler's Aid''' 
The Travelers Aid organization began with an 1851 bequest from St. Louis mayor Bryan Mullanphy. Its efforts were directed first to settlers traveling West, and later became worldwide (including a role in the USO -- United Service Organizations -- supporting Allied troops in WWII.)[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelers_Aid_International]

One of Travelers Aid's early concerns was to protect stranded female travelers from the over-hyped "white slave trade." That gives ironic poignance to Pointsman's tenderness -- "for the moment," that is.

51.06 '''AWOL bag'''
AWOL = "away without [official] leave." An AWOL bag is a small unframed man's bag with handles, usually leather or canvas. It was named for its convenience as "grab and go" luggage into which a weekend's clothes could be hastily tossed.

[[image:lymer.jpg|thumb|150px|Cobb & Beach at Lyme Regis|right]]51.31-32 '''the Ick Regis jetty''' 
The name is Pynchon’s but evokes "The Cobb," the famous jetty at the city of Lyme Regis on the southern coast of England. 

Regis is the Latin genitive of Rex, "the King" thus, "of the king."
As William Safire notes, "The colloquial noun and interjection [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/25/magazine/25onlanguage.html?_r=1&oref=slogin ick], as well as its adjectival form, icky, are terms of disgust, distaste and revulsion." Oedipa Maas uses the term in [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_3 CoL49] in response to a grisly play. 

Combining Ick and Regis, could therefore render the anarchic sentiment "sick of the king."

Ick Regis, when spoken aloud, sounds like 'egregious'--perhaps a comment on the programs being run at the White Visitation?

Interestingly, for PISCES and White Visitation to be headquartered in a place named Ick Regis, brings associations with the fish sickness "ick" also known as [http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/FA006 the white spot disease], which is a severe dermatitis of freshwater fish caused by a protozoan of the genus Ichthyophthirius and is especially destructive in aquariums and hatcheries called also ichthyophthiriasis, ichthyophthirius. Hence, the "white visitation" could, again, be a sickness.

51.37 '''blastulablob''' 
Apparently a TRP neologism. More about blastulas [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blastula here.]
--[[User:Jpicco|Jpicco]]

==Page 52==
52.23 '''it's the damned Rundstedt offensive''' 
Pointsman ascribes his tight budget to high-level concerns over the German counteroffensive in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg (not Holland, per Weisenburger) that would be remembered as the Battle of the Bulge.
[http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Rundstedt+Offensive Freedictionary] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge Wiki].
--[[User:Jpicco|Jpicco]]

52.39 '''Deptford''' 
Deptford is a district of south London, England, located on the south bank of the River Thames. It is named after a ford of the River Ravensbourne, and from the mid 16th century to the late 19th was home to Deptford Dockyard, the first of the Royal Dockyards... Deptford experienced economic decline in the 20th century with the closing of the docks, and the damage caused by the bombing during the Second World War: one V-2 rocket alone destroyed a Woolworth's store outside Deptford Town Hall, killing 160 people. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deptford]

==Page 53==
53.03 '''"'One, little, Fox!'" 
Compare with Spectro's use of "fox" for patients (47.34), now recast as Pointsman's prey -- the ultimate lab animal. "Fox" recurs nearly twenty times in the novel, often with eerie connotations (e.g. 138.23).

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 47-53

2016-05-07T14:10:52Z

Modavis: /* Page 49 */

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 47==
47.26 '''autoclave''' 
An autoclave sterilizes equipment and supplies by subjecting them to high pressure saturated steam at 121 °C for around 15–20 minutes depending on the size of the load and the contents. It was invented by Charles Chamberland in 1879, although a precursor known as the steam digester was created by Denis Papin in 1679. The name comes from Greek auto-, ultimately meaning self, and Latin clavis meaning key — a self-locking device. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoclave]

The "fine clutter of steel bones" inside the autoclave should sensitize us to other hot enclosures to come -- domestic, folkloric, and genocidal. This is reinforced at once by patients' cries of pain "as from cold metal."

47.34-35 '''run three times around the building without thinking of a fox and you can cure anything''' 
Pynchon's source may be folkloric, shared with Douglas Hofstadter -- who in Godel, Escher, Bach (1979) would illustrate paradox by citing "this surefire cure for hiccups: 'Run around the house three times without thinking of the word "wolf."'"

Note that an injunction not to think of something is a perfect example of anthropologist Gregory Bateson's "double bind." Pointsman's own thinking may have absorbed a bit too much of the "paradoxical state" and "idea of the opposite" he studies.

==Page 48==
48.13-14 '''sybilline cries arriving out of the darkness''' 
Copy editor napping: "Sybil" is a woman's given name. Sibyls were female oracles in classical times. The Sibyl, with frenzied mouth uttering things not to be laughed at, unadorned and unperfumed, yet reaches to a thousand years with her voice by aid of the god. - Homer [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibyl]

'''Abreactions of the Lord of the Night''' 
Abreaction is a psychoanalytical term for reliving an experience in order to purge it of its emotional excesses; a type of catharsis. Sometimes it is a method of becoming conscious of repressed traumatic events. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abreaction]

48.25 "''' . . . one of Lazslo Jamf’s subjects . . .''' " 
The name "Jamf" apparently derives from an acronym used by Charlie Parker: "'''J'''ive-'''A'''ss '''M'''other-'''F'''ucker"!

48.38 Transmarginal and Paradoxical phases 
see [[T#Transmarginal|here]]

49.26-29 '''pain-voices of the... Lord of the Night's children... sooner or later an abreaction''' 
The quick repetition of these ideas within two pages, here, seems to dig at the idea that Pynchon is inferring that the aural psychical effects of the bombing victims come after the fact of death just as the bombs sound come after their delivery. In other words, because of the instantaneous nature of their death there is much psychic energy that is let off which affects the environment afterward, ie. all over the frost & harrowed city.

==Page 50==
50.10 '''mummery''' 
Strictly speaking, a mummer is an actor in a traditional seasonal folk play. The term is also humorously (or derogatorily) applied to any actor. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummer_%28disambiguation%29]

50.16 '''palimpsests''' 
A palimpsest is a manuscript, usually parchment or vellum, from which the text has been scraped off and which can be used again. Over time the earlier writing can re-emerge, creating multiple superimposed layers -- symbolic of the mind as well as history. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palimpsests]

50.22 '''Realpolitik''' 
Realpolitik refers to politics or diplomacy based primarily on power and on practical and material factors and considerations, rather than ideological notions or moralistic or ethical premises... Realpolitik is a theory of politics that focuses on considerations of power, not ideals, morals, or principles. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik]

==Page 51==
51.04 '''you are the Traveler's Aid''' 
The Travelers Aid organization began with an 1851 bequest from St. Louis mayor Bryan Mullanphy. Its efforts were directed first to settlers traveling West, and later became worldwide (including a role in the USO -- United Service Organizations -- supporting Allied troops in WWII.)[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelers_Aid_International]

One of Travelers Aid's early concerns was to protect stranded female travelers from the over-hyped "white slave trade." That gives ironic poignance to Pointsman's tenderness -- "for the moment," that is.

51.06 '''AWOL bag'''
AWOL = "away without [official] leave." An AWOL bag is a small unframed man's bag with handles, usually leather or canvas. It was named for its convenience as "grab and go" luggage into which a weekend's clothes could be hastily tossed.

[[image:lymer.jpg|thumb|150px|Cobb & Beach at Lyme Regis|right]]51.31-32 '''the Ick Regis jetty''' 
The name is Pynchon’s but evokes "The Cobb," the famous jetty at the city of Lyme Regis on the southern coast of England. 

Regis is the Latin genitive of Rex, "the King" thus, "of the king."
As William Safire notes, "The colloquial noun and interjection [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/25/magazine/25onlanguage.html?_r=1&oref=slogin ick], as well as its adjectival form, icky, are terms of disgust, distaste and revulsion." Oedipa Maas uses the term in [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_3 CoL49] in response to a grisly play. 

Combining Ick and Regis, could therefore render the anarchic sentiment "sick of the king."

Ick Regis, when spoken aloud, sounds like 'egregious'--perhaps a comment on the programs being run at the White Visitation?

Interestingly, for PISCES and White Visitation to be headquartered in a place named Ick Regis, brings associations with the fish sickness "ick" also known as [http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/FA006 the white spot disease], which is a severe dermatitis of freshwater fish caused by a protozoan of the genus Ichthyophthirius and is especially destructive in aquariums and hatcheries called also ichthyophthiriasis, ichthyophthirius. Hence, the "white visitation" could, again, be a sickness.

51.37 '''blastulablob''' 
Apparently a TRP neologism. More about blastulas [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blastula here.]
--[[User:Jpicco|Jpicco]]

==Page 52==
52.23 '''it's the damned Rundstedt offensive''' 
Pointsman ascribes his tight budget to high-level concerns over the German counteroffensive in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg (not Holland, per Weisenburger) that would be remembered as the Battle of the Bulge.
[http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Rundstedt+Offensive Freedictionary] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge Wiki].
--[[User:Jpicco|Jpicco]]

52.39 '''Deptford''' 
Deptford is a district of south London, England, located on the south bank of the River Thames. It is named after a ford of the River Ravensbourne, and from the mid 16th century to the late 19th was home to Deptford Dockyard, the first of the Royal Dockyards... Deptford experienced economic decline in the 20th century with the closing of the docks, and the damage caused by the bombing during the Second World War: one V-2 rocket alone destroyed a Woolworth's store outside Deptford Town Hall, killing 160 people. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deptford]

==Page 53==
53.03 '''"'One, little, Fox!'" 
Compare with Spectro's use of "fox" for patients (47.34), now recast as Pointsman's prey -- the ultimate lab animal. "Fox" recurs nearly twenty times in the novel, often with eerie connotations (e.g. 138.23).

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 47-53

2016-05-07T14:10:28Z

Modavis: /* Page 47 */

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 47==
47.26 '''autoclave''' 
An autoclave sterilizes equipment and supplies by subjecting them to high pressure saturated steam at 121 °C for around 15–20 minutes depending on the size of the load and the contents. It was invented by Charles Chamberland in 1879, although a precursor known as the steam digester was created by Denis Papin in 1679. The name comes from Greek auto-, ultimately meaning self, and Latin clavis meaning key — a self-locking device. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoclave]

The "fine clutter of steel bones" inside the autoclave should sensitize us to other hot enclosures to come -- domestic, folkloric, and genocidal. This is reinforced at once by patients' cries of pain "as from cold metal."

47.34-35 '''run three times around the building without thinking of a fox and you can cure anything''' 
Pynchon's source may be folkloric, shared with Douglas Hofstadter -- who in Godel, Escher, Bach (1979) would illustrate paradox by citing "this surefire cure for hiccups: 'Run around the house three times without thinking of the word "wolf."'"

Note that an injunction not to think of something is a perfect example of anthropologist Gregory Bateson's "double bind." Pointsman's own thinking may have absorbed a bit too much of the "paradoxical state" and "idea of the opposite" he studies.

==Page 49==
49.30 '''...as once again the floor is a giant lift.. the walls blown outward'''
This paragraph takes us into the drugged, traumatized dreams and memories of the "rocketbombed" patients. Several of the fragments ("The cinema kiss never completed... crying from the rows either side... the sudden light") might be recalled later, if we find ourselves in another movie theater.

==Page 48==
48.13-14 '''sybilline cries arriving out of the darkness''' 
Copy editor napping: "Sybil" is a woman's given name. Sibyls were female oracles in classical times. The Sibyl, with frenzied mouth uttering things not to be laughed at, unadorned and unperfumed, yet reaches to a thousand years with her voice by aid of the god. - Homer [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibyl]

'''Abreactions of the Lord of the Night''' 
Abreaction is a psychoanalytical term for reliving an experience in order to purge it of its emotional excesses; a type of catharsis. Sometimes it is a method of becoming conscious of repressed traumatic events. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abreaction]

48.25 "''' . . . one of Lazslo Jamf’s subjects . . .''' " 
The name "Jamf" apparently derives from an acronym used by Charlie Parker: "'''J'''ive-'''A'''ss '''M'''other-'''F'''ucker"!

48.38 Transmarginal and Paradoxical phases 
see [[T#Transmarginal|here]]

49.26-29 '''pain-voices of the... Lord of the Night's children... sooner or later an abreaction''' 
The quick repetition of these ideas within two pages, here, seems to dig at the idea that Pynchon is inferring that the aural psychical effects of the bombing victims come after the fact of death just as the bombs sound come after their delivery. In other words, because of the instantaneous nature of their death there is much psychic energy that is let off which affects the environment afterward, ie. all over the frost & harrowed city.

==Page 50==
50.10 '''mummery''' 
Strictly speaking, a mummer is an actor in a traditional seasonal folk play. The term is also humorously (or derogatorily) applied to any actor. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummer_%28disambiguation%29]

50.16 '''palimpsests''' 
A palimpsest is a manuscript, usually parchment or vellum, from which the text has been scraped off and which can be used again. Over time the earlier writing can re-emerge, creating multiple superimposed layers -- symbolic of the mind as well as history. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palimpsests]

50.22 '''Realpolitik''' 
Realpolitik refers to politics or diplomacy based primarily on power and on practical and material factors and considerations, rather than ideological notions or moralistic or ethical premises... Realpolitik is a theory of politics that focuses on considerations of power, not ideals, morals, or principles. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik]

==Page 51==
51.04 '''you are the Traveler's Aid''' 
The Travelers Aid organization began with an 1851 bequest from St. Louis mayor Bryan Mullanphy. Its efforts were directed first to settlers traveling West, and later became worldwide (including a role in the USO -- United Service Organizations -- supporting Allied troops in WWII.)[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelers_Aid_International]

One of Travelers Aid's early concerns was to protect stranded female travelers from the over-hyped "white slave trade." That gives ironic poignance to Pointsman's tenderness -- "for the moment," that is.

51.06 '''AWOL bag'''
AWOL = "away without [official] leave." An AWOL bag is a small unframed man's bag with handles, usually leather or canvas. It was named for its convenience as "grab and go" luggage into which a weekend's clothes could be hastily tossed.

[[image:lymer.jpg|thumb|150px|Cobb & Beach at Lyme Regis|right]]51.31-32 '''the Ick Regis jetty''' 
The name is Pynchon’s but evokes "The Cobb," the famous jetty at the city of Lyme Regis on the southern coast of England. 

Regis is the Latin genitive of Rex, "the King" thus, "of the king."
As William Safire notes, "The colloquial noun and interjection [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/25/magazine/25onlanguage.html?_r=1&oref=slogin ick], as well as its adjectival form, icky, are terms of disgust, distaste and revulsion." Oedipa Maas uses the term in [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_3 CoL49] in response to a grisly play. 

Combining Ick and Regis, could therefore render the anarchic sentiment "sick of the king."

Ick Regis, when spoken aloud, sounds like 'egregious'--perhaps a comment on the programs being run at the White Visitation?

Interestingly, for PISCES and White Visitation to be headquartered in a place named Ick Regis, brings associations with the fish sickness "ick" also known as [http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/FA006 the white spot disease], which is a severe dermatitis of freshwater fish caused by a protozoan of the genus Ichthyophthirius and is especially destructive in aquariums and hatcheries called also ichthyophthiriasis, ichthyophthirius. Hence, the "white visitation" could, again, be a sickness.

51.37 '''blastulablob''' 
Apparently a TRP neologism. More about blastulas [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blastula here.]
--[[User:Jpicco|Jpicco]]

==Page 52==
52.23 '''it's the damned Rundstedt offensive''' 
Pointsman ascribes his tight budget to high-level concerns over the German counteroffensive in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg (not Holland, per Weisenburger) that would be remembered as the Battle of the Bulge.
[http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Rundstedt+Offensive Freedictionary] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge Wiki].
--[[User:Jpicco|Jpicco]]

52.39 '''Deptford''' 
Deptford is a district of south London, England, located on the south bank of the River Thames. It is named after a ford of the River Ravensbourne, and from the mid 16th century to the late 19th was home to Deptford Dockyard, the first of the Royal Dockyards... Deptford experienced economic decline in the 20th century with the closing of the docks, and the damage caused by the bombing during the Second World War: one V-2 rocket alone destroyed a Woolworth's store outside Deptford Town Hall, killing 160 people. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deptford]

==Page 53==
53.03 '''"'One, little, Fox!'" 
Compare with Spectro's use of "fox" for patients (47.34), now recast as Pointsman's prey -- the ultimate lab animal. "Fox" recurs nearly twenty times in the novel, often with eerie connotations (e.g. 138.23).

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 72-83

2016-04-27T20:51:27Z

Modavis:

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 73==
73.04 '''ancient Abbey... its roof long ago taken at the manic whim of Henry VIII''' 
The Dissolution of the Monasteries, sometimes referred to as the Suppression of the Monasteries, was the set of administrative and legal processes between 1536 and 1541 by which Henry VIII disbanded monasteries, priories, convents and friaries in England, Wales and Ireland; appropriated their income, disposed of their assets, and provided for their former members. He was given the authority to do this in England and Wales by the Act of Supremacy, passed by Parliament in 1534, which made him Supreme Head of the Church in England, thus separating England from Papal authority; and by the First Suppression Act (1536) and the Second Suppression Act (1539). Although some monastic foundations dated back to Anglo-Saxon England, the overwhelming majority of the 825 religious communities dissolved by Henry VIII owed their existence to the wave of monastic enthusiasm that had swept England and Wales in the 11th and 12th centuries; in consequence of which religious houses in the 16th century controlled appointment to about a third of all parish benefices, and disposed of about half of all ecclesiastical income. The dissolution still represents the largest legally enforced transfer of property in English history since the Norman Conquest. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Monasteries]

73.08 '''Palladian house''' 
Palladian architecture is a European style derived from the designs of the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580). His work was strongly based on the symmetry, perspective and values of the formal classical temple architecture of the Ancient Greeks and Romans.

==Page 74==
74.15 '''rust bouclé''' 
Bouclé is a yarn with a length of loops of similar size which can range from tiny circlets to large curls. To make bouclé, at least two strands are combined, with the tension on one strand being much looser than the other as it is being plied, with the loose strand forming the loops and the other strand as the anchor. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boucle] Radio speaker grille cloths at the time were often bouclé weaves.

74.21 '''Dawes-era flashes''' 
The Dawes Plan (as proposed by the Dawes Committee, chaired by Charles G. Dawes) was an attempt in 1924, following World War I for the Triple Entente to collect war reparations debt from Germany. When after five years the plan proved to be unsuccessful, the Young Plan was adopted in 1929 to replace it. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawes_Plan]

74.26 '''SHAEF''' 
Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force was the headquarters of the Commander of Allied forces in north west Europe, from late 1943 until the end of World War II. U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was in command of SHAEF throughout its existence. The position itself shares a common lineage with Supreme Allied Commander Europe and Atlantic, but they are different titles. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHAEF]

74.30 '''"strategy of truth"''' 
Due to the public skepticism of propaganda due to the heavy handed efforts of the Committee on Public Information in the US during World War I, and the fascist regimes propaganda machinery, the US had adopted a "strategy of truth" whereby they would disseminate information but not try to influence the public directly through propaganda. However, seeing the value and need of propaganda, ways were found to circumvent official policy. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writers%27_War_Board]

74.33 '''Hereros, ex-colonials from South-West Africa''' 
During the late 19th century, the first Europeans began entering to permanently settle the land. Primarily in Damaraland, German settlers acquired land from the Herero in order to establish farms. In 1883, the merchant Franz Adolf Eduard Lüderitz entered into a contract with the native elders. The exchange later became the basis of German colonial rule. The territory became a German colony under the name of German South-West Africa. Soon after, conflicts between the German colonists and the Herero herdsmen began. Controversies frequently arose because of disputes about access to land and water, but also the legal discrimination against the native population by the white immigrants. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hereros]

==Page 75==
75.09 '''to root out the truffles of truth created, as ancients surmised, during storm, in the instant of lightning blast''' 
The first mention of truffles appears in the inscriptions of the neo-Sumerians regarding their Amorite enemy's eating habits (Third Dynasty of Ur, 20th century) and later in writings of Theophrastus in the fourth century BC. In classical times, their origins were a mystery that challenged many; Plutarch and others thought them to be the result of lightning, warmth and water in the soil, while Juvenal thought thunder and rain to be instrumental in their origin. Cicero deemed them children of the earth, while Dioscorides thought they were tuberous roots. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truffle_(fungus)]

75.10 '''American PWD''' 
The Psychological Warfare Division of SHAEF (PWD/SHAEF) was a joint Anglo-American organisation set-up in World War II tasked with conducting principally 'white' tactical psychological warfare against German troops in North-west Europe during and after D-Day. It was headed by US Brigadier-General Robert A. McClure who had previously commanded the Psychological Warfare Branch (PWB/AFHQ) of U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower's staff for Operation Torch. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_Warfare_Division]

75.12 '''"Schwarzkommando"''' 
German: literally 'black command'; in this case meaning both 'unit composed of blacks' and 'secret unit'; an alternate meaning of ''schwartz'' is 'secret' or 'illicit' as in 'Secret Service' or 'black market'

75.13 '''"Wütende Heer"''' 
German: 'furious' or 'raging' army; see note at [[Pages 71-72#Page 72|72.27]]

75.30 '''Dr. Porkyevitch''' 
Another suggestion of one of Pynchon’s favorite motifs, the little cartoon hero Porky Pig. See note at [[V545.04-05]]

75.31 '''before the purge trials''' 
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938. It involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party and government officials, repression of peasants, Red Army leadership, and the persecution of unaffiliated persons, characterized by widespread police surveillance, widespread suspicion of "saboteurs", imprisonment, and arbitrary executions. In Russian historiography the period of the most intense purge, 1937–1938, is called ''Yezhovshchina'' (Russian: ежовщина; literally, the Yezhov regime), after Nikolai Yezhov, the head of the Soviet secret police, NKVD. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purge_Trials]

75.40 '''P.W.E.''' 
During World War II, the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) was a British clandestine body created to produce and disseminate both white and black propaganda, with the aim of damaging enemy morale and sustaining the morale of the Occupied countries. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Warfare_Executive]

==Page 76==
76.06 '''''dégagé''''' 
Detached, disengaged, unconcerned

76.13 '''Polygon Wood''' 
The Battle of Polygon Wood took place during the 'second phase' of the Battle of Passchendaele/Third Battle of Ypres in World War I. The battle was fought near Ypres, Belgium, in an area named the Polygon Wood after the layout of the area. However, much of the woodland had been under intense shelling during the Battle of Passchendaele, and the area changed hands several times before this battle. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Polygon_Wood]

76.32 '''F.O. Political Intelligence Department at Fitzmaurice House''' 
The Political Intelligence Department was a department of the British Foreign Office during World War II. Established in 1939, its main function was the production of weekly intelligence summaries. It was headed by Foreign Office diplomatist Rex Leeper. In April 1943, the department was merged with the Royal Institute of International Affairs' Foreign Research and Press Service in Oxford, creating the new Foreign Office Research Department. The 'Political Intelligence Department' name continued to exist until 1946 as a cover for the Political Warfare Executive. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Intelligence_Department_(1939_-_1943)]

76.34 '''OSS''' 
The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The OSS was formed in order to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for the branches of the United States Armed Forces. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_Services]

'''OWI''' 
The United States Office of War Information (OWI) was a U.S. government agency created during World War II to consolidate government information services. It operated from June 1942 until September 1945. It coordinated the release of war news for domestic use, and, using posters and radio broadcasts, worked to promote patriotism, warned about foreign spies and attempted to recruit women into war work. The office also established an overseas branch which launched a large scale information and propaganda campaign abroad. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OWI]

==Page 77==
77.08 '''Chain of Being''' 
The great chain of being (Latin: scala naturae, literally "ladder or stair-way of nature"), is a Christian concept detailing a strict, religious hierarchical structure of all matter and life, believed to have been decreed by the Christian God. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_of_being]

Chain of Being is a major motif in ''Mason & Dixon''.

77.10 '''... Ypres salient...wastage of only 70% of his unit.''' 
The Ypres Salient is the area around Ypres in Belgium which was the scene of some of the most protracted and grueling trench warfare during World War I. Success was measured in feet and yards as tiny bits of land were captured, lost and recaptured throughout the war. Unit casualty rates were often extremely high. 70% wastage for 40 yards is, at most, only a slight exaggeration. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ypres_Salient]

77.20 '''Flanders''' 
Flanders Fields is the generic name of the World War I battlefields in the medieval County of Flanders. At the time of World War I, the county no longer existed but corresponded approximately to the Belgian provinces East Flanders and West Flanders and the French Nord-Pas-de-Calais region. The name is particularly associated with the battles of Ypres, Passchendaele, and the Somme. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanders_Fields]

77.21 '''entitled ''Things That Can Happen In European Politics''''' 
Here, surprisingly, Pynchon makes a common usage error. Should be ''titled''. A book is ''titled'' something; someone is ''entitled'' to their opinion.

77.22 '''Bereshith, as it were...''' 
Bereishit is a Hebrew word, which is the first word of the Torah (the first five books of the Tanach, or Hebrew Bible). It may be translated as the phrase "In the beginning of". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bereishit]

77.23 '''Ramsay MacDonald''' 
James Ramsay MacDonald, PC, FRS (12 October 1866 – 9 November 1937) was a British Labour politician who rose from humble origins to serve two separate terms as the first ever British Labour Prime Minister. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsay_Macdonald]

77.35-36 '''Couéists''' 
Émile Coué de la Châtaigneraie (February 26, 1857 – July 2, 1926) was a French psychologist and pharmacist who introduced a method of psychotherapy and self-improvement based on optimistic autosuggestion. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Cou%C3%A9]

'''Ouspenskians''' 
See page [[Pages 29-37#Page 30|30]].

'''Skinnerites''' 
Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American behaviorist, author, inventor, social philosopher and poet. He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner]

'''Dale Carnegie zealots''' 
Dale Breckenridge Carnegie (November 24, 1888 – November 1, 1955) was an American writer, lecturer, and the developer of famous courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking, and interpersonal skills. Born in poverty on a farm in Missouri, he was the author of ''How to Win Friends and Influence People'' (1936), a massive bestseller that remains popular today. He also wrote ''How to Stop Worrying and Start Living'' (1948), ''Lincoln the Unknown'' (1932), and several other books. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Carnegie]

==Page 78==
78.05 '''Subalterns''' 
A subaltern is a chiefly British military term for a junior officer. Literally meaning "subordinate," subaltern is used to describe commissioned officers below the rank of captain and generally comprises the various grades of lieutenant. In the British Army the senior subaltern rank was captain-lieutenant, obsolete since the 18th century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaltern]

78.11 '''pearlies''' 
British slang for "teeth", a shortened form of "pearly whites". The Oxford English Dictionary cites this very passage as one of its examples of the word.

[[image:asquith.jpg|thumb|100px|Lady Asquith by Beaton|right]]78.12 '''Cecil Beaton’s photograph of Margot Asquith''' 
Another example of the Turning Head motif.

78.25'''bedlamites''' 
The Bethlem Royal Hospital is a psychiatric hospital located in London, United Kingdom and part of the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. Although no longer based at its original location, it is recognised as the world's first and oldest institution to specialise in mental illnesses. It has been variously known as St. Mary Bethlehem, Bethlem Hospital, Bethlehem Hospital and Bedlam... The word bedlam, meaning uproar and confusion, is derived from its name. Although the hospital is now at the forefront of humane psychiatric treatment, for much of its history it was notorious for cruelty and inhumane treatment – the epitome of what the term "madhouse" or "insane asylum" might connote to the modern reader. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethlem_Royal_Hospital]

78.39 '''"equivalent" phase, the first of the transmarginal phases...''' 
In psychology, Transmarginal inhibition, or TMI, is an organism's response to overwhelming stimuli. Ivan Pavlov enumerated details of TMI on his work of conditioning animals to pain. He found that organisms had different levels of tolerance. He commented "that the most basic inherited difference among people was how soon they reached this shutdown point and that the quick-to-shut-down have a fundamentally different type of nervous system." Patients who have reached this shutdown point often become socially dysfunctional or develop one of several personality disorders. Often patients who dissociate during and after the experience, will more easily dissociate or shut down during stressful or painful experiences, and may experience post traumatic stress disorder for the remainder of their lives.

There are three stages passed through for state of TMI to be reached.

1.equivalent phase: when the response matches the stimuli, which is considered the normal baseline behavior. 
2.paradoxical phase: associated with quantity reversal, occurs when small stimuli receive major response and a major stimuli elicit small responses. 
3.ultra-paradoxical: the final stage, associated with quality reversal in which negative stimulation results in positive responses and vice versa. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmarginal_inhibition]

==Page 79==

79.13 '''Webley Silvernail''' 
Webley is the name of the British gun manufacturer. ''The Berkshire Hills'' cites Silvernail House in West Stockbridge as one of the oldest houses in that town (TBH 99).

79.18 '''Geza Rozsavolgyi''' 
The family name means neither "evil valley" as it stands in Weisenburger's Companion, nor "of the pink valley" as it is in the Alphabetical Index but "of the Valley of Roses". In fact, this is a Jewish name, the literal Magyarization of the German name Rosenthal. Geza’s first name also suggests the Hungarian-American psychologist Geza Roheim, who was one of the first to employ psychoanalytic critiques of culture. Rozsavolgyi is the name of a famous Budapest music store founded in 1850, which also published works by Liszt, Bartok and Kodaly, among others.

79.25 '''"The Weekly Briefings"''' 
In this section, Brigadier Pudding sorta brings to mind Reverend Gail Hightower from Faulkner's ''Light In August''.

79.31-32 '''Haig''' 
Field Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig, KT, GCB, OM, GCVO, KCIE, ADC, (19 June 1861 – 29 January 1928) was a British senior officer during World War I. He commanded the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from 1915 to the end of the War. He was commander during the Battle of the Somme (which brought some of the highest casualties in British military history), the Third Battle of Ypres and the Hundred Days Offensive which led to the armistice in 1918. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Haig,_1st_Earl_Haig]

Haig was vehemently denounced -- perhaps too facilely -- in the generation after WWI. Even among his defenders, though, "the richness of his wit" was rarely mentioned.

'''Lieutenant Sassoon's refusal to fight''' 
Sir Philip Albert Gustave David Sassoon, 3rd Baronet, GBE, CMG (4 December 1888 – 3 June 1939), was a British politician, art collector and social host, entertaining many celebrity guests at his homes, Port Lympne, Kent, and Trent Park, Hertfordshire, England... A second lieutenant in the East Kent Yeomanry, Sassoon served as private secretary to Field Marshal Haig during the First World War. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Sassoon]

More likely Pynchon was referring to Lt. Siegfried Sassoon CBE MC (8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967), a decorated war hero who famously refused to return to combat in 1917 and became one of Britain's best known pacifists and poets. This Sassoon was ordered to undergo mental health treatment by British military authorities who could not understand his change in attitude towards the war. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Sassoon]

79.41 '''Passchendaele horror''' 
The Battle of Passchendaele was one of the major battles of the First World War, taking place between July and November 1917. In a series of operations, Entente troops under British command attacked the Imperial German Army. The battle was fought for control of the village of Passchendaele (modern Passendale) near the town of Ypres in West Flanders, Belgium. The objectives of the offensive were 'wearing out the enemy' and 'securing the Belgian coast and connecting with the Dutch frontier'. Haig expected three phases, capturing Passchendaele Ridge, moving on Roulers and an amphibious landing combined with an attack along the coast from Nieuport. The offensive also served to distract the German army from the French in the Aisne, who were suffering from widespread mutiny. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Passchendaele]

==Page 80==
80.02 '''cucurbitaceous improbabilities''' 
The plant family Cucurbitaceae consists of squashes, melons, and gourds, including crops such as cucumber, various squashes (including pumpkins), luffas, and melons (including watermelons). The family is predominantly distributed around the tropics, where those with edible fruits were amongst the earliest cultivated plants in both the Old and New Worlds. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucurbitaceous]

80.11 '''Toad-in-the-Hole''' 
Toad in the hole is a traditional English dish consisting of sausages in Yorkshire pudding batter, usually served with vegetables and onion gravy. The origin of the name "Toad-in-the-Hole" is often disputed. Many suggestions are that the dish's resemblance to a toad sticking its head out of a hole provides the dish with its somewhat unusual name. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toad_in_the_hole]

80.12 '''''rissolé''''' 
A rissolé is a small croquette, enclosed in pastry or rolled in breadcrumbs, usually baked or deep fried. It is filled with sweet or savory ingredients, most often minced meat or fish, and is served as an entrée, main course, dessert or side dish. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rissole]

80.13 '''samphire''' 
Originally "sampiere", a corruption of the French "Saint Pierre" (Saint Peter), Samphire was named for the patron saint of fishermen because all of the original plants with its name grow in rocky salt-sprayed regions along the sea coast of northern Europe or in its coastal marsh areas. It is sometimes called sea asparagus or sea pickle. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samphire]

80.21-22 '''"Would You Rather Be a Colonel with an Eagle on Your Shoulder, or a Private with a Chicken on Your Knee?"''' 
The World War I song was composed by the team of Sidney Mitchell and Archie Gottlieb in 1918. ('''Note''': This is a correction of my earlier error in attributing the song to the team of Harold Arlen and "Yip" Harburg, who also composed the songs for ''The Wizard of Oz''.)
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxfeMkzvNQU Video]

80.24 '''Electra House''' 
The Electra House, at Moorgate, London, opened in 1902 & was the accommodation for the Eastern and Associated Telegraph Companies.

80.37 '''V-E Day''' 
Victory in Europe Day commemorates 8 May 1945 (in Commonwealth countries; 7 May 1945), the date when the World War II Allies formally accepted the unconditional surrender of the armed forces of Nazi Germany and the end of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. The formal surrender of the occupying German forces in the Channel Islands was not until 9 May 1945. On 30 April Hitler committed suicide during the Battle of Berlin, and so the surrender of Germany was authorized by his replacement, President of Germany Karl Dönitz. The administration headed by Dönitz was known as the Flensburg government. The act of ''military surrender'' was signed on 7 May in Reims, France, and ratified on 8 May in Berlin, Germany. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-E_Day]

80.40 '''into a phalanx''' 
Brings to mind the image of God's finger pointing out of a cloud from earlier in the novel.

==Page 81==

81.08 '''terrible disease like charisma''' 
The term charisma, derived from Ancient Greek was introduced in scholarly [and popular [[User:MKOHUT|MKOHUT]]] usage by German sociologist Max Weber, in a book first published in 1922. He defined charismatic authority to be one of three forms of authority, the other two being traditional (feudal) authority and legal or rational authority. According to Weber, charisma is defined thus: 
"a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which s/he is "set apart" from ordinary people and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These as such are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as divine in origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader." adapted from Wikipedia

81.08 '''rationalization''' 
Rationalization is a key sociological concept [from online Dictionary of Social Science]:RATIONALIZATION This term has two specific meanings in sociology. (1) The concept was developed by German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) who used it in two ways. First, it was the process through which magical, supernatural and religious ideas lose cultural importance in a society and ideas based on science and practical calculation become dominant. For example, in modern societies science has rationalized our understanding of weather patterns. Science explains weather patterns as a result of interaction between physical elements like wind-speed and direction, air and water temperatures, humidity, etc. In some other cultures, weather is thought to express the pleasure or displeasure of gods, or spirits of ancestors. One explanation is rationalized and scientific, the other mysterious and magical. Rationalization also involves the development of forms of social organization devoted to the achievement of precise goals by efficient means. It is this type of rationalization that we see in the development of modern business corporations and of bureaucracy. These are organizations dedicated to the pursuit of defined goals by calculated, systematically administered means. (2) Within symbolic interactionism, rationalization is used more in the everyday sense of the word to refer to providing justifications or excuses for one's actions. See use in ''Against the Day'', page 10 [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_1-25 Against the Day]

81.17 '''The Reverend Paul de la Nuit''' 
A double pun: "Pall [dark and gloomy covering] of the night"; also "Pall de l’ennui [of boredom]."

81.22 '''MMPI''' 
See 21.03

==Page 82==

82.01 '''his most famous compatriot''' 
Rozsavolgyi’s fellow countryman would be, of course, Bela Lugosi in his role as Dracula, whose speech patterns are suggested by Pynchon’s punctuation of Rozsavolgyi’s dialogue.

82.11 '''Dr. Aaron Throwster''' 
Aaron was the brother of and spokesperson for Moses. A throwster is one who makes threads out of silk. The name is fairly common in Britain.

82.26 '''It is a classic "folly"''' 
In architecture, a folly is a building constructed primarily for decoration, but either suggesting by its appearance some other purpose, or merely so extravagant that it transcends the normal range of garden ornaments or other class of building to which it belongs. In the original use of the word, these buildings had no other use, but from the 19th to 20th centuries the term was also applied to highly decorative buildings which had secondary practical functions such as housing, sheltering or business use. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folly]

Cf. ''Mason & Dixon'' pg. [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_74:_717-732#Page_722 722]

82.27 '''The buttery''' 
A buttery was a domestic room in a large medieval house. Along with the pantry, it was generally part of the offices pertaining to the kitchen. Reached from the screens passage at the low end of the Great Hall the buttery was traditionally the place from which the yeoman of the buttery served beer from the wooden butts standing by to those lower members of the household not entitled to drink wine. Candles were also dispensed from the buttery. Even today in Oxford and Cambridge colleges drinks are served from the buttery bar. The buttery generally had a staircase to the beer cellar below. The wine cellars, however, belonged to a different department, that of the yeoman of the cellar and in keeping with the higher value of their contents were often more richly decorated to reflect the higher status of their contents. From the mid-17th century, as it became the custom for servants and their offices to be less conspicuous and sited far from the principal reception rooms, the Great Hall and its neighbouring buttery and pantry lost their original uses. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttery_(room)]

82.31 '''Gloucestershire Old Spots''' 
The Gloucestershire Old Spots is an English breed of pig which is predominantly white with black spots. It is named after the county of Gloucestershire. The Gloucestershire Old Spots pig is known for its docility, intelligence, and prolificacy. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloucestershire_Old_Spots]

82.32 '''buckram books''' 
Buckram is a stiff cloth, made of cotton, and still occasionally linen, which is used to cover and protect books. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckram]

82.36 '''...Clive and his elephants stomping the French at Plassy...''' 
The Battle of Plassey (Plassy in text), 23 June 1757, was a decisive victory for the British East India Company, lead by Baron Robert Clive, over the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies. Elephants were used to help move infantry pieces. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Plassey]

82.37 '''Salome with the head of John''' 
Salome, the Daughter of Herodias (c AD 14 - between 62 and 71), is known from the New Testament (Mark 6:17-29 and Matt 14:3-11, where, however, her name is not given). Another source from Antiquity, Flavius Josephus's ''Jewish Antiquities'', gives her name and some detail about her family relations... Christian traditions depict her as an icon of dangerous female seductiveness, for instance depicting as erotic her dance mentioned in the New Testament (in some later transformations further iconised to the ''dance of the seven veils''), or concentrate on her lighthearted and cold foolishness that, according to the gospels, led to John the Baptist's death. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salome]

82.39 '''tessellated''' 
A tessellation or tiling of the plane is a pattern of plane figures that fills the plane with no overlaps and no gaps. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tessellation]

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==Page 73==
73.04 '''ancient Abbey... its roof long ago taken at the manic whim of Henry VIII''' 
The Dissolution of the Monasteries, sometimes referred to as the Suppression of the Monasteries, was the set of administrative and legal processes between 1536 and 1541 by which Henry VIII disbanded monasteries, priories, convents and friaries in England, Wales and Ireland; appropriated their income, disposed of their assets, and provided for their former members. He was given the authority to do this in England and Wales by the Act of Supremacy, passed by Parliament in 1534, which made him Supreme Head of the Church in England, thus separating England from Papal authority; and by the First Suppression Act (1536) and the Second Suppression Act (1539). Although some monastic foundations dated back to Anglo-Saxon England, the overwhelming majority of the 825 religious communities dissolved by Henry VIII owed their existence to the wave of monastic enthusiasm that had swept England and Wales in the 11th and 12th centuries; in consequence of which religious houses in the 16th century controlled appointment to about a third of all parish benefices, and disposed of about half of all ecclesiastical income. The dissolution still represents the largest legally enforced transfer of property in English history since the Norman Conquest. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Monasteries]

73.08 '''Palladian house''' 
Palladian architecture is a European style derived from the designs of the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580). His work was strongly based on the symmetry, perspective and values of the formal classical temple architecture of the Ancient Greeks and Romans.

==Page 74==
74.15 '''rust bouclé''' 
Bouclé is a yarn with a length of loops of similar size which can range from tiny circlets to large curls. To make bouclé, at least two strands are combined, with the tension on one strand being much looser than the other as it is being plied, with the loose strand forming the loops and the other strand as the anchor. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boucle] Radio speaker grille cloths at the time were often bouclé weaves.

74.21 '''Dawes-era flashes''' 
The Dawes Plan (as proposed by the Dawes Committee, chaired by Charles G. Dawes) was an attempt in 1924, following World War I for the Triple Entente to collect war reparations debt from Germany. When after five years the plan proved to be unsuccessful, the Young Plan was adopted in 1929 to replace it. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawes_Plan]

74.26 '''SHAEF''' 
Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force was the headquarters of the Commander of Allied forces in north west Europe, from late 1943 until the end of World War II. U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was in command of SHAEF throughout its existence. The position itself shares a common lineage with Supreme Allied Commander Europe and Atlantic, but they are different titles. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHAEF]

74.30 '''"strategy of truth"''' 
Due to the public skepticism of propaganda due to the heavy handed efforts of the Committee on Public Information in the US during World War I, and the fascist regimes propaganda machinery, the US had adopted a "strategy of truth" whereby they would disseminate information but not try to influence the public directly through propaganda. However, seeing the value and need of propaganda, ways were found to circumvent official policy. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writers%27_War_Board]

74.33 '''Hereros, ex-colonials from South-West Africa''' 
During the late 19th century, the first Europeans began entering to permanently settle the land. Primarily in Damaraland, German settlers acquired land from the Herero in order to establish farms. In 1883, the merchant Franz Adolf Eduard Lüderitz entered into a contract with the native elders. The exchange later became the basis of German colonial rule. The territory became a German colony under the name of German South-West Africa. Soon after, conflicts between the German colonists and the Herero herdsmen began. Controversies frequently arose because of disputes about access to land and water, but also the legal discrimination against the native population by the white immigrants. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hereros]

==Page 75==
75.09 '''to root out the truffles of truth created, as ancients surmised, during storm, in the instant of lightning blast''' 
The first mention of truffles appears in the inscriptions of the neo-Sumerians regarding their Amorite enemy's eating habits (Third Dynasty of Ur, 20th century) and later in writings of Theophrastus in the fourth century BC. In classical times, their origins were a mystery that challenged many; Plutarch and others thought them to be the result of lightning, warmth and water in the soil, while Juvenal thought thunder and rain to be instrumental in their origin. Cicero deemed them children of the earth, while Dioscorides thought they were tuberous roots. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truffle_(fungus)]

75.10 '''American PWD''' 
The Psychological Warfare Division of SHAEF (PWD/SHAEF) was a joint Anglo-American organisation set-up in World War II tasked with conducting principally 'white' tactical psychological warfare against German troops in North-west Europe during and after D-Day. It was headed by US Brigadier-General Robert A. McClure who had previously commanded the Psychological Warfare Branch (PWB/AFHQ) of U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower's staff for Operation Torch. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_Warfare_Division]

75.12 '''"Schwarzkommando"''' 
German: literally 'black command'; in this case meaning both 'unit composed of blacks' and 'secret unit'; an alternate meaning of ''schwartz'' is 'secret' or 'illicit' as in 'Secret Service' or 'black market'

75.13 '''"Wütende Heer"''' 
German: 'furious' or 'raging' army; see note at [[Pages 71-72#Page 72|72.27]]

75.30 '''Dr. Porkyevitch''' 
Another suggestion of one of Pynchon’s favorite motifs, the little cartoon hero Porky Pig. See note at [[V545.04-05]]

75.31 '''before the purge trials''' 
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938. It involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party and government officials, repression of peasants, Red Army leadership, and the persecution of unaffiliated persons, characterized by widespread police surveillance, widespread suspicion of "saboteurs", imprisonment, and arbitrary executions. In Russian historiography the period of the most intense purge, 1937–1938, is called ''Yezhovshchina'' (Russian: ежовщина; literally, the Yezhov regime), after Nikolai Yezhov, the head of the Soviet secret police, NKVD. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purge_Trials]

75.40 '''P.W.E.''' 
During World War II, the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) was a British clandestine body created to produce and disseminate both white and black propaganda, with the aim of damaging enemy morale and sustaining the morale of the Occupied countries. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Warfare_Executive]

==Page 76==
76.06 '''''dégagé''''' 
Detached, disengaged, unconcerned

76.13 '''Polygon Wood''' 
The Battle of Polygon Wood took place during the 'second phase' of the Battle of Passchendaele/Third Battle of Ypres in World War I. The battle was fought near Ypres, Belgium, in an area named the Polygon Wood after the layout of the area. However, much of the woodland had been under intense shelling during the Battle of Passchendaele, and the area changed hands several times before this battle. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Polygon_Wood]

76.32 '''F.O. Political Intelligence Department at Fitzmaurice House''' 
The Political Intelligence Department was a department of the British Foreign Office during World War II. Established in 1939, its main function was the production of weekly intelligence summaries. It was headed by Foreign Office diplomatist Rex Leeper. In April 1943, the department was merged with the Royal Institute of International Affairs' Foreign Research and Press Service in Oxford, creating the new Foreign Office Research Department. The 'Political Intelligence Department' name continued to exist until 1946 as a cover for the Political Warfare Executive. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Intelligence_Department_(1939_-_1943)]

76.34 '''OSS''' 
The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The OSS was formed in order to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for the branches of the United States Armed Forces. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_Services]

'''OWI''' 
The United States Office of War Information (OWI) was a U.S. government agency created during World War II to consolidate government information services. It operated from June 1942 until September 1945. It coordinated the release of war news for domestic use, and, using posters and radio broadcasts, worked to promote patriotism, warned about foreign spies and attempted to recruit women into war work. The office also established an overseas branch which launched a large scale information and propaganda campaign abroad. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OWI]

==Page 77==
77.08 '''Chain of Being''' 
The great chain of being (Latin: scala naturae, literally "ladder or stair-way of nature"), is a Christian concept detailing a strict, religious hierarchical structure of all matter and life, believed to have been decreed by the Christian God. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_of_being]

Chain of Being is a major motif in ''Mason & Dixon''.

77.10 '''... Ypres salient...wastage of only 70% of his unit.''' 
The Ypres Salient is the area around Ypres in Belgium which was the scene of some of the most protracted and grueling trench warfare during World War I. Success was measured in feet and yards as tiny bits of land were captured, lost and recaptured throughout the war. Unit casualty rates were often extremely high. 70% wastage for 40 yards is, at most, only a slight exaggeration. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ypres_Salient]

77.20 '''Flanders''' 
Flanders Fields is the generic name of the World War I battlefields in the medieval County of Flanders. At the time of World War I, the county no longer existed but corresponded approximately to the Belgian provinces East Flanders and West Flanders and the French Nord-Pas-de-Calais region. The name is particularly associated with the battles of Ypres, Passchendaele, and the Somme. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanders_Fields]

77.21 '''entitled ''Things That Can Happen In European Politics''''' 
Here, surprisingly, Pynchon makes a common usage error. Should be ''titled''. A book is ''titled'' something; someone is ''entitled'' to their opinion.

77.22 '''Bereshith, as it were...''' 
Bereishit is a Hebrew word, which is the first word of the Torah (the first five books of the Tanach, or Hebrew Bible). It may be translated as the phrase "In the beginning of". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bereishit]

77.23 '''Ramsay MacDonald''' 
James Ramsay MacDonald, PC, FRS (12 October 1866 – 9 November 1937) was a British Labour politician who rose from humble origins to serve two separate terms as the first ever British Labour Prime Minister. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsay_Macdonald]

77.35-36 '''Couéists''' 
Émile Coué de la Châtaigneraie (February 26, 1857 – July 2, 1926) was a French psychologist and pharmacist who introduced a method of psychotherapy and self-improvement based on optimistic autosuggestion. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Cou%C3%A9]

'''Ouspenskians''' 
See page [[Pages 29-37#Page 30|30]].

'''Skinnerites''' 
Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American behaviorist, author, inventor, social philosopher and poet. He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner]

'''Dale Carnegie zealots''' 
Dale Breckenridge Carnegie (November 24, 1888 – November 1, 1955) was an American writer, lecturer, and the developer of famous courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking, and interpersonal skills. Born in poverty on a farm in Missouri, he was the author of ''How to Win Friends and Influence People'' (1936), a massive bestseller that remains popular today. He also wrote ''How to Stop Worrying and Start Living'' (1948), ''Lincoln the Unknown'' (1932), and several other books. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Carnegie]

==Page 78==
78.05 '''Subalterns''' 
A subaltern is a chiefly British military term for a junior officer. Literally meaning "subordinate," subaltern is used to describe commissioned officers below the rank of captain and generally comprises the various grades of lieutenant. In the British Army the senior subaltern rank was captain-lieutenant, obsolete since the 18th century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaltern]

78.11 '''pearlies''' 
British slang for "teeth", a shortened form of "pearly whites". The Oxford English Dictionary cites this very passage as one of its examples of the word.

[[image:asquith.jpg|thumb|100px|Lady Asquith by Beaton|right]]78.12 '''Cecil Beaton’s photograph of Margot Asquith''' 
Another example of the Turning Head motif.

78.25'''bedlamites''' 
The Bethlem Royal Hospital is a psychiatric hospital located in London, United Kingdom and part of the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. Although no longer based at its original location, it is recognised as the world's first and oldest institution to specialise in mental illnesses. It has been variously known as St. Mary Bethlehem, Bethlem Hospital, Bethlehem Hospital and Bedlam... The word bedlam, meaning uproar and confusion, is derived from its name. Although the hospital is now at the forefront of humane psychiatric treatment, for much of its history it was notorious for cruelty and inhumane treatment – the epitome of what the term "madhouse" or "insane asylum" might connote to the modern reader. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethlem_Royal_Hospital]

78.39 '''"equivalent" phase, the first of the transmarginal phases...''' 
In psychology, Transmarginal inhibition, or TMI, is an organism's response to overwhelming stimuli. Ivan Pavlov enumerated details of TMI on his work of conditioning animals to pain. He found that organisms had different levels of tolerance. He commented "that the most basic inherited difference among people was how soon they reached this shutdown point and that the quick-to-shut-down have a fundamentally different type of nervous system." Patients who have reached this shutdown point often become socially dysfunctional or develop one of several personality disorders. Often patients who dissociate during and after the experience, will more easily dissociate or shut down during stressful or painful experiences, and may experience post traumatic stress disorder for the remainder of their lives.

There are three stages passed through for state of TMI to be reached.

1.equivalent phase: when the response matches the stimuli, which is considered the normal baseline behavior. 
2.paradoxical phase: associated with quantity reversal, occurs when small stimuli receive major response and a major stimuli elicit small responses. 
3.ultra-paradoxical: the final stage, associated with quality reversal in which negative stimulation results in positive responses and vice versa. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmarginal_inhibition]

==Page 79==

79.13 '''Webley Silvernail''' 
Webley is the name of the British gun manufacturer. ''The Berkshire Hills'' cites Silvernail House in West Stockbridge as one of the oldest houses in that town (TBH 99).

79.18 '''Geza Rozsavolgyi''' 
The family name means neither "evil valley" as it stands in Weisenburger's Companion, nor "of the pink valley" as it is in the Alphabetical Index but "of the Valley of Roses". In fact, this is a Jewish name, the literal Magyarization of the German name Rosenthal. Geza’s first name also suggests the Hungarian-American psychologist Geza Roheim, who was one of the first to employ psychoanalytic critiques of culture. Rozsavolgyi is the name of a famous Budapest music store founded in 1850, which also published works by Liszt, Bartok and Kodaly, among others.

79.25 '''"The Weekly Briefings"''' 
In this section, Brigadier Pudding sorta brings to mind Reverend Gail Hightower from Faulkner's ''Light In August''.

79.31-32 '''Haig''' 
Field Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig, KT, GCB, OM, GCVO, KCIE, ADC, (19 June 1861 – 29 January 1928) was a British senior officer during World War I. He commanded the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from 1915 to the end of the War. He was commander during the Battle of the Somme the battle with one of the highest casualties in British military history, the Third Battle of Ypres and the Hundred Days Offensive which led to the armistice in 1918. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Haig,_1st_Earl_Haig]

'''Lieutenant Sassoon's refusal to fight''' 
Sir Philip Albert Gustave David Sassoon, 3rd Baronet, GBE, CMG (4 December 1888 – 3 June 1939), was a British politician, art collector and social host, entertaining many celebrity guests at his homes, Port Lympne, Kent, and Trent Park, Hertfordshire, England... A second lieutenant in the East Kent Yeomanry, Sassoon served as private secretary to Field Marshal Haig during the First World War. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Sassoon]

More likely Pynchon was referring to Lt. Siegfried Sassoon CBE MC (8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967), a decorated war hero who famously refused to return to combat in 1917 and became one of Britain's best known pacifists and poets. This Sassoon was ordered to undergo mental health treatment by British military authorities who could not understand his change in attitude towards the war. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Sassoon]

79.41 '''Passchendaele horror''' 
The Battle of Passchendaele was one of the major battles of the First World War, taking place between July and November 1917. In a series of operations, Entente troops under British command attacked the Imperial German Army. The battle was fought for control of the village of Passchendaele (modern Passendale) near the town of Ypres in West Flanders, Belgium. The objectives of the offensive were 'wearing out the enemy' and 'securing the Belgian coast and connecting with the Dutch frontier'. Haig expected three phases, capturing Passchendaele Ridge, moving on Roulers and an amphibious landing combined with an attack along the coast from Nieuport. The offensive also served to distract the German army from the French in the Aisne, who were suffering from widespread mutiny. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Passchendaele]

==Page 80==
80.02 '''cucurbitaceous improbabilities''' 
The plant family Cucurbitaceae consists of squashes, melons, and gourds, including crops such as cucumber, various squashes (including pumpkins), luffas, and melons (including watermelons). The family is predominantly distributed around the tropics, where those with edible fruits were amongst the earliest cultivated plants in both the Old and New Worlds. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucurbitaceous]

80.11 '''Toad-in-the-Hole''' 
Toad in the hole is a traditional English dish consisting of sausages in Yorkshire pudding batter, usually served with vegetables and onion gravy. The origin of the name "Toad-in-the-Hole" is often disputed. Many suggestions are that the dish's resemblance to a toad sticking its head out of a hole provides the dish with its somewhat unusual name. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toad_in_the_hole]

80.12 '''''rissolé''''' 
A rissolé is a small croquette, enclosed in pastry or rolled in breadcrumbs, usually baked or deep fried. It is filled with sweet or savory ingredients, most often minced meat or fish, and is served as an entrée, main course, dessert or side dish. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rissole]

80.13 '''samphire''' 
Originally "sampiere", a corruption of the French "Saint Pierre" (Saint Peter), Samphire was named for the patron saint of fishermen because all of the original plants with its name grow in rocky salt-sprayed regions along the sea coast of northern Europe or in its coastal marsh areas. It is sometimes called sea asparagus or sea pickle. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samphire]

80.21-22 '''"Would You Rather Be a Colonel with an Eagle on Your Shoulder, or a Private with a Chicken on Your Knee?"''' 
The World War I song was composed by the team of Sidney Mitchell and Archie Gottlieb in 1918. ('''Note''': This is a correction of my earlier error in attributing the song to the team of Harold Arlen and "Yip" Harburg, who also composed the songs for ''The Wizard of Oz''.)
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxfeMkzvNQU Video]

80.24 '''Electra House''' 
The Electra House, at Moorgate, London, opened in 1902 & was the accommodation for the Eastern and Associated Telegraph Companies.

80.37 '''V-E Day''' 
Victory in Europe Day commemorates 8 May 1945 (in Commonwealth countries; 7 May 1945), the date when the World War II Allies formally accepted the unconditional surrender of the armed forces of Nazi Germany and the end of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. The formal surrender of the occupying German forces in the Channel Islands was not until 9 May 1945. On 30 April Hitler committed suicide during the Battle of Berlin, and so the surrender of Germany was authorized by his replacement, President of Germany Karl Dönitz. The administration headed by Dönitz was known as the Flensburg government. The act of ''military surrender'' was signed on 7 May in Reims, France, and ratified on 8 May in Berlin, Germany. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-E_Day]

80.40 '''into a phalanx''' 
Brings to mind the image of God's finger pointing out of a cloud from earlier in the novel.

==Page 81==

81.08 '''terrible disease like charisma''' 
The term charisma, derived from Ancient Greek was introduced in scholarly [and popular [[User:MKOHUT|MKOHUT]]] usage by German sociologist Max Weber, in a book first published in 1922. He defined charismatic authority to be one of three forms of authority, the other two being traditional (feudal) authority and legal or rational authority. According to Weber, charisma is defined thus: 
"a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which s/he is "set apart" from ordinary people and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These as such are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as divine in origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader." adapted from Wikipedia

81.08 '''rationalization''' 
Rationalization is a key sociological concept [from online Dictionary of Social Science]:RATIONALIZATION This term has two specific meanings in sociology. (1) The concept was developed by German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) who used it in two ways. First, it was the process through which magical, supernatural and religious ideas lose cultural importance in a society and ideas based on science and practical calculation become dominant. For example, in modern societies science has rationalized our understanding of weather patterns. Science explains weather patterns as a result of interaction between physical elements like wind-speed and direction, air and water temperatures, humidity, etc. In some other cultures, weather is thought to express the pleasure or displeasure of gods, or spirits of ancestors. One explanation is rationalized and scientific, the other mysterious and magical. Rationalization also involves the development of forms of social organization devoted to the achievement of precise goals by efficient means. It is this type of rationalization that we see in the development of modern business corporations and of bureaucracy. These are organizations dedicated to the pursuit of defined goals by calculated, systematically administered means. (2) Within symbolic interactionism, rationalization is used more in the everyday sense of the word to refer to providing justifications or excuses for one's actions. See use in ''Against the Day'', page 10 [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_1-25 Against the Day]

81.17 '''The Reverend Paul de la Nuit''' 
A double pun: "Pall [dark and gloomy covering] of the night"; also "Pall de l’ennui [of boredom]."

81.22 '''MMPI''' 
See 21.03

==Page 82==

82.01 '''his most famous compatriot''' 
Rozsavolgyi’s fellow countryman would be, of course, Bela Lugosi in his role as Dracula, whose speech patterns are suggested by Pynchon’s punctuation of Rozsavolgyi’s dialogue.

82.11 '''Dr. Aaron Throwster''' 
Aaron was the brother of and spokesperson for Moses. A throwster is one who makes threads out of silk. The name is fairly common in Britain.

82.26 '''It is a classic "folly"''' 
In architecture, a folly is a building constructed primarily for decoration, but either suggesting by its appearance some other purpose, or merely so extravagant that it transcends the normal range of garden ornaments or other class of building to which it belongs. In the original use of the word, these buildings had no other use, but from the 19th to 20th centuries the term was also applied to highly decorative buildings which had secondary practical functions such as housing, sheltering or business use. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folly]

Cf. ''Mason & Dixon'' pg. [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_74:_717-732#Page_722 722]

82.27 '''The buttery''' 
A buttery was a domestic room in a large medieval house. Along with the pantry, it was generally part of the offices pertaining to the kitchen. Reached from the screens passage at the low end of the Great Hall the buttery was traditionally the place from which the yeoman of the buttery served beer from the wooden butts standing by to those lower members of the household not entitled to drink wine. Candles were also dispensed from the buttery. Even today in Oxford and Cambridge colleges drinks are served from the buttery bar. The buttery generally had a staircase to the beer cellar below. The wine cellars, however, belonged to a different department, that of the yeoman of the cellar and in keeping with the higher value of their contents were often more richly decorated to reflect the higher status of their contents. From the mid-17th century, as it became the custom for servants and their offices to be less conspicuous and sited far from the principal reception rooms, the Great Hall and its neighbouring buttery and pantry lost their original uses. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttery_(room)]

82.31 '''Gloucestershire Old Spots''' 
The Gloucestershire Old Spots is an English breed of pig which is predominantly white with black spots. It is named after the county of Gloucestershire. The Gloucestershire Old Spots pig is known for its docility, intelligence, and prolificacy. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloucestershire_Old_Spots]

82.32 '''buckram books''' 
Buckram is a stiff cloth, made of cotton, and still occasionally linen, which is used to cover and protect books. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckram]

82.36 '''...Clive and his elephants stomping the French at Plassy...''' 
The Battle of Plassey (Plassy in text), 23 June 1757, was a decisive victory for the British East India Company, lead by Baron Robert Clive, over the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies. Elephants were used to help move infantry pieces. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Plassey]

82.37 '''Salome with the head of John''' 
Salome, the Daughter of Herodias (c AD 14 - between 62 and 71), is known from the New Testament (Mark 6:17-29 and Matt 14:3-11, where, however, her name is not given). Another source from Antiquity, Flavius Josephus's ''Jewish Antiquities'', gives her name and some detail about her family relations... Christian traditions depict her as an icon of dangerous female seductiveness, for instance depicting as erotic her dance mentioned in the New Testament (in some later transformations further iconised to the ''dance of the seven veils''), or concentrate on her lighthearted and cold foolishness that, according to the gospels, led to John the Baptist's death. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salome]

82.39 '''tessellated''' 
A tessellation or tiling of the plane is a pattern of plane figures that fills the plane with no overlaps and no gaps. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tessellation]

{{GR PbP}}

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2016-04-25T18:26:36Z

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==Page 20==

20.21 '''What it is is a graphite cylinder''' 
The contents wiull be revealed on pp. 71-72.

20.34 '''A-and''' 
Does anyone know how TRP pronounces this? Is it just a stutter? (It will recur in [http://www.google.com/search?tbs=bks:1&tbo=p&q=a-and+inauthor:thomas+inauthor:pynchon&num=10 all] his subsequent books.)

20.36 '''TDY''' 
Not "tour of duty," as in Weisenburger, but "temporary duty."

20.37 '''East End'''
This is the East End of London, particularly heavily bombed by the Germans in the war as London's docks were situated there. It was, and still is, the area where the poorest people of London live. Famously, Queen Elizabeth's mother made a royal visit there during the war where she was enthusiastically received.

==Page 21==

21.03 '''more of that Minnesota Multiphasic shit''' 
The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is a standardized test of adult personality and psychopathology. It was first published by the University of Minnesota Press in 1943, and quickly adopted by US armed forces.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Multiphasic_Personality_Inventory]

21.07 '''A lot of stuff prior to 1944 is getting blurry now.''' 
Even this early in the novel, Slothrop has problems with his "temporal bandwidth." His memories of the Blitz (21.08) put him in London no later than May 1941, and possibly as early as September 1940. Note also "I'm four years overdue" (25.17). The US did have military liaison missions in the UK long before entering the war, but we will get no details of Slothrop's role before the V-weapon campaign.

21.32 '''these three years''' 
This puts Slothrop and Tantivy together (presumably at ACHTUNG) since Dec. 1941. What technical intelligence from northern Germany had been targeted that far back? According to the history books, the Allies became aware of the V-weapons programs only in mid-1943.

21.35 '''Tantivy's guest at the Junior Athenaeum''' 
According to the London Encyclopedia the Junior Athenaeum purchased Hope House at 116 Piccadilly in 1868, owning it until the building was demolished in 1936. The JA appears to have closed its doors in 1931, making this a possible anachronism. The Athenaeum Club proper is the most intellectually elite of the gentlemen's clubs; Darwin, Dickens and Trollope were members and Michael Faraday was secretary of the first committee.

21.36 '''86’d''' 
While sources do agree with Weisenburger that the term "86" might originate in rhyming slang (for "nix"), they also agree that it was first used in the restaurant business to indicate menu items that were no longer available. The wider usage here may not have originated until the 1950s.

==Page 22==
22.03 '''a build out of the chorus line at the Windmill'''; also p39 "It's not backstage at the Windmill" 
The Windmill opened in 1932 in a building which had been the Palais de Luxe Cinema and then a theatre. It featured comedy and burlesque revues. The only London theatre to remain open throughout the war, the Windmill continued until 1964 when it became a cinema, reverted to a strip club in 1973, became a theatre/restaurant in 1982 and finally re-opened as a strip club in 1986. From a recent advertisement: "The Windmill International - London's Premier Tableside Dancing Club with 75 Beautiful Dancing Girls who will perform tableside for you - full Nudity - fantastic stage and light show - Dress Smart".

22.04 '''Frick Frack Club''' 
The term "frick and frack" is often used to designate two people or almost any two items closely associated with each other. The term originates from the stage names of a pair of Swiss skaters who starred in ice shows in the 1930s. Pynchon probably chose the name more for its senseless alliteration (like "Kit-Kat Club") than any specific meaning.

22.25 '''Thomas Hooker... wilde Thyme''' 
Thomas Hooker (July 5, 1586 – July 7, 1647) was a prominent Puritan religious and colonial leader, who founded the Colony of Connecticut after dissenting with Puritan leaders in Massachusetts. He was known as an outstanding speaker and a leader of universal Christian suffrage. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hooker]

"wilde Thyme" also brings to mind "Wild Tyme", song by Jefferson Airplane on their 1967 LP ''After Bathing At Baxter's'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_bathing_at_baxter%27s]

==Page 23==

23.10 '''Bovril''' 
A beef extract--its main use is as a flavouring for soups, and as a drink when you put a teaspoon of the stuff in a mug of boiling water. The method for making the extract was perfected by Justus von Liebig, who co-founded the eponymous London based company.

23.19 '''Wrens''' 
Women's Royal Naval Service - British civilian support group of war effort

23.25 '''Ike jacket''' 
[[image:Ike_Jacket.jpeg|thumb|75px|Ike jacket|right]]Eisenhower jacket-- officially the M-44; a waist-cropped style jacket designed in 1943 and meant to be worn beneath the standard US field jacket, the M-43, as an added layer of insulation; supposedly made at Eisenhower's request.

==Page 24==
24.14 '''Humber''' 
Humber is a British automobile marque which could date its beginnings to Thomas Humber's bicycle company founded in 1868. Following their involvement in Humber through Hillman in 1928 the Rootes brothers[1] acquired a controlling interest and joined the Humber board in 1932 making Humber part of their Rootes Group. The range focused on luxury models, such as the Humber Super Snipe. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humber_(car)]

24.30 '''Morrison shelter''' 
The Morrison shelter, officially termed ''Table (Morrison) Indoor Shelter'', had a cage-like construction beneath it. It was designed by John Baker and named after Herbert Morrison, the Minister of Home Security at the time. It was the result of the realisation that due to the lack of house cellars it was necessary to develop an effective type of indoor shelter. The shelters came in assembly kits, to be bolted together inside the home. They were approximately 6 ft 6 in (2 m) long, 4 ft (1.2 m) wide and 2 ft 6 in (0.75 m) high, had a solid 1/8 in (3 mm) steel plate “table” top, welded wire mesh sides, and a metal lath “mattress”- type floor. Altogether it had 359 parts and had 3 tools supplied with the pack. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrison_shelter#Morrison_shelter]

==Page 25==

25.06-07 '''Slothrop’s Progress . . . a parable''' 
"Slothrop’s Progress" echoes John Bunyan’s Puritan allegory ''The Pilgrim’s Progress''. The word "parable," interestingly, comes from the same root as "parabola."

Slothrop's Progress may be Time itself. Sir Arthur Eddington coined the term "time's arrow" to describe entropy's progress and time's irreversibility-- i.e. "as the universe gets older, it becomes more disordered, following the second law of thermodynamics." Entropy's progress defines time. Cf. ''Scientific American'', Jan 2008, p.26 for more.

25. 29 '''Bond Street Underground station'''
This is a station in the wealthier West End of London - also a site on the British version of 'Monopoly'

==Page 26==

26.30 '''back home in Mingeborough, Massachusetts''' 
The Berkshire town was first created by Pynchon in the short story "The Secret Integration," set in the mid-1960s. This story also introduced the Slothrop family, in the person of Hogan Slothrop, who is apparently the son of Tyrone’s brother. Minges (or "midges") are small, biting insects. However, "minge" was originally also a British slang term for a woman's pubic hair, now generalised to the female genitals.

26.33 '''British Double Summer Time''' 
Correspondent Igor Zabel explains this term:
" . . . in Britain they had, during the war, the clocks an hour ahead in the winter time and two hours in the summer time."

26.37-38 '''Death is a debt to nature due . . . so must you.''' 
Weisenburger claims that this epitaph, with its debt to "nature" rather than God, would be heretical to Puritans. That might be so, but the inscription was fairly common on tombstones in the northeast from the mid-1700s until the early 1800s, a range that includes Constant’s 1760 death.

==Page 27==

27.04 '''Variable Slothrop''' 
The son of "Constant": The two names play a mathematical pun and suggest the family’s decline as well. Both names seem to be a pun as well on the name of Puritan minister and Harvard president, the Rev. Increase Mather of Massachusetts Bay Colony and his son, Cotton Mather. Increase attempted to decrease the heat surrounding the Salem Witch Trials through a series of sermons seeking moderation in the use of spectral evidence, even though he defended the trials and the judges. Parallels: Second law of thermodynamics - heated trials cooling. Increase-Cotton-Constant-Variable -- 

27.31-33 '''They began as fur traders, cordwainers, salters and smokers of bacon, went on into glassmaking, became selectmen, builders of tanneries, quarriers of marble.''' 
[[image:berkshire.jpg|thumb|100px|right]]One source listed in Weisenburger but that he did not have time to consult closely is ''The Berkshire Hills'' <ref>''The Berkshire Hills''', Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York, 1939</ref>, a guidebook prepared for this western Massachusetts region by the Federal Writers Project during the Depression. (See Pynchon’s comments in his introduction to ''Slow Learner''.) Although not the sole source, the book provides important background for "The Secret Integration" and the Berkshire segments of ''Gravity’s Rainbow''. Most of the offices and trades listed here (except for "smokers and salters of bacon") are noted at one place or another in the guidebook. Also see my article "From the Berkshires to the Brocken: Transformations of a Source in "The Secret Integration" and Gravity’s Rainbow," Pynchon Notes 22-23 (Spring-Fall 1988): 87-98.[http://www.ham.miamioh.edu/krafftjm/pn/pn022.pdf]

==Page 28==

28.02 '''converted acres at a clip into paper''' 
A paper clip? A likely reference to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip Operation Paper Clip], the OSS program to recruit Nazi scientists to work for the US and deny them to the Russians. Von Braun was brought to the US under this program.

28.02-03 '''paper—toilet paper, banknote stock, newsprint''' 
The Berkshire Hills describes several paper mills in the region and notes the importance of the industry. One producer, Crane and Company, first used the term "bond" for high-quality paper and provided special paper for U.S. currency from 1879 on <ref>Ibid, p. 238</ref>. Another company, in the town of Lee, gave the "first practical demonstration in America of the process of manufacturing paper from wood pulp instead of rags" <ref>Ibid, p. 143</ref>.

28.05 '''Somerset Club''' 
The Somerset Club is a private social club in Boston, Massachusetts, founded perhaps as early as 1826. The original club was informal, without a clubhouse. By the 1830s this had evolved into a group called the Temple. In 1851 the group purchased the home of Benjamin W. Crowninshield, located at the corner of Beacon and Somerset Streets. Originally called the Beacon Club, it was renamed the Somerset Club in 1852. In 1871 the Somerset Club purchased the David Sears townhouse at 42 Beacon Street on Beacon Hill. Originally designed by Alexander Parris and built in 1819, Sears had added to the house in 1832 and had built the adjacent Crowninshield-Amory house at 43 Beacon Street for his daughter. The land on which the house stood was originally part of an 18-acre (73,000 m2) parcel owned by John Singleton Copley, who called it "his farm on Beacon Street." Eventually the Club bought 43 Beacon Street and joined the two houses into one large clubhouse. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_Club]

28.29-30 '''dying... but never quite to the zero''' 
The third in a series of zeros: 
Pirate's "idiot chase out to zero longitude" (20.8) 
Slothrop's fear of death by V-2: "the next second, right, just suddenly... shit... just zero, just nothing..."(25.18) 
And now the Slothrop family wealth diminishing towards zero 
The primary referent for the section title "Beyond the Zero" is a concept from Pavlov's theory of reflex conditioning -- but these three may also link it to the East (where the rockets come from), to what lies beyond death, and to negative wealth -- "a debt to nature due" (26.39), or a guilt accumulated by the Slothrops' spoiling of the New World.

28.33-34 '''Harrimans and Whitneys gone''' 
The Harrimans are mentioned in passing several times in The Berkshire Hills as being among the wealthy families who spent their summers in the region. William C. Whitney, President Cleveland’s Secretary of the Navy, is specifically mentioned as the founder of a vacation colony in Lenox in 1886 <ref>Ibid, p. 224</ref>. These decaying vacation homes also appear in "The Secret Integration": "...a miniaturized or toy Venice for the New York candy magnate Ellsworth Baffy, who had caused this place to be built originally. Like many who put castles up among these inland hills, he was a contemporary of Jay Gould and his partner, the jolly Berkshire peddler Jubilee Jim Fisk."

28.40 '''the Great Aspinwall Hotel Fire''' 
More historical fact, also possibly from The Berkshire Hills. [http://lostnewengland.com/2016/02/hotel-aspinwall-lenox-mass-1/]

==Page 29==

29.04 '''Hogan''' 
Tyrone Slothrop’s brother, presumably the father of the Hogan Slothrop of "The Secret Integration," set in the Berkshires a generation later.

==References==
<references/>

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 20-29

2016-04-25T18:13:21Z

Modavis: /* Page 22 */

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 20==

20.21 '''What it is is a graphite cylinder''' 
The contents wiull be revealed on pp. 71-72.

20.34 '''A-and''' 
Does anyone know how TRP pronounces this? Is it just a stutter? (It will recur in [http://www.google.com/search?tbs=bks:1&tbo=p&q=a-and+inauthor:thomas+inauthor:pynchon&num=10 all] his subsequent books.)

20.36 '''TDY''' 
Not "tour of duty," as in Weisenburger, but "temporary duty."

20.37 '''East End'''
This is the East End of London, particularly heavily bombed by the Germans in the war as London's docks were situated there. It was, and still is, the area where the poorest people of London live. Famously, Queen Elizabeth's mother made a royal visit there during the war where she was enthusiastically received.

==Page 21==

21.03 '''more of that Minnesota Multiphasic shit''' 
The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is a standardized test of adult personality and psychopathology. It was first published by the University of Minnesota Press in 1943, and quickly adopted by US armed forces.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Multiphasic_Personality_Inventory]

21.07 '''A lot of stuff prior to 1944 is getting blurry now.''' 
Even this early in the novel, Slothrop has problems with his "temporal bandwidth." His memories of the Blitz (21.08) put him in London no later than May 1941, and possibly as early as September 1940. Note also "I'm four years overdue" (25.17). The US did have military liaison missions in the UK long before entering the war, but we will get no details of Slothrop's role before the V-weapon campaign.

21.32 '''these three years''' 
This puts Slothrop and Tantivy together (presumably at ACHTUNG) since Dec. 1941. What technical intelligence from northern Germany had been targeted that far back? According to the history books, the Allies became aware of the V-weapons programs only in mid-1943.

21.35 '''Tantivy's guest at the Junior Athenaeum''' 
According to the London Encyclopedia the Junior Athenaeum purchased Hope House at 116 Piccadilly in 1868, owning it until the building was demolished in 1936. The JA appears to have closed its doors in 1931, making this a possible anachronism. The Athenaeum Club proper is the most intellectually elite of the gentlemen's clubs; Darwin, Dickens and Trollope were members and Michael Faraday was secretary of the first committee.

21.36 '''86’d''' 
While sources do agree with Weisenburger that the term "86" might originate in rhyming slang (for "nix"), they also agree that it was first used in the restaurant business to indicate menu items that were no longer available. The wider usage here may not have originated until the 1950s.

==Page 22==
22.03 '''a build out of the chorus line at the Windmill'''; also p39 "It's not backstage at the Windmill" 
The Windmill opened in 1932 in a building which had been the Palais de Luxe Cinema and then a theatre. It featured comedy and burlesque revues. The only London theatre to remain open throughout the war, the Windmill continued until 1964 when it became a cinema, reverted to a strip club in 1973, became a theatre/restaurant in 1982 and finally re-opened as a strip club in 1986. From a recent advertisement: "The Windmill International - London's Premier Tableside Dancing Club with 75 Beautiful Dancing Girls who will perform tableside for you - full Nudity - fantastic stage and light show - Dress Smart".

22.04 '''Frick Frack Club''' 
The term "frick and frack" is often used to designate two people or almost any two items closely associated with each other. The term originates from the stage names of a pair of Swiss skaters who starred in ice shows in the 1930s. Pynchon probably chose the name more for its senseless alliteration (like "Kit-Kat Club") than any specific meaning.

22.25 '''Thomas Hooker... wilde Thyme''' 
Thomas Hooker (July 5, 1586 – July 7, 1647) was a prominent Puritan religious and colonial leader, who founded the Colony of Connecticut after dissenting with Puritan leaders in Massachusetts. He was known as an outstanding speaker and a leader of universal Christian suffrage. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hooker]

"wilde Thyme" also brings to mind "Wild Tyme", song by Jefferson Airplane on their 1967 LP ''After Bathing At Baxter's'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_bathing_at_baxter%27s]

==Page 23==

23.10 '''Bovril''' 
A beef extract--its main use is as a flavouring for soups, and as a drink when you put a teaspoon of the stuff in a mug of boiling water. The method for making the extract was perfected by Justus von Liebig, who co-founded the eponymous London based company.

23.19 '''Wrens''' 
Women's Royal Naval Service - British civilian support group of war effort

23.25 '''Ike jacket''' 
[[image:Ike_Jacket.jpeg|thumb|75px|Ike jacket|right]]Eisenhower jacket-- officially the M-44; a waist-cropped style jacket designed in 1943 and meant to be worn beneath the standard US field jacket, the M-43, as an added layer of insulation; supposedly made at Eisenhower's request.

==Page 24==
'''Humber''' 
Humber is a British automobile marque which could date its beginnings to Thomas Humber's bicycle company founded in 1868. Following their involvement in Humber through Hillman in 1928 the Rootes brothers[1] acquired a controlling interest and joined the Humber board in 1932 making Humber part of their Rootes Group. The range focused on luxury models, such as the Humber Super Snipe. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humber_(car)]

'''Morrison shelter''' 
The Morrison shelter, officially termed ''Table (Morrison) Indoor Shelter'', had a cage-like construction beneath it. It was designed by John Baker and named after Herbert Morrison, the Minister of Home Security at the time. It was the result of the realisation that due to the lack of house cellars it was necessary to develop an effective type of indoor shelter. The shelters came in assembly kits, to be bolted together inside the home. They were approximately 6 ft 6 in (2 m) long, 4 ft (1.2 m) wide and 2 ft 6 in (0.75 m) high, had a solid 1/8 in (3 mm) steel plate “table” top, welded wire mesh sides, and a metal lath “mattress”- type floor. Altogether it had 359 parts and had 3 tools supplied with the pack. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrison_shelter#Morrison_shelter]

==Page 25==

25.06-07 '''Slothrop’s Progress . . . a parable''' 
"Slothrop’s Progress" echoes John Bunyan’s Puritan allegory ''The Pilgrim’s Progress''. The word "parable," interestingly, comes from the same root as "parabola."

Slothrop's Progress may be Time itself. Sir Arthur Eddington coined the term "time's arrow" to describe entropy's progress and time's irreversibility-- i.e. "as the universe gets older, it becomes more disordered, following the second law of thermodynamics." Entropy's progress defines time. Cf. ''Scientific American'', Jan 2008, p.26 for more.

25. 29 '''Bond Street Underground station'''
This is a station in the wealthier West End of London - also a site on the British version of 'Monopoly'

==Page 26==

26.30 '''back home in Mingeborough, Massachusetts''' 
The Berkshire town was first created by Pynchon in the short story "The Secret Integration," set in the mid-1960s. This story also introduced the Slothrop family, in the person of Hogan Slothrop, who is apparently the son of Tyrone’s brother. Minges (or "midges") are small, biting insects. However, "minge" was originally also a British slang term for a woman's pubic hair, now generalised to the female genitals.

26.33 '''British Double Summer Time''' 
Correspondent Igor Zabel explains this term:
" . . . in Britain they had, during the war, the clocks an hour ahead in the winter time and two hours in the summer time."

26.37-38 '''Death is a debt to nature due . . . so must you.''' 
Weisenburger claims that this epitaph, with its debt to "nature" rather than God, would be heretical to Puritans. That might be so, but the inscription was fairly common on tombstones in the northeast from the mid-1700s until the early 1800s, a range that includes Constant’s 1760 death.

==Page 27==

27.04 '''Variable Slothrop''' 
The son of "Constant": The two names play a mathematical pun and suggest the family’s decline as well. Both names seem to be a pun as well on the name of Puritan minister and Harvard president, the Rev. Increase Mather of Massachusetts Bay Colony and his son, Cotton Mather. Increase attempted to decrease the heat surrounding the Salem Witch Trials through a series of sermons seeking moderation in the use of spectral evidence, even though he defended the trials and the judges. Parallels: Second law of thermodynamics - heated trials cooling. Increase-Cotton-Constant-Variable -- 

27.31-33 '''They began as fur traders, cordwainers, salters and smokers of bacon, went on into glassmaking, became selectmen, builders of tanneries, quarriers of marble.''' 
[[image:berkshire.jpg|thumb|100px|right]]One source listed in Weisenburger but that he did not have time to consult closely is ''The Berkshire Hills'' <ref>''The Berkshire Hills''', Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York, 1939</ref>, a guidebook prepared for this western Massachusetts region by the Federal Writers Project during the Depression. (See Pynchon’s comments in his introduction to ''Slow Learner''.) Although not the sole source, the book provides important background for "The Secret Integration" and the Berkshire segments of ''Gravity’s Rainbow''. Most of the offices and trades listed here (except for "smokers and salters of bacon") are noted at one place or another in the guidebook. Also see my article "From the Berkshires to the Brocken: Transformations of a Source in "The Secret Integration" and Gravity’s Rainbow," Pynchon Notes 22-23 (Spring-Fall 1988): 87-98.[http://www.ham.miamioh.edu/krafftjm/pn/pn022.pdf]

==Page 28==

28.02 '''converted acres at a clip into paper''' 
A paper clip? A likely reference to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip Operation Paper Clip], the OSS program to recruit Nazi scientists to work for the US and deny them to the Russians. Von Braun was brought to the US under this program.

28.02-03 '''paper—toilet paper, banknote stock, newsprint''' 
The Berkshire Hills describes several paper mills in the region and notes the importance of the industry. One producer, Crane and Company, first used the term "bond" for high-quality paper and provided special paper for U.S. currency from 1879 on <ref>Ibid, p. 238</ref>. Another company, in the town of Lee, gave the "first practical demonstration in America of the process of manufacturing paper from wood pulp instead of rags" <ref>Ibid, p. 143</ref>.

28.05 '''Somerset Club''' 
The Somerset Club is a private social club in Boston, Massachusetts, founded perhaps as early as 1826. The original club was informal, without a clubhouse. By the 1830s this had evolved into a group called the Temple. In 1851 the group purchased the home of Benjamin W. Crowninshield, located at the corner of Beacon and Somerset Streets. Originally called the Beacon Club, it was renamed the Somerset Club in 1852. In 1871 the Somerset Club purchased the David Sears townhouse at 42 Beacon Street on Beacon Hill. Originally designed by Alexander Parris and built in 1819, Sears had added to the house in 1832 and had built the adjacent Crowninshield-Amory house at 43 Beacon Street for his daughter. The land on which the house stood was originally part of an 18-acre (73,000 m2) parcel owned by John Singleton Copley, who called it "his farm on Beacon Street." Eventually the Club bought 43 Beacon Street and joined the two houses into one large clubhouse. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_Club]

28.29-30 '''dying... but never quite to the zero''' 
The third in a series of zeros: 
Pirate's "idiot chase out to zero longitude" (20.8) 
Slothrop's fear of death by V-2: "the next second, right, just suddenly... shit... just zero, just nothing..."(25.18) 
And now the Slothrop family wealth diminishing towards zero 
The primary referent for the section title "Beyond the Zero" is a concept from Pavlov's theory of reflex conditioning -- but these three may also link it to the East (where the rockets come from), to what lies beyond death, and to negative wealth -- "a debt to nature due" (26.39), or a guilt accumulated by the Slothrops' spoiling of the New World.

28.33-34 '''Harrimans and Whitneys gone''' 
The Harrimans are mentioned in passing several times in The Berkshire Hills as being among the wealthy families who spent their summers in the region. William C. Whitney, President Cleveland’s Secretary of the Navy, is specifically mentioned as the founder of a vacation colony in Lenox in 1886 <ref>Ibid, p. 224</ref>. These decaying vacation homes also appear in "The Secret Integration": "...a miniaturized or toy Venice for the New York candy magnate Ellsworth Baffy, who had caused this place to be built originally. Like many who put castles up among these inland hills, he was a contemporary of Jay Gould and his partner, the jolly Berkshire peddler Jubilee Jim Fisk."

28.40 '''the Great Aspinwall Hotel Fire''' 
More historical fact, also possibly from The Berkshire Hills. [http://lostnewengland.com/2016/02/hotel-aspinwall-lenox-mass-1/]

==Page 29==

29.04 '''Hogan''' 
Tyrone Slothrop’s brother, presumably the father of the Hogan Slothrop of "The Secret Integration," set in the Berkshires a generation later.

==References==
<references/>

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 20-29

2016-04-25T18:12:57Z

Modavis: /* Page 22 */

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 20==

20.21 '''What it is is a graphite cylinder''' 
The contents wiull be revealed on pp. 71-72.

20.34 '''A-and''' 
Does anyone know how TRP pronounces this? Is it just a stutter? (It will recur in [http://www.google.com/search?tbs=bks:1&tbo=p&q=a-and+inauthor:thomas+inauthor:pynchon&num=10 all] his subsequent books.)

20.36 '''TDY''' 
Not "tour of duty," as in Weisenburger, but "temporary duty."

20.37 '''East End'''
This is the East End of London, particularly heavily bombed by the Germans in the war as London's docks were situated there. It was, and still is, the area where the poorest people of London live. Famously, Queen Elizabeth's mother made a royal visit there during the war where she was enthusiastically received.

==Page 21==

21.03 '''more of that Minnesota Multiphasic shit''' 
The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is a standardized test of adult personality and psychopathology. It was first published by the University of Minnesota Press in 1943, and quickly adopted by US armed forces.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Multiphasic_Personality_Inventory]

21.07 '''A lot of stuff prior to 1944 is getting blurry now.''' 
Even this early in the novel, Slothrop has problems with his "temporal bandwidth." His memories of the Blitz (21.08) put him in London no later than May 1941, and possibly as early as September 1940. Note also "I'm four years overdue" (25.17). The US did have military liaison missions in the UK long before entering the war, but we will get no details of Slothrop's role before the V-weapon campaign.

21.32 '''these three years''' 
This puts Slothrop and Tantivy together (presumably at ACHTUNG) since Dec. 1941. What technical intelligence from northern Germany had been targeted that far back? According to the history books, the Allies became aware of the V-weapons programs only in mid-1943.

21.35 '''Tantivy's guest at the Junior Athenaeum''' 
According to the London Encyclopedia the Junior Athenaeum purchased Hope House at 116 Piccadilly in 1868, owning it until the building was demolished in 1936. The JA appears to have closed its doors in 1931, making this a possible anachronism. The Athenaeum Club proper is the most intellectually elite of the gentlemen's clubs; Darwin, Dickens and Trollope were members and Michael Faraday was secretary of the first committee.

21.36 '''86’d''' 
While sources do agree with Weisenburger that the term "86" might originate in rhyming slang (for "nix"), they also agree that it was first used in the restaurant business to indicate menu items that were no longer available. The wider usage here may not have originated until the 1950s.

==Page 22==
22 '''a build out of the chorus line at the Windmill'''; also p39 "It's not backstage at the Windmill" 
The Windmill opened in 1932 in a building which had been the Palais de Luxe Cinema and then a theatre. It featured comedy and burlesque revues. The only London theatre to remain open throughout the war, the Windmill continued until 1964 when it became a cinema, reverted to a strip club in 1973, became a theatre/restaurant in 1982 and finally re-opened as a strip club in 1986. From a recent advertisement: "The Windmill International - London's Premier Tableside Dancing Club with 75 Beautiful Dancing Girls who will perform tableside for you - full Nudity - fantastic stage and light show - Dress Smart".

22.04 '''Frick Frack Club''' 
The term "frick and frack" is often used to designate two people or almost any two items closely associated with each other. The term originates from the stage names of a pair of Swiss skaters who starred in ice shows in the 1930s. Pynchon probably chose the name more for its senseless alliteration (like "Kit-Kat Club") than any specific meaning.

22.25 '''Thomas Hooker... wilde Thyme''' 
Thomas Hooker (July 5, 1586 – July 7, 1647) was a prominent Puritan religious and colonial leader, who founded the Colony of Connecticut after dissenting with Puritan leaders in Massachusetts. He was known as an outstanding speaker and a leader of universal Christian suffrage. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hooker]

"wilde Thyme" also brings to mind "Wild Tyme", song by Jefferson Airplane on their 1967 LP ''After Bathing At Baxter's'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_bathing_at_baxter%27s]

==Page 23==

23.10 '''Bovril''' 
A beef extract--its main use is as a flavouring for soups, and as a drink when you put a teaspoon of the stuff in a mug of boiling water. The method for making the extract was perfected by Justus von Liebig, who co-founded the eponymous London based company.

23.19 '''Wrens''' 
Women's Royal Naval Service - British civilian support group of war effort

23.25 '''Ike jacket''' 
[[image:Ike_Jacket.jpeg|thumb|75px|Ike jacket|right]]Eisenhower jacket-- officially the M-44; a waist-cropped style jacket designed in 1943 and meant to be worn beneath the standard US field jacket, the M-43, as an added layer of insulation; supposedly made at Eisenhower's request.

==Page 24==
'''Humber''' 
Humber is a British automobile marque which could date its beginnings to Thomas Humber's bicycle company founded in 1868. Following their involvement in Humber through Hillman in 1928 the Rootes brothers[1] acquired a controlling interest and joined the Humber board in 1932 making Humber part of their Rootes Group. The range focused on luxury models, such as the Humber Super Snipe. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humber_(car)]

'''Morrison shelter''' 
The Morrison shelter, officially termed ''Table (Morrison) Indoor Shelter'', had a cage-like construction beneath it. It was designed by John Baker and named after Herbert Morrison, the Minister of Home Security at the time. It was the result of the realisation that due to the lack of house cellars it was necessary to develop an effective type of indoor shelter. The shelters came in assembly kits, to be bolted together inside the home. They were approximately 6 ft 6 in (2 m) long, 4 ft (1.2 m) wide and 2 ft 6 in (0.75 m) high, had a solid 1/8 in (3 mm) steel plate “table” top, welded wire mesh sides, and a metal lath “mattress”- type floor. Altogether it had 359 parts and had 3 tools supplied with the pack. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrison_shelter#Morrison_shelter]

==Page 25==

25.06-07 '''Slothrop’s Progress . . . a parable''' 
"Slothrop’s Progress" echoes John Bunyan’s Puritan allegory ''The Pilgrim’s Progress''. The word "parable," interestingly, comes from the same root as "parabola."

Slothrop's Progress may be Time itself. Sir Arthur Eddington coined the term "time's arrow" to describe entropy's progress and time's irreversibility-- i.e. "as the universe gets older, it becomes more disordered, following the second law of thermodynamics." Entropy's progress defines time. Cf. ''Scientific American'', Jan 2008, p.26 for more.

25. 29 '''Bond Street Underground station'''
This is a station in the wealthier West End of London - also a site on the British version of 'Monopoly'

==Page 26==

26.30 '''back home in Mingeborough, Massachusetts''' 
The Berkshire town was first created by Pynchon in the short story "The Secret Integration," set in the mid-1960s. This story also introduced the Slothrop family, in the person of Hogan Slothrop, who is apparently the son of Tyrone’s brother. Minges (or "midges") are small, biting insects. However, "minge" was originally also a British slang term for a woman's pubic hair, now generalised to the female genitals.

26.33 '''British Double Summer Time''' 
Correspondent Igor Zabel explains this term:
" . . . in Britain they had, during the war, the clocks an hour ahead in the winter time and two hours in the summer time."

26.37-38 '''Death is a debt to nature due . . . so must you.''' 
Weisenburger claims that this epitaph, with its debt to "nature" rather than God, would be heretical to Puritans. That might be so, but the inscription was fairly common on tombstones in the northeast from the mid-1700s until the early 1800s, a range that includes Constant’s 1760 death.

==Page 27==

27.04 '''Variable Slothrop''' 
The son of "Constant": The two names play a mathematical pun and suggest the family’s decline as well. Both names seem to be a pun as well on the name of Puritan minister and Harvard president, the Rev. Increase Mather of Massachusetts Bay Colony and his son, Cotton Mather. Increase attempted to decrease the heat surrounding the Salem Witch Trials through a series of sermons seeking moderation in the use of spectral evidence, even though he defended the trials and the judges. Parallels: Second law of thermodynamics - heated trials cooling. Increase-Cotton-Constant-Variable -- 

27.31-33 '''They began as fur traders, cordwainers, salters and smokers of bacon, went on into glassmaking, became selectmen, builders of tanneries, quarriers of marble.''' 
[[image:berkshire.jpg|thumb|100px|right]]One source listed in Weisenburger but that he did not have time to consult closely is ''The Berkshire Hills'' <ref>''The Berkshire Hills''', Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York, 1939</ref>, a guidebook prepared for this western Massachusetts region by the Federal Writers Project during the Depression. (See Pynchon’s comments in his introduction to ''Slow Learner''.) Although not the sole source, the book provides important background for "The Secret Integration" and the Berkshire segments of ''Gravity’s Rainbow''. Most of the offices and trades listed here (except for "smokers and salters of bacon") are noted at one place or another in the guidebook. Also see my article "From the Berkshires to the Brocken: Transformations of a Source in "The Secret Integration" and Gravity’s Rainbow," Pynchon Notes 22-23 (Spring-Fall 1988): 87-98.[http://www.ham.miamioh.edu/krafftjm/pn/pn022.pdf]

==Page 28==

28.02 '''converted acres at a clip into paper''' 
A paper clip? A likely reference to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip Operation Paper Clip], the OSS program to recruit Nazi scientists to work for the US and deny them to the Russians. Von Braun was brought to the US under this program.

28.02-03 '''paper—toilet paper, banknote stock, newsprint''' 
The Berkshire Hills describes several paper mills in the region and notes the importance of the industry. One producer, Crane and Company, first used the term "bond" for high-quality paper and provided special paper for U.S. currency from 1879 on <ref>Ibid, p. 238</ref>. Another company, in the town of Lee, gave the "first practical demonstration in America of the process of manufacturing paper from wood pulp instead of rags" <ref>Ibid, p. 143</ref>.

28.05 '''Somerset Club''' 
The Somerset Club is a private social club in Boston, Massachusetts, founded perhaps as early as 1826. The original club was informal, without a clubhouse. By the 1830s this had evolved into a group called the Temple. In 1851 the group purchased the home of Benjamin W. Crowninshield, located at the corner of Beacon and Somerset Streets. Originally called the Beacon Club, it was renamed the Somerset Club in 1852. In 1871 the Somerset Club purchased the David Sears townhouse at 42 Beacon Street on Beacon Hill. Originally designed by Alexander Parris and built in 1819, Sears had added to the house in 1832 and had built the adjacent Crowninshield-Amory house at 43 Beacon Street for his daughter. The land on which the house stood was originally part of an 18-acre (73,000 m2) parcel owned by John Singleton Copley, who called it "his farm on Beacon Street." Eventually the Club bought 43 Beacon Street and joined the two houses into one large clubhouse. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_Club]

28.29-30 '''dying... but never quite to the zero''' 
The third in a series of zeros: 
Pirate's "idiot chase out to zero longitude" (20.8) 
Slothrop's fear of death by V-2: "the next second, right, just suddenly... shit... just zero, just nothing..."(25.18) 
And now the Slothrop family wealth diminishing towards zero 
The primary referent for the section title "Beyond the Zero" is a concept from Pavlov's theory of reflex conditioning -- but these three may also link it to the East (where the rockets come from), to what lies beyond death, and to negative wealth -- "a debt to nature due" (26.39), or a guilt accumulated by the Slothrops' spoiling of the New World.

28.33-34 '''Harrimans and Whitneys gone''' 
The Harrimans are mentioned in passing several times in The Berkshire Hills as being among the wealthy families who spent their summers in the region. William C. Whitney, President Cleveland’s Secretary of the Navy, is specifically mentioned as the founder of a vacation colony in Lenox in 1886 <ref>Ibid, p. 224</ref>. These decaying vacation homes also appear in "The Secret Integration": "...a miniaturized or toy Venice for the New York candy magnate Ellsworth Baffy, who had caused this place to be built originally. Like many who put castles up among these inland hills, he was a contemporary of Jay Gould and his partner, the jolly Berkshire peddler Jubilee Jim Fisk."

28.40 '''the Great Aspinwall Hotel Fire''' 
More historical fact, also possibly from The Berkshire Hills. [http://lostnewengland.com/2016/02/hotel-aspinwall-lenox-mass-1/]

==Page 29==

29.04 '''Hogan''' 
Tyrone Slothrop’s brother, presumably the father of the Hogan Slothrop of "The Secret Integration," set in the Berkshires a generation later.

==References==
<references/>

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==Page 20==

20.21 '''What it is is a graphite cylinder''' 
The contents wiull be revealed on pp. 71-72.

20.34 '''A-and''' 
Does anyone know how TRP pronounces this? Is it just a stutter? (It will recur in [http://www.google.com/search?tbs=bks:1&tbo=p&q=a-and+inauthor:thomas+inauthor:pynchon&num=10 all] his subsequent books.)

20.36 '''TDY''' 
Not "tour of duty," as in Weisenburger, but "temporary duty."

20.37 '''East End'''
This is the East End of London, particularly heavily bombed by the Germans in the war as London's docks were situated there. It was, and still is, the area where the poorest people of London live. Famously, Queen Elizabeth's mother made a royal visit there during the war where she was enthusiastically received.

==Page 21==

21.03 '''more of that Minnesota Multiphasic shit''' 
The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is a standardized test of adult personality and psychopathology. It was first published by the University of Minnesota Press in 1943, and quickly adopted by US armed forces.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Multiphasic_Personality_Inventory]

21.07 '''A lot of stuff prior to 1944 is getting blurry now.''' 
Even this early in the novel, Slothrop has problems with his "temporal bandwidth." His memories of the Blitz (21.08) put him in London no later than May 1941, and possibly as early as September 1940. Note also "I'm four years overdue" (25.17). The US did have military liaison missions in the UK long before entering the war, but we will get no details of Slothrop's role before the V-weapon campaign.

21.32 '''these three years''' 
This puts Slothrop and Tantivy together (presumably at ACHTUNG) since Dec. 1941. What technical intelligence from northern Germany had been targeted that far back? According to the history books, the Allies became aware of the V-weapons programs only in mid-1943.

21.35 '''Tantivy's guest at the Junior Athenaeum''' 
According to the London Encyclopedia the Junior Athenaeum purchased Hope House at 116 Piccadilly in 1868, owning it until the building was demolished in 1936. The JA appears to have closed its doors in 1931, making this a possible anachronism. The Athenaeum Club proper is the most intellectually elite of the gentlemen's clubs; Darwin, Dickens and Trollope were members and Michael Faraday was secretary of the first committee.

21.36 '''86’d''' 
While sources do agree with Weisenburger that the term "86" might originate in rhyming slang (for "nix"), they also agree that it was first used in the restaurant business to indicate menu items that were no longer available. The wider usage here may not have originated until the 1950s.

==Page 22==
22 '''a build out of the chorus line at the Windmill'''; also p39 "It's not backstage at the Windmill" 
The Windmill opened in 1932 in a building which had been the Palais de Luxe Cinema and then a theatre. It featured comedy and burlesque revues. The only London theatre to remain open throughout the war, the Windmill continued until 1964 when it became a cinema, reverted to a strip club in 1973, became a theatre/restaurant in 1982 and finally re-opened as a strip club in 1986. From a recent advertisement: "The Windmill International - London's Premier Tableside Dancing Club with 75 Beautiful Dancing Girls who will perform tableside for you - full Nudity - fantastic stage and light show - Dress Smart".

22.04 '''Frick Frack Club''' 
The term "frick and frack" is often used to designate two people or almost any two items closely associated with each other. The term originates from the stage names of a pair of Swiss skaters who starred in ice shows in the 1930s. Pynchon probably chose the name more for its senseless alliteration (like "Kit-Kat Club") than any specific meaning.

'''Thomas Hooker... wilde Thyme''' 
Thomas Hooker (July 5, 1586 – July 7, 1647) was a prominent Puritan religious and colonial leader, who founded the Colony of Connecticut after dissenting with Puritan leaders in Massachusetts. He was known as an outstanding speaker and a leader of universal Christian suffrage. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hooker]

"wilde Thyme" also brings to mind "Wild Tyme", song by Jefferson Airplane on their 1967 LP ''After Bathing At Baxter's'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_bathing_at_baxter%27s]

==Page 23==

23.10 '''Bovril''' 
A beef extract--its main use is as a flavouring for soups, and as a drink when you put a teaspoon of the stuff in a mug of boiling water. The method for making the extract was perfected by Justus von Liebig, who co-founded the eponymous London based company.

23.19 '''Wrens''' 
Women's Royal Naval Service - British civilian support group of war effort

23.25 '''Ike jacket''' 
[[image:Ike_Jacket.jpeg|thumb|75px|Ike jacket|right]]Eisenhower jacket-- officially the M-44; a waist-cropped style jacket designed in 1943 and meant to be worn beneath the standard US field jacket, the M-43, as an added layer of insulation; supposedly made at Eisenhower's request.

==Page 24==
'''Humber''' 
Humber is a British automobile marque which could date its beginnings to Thomas Humber's bicycle company founded in 1868. Following their involvement in Humber through Hillman in 1928 the Rootes brothers[1] acquired a controlling interest and joined the Humber board in 1932 making Humber part of their Rootes Group. The range focused on luxury models, such as the Humber Super Snipe. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humber_(car)]

'''Morrison shelter''' 
The Morrison shelter, officially termed ''Table (Morrison) Indoor Shelter'', had a cage-like construction beneath it. It was designed by John Baker and named after Herbert Morrison, the Minister of Home Security at the time. It was the result of the realisation that due to the lack of house cellars it was necessary to develop an effective type of indoor shelter. The shelters came in assembly kits, to be bolted together inside the home. They were approximately 6 ft 6 in (2 m) long, 4 ft (1.2 m) wide and 2 ft 6 in (0.75 m) high, had a solid 1/8 in (3 mm) steel plate “table” top, welded wire mesh sides, and a metal lath “mattress”- type floor. Altogether it had 359 parts and had 3 tools supplied with the pack. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrison_shelter#Morrison_shelter]

==Page 25==

25.06-07 '''Slothrop’s Progress . . . a parable''' 
"Slothrop’s Progress" echoes John Bunyan’s Puritan allegory ''The Pilgrim’s Progress''. The word "parable," interestingly, comes from the same root as "parabola."

Slothrop's Progress may be Time itself. Sir Arthur Eddington coined the term "time's arrow" to describe entropy's progress and time's irreversibility-- i.e. "as the universe gets older, it becomes more disordered, following the second law of thermodynamics." Entropy's progress defines time. Cf. ''Scientific American'', Jan 2008, p.26 for more.

25. 29 '''Bond Street Underground station'''
This is a station in the wealthier West End of London - also a site on the British version of 'Monopoly'

==Page 26==

26.30 '''back home in Mingeborough, Massachusetts''' 
The Berkshire town was first created by Pynchon in the short story "The Secret Integration," set in the mid-1960s. This story also introduced the Slothrop family, in the person of Hogan Slothrop, who is apparently the son of Tyrone’s brother. Minges (or "midges") are small, biting insects. However, "minge" was originally also a British slang term for a woman's pubic hair, now generalised to the female genitals.

26.33 '''British Double Summer Time''' 
Correspondent Igor Zabel explains this term:
" . . . in Britain they had, during the war, the clocks an hour ahead in the winter time and two hours in the summer time."

26.37-38 '''Death is a debt to nature due . . . so must you.''' 
Weisenburger claims that this epitaph, with its debt to "nature" rather than God, would be heretical to Puritans. That might be so, but the inscription was fairly common on tombstones in the northeast from the mid-1700s until the early 1800s, a range that includes Constant’s 1760 death.

==Page 27==

27.04 '''Variable Slothrop''' 
The son of "Constant": The two names play a mathematical pun and suggest the family’s decline as well. Both names seem to be a pun as well on the name of Puritan minister and Harvard president, the Rev. Increase Mather of Massachusetts Bay Colony and his son, Cotton Mather. Increase attempted to decrease the heat surrounding the Salem Witch Trials through a series of sermons seeking moderation in the use of spectral evidence, even though he defended the trials and the judges. Parallels: Second law of thermodynamics - heated trials cooling. Increase-Cotton-Constant-Variable -- 

27.31-33 '''They began as fur traders, cordwainers, salters and smokers of bacon, went on into glassmaking, became selectmen, builders of tanneries, quarriers of marble.''' 
[[image:berkshire.jpg|thumb|100px|right]]One source listed in Weisenburger but that he did not have time to consult closely is ''The Berkshire Hills'' <ref>''The Berkshire Hills''', Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York, 1939</ref>, a guidebook prepared for this western Massachusetts region by the Federal Writers Project during the Depression. (See Pynchon’s comments in his introduction to ''Slow Learner''.) Although not the sole source, the book provides important background for "The Secret Integration" and the Berkshire segments of ''Gravity’s Rainbow''. Most of the offices and trades listed here (except for "smokers and salters of bacon") are noted at one place or another in the guidebook. Also see my article "From the Berkshires to the Brocken: Transformations of a Source in "The Secret Integration" and Gravity’s Rainbow," Pynchon Notes 22-23 (Spring-Fall 1988): 87-98.[http://www.ham.miamioh.edu/krafftjm/pn/pn022.pdf]

==Page 28==

28.02 '''converted acres at a clip into paper''' 
A paper clip? A likely reference to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip Operation Paper Clip], the OSS program to recruit Nazi scientists to work for the US and deny them to the Russians. Von Braun was brought to the US under this program.

28.02-03 '''paper—toilet paper, banknote stock, newsprint''' 
The Berkshire Hills describes several paper mills in the region and notes the importance of the industry. One producer, Crane and Company, first used the term "bond" for high-quality paper and provided special paper for U.S. currency from 1879 on <ref>Ibid, p. 238</ref>. Another company, in the town of Lee, gave the "first practical demonstration in America of the process of manufacturing paper from wood pulp instead of rags" <ref>Ibid, p. 143</ref>.

28.05 '''Somerset Club''' 
The Somerset Club is a private social club in Boston, Massachusetts, founded perhaps as early as 1826. The original club was informal, without a clubhouse. By the 1830s this had evolved into a group called the Temple. In 1851 the group purchased the home of Benjamin W. Crowninshield, located at the corner of Beacon and Somerset Streets. Originally called the Beacon Club, it was renamed the Somerset Club in 1852. In 1871 the Somerset Club purchased the David Sears townhouse at 42 Beacon Street on Beacon Hill. Originally designed by Alexander Parris and built in 1819, Sears had added to the house in 1832 and had built the adjacent Crowninshield-Amory house at 43 Beacon Street for his daughter. The land on which the house stood was originally part of an 18-acre (73,000 m2) parcel owned by John Singleton Copley, who called it "his farm on Beacon Street." Eventually the Club bought 43 Beacon Street and joined the two houses into one large clubhouse. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_Club]

28.29-30 '''dying... but never quite to the zero''' 
The third in a series of zeros: 
Pirate's "idiot chase out to zero longitude" (20.8) 
Slothrop's fear of death by V-2: "the next second, right, just suddenly... shit... just zero, just nothing..."(25.18) 
And now the Slothrop family wealth diminishing towards zero 
The primary referent for the section title "Beyond the Zero" is a concept from Pavlov's theory of reflex conditioning -- but these three may also link it to the East (where the rockets come from), to what lies beyond death, and to negative wealth -- "a debt to nature due" (26.39), or a guilt accumulated by the Slothrops' spoiling of the New World.

28.33-34 '''Harrimans and Whitneys gone''' 
The Harrimans are mentioned in passing several times in The Berkshire Hills as being among the wealthy families who spent their summers in the region. William C. Whitney, President Cleveland’s Secretary of the Navy, is specifically mentioned as the founder of a vacation colony in Lenox in 1886 <ref>Ibid, p. 224</ref>. These decaying vacation homes also appear in "The Secret Integration": "...a miniaturized or toy Venice for the New York candy magnate Ellsworth Baffy, who had caused this place to be built originally. Like many who put castles up among these inland hills, he was a contemporary of Jay Gould and his partner, the jolly Berkshire peddler Jubilee Jim Fisk."

28.40 '''the Great Aspinwall Hotel Fire''' 
More historical fact, also possibly from The Berkshire Hills. [http://lostnewengland.com/2016/02/hotel-aspinwall-lenox-mass-1/]

==Page 29==

29.04 '''Hogan''' 
Tyrone Slothrop’s brother, presumably the father of the Hogan Slothrop of "The Secret Integration," set in the Berkshires a generation later.

==References==
<references/>

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==Page 73==
73.4 '''ancient Abbey... its roof long ago taken at the manic whim of Henry VIII''' 
The Dissolution of the Monasteries, sometimes referred to as the Suppression of the Monasteries, was the set of administrative and legal processes between 1536 and 1541 by which Henry VIII disbanded monasteries, priories, convents and friaries in England, Wales and Ireland; appropriated their income, disposed of their assets, and provided for their former members. He was given the authority to do this in England and Wales by the Act of Supremacy, passed by Parliament in 1534, which made him Supreme Head of the Church in England, thus separating England from Papal authority; and by the First Suppression Act (1536) and the Second Suppression Act (1539). Although some monastic foundations dated back to Anglo-Saxon England, the overwhelming majority of the 825 religious communities dissolved by Henry VIII owed their existence to the wave of monastic enthusiasm that had swept England and Wales in the 11th and 12th centuries; in consequence of which religious houses in the 16th century controlled appointment to about a third of all parish benefices, and disposed of about half of all ecclesiastical income. The dissolution still represents the largest legally enforced transfer of property in English history since the Norman Conquest. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Monasteries]

73.8 '''Palladian house''' 
Palladian architecture is a European style derived from the designs of the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580). His work was strongly based on the symmetry, perspective and values of the formal classical temple architecture of the Ancient Greeks and Romans.

==Page 74==
74.15 '''rust bouclé''' 
Bouclé is a yarn with a length of loops of similar size which can range from tiny circlets to large curls. To make bouclé, at least two strands are combined, with the tension on one strand being much looser than the other as it is being plied, with the loose strand forming the loops and the other strand as the anchor. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boucle] Radio speaker grille cloths at the time were often bouclé weaves.

74.21 '''Dawes-era flashes''' 
The Dawes Plan (as proposed by the Dawes Committee, chaired by Charles G. Dawes) was an attempt in 1924, following World War I for the Triple Entente to collect war reparations debt from Germany. When after five years the plan proved to be unsuccessful, the Young Plan was adopted in 1929 to replace it. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawes_Plan]

74.26 '''SHAEF''' 
Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force was the headquarters of the Commander of Allied forces in north west Europe, from late 1943 until the end of World War II. U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was in command of SHAEF throughout its existence. The position itself shares a common lineage with Supreme Allied Commander Europe and Atlantic, but they are different titles. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHAEF]

74.30 '''"strategy of truth"''' 
Due to the public skepticism of propaganda due to the heavy handed efforts of the Committee on Public Information in the US during World War I, and the fascist regimes propaganda machinery, the US had adopted a "strategy of truth" whereby they would disseminate information but not try to influence the public directly through propaganda. However, seeing the value and need of propaganda, ways were found to circumvent official policy. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writers%27_War_Board]

74.33 '''Hereros, ex-colonials from South-West Africa''' 
During the late 19th century, the first Europeans began entering to permanently settle the land. Primarily in Damaraland, German settlers acquired land from the Herero in order to establish farms. In 1883, the merchant Franz Adolf Eduard Lüderitz entered into a contract with the native elders. The exchange later became the basis of German colonial rule. The territory became a German colony under the name of German South-West Africa. Soon after, conflicts between the German colonists and the Herero herdsmen began. Controversies frequently arose because of disputes about access to land and water, but also the legal discrimination against the native population by the white immigrants. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hereros]

==Page 75==
75.9 '''to root out the truffles of truth created, as ancients surmised, during storm, in the instant of lightning blast''' 
The first mention of truffles appears in the inscriptions of the neo-Sumerians regarding their Amorite enemy's eating habits (Third Dynasty of Ur, 20th century) and later in writings of Theophrastus in the fourth century BC. In classical times, their origins were a mystery that challenged many; Plutarch and others thought them to be the result of lightning, warmth and water in the soil, while Juvenal thought thunder and rain to be instrumental in their origin. Cicero deemed them children of the earth, while Dioscorides thought they were tuberous roots. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truffle_(fungus)]

75.10 '''American PWD''' 
The Psychological Warfare Division of SHAEF (PWD/SHAEF) was a joint Anglo-American organisation set-up in World War II tasked with conducting principally 'white' tactical psychological warfare against German troops in North-west Europe during and after D-Day. It was headed by US Brigadier-General Robert A. McClure who had previously commanded the Psychological Warfare Branch (PWB/AFHQ) of U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower's staff for Operation Torch. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_Warfare_Division]

75.12 '''"Schwarzkommando"''' 
German: literally 'black command'; in this case meaning both 'unit composed of blacks' and 'secret unit'; an alternate meaning of ''schwartz'' is 'secret' or 'illicit' as in 'Secret Service' or 'black market'

75.13 '''"Wütende Heer"''' 
German: 'furious' or 'raging' army; see note at [[Pages 71-72#Page 72|72.27]]

75.30 '''Dr. Porkyevitch''' 
Another suggestion of one of Pynchon’s favorite motifs, the little cartoon hero Porky Pig. See note at [[V545.04-05]]

75.31 '''before the purge trials''' 
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938. It involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party and government officials, repression of peasants, Red Army leadership, and the persecution of unaffiliated persons, characterized by widespread police surveillance, widespread suspicion of "saboteurs", imprisonment, and arbitrary executions. In Russian historiography the period of the most intense purge, 1937–1938, is called ''Yezhovshchina'' (Russian: ежовщина; literally, the Yezhov regime), after Nikolai Yezhov, the head of the Soviet secret police, NKVD. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purge_Trials]

75.40 '''P.W.E.''' 
During World War II, the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) was a British clandestine body created to produce and disseminate both white and black propaganda, with the aim of damaging enemy morale and sustaining the morale of the Occupied countries. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Warfare_Executive]

==Page 76==
76.06 '''''dégagé''''' 
Detached, disengaged, unconcerned

76.13 '''Polygon Wood''' 
The Battle of Polygon Wood took place during the 'second phase' of the Battle of Passchendaele/Third Battle of Ypres in World War I. The battle was fought near Ypres, Belgium, in an area named the Polygon Wood after the layout of the area. However, much of the woodland had been under intense shelling during the Battle of Passchendaele, and the area changed hands several times before this battle. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Polygon_Wood]

76.32 '''F.O. Political Intelligence Department at Fitzmaurice House''' 
The Political Intelligence Department was a department of the British Foreign Office during World War II. Established in 1939, its main function was the production of weekly intelligence summaries. It was headed by Foreign Office diplomatist Rex Leeper. In April 1943, the department was merged with the Royal Institute of International Affairs' Foreign Research and Press Service in Oxford, creating the new Foreign Office Research Department. The 'Political Intelligence Department' name continued to exist until 1946 as a cover for the Political Warfare Executive. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Intelligence_Department_(1939_-_1943)]

76.34 '''OSS''' 
The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The OSS was formed in order to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for the branches of the United States Armed Forces. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_Services]

'''OWI''' 
The United States Office of War Information (OWI) was a U.S. government agency created during World War II to consolidate government information services. It operated from June 1942 until September 1945. It coordinated the release of war news for domestic use, and, using posters and radio broadcasts, worked to promote patriotism, warned about foreign spies and attempted to recruit women into war work. The office also established an overseas branch which launched a large scale information and propaganda campaign abroad. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OWI]

==Page 77==
77.8 '''Chain of Being''' 
The great chain of being (Latin: scala naturae, literally "ladder or stair-way of nature"), is a Christian concept detailing a strict, religious hierarchical structure of all matter and life, believed to have been decreed by the Christian God. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_of_being]

Chain of Being is a major motif in ''Mason & Dixon''.

77.10 '''... Ypres salient...wastage of only 70% of his unit.''' 
The Ypres Salient is the area around Ypres in Belgium which was the scene of some of the most protracted and grueling trench warfare during World War I. Success was measured in feet and yards as tiny bits of land were captured, lost and recaptured throughout the war. Unit casualty rates were often extremely high. 70% wastage for 40 yards is, at most, only a slight exaggeration. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ypres_Salient]

77.20 '''Flanders''' 
Flanders Fields is the generic name of the World War I battlefields in the medieval County of Flanders. At the time of World War I, the county no longer existed but corresponded approximately to the Belgian provinces East Flanders and West Flanders and the French Nord-Pas-de-Calais region. The name is particularly associated with the battles of Ypres, Passchendaele, and the Somme. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanders_Fields]

77.21 '''entitled ''Things That Can Happen In European Politics''''' 
Here, surprisingly, Pynchon makes a common usage error. Should be ''titled''. A book is ''titled'' something; someone is ''entitled'' to their opinion.

77.22 '''Bereshith, as it were...''' 
Bereishit is a Hebrew word, which is the first word of the Torah (the first five books of the Tanach, or Hebrew Bible). It may be translated as the phrase "In the beginning of". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bereishit]

77.23 '''Ramsay MacDonald''' 
James Ramsay MacDonald, PC, FRS (12 October 1866 – 9 November 1937) was a British Labour politician who rose from humble origins to serve two separate terms as the first ever British Labour Prime Minister. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsay_Macdonald]

77.35 '''Couéists''' 
Émile Coué de la Châtaigneraie (February 26, 1857 – July 2, 1926) was a French psychologist and pharmacist who introduced a method of psychotherapy and self-improvement based on optimistic autosuggestion. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Cou%C3%A9]

'''Ouspenskians''' 
See page [[Pages 29-37#Page 30|30]].

'''Skinnerites''' 
Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American behaviorist, author, inventor, social philosopher and poet. He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner]

'''Dale Carnegie zealots''' 
Dale Breckenridge Carnegie (November 24, 1888 – November 1, 1955) was an American writer, lecturer, and the developer of famous courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking, and interpersonal skills. Born in poverty on a farm in Missouri, he was the author of ''How to Win Friends and Influence People'' (1936), a massive bestseller that remains popular today. He also wrote ''How to Stop Worrying and Start Living'' (1948), ''Lincoln the Unknown'' (1932), and several other books. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Carnegie]

==Page 78==
'''Subalterns''' 
A subaltern is a chiefly British military term for a junior officer. Literally meaning "subordinate," subaltern is used to describe commissioned officers below the rank of captain and generally comprises the various grades of lieutenant. In the British Army the senior subaltern rank was captain-lieutenant, obsolete since the 18th century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaltern]

'''pearlies''' 
British slang for "teeth", a shortened form of "pearly whites". The Oxford English Dictionary cites this very passage as one of its examples of the word.

[[image:asquith.jpg|thumb|100px|Lady Asquith by Beaton|right]]78.12 '''Cecil Beaton’s photograph of Margot Asquith''' 
Another example of the Turning Head motif.

'''bedlamites''' 
The Bethlem Royal Hospital is a psychiatric hospital located in London, United Kingdom and part of the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. Although no longer based at its original location, it is recognised as the world's first and oldest institution to specialise in mental illnesses. It has been variously known as St. Mary Bethlehem, Bethlem Hospital, Bethlehem Hospital and Bedlam... The word bedlam, meaning uproar and confusion, is derived from its name. Although the hospital is now at the forefront of humane psychiatric treatment, for much of its history it was notorious for cruelty and inhumane treatment – the epitome of what the term "madhouse" or "insane asylum" might connote to the modern reader. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethlem_Royal_Hospital]

'''"equivalent" phase, the first of the transmarginal phases...''' 
In psychology, Transmarginal inhibition, or TMI, is an organism's response to overwhelming stimuli. Ivan Pavlov enumerated details of TMI on his work of conditioning animals to pain. He found that organisms had different levels of tolerance. He commented "that the most basic inherited difference among people was how soon they reached this shutdown point and that the quick-to-shut-down have a fundamentally different type of nervous system." Patients who have reached this shutdown point often become socially dysfunctional or develop one of several personality disorders. Often patients who dissociate during and after the experience, will more easily dissociate or shut down during stressful or painful experiences, and may experience post traumatic stress disorder for the remainder of their lives.

There are three stages passed through for state of TMI to be reached.

1.equivalent phase: when the response matches the stimuli, which is considered the normal baseline behavior. 
2.paradoxical phase: associated with quantity reversal, occurs when small stimuli receive major response and a major stimuli elicit small responses. 
3.ultra-paradoxical: the final stage, associated with quality reversal in which negative stimulation results in positive responses and vice versa. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmarginal_inhibition]

==Page 79==

79.13 '''Webley Silvernail''' 
Webley is the name of the British gun manufacturer. ''The Berkshire Hills'' cites Silvernail House in West Stockbridge as one of the oldest houses in that town (TBH 99).

79.18 '''Geza Rozsavolgyi''' 
The family name means neither "evil valley" as it stands in Weisenburger's Companion, nor "of the pink valley" as it is in the Alphabetical Index but "of the Valley of Roses". In fact, this is a Jewish name, the literal Magyarization of the German name Rosenthal. Geza’s first name also suggests the Hungarian-American psychologist Geza Roheim, who was one of the first to employ psychoanalytic critiques of culture. Rozsavolgyi is the name of a famous Budapest music store founded in 1850, which also published works by Liszt, Bartok and Kodaly, among others.

'''"The Weekly Briefings"''' 
In this section, Brigadier Pudding sorta brings to mind Reverend Gail Hightower from Faulkner's ''Light In August''.

'''Haig''' 
Field Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig, KT, GCB, OM, GCVO, KCIE, ADC, (19 June 1861 – 29 January 1928) was a British senior officer during World War I. He commanded the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from 1915 to the end of the War. He was commander during the Battle of the Somme the battle with one of the highest casualties in British military history, the Third Battle of Ypres and the Hundred Days Offensive which led to the armistice in 1918. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Haig,_1st_Earl_Haig]

'''Lieutenant Sassoon's refusal to fight''' 
Sir Philip Albert Gustave David Sassoon, 3rd Baronet, GBE, CMG (4 December 1888 – 3 June 1939), was a British politician, art collector and social host, entertaining many celebrity guests at his homes, Port Lympne, Kent, and Trent Park, Hertfordshire, England... A second lieutenant in the East Kent Yeomanry, Sassoon served as private secretary to Field Marshal Haig during the First World War. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Sassoon]

More likely Pynchon was referring to Lt. Siegfried Sassoon CBE MC (8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967), a decorated war hero who famously refused to return to combat in 1917 and became one of Britain's best known pacifists and poets. This Sassoon was ordered to undergo mental health treatment by British military authorities who could not understand his change in attitude towards the war. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Sassoon]

'''Passchendaele horror''' 
The Battle of Passchendaele was one of the major battles of the First World War, taking place between July and November 1917. In a series of operations, Entente troops under British command attacked the Imperial German Army. The battle was fought for control of the village of Passchendaele (modern Passendale) near the town of Ypres in West Flanders, Belgium. The objectives of the offensive were 'wearing out the enemy' and 'securing the Belgian coast and connecting with the Dutch frontier'. Haig expected three phases, capturing Passchendaele Ridge, moving on Roulers and an amphibious landing combined with an attack along the coast from Nieuport. The offensive also served to distract the German army from the French in the Aisne, who were suffering from widespread mutiny. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Passchendaele]

==Page 80==
'''cucurbitaceous improbabilities''' 
The plant family Cucurbitaceae consists of squashes, melons, and gourds, including crops such as cucumber, various squashes (including pumpkins), luffas, and melons (including watermelons). The family is predominantly distributed around the tropics, where those with edible fruits were amongst the earliest cultivated plants in both the Old and New Worlds. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucurbitaceous]

'''Toad-in-the-Hole''' 
Toad in the hole is a traditional English dish consisting of sausages in Yorkshire pudding batter, usually served with vegetables and onion gravy. The origin of the name "Toad-in-the-Hole" is often disputed. Many suggestions are that the dish's resemblance to a toad sticking its head out of a hole provides the dish with its somewhat unusual name. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toad_in_the_hole]

'''''rissole''''' 
A rissole is a small croquette, enclosed in pastry or rolled in breadcrumbs, usually baked or deep fried. It is filled with sweet or savory ingredients, most often minced meat or fish, and is served as an entrée, main course, dessert or side dish. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rissole]

'''samphire''' 
Originally "sampiere", a corruption of the French "Saint Pierre" (Saint Peter), Samphire was named for the patron saint of fishermen because all of the original plants with its name grow in rocky salt-sprayed regions along the sea coast of northern Europe or in its coastal marsh areas. It is sometimes called sea asparagus or sea pickle. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samphire]

80.21-22 '''"Would You Rather Be a Colonel with an Eagle on Your Shoulder, or a Private with a Chicken on Your Knee?"''' 
The World War I song was composed by the team of Sidney Mitchell and Archie Gottlieb in 1918. ('''Note''': This is a correction of my earlier error in attributing the song to the team of Harold Arlen and "Yip" Harburg, who also composed the songs for ''The Wizard of Oz''.)
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxfeMkzvNQU Video]

'''Electra House''' 
The Electra House, at Moorgate, London, opened in 1902 & was the accommodation for the Eastern and Associated Telegraph Companies.

'''V-E Day''' 
Victory in Europe Day commemorates 8 May 1945 (in Commonwealth countries; 7 May 1945), the date when the World War II Allies formally accepted the unconditional surrender of the armed forces of Nazi Germany and the end of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. The formal surrender of the occupying German forces in the Channel Islands was not until 9 May 1945. On 30 April Hitler committed suicide during the Battle of Berlin, and so the surrender of Germany was authorized by his replacement, President of Germany Karl Dönitz. The administration headed by Dönitz was known as the Flensburg government. The act of ''military surrender'' was signed on 7 May in Reims, France, and ratified on 8 May in Berlin, Germany. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-E_Day]

'''into a phalanx''' 
Brings to mind the image of God's finger pointing out of a cloud from earlier in the novel.

==Page 81==

81.08 '''terrible disease like charisma''' 
The term charisma, derived from Ancient Greek was introduced in scholarly [and popular [[User:MKOHUT|MKOHUT]]] usage by German sociologist Max Weber, in a book first published in 1922. He defined charismatic authority to be one of three forms of authority, the other two being traditional (feudal) authority and legal or rational authority. According to Weber, charisma is defined thus: 
"a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which s/he is "set apart" from ordinary people and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These as such are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as divine in origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader." adapted from Wikipedia

81.08 '''rationalization''' 
Rationalization is a key sociological concept [from online Dictionary of Social Science]:RATIONALIZATION This term has two specific meanings in sociology. (1) The concept was developed by German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) who used it in two ways. First, it was the process through which magical, supernatural and religious ideas lose cultural importance in a society and ideas based on science and practical calculation become dominant. For example, in modern societies science has rationalized our understanding of weather patterns. Science explains weather patterns as a result of interaction between physical elements like wind-speed and direction, air and water temperatures, humidity, etc. In some other cultures, weather is thought to express the pleasure or displeasure of gods, or spirits of ancestors. One explanation is rationalized and scientific, the other mysterious and magical. Rationalization also involves the development of forms of social organization devoted to the achievement of precise goals by efficient means. It is this type of rationalization that we see in the development of modern business corporations and of bureaucracy. These are organizations dedicated to the pursuit of defined goals by calculated, systematically administered means. (2) Within symbolic interactionism, rationalization is used more in the everyday sense of the word to refer to providing justifications or excuses for one's actions. See use in ''Against the Day'', page 10 [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_1-25 Against the Day]

81.17 '''The Reverend Paul de la Nuit''' 
A double pun: "Pall [dark and gloomy covering] of the night"; also "Pall de l’ennui [of boredom]."

81.22 '''MMPI''' 
See 21.03

==Page 82==

82.01 '''his most famous compatriot''' 
Rozsavolgyi’s fellow countryman would be, of course, Bela Lugosi in his role as Dracula, whose speech patterns are suggested by Pynchon’s punctuation of Rozsavolgyi’s dialogue.

82.11 '''Dr. Aaron Thowster''' 
Aaron was the brother of and spokesperson for Moses. A throwster is one who makes threads out of silk. The name is fairly common in Britain.

'''It is a classic "folly"''' 
In architecture, a folly is a building constructed primarily for decoration, but either suggesting by its appearance some other purpose, or merely so extravagant that it transcends the normal range of garden ornaments or other class of building to which it belongs. In the original use of the word, these buildings had no other use, but from the 19th to 20th centuries the term was also applied to highly decorative buildings which had secondary practical functions such as housing, sheltering or business use. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folly]

Cf. ''Mason & Dixon'' pg. [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_74:_717-732#Page_722 722]

'''The buttery''' 
A buttery was a domestic room in a large medieval house. Along with the pantry, it was generally part of the offices pertaining to the kitchen. Reached from the screens passage at the low end of the Great Hall the buttery was traditionally the place from which the yeoman of the buttery served beer from the wooden butts standing by to those lower members of the household not entitled to drink wine. Candles were also dispensed from the buttery. Even today in Oxford and Cambridge colleges drinks are served from the buttery bar. The buttery generally had a staircase to the beer cellar below. The wine cellars, however, belonged to a different department, that of the yeoman of the cellar and in keeping with the higher value of their contents were often more richly decorated to reflect the higher status of their contents. From the mid-17th century, as it became the custom for servants and their offices to be less conspicuous and sited far from the principal reception rooms, the Great Hall and its neighbouring buttery and pantry lost their original uses. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttery_(room)]

'''Gloucestershire Old Spots''' 
The Gloucestershire Old Spots is an English breed of pig which is predominantly white with black spots. It is named after the county of Gloucestershire. The Gloucestershire Old Spots pig is known for its docility, intelligence, and prolificacy. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloucestershire_Old_Spots]

'''buckram books''' 
Buckram is a stiff cloth, made of cotton, and still occasionally linen, which is used to cover and protect books. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckram]

82.36 '''...Clive and his elephants stomping the French at Plassy...''' 
The Battle of Plassey (Plassy in text), 23 June 1757, was a decisive victory for the British East India Company, lead by Baron Robert Clive, over the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies. Elephants were used to help move infantry pieces. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Plassey]

'''Salome with the head of John''' 
Salome, the Daughter of Herodias (c AD 14 - between 62 and 71), is known from the New Testament (Mark 6:17-29 and Matt 14:3-11, where, however, her name is not given). Another source from Antiquity, Flavius Josephus's ''Jewish Antiquities'', gives her name and some detail about her family relations... Christian traditions depict her as an icon of dangerous female seductiveness, for instance depicting as erotic her dance mentioned in the New Testament (in some later transformations further iconised to the ''dance of the seven veils''), or concentrate on her lighthearted and cold foolishness that, according to the gospels, led to John the Baptist's death. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salome]

'''tessellated''' 
A tessellation or tiling of the plane is a pattern of plane figures that fills the plane with no overlaps and no gaps. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tessellation]

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 72-83

2016-04-25T18:09:34Z

Modavis: /* Page 81 */

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 73==
73.4 '''ancient Abbey... its roof long ago taken at the manic whim of Henry VIII''' 
The Dissolution of the Monasteries, sometimes referred to as the Suppression of the Monasteries, was the set of administrative and legal processes between 1536 and 1541 by which Henry VIII disbanded monasteries, priories, convents and friaries in England, Wales and Ireland; appropriated their income, disposed of their assets, and provided for their former members. He was given the authority to do this in England and Wales by the Act of Supremacy, passed by Parliament in 1534, which made him Supreme Head of the Church in England, thus separating England from Papal authority; and by the First Suppression Act (1536) and the Second Suppression Act (1539). Although some monastic foundations dated back to Anglo-Saxon England, the overwhelming majority of the 825 religious communities dissolved by Henry VIII owed their existence to the wave of monastic enthusiasm that had swept England and Wales in the 11th and 12th centuries; in consequence of which religious houses in the 16th century controlled appointment to about a third of all parish benefices, and disposed of about half of all ecclesiastical income. The dissolution still represents the largest legally enforced transfer of property in English history since the Norman Conquest. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_the_Monasteries]

73.8 '''Palladian house''' 
Palladian architecture is a European style derived from the designs of the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580). His work was strongly based on the symmetry, perspective and values of the formal classical temple architecture of the Ancient Greeks and Romans.

==Page 74==
74.15 '''rust bouclé''' 
Bouclé is a yarn with a length of loops of similar size which can range from tiny circlets to large curls. To make bouclé, at least two strands are combined, with the tension on one strand being much looser than the other as it is being plied, with the loose strand forming the loops and the other strand as the anchor. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boucle] Radio speaker grille cloths at the time were often bouclé weaves.

74.21 '''Dawes-era flashes''' 
The Dawes Plan (as proposed by the Dawes Committee, chaired by Charles G. Dawes) was an attempt in 1924, following World War I for the Triple Entente to collect war reparations debt from Germany. When after five years the plan proved to be unsuccessful, the Young Plan was adopted in 1929 to replace it. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawes_Plan]

74.26 '''SHAEF''' 
Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force was the headquarters of the Commander of Allied forces in north west Europe, from late 1943 until the end of World War II. U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was in command of SHAEF throughout its existence. The position itself shares a common lineage with Supreme Allied Commander Europe and Atlantic, but they are different titles. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHAEF]

74.30 '''"strategy of truth"''' 
Due to the public skepticism of propaganda due to the heavy handed efforts of the Committee on Public Information in the US during World War I, and the fascist regimes propaganda machinery, the US had adopted a "strategy of truth" whereby they would disseminate information but not try to influence the public directly through propaganda. However, seeing the value and need of propaganda, ways were found to circumvent official policy. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writers%27_War_Board]

74.33 '''Hereros, ex-colonials from South-West Africa''' 
During the late 19th century, the first Europeans began entering to permanently settle the land. Primarily in Damaraland, German settlers acquired land from the Herero in order to establish farms. In 1883, the merchant Franz Adolf Eduard Lüderitz entered into a contract with the native elders. The exchange later became the basis of German colonial rule. The territory became a German colony under the name of German South-West Africa. Soon after, conflicts between the German colonists and the Herero herdsmen began. Controversies frequently arose because of disputes about access to land and water, but also the legal discrimination against the native population by the white immigrants. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hereros]

==Page 75==
75.9 '''to root out the truffles of truth created, as ancients surmised, during storm, in the instant of lightning blast''' 
The first mention of truffles appears in the inscriptions of the neo-Sumerians regarding their Amorite enemy's eating habits (Third Dynasty of Ur, 20th century) and later in writings of Theophrastus in the fourth century BC. In classical times, their origins were a mystery that challenged many; Plutarch and others thought them to be the result of lightning, warmth and water in the soil, while Juvenal thought thunder and rain to be instrumental in their origin. Cicero deemed them children of the earth, while Dioscorides thought they were tuberous roots. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truffle_(fungus)]

75.10 '''American PWD''' 
The Psychological Warfare Division of SHAEF (PWD/SHAEF) was a joint Anglo-American organisation set-up in World War II tasked with conducting principally 'white' tactical psychological warfare against German troops in North-west Europe during and after D-Day. It was headed by US Brigadier-General Robert A. McClure who had previously commanded the Psychological Warfare Branch (PWB/AFHQ) of U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower's staff for Operation Torch. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_Warfare_Division]

75.12 '''"Schwarzkommando"''' 
German: literally 'black command'; in this case meaning both 'unit composed of blacks' and 'secret unit'; an alternate meaning of ''schwartz'' is 'secret' or 'illicit' as in 'Secret Service' or 'black market'

75.13 '''"Wütende Heer"''' 
German: 'furious' or 'raging' army; see note at [[Pages 71-72#Page 72|72.27]]

75.30 '''Dr. Porkyevitch''' 
Another suggestion of one of Pynchon’s favorite motifs, the little cartoon hero Porky Pig. See note at [[V545.04-05]]

75.31 '''before the purge trials''' 
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938. It involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party and government officials, repression of peasants, Red Army leadership, and the persecution of unaffiliated persons, characterized by widespread police surveillance, widespread suspicion of "saboteurs", imprisonment, and arbitrary executions. In Russian historiography the period of the most intense purge, 1937–1938, is called ''Yezhovshchina'' (Russian: ежовщина; literally, the Yezhov regime), after Nikolai Yezhov, the head of the Soviet secret police, NKVD. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purge_Trials]

75.40 '''P.W.E.''' 
During World War II, the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) was a British clandestine body created to produce and disseminate both white and black propaganda, with the aim of damaging enemy morale and sustaining the morale of the Occupied countries. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Warfare_Executive]

==Page 76==
76.06 '''''dégagé''''' 
Detached, disengaged, unconcerned

76.13 '''Polygon Wood''' 
The Battle of Polygon Wood took place during the 'second phase' of the Battle of Passchendaele/Third Battle of Ypres in World War I. The battle was fought near Ypres, Belgium, in an area named the Polygon Wood after the layout of the area. However, much of the woodland had been under intense shelling during the Battle of Passchendaele, and the area changed hands several times before this battle. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Polygon_Wood]

76.32 '''F.O. Political Intelligence Department at Fitzmaurice House''' 
The Political Intelligence Department was a department of the British Foreign Office during World War II. Established in 1939, its main function was the production of weekly intelligence summaries. It was headed by Foreign Office diplomatist Rex Leeper. In April 1943, the department was merged with the Royal Institute of International Affairs' Foreign Research and Press Service in Oxford, creating the new Foreign Office Research Department. The 'Political Intelligence Department' name continued to exist until 1946 as a cover for the Political Warfare Executive. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Intelligence_Department_(1939_-_1943)]

76.34 '''OSS''' 
The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The OSS was formed in order to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for the branches of the United States Armed Forces. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_Services]

'''OWI''' 
The United States Office of War Information (OWI) was a U.S. government agency created during World War II to consolidate government information services. It operated from June 1942 until September 1945. It coordinated the release of war news for domestic use, and, using posters and radio broadcasts, worked to promote patriotism, warned about foreign spies and attempted to recruit women into war work. The office also established an overseas branch which launched a large scale information and propaganda campaign abroad. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OWI]

==Page 77==
77.8 '''Chain of Being''' 
The great chain of being (Latin: scala naturae, literally "ladder or stair-way of nature"), is a Christian concept detailing a strict, religious hierarchical structure of all matter and life, believed to have been decreed by the Christian God. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_of_being]

Chain of Being is a major motif in ''Mason & Dixon''.

77.10 '''... Ypres salient...wastage of only 70% of his unit.''' 
The Ypres Salient is the area around Ypres in Belgium which was the scene of some of the most protracted and grueling trench warfare during World War I. Success was measured in feet and yards as tiny bits of land were captured, lost and recaptured throughout the war. Unit casualty rates were often extremely high. 70% wastage for 40 yards is, at most, only a slight exaggeration. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ypres_Salient]

77.20 '''Flanders''' 
Flanders Fields is the generic name of the World War I battlefields in the medieval County of Flanders. At the time of World War I, the county no longer existed but corresponded approximately to the Belgian provinces East Flanders and West Flanders and the French Nord-Pas-de-Calais region. The name is particularly associated with the battles of Ypres, Passchendaele, and the Somme. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanders_Fields]

77.21 '''entitled ''Things That Can Happen In European Politics''''' 
Here, surprisingly, Pynchon makes a common usage error. Should be ''titled''. A book is ''titled'' something; someone is ''entitled'' to their opinion.

77.22 '''Bereshith, as it were...''' 
Bereishit is a Hebrew word, which is the first word of the Torah (the first five books of the Tanach, or Hebrew Bible). It may be translated as the phrase "In the beginning of". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bereishit]

77.23 '''Ramsay MacDonald''' 
James Ramsay MacDonald, PC, FRS (12 October 1866 – 9 November 1937) was a British Labour politician who rose from humble origins to serve two separate terms as the first ever British Labour Prime Minister. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsay_Macdonald]

77.35 '''Couéists''' 
Émile Coué de la Châtaigneraie (February 26, 1857 – July 2, 1926) was a French psychologist and pharmacist who introduced a method of psychotherapy and self-improvement based on optimistic autosuggestion. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Cou%C3%A9]

'''Ouspenskians''' 
See page [[Pages 29-37#Page 30|30]].

'''Skinnerites''' 
Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American behaviorist, author, inventor, social philosopher and poet. He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner]

'''Dale Carnegie zealots''' 
Dale Breckenridge Carnegie (November 24, 1888 – November 1, 1955) was an American writer, lecturer, and the developer of famous courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking, and interpersonal skills. Born in poverty on a farm in Missouri, he was the author of ''How to Win Friends and Influence People'' (1936), a massive bestseller that remains popular today. He also wrote ''How to Stop Worrying and Start Living'' (1948), ''Lincoln the Unknown'' (1932), and several other books. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Carnegie]

==Page 78==
'''Subalterns''' 
A subaltern is a chiefly British military term for a junior officer. Literally meaning "subordinate," subaltern is used to describe commissioned officers below the rank of captain and generally comprises the various grades of lieutenant. In the British Army the senior subaltern rank was captain-lieutenant, obsolete since the 18th century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaltern]

'''pearlies''' 
British slang for "teeth", a shortened form of "pearly whites". The Oxford English Dictionary cites this very passage as one of its examples of the word.

[[image:asquith.jpg|thumb|100px|Lady Asquith by Beaton|right]]78.12 '''Cecil Beaton’s photograph of Margot Asquith''' 
Another example of the Turning Head motif.

'''bedlamites''' 
The Bethlem Royal Hospital is a psychiatric hospital located in London, United Kingdom and part of the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. Although no longer based at its original location, it is recognised as the world's first and oldest institution to specialise in mental illnesses. It has been variously known as St. Mary Bethlehem, Bethlem Hospital, Bethlehem Hospital and Bedlam... The word bedlam, meaning uproar and confusion, is derived from its name. Although the hospital is now at the forefront of humane psychiatric treatment, for much of its history it was notorious for cruelty and inhumane treatment – the epitome of what the term "madhouse" or "insane asylum" might connote to the modern reader. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethlem_Royal_Hospital]

'''"equivalent" phase, the first of the transmarginal phases...''' 
In psychology, Transmarginal inhibition, or TMI, is an organism's response to overwhelming stimuli. Ivan Pavlov enumerated details of TMI on his work of conditioning animals to pain. He found that organisms had different levels of tolerance. He commented "that the most basic inherited difference among people was how soon they reached this shutdown point and that the quick-to-shut-down have a fundamentally different type of nervous system." Patients who have reached this shutdown point often become socially dysfunctional or develop one of several personality disorders. Often patients who dissociate during and after the experience, will more easily dissociate or shut down during stressful or painful experiences, and may experience post traumatic stress disorder for the remainder of their lives.

There are three stages passed through for state of TMI to be reached.

1.equivalent phase: when the response matches the stimuli, which is considered the normal baseline behavior. 
2.paradoxical phase: associated with quantity reversal, occurs when small stimuli receive major response and a major stimuli elicit small responses. 
3.ultra-paradoxical: the final stage, associated with quality reversal in which negative stimulation results in positive responses and vice versa. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmarginal_inhibition]

==Page 79==

79.13 '''Webley Silvernail''' 
Webley is the name of the British gun manufacturer. ''The Berkshire Hills'' cites Silvernail House in West Stockbridge as one of the oldest houses in that town (TBH 99).

79.18 '''Geza Rozsavolgyi''' 
The family name means neither "evil valley" as it stands in Weisenburger's Companion, nor "of the pink valley" as it is in the Alphabetical Index but "of the Valley of Roses". In fact, this is a Jewish name, the literal Magyarization of the German name Rosenthal. Geza’s first name also suggests the Hungarian-American psychologist Geza Roheim, who was one of the first to employ psychoanalytic critiques of culture. Rozsavolgyi is the name of a famous Budapest music store founded in 1850, which also published works by Liszt, Bartok and Kodaly, among others.

'''"The Weekly Briefings"''' 
In this section, Brigadier Pudding sorta brings to mind Reverend Gail Hightower from Faulkner's ''Light In August''.

'''Haig''' 
Field Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig, KT, GCB, OM, GCVO, KCIE, ADC, (19 June 1861 – 29 January 1928) was a British senior officer during World War I. He commanded the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from 1915 to the end of the War. He was commander during the Battle of the Somme the battle with one of the highest casualties in British military history, the Third Battle of Ypres and the Hundred Days Offensive which led to the armistice in 1918. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Haig,_1st_Earl_Haig]

'''Lieutenant Sassoon's refusal to fight''' 
Sir Philip Albert Gustave David Sassoon, 3rd Baronet, GBE, CMG (4 December 1888 – 3 June 1939), was a British politician, art collector and social host, entertaining many celebrity guests at his homes, Port Lympne, Kent, and Trent Park, Hertfordshire, England... A second lieutenant in the East Kent Yeomanry, Sassoon served as private secretary to Field Marshal Haig during the First World War. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Sassoon]

More likely Pynchon was referring to Lt. Siegfried Sassoon CBE MC (8 September 1886 – 1 September 1967), a decorated war hero who famously refused to return to combat in 1917 and became one of Britain's best known pacifists and poets. This Sassoon was ordered to undergo mental health treatment by British military authorities who could not understand his change in attitude towards the war. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Sassoon]

'''Passchendaele horror''' 
The Battle of Passchendaele was one of the major battles of the First World War, taking place between July and November 1917. In a series of operations, Entente troops under British command attacked the Imperial German Army. The battle was fought for control of the village of Passchendaele (modern Passendale) near the town of Ypres in West Flanders, Belgium. The objectives of the offensive were 'wearing out the enemy' and 'securing the Belgian coast and connecting with the Dutch frontier'. Haig expected three phases, capturing Passchendaele Ridge, moving on Roulers and an amphibious landing combined with an attack along the coast from Nieuport. The offensive also served to distract the German army from the French in the Aisne, who were suffering from widespread mutiny. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Passchendaele]

==Page 80==
'''cucurbitaceous improbabilities''' 
The plant family Cucurbitaceae consists of squashes, melons, and gourds, including crops such as cucumber, various squashes (including pumpkins), luffas, and melons (including watermelons). The family is predominantly distributed around the tropics, where those with edible fruits were amongst the earliest cultivated plants in both the Old and New Worlds. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucurbitaceous]

'''Toad-in-the-Hole''' 
Toad in the hole is a traditional English dish consisting of sausages in Yorkshire pudding batter, usually served with vegetables and onion gravy. The origin of the name "Toad-in-the-Hole" is often disputed. Many suggestions are that the dish's resemblance to a toad sticking its head out of a hole provides the dish with its somewhat unusual name. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toad_in_the_hole]

'''''rissole''''' 
A rissole is a small croquette, enclosed in pastry or rolled in breadcrumbs, usually baked or deep fried. It is filled with sweet or savory ingredients, most often minced meat or fish, and is served as an entrée, main course, dessert or side dish. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rissole]

'''samphire''' 
Originally "sampiere", a corruption of the French "Saint Pierre" (Saint Peter), Samphire was named for the patron saint of fishermen because all of the original plants with its name grow in rocky salt-sprayed regions along the sea coast of northern Europe or in its coastal marsh areas. It is sometimes called sea asparagus or sea pickle. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samphire]

80.21-22 '''"Would You Rather Be a Colonel with an Eagle on Your Shoulder, or a Private with a Chicken on Your Knee?"''' 
The World War I song was composed by the team of Sidney Mitchell and Archie Gottlieb in 1918. ('''Note''': This is a correction of my earlier error in attributing the song to the team of Harold Arlen and "Yip" Harburg, who also composed the songs for ''The Wizard of Oz''.)
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxfeMkzvNQU Video]

'''Electra House''' 
The Electra House, at Moorgate, London, opened in 1902 & was the accommodation for the Eastern and Associated Telegraph Companies.

'''V-E Day''' 
Victory in Europe Day commemorates 8 May 1945 (in Commonwealth countries; 7 May 1945), the date when the World War II Allies formally accepted the unconditional surrender of the armed forces of Nazi Germany and the end of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. The formal surrender of the occupying German forces in the Channel Islands was not until 9 May 1945. On 30 April Hitler committed suicide during the Battle of Berlin, and so the surrender of Germany was authorized by his replacement, President of Germany Karl Dönitz. The administration headed by Dönitz was known as the Flensburg government. The act of ''military surrender'' was signed on 7 May in Reims, France, and ratified on 8 May in Berlin, Germany. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-E_Day]

'''into a phalanx''' 
Brings to mind the image of God's finger pointing out of a cloud from earlier in the novel.

==Page 81==

81.08 '''terrible disease like charisma''' 
The term charisma, derived from Ancient Greek was introduced in scholarly [and popular [[User:MKOHUT|MKOHUT]]] usage by German sociologist Max Weber, in a book first published in 1922. He defined charismatic authority to be one of three forms of authority, the other two being traditional (feudal) authority and legal or rational authority. According to Weber, charisma is defined thus: 
"a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which s/he is "set apart" from ordinary people and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These as such are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as divine in origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader." adapted from Wikipedia

81.08 '''rationalization''' 
Rationalization is a key sociological concept [from online Dictionary of Social Science]:RATIONALIZATION This term has two specific meanings in sociology. (1) The concept was developed by German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) who used it in two ways. First, it was the process through which magical, supernatural and religious ideas lose cultural importance in a society and ideas based on science and practical calculation become dominant. For example, in modern societies science has rationalized our understanding of weather patterns. Science explains weather patterns as a result of interaction between physical elements like wind-speed and direction, air and water temperatures, humidity, etc. In some other cultures, weather is thought to express the pleasure or displeasure of gods, or spirits of ancestors. One explanation is rationalized and scientific, the other mysterious and magical. Rationalization also involves the development of forms of social organization devoted to the achievement of precise goals by efficient means. It is this type of rationalization that we see in the development of modern business corporations and of bureaucracy. These are organizations dedicated to the pursuit of defined goals by calculated, systematically administered means. (2) Within symbolic interactionism, rationalization is used more in the everyday sense of the word to refer to providing justifications or excuses for one's actions. See use in ''Against the Day'', page 10 [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_1-25 Against the Day]

81.17 '''The Reverend Paul de la Nuit''' 
A double pun: "Pall [dark and gloomy covering] of the night"; also "Pall de l’ennui [of boredom]."

'''MMPI''' 
See 21.03

==Page 82==

82.01 '''his most famous compatriot''' 
Rozsavolgyi’s fellow countryman would be, of course, Bela Lugosi in his role as Dracula, whose speech patterns are suggested by Pynchon’s punctuation of Rozsavolgyi’s dialogue.

82.11 '''Dr. Aaron Thowster''' 
Aaron was the brother of and spokesperson for Moses. A throwster is one who makes threads out of silk. The name is fairly common in Britain.

'''It is a classic "folly"''' 
In architecture, a folly is a building constructed primarily for decoration, but either suggesting by its appearance some other purpose, or merely so extravagant that it transcends the normal range of garden ornaments or other class of building to which it belongs. In the original use of the word, these buildings had no other use, but from the 19th to 20th centuries the term was also applied to highly decorative buildings which had secondary practical functions such as housing, sheltering or business use. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folly]

Cf. ''Mason & Dixon'' pg. [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_74:_717-732#Page_722 722]

'''The buttery''' 
A buttery was a domestic room in a large medieval house. Along with the pantry, it was generally part of the offices pertaining to the kitchen. Reached from the screens passage at the low end of the Great Hall the buttery was traditionally the place from which the yeoman of the buttery served beer from the wooden butts standing by to those lower members of the household not entitled to drink wine. Candles were also dispensed from the buttery. Even today in Oxford and Cambridge colleges drinks are served from the buttery bar. The buttery generally had a staircase to the beer cellar below. The wine cellars, however, belonged to a different department, that of the yeoman of the cellar and in keeping with the higher value of their contents were often more richly decorated to reflect the higher status of their contents. From the mid-17th century, as it became the custom for servants and their offices to be less conspicuous and sited far from the principal reception rooms, the Great Hall and its neighbouring buttery and pantry lost their original uses. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttery_(room)]

'''Gloucestershire Old Spots''' 
The Gloucestershire Old Spots is an English breed of pig which is predominantly white with black spots. It is named after the county of Gloucestershire. The Gloucestershire Old Spots pig is known for its docility, intelligence, and prolificacy. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloucestershire_Old_Spots]

'''buckram books''' 
Buckram is a stiff cloth, made of cotton, and still occasionally linen, which is used to cover and protect books. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckram]

82.36 '''...Clive and his elephants stomping the French at Plassy...''' 
The Battle of Plassey (Plassy in text), 23 June 1757, was a decisive victory for the British East India Company, lead by Baron Robert Clive, over the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies. Elephants were used to help move infantry pieces. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Plassey]

'''Salome with the head of John''' 
Salome, the Daughter of Herodias (c AD 14 - between 62 and 71), is known from the New Testament (Mark 6:17-29 and Matt 14:3-11, where, however, her name is not given). Another source from Antiquity, Flavius Josephus's ''Jewish Antiquities'', gives her name and some detail about her family relations... Christian traditions depict her as an icon of dangerous female seductiveness, for instance depicting as erotic her dance mentioned in the New Testament (in some later transformations further iconised to the ''dance of the seven veils''), or concentrate on her lighthearted and cold foolishness that, according to the gospels, led to John the Baptist's death. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salome]

'''tessellated''' 
A tessellation or tiling of the plane is a pattern of plane figures that fills the plane with no overlaps and no gaps. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tessellation]

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 3-7

2016-04-23T21:40:09Z

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{{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
[[http://www.en.wikipedia.org/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 53===

53.29-30 '''out into the snow tracked over by foxes, rabbits, long lost dogs''' 
With Pointsman's "One, little, Fox!" on line 3 above, another overlapping of hunters and prey.

53.30-31 '''Empty canals of snow thread away into trees and town whose name they still don’t know.''' 
Echoing "places whose names he has never heard" on p. 3, or the "slopes and serifs of an un-readable legend on the lintel" at St. Veronica's on p. 47, this is a recurring Pynchonian flourish of What Is Not Said.

53.34 '''Late lorry motors''' 
Lorry is the British word for a truck.

53.39-40 '''she does wish there were others about''' 
See 41.28

==Page 54==

54.25 '''Poisson Distribution/Equation''' 
"In probability theory and statistics, the Poisson distribution is a discrete probability distribution that expresses the probability of a number of events occurring in a fixed period of time if these events occur with a known average rate and independently of the time since the last event. The Poisson distribution can also be used for the number of events in other specified intervals such as distance, area or volume."<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Poisson_distribution&oldid=327409885 Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia]. Retrieved 16:45, November 23, 2009</ref>

For instance, if on average London received one rocket strike per square kilometer per day, the Poisson equation could be used to predict the probability of a random 1 km2 area of London receiving 0, 1, 10 or any other number of rocket strikes. Of relevance to the novel, an necessary assumption of the Poisson distribution is that events are independent: even if a given square kilometer of London has already received 100 rocket strikes today, it is still just as likely to be hit again as any other square kilometer of London.

This concept recurs on pp. 55, 56, 85, 140, 171, 270.

''Poisson'', though the name of an actual person, is also French for ''fish''. Could this be an echo of [[P|PISCES]]?

<references />

==Page 55==

55.01 '''His little bureau''' 
A jump cut here -- not confirmed until the next paragraph -- to Roger's London workplace, and interpolated scenes of his exchanges with Pointsman

55.11 '''Whittaker and Watson''' 
The co-authors (and informal name) of a book formally titled A Course of Modern Analysis. Weisenburger notwithstanding, it is a calculus text with only incidental appearance of a few statistical functions.(Read the whole thing if you want at [http://books.google.com/books?id=_hoPAAAAIAAJ Google Books]!) Notice the very cinematic, scene-setting "slow pan," with the book and snapshot as Hollywood-heavy symbols of Roger's divided loyalty.

55.13-15 '''dogs wait with cheeks laid open... to fill the wax cup or graduated tube''' 
See 44.22

==Page 56==
56.08 '''Monte Carlo Fallacy''' 
The belief that if events have deviated from our expectations of "chance" in one direction, they are bound to deviate in the opposite direction soon, as if to compensate. The name is drawn from a famous event at the Monte Carlo Casino in 1913, when a roulette ball settled on black 26 times in a row -- and the casino grew richer as more and more patrons bet on red, anticipating a "rebound."[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_fallacy]

As Roger patiently explains, no rocket is influenced by what previous rockets have done, any more than the roulette ball was influenced by what it had done on a previous spin -- or 25 previous spins -- of the wheel. The Poisson distribution depends on the assumption that events in a data set are genuinely random and independent -- i.e. that in this case, there is no systematic "skew" in how the V-2s are aimed and launched, or in the many manufacturing and environmental variables that affect their trajectory and scatter their impacts around the target point.

==Page 57==
57.08 '''...she gives him her Fay Wray look...''' 
Fay Wray played the heroine, Ann Darrow, in the 1933 film ''King Kong.'' So the look Jess gives Roger must've been something like [http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y134/jpicco/wrayfd08.jpg this.]

Lot of photos at [http://www.gettyimages.com/photos/fay-wray Getty Images].

57.31 '''Beveridge Proposal''' 
The ''Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Social Insurance and Allied Services'', known commonly as the ''Beveridge Report'' was an influential document in the founding of the Welfare State in the United Kingdom. It was chaired by William Beveridge, an economist, who identified five "Giant Evils" in society: squalor, ignorance, want, idleness and disease, and went on to propose widespread reform to the system of social welfare to address these. Highly popular with the public, the report formed the basis for the post-war reforms known as the Welfare State, which include the expansion of National Insurance and the creation of the National Health Service. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beveridge_Report]

==Page 58==
58.02 '''the good dog alerted by the eternal scent, the explosion... always just about to come''' 
This begins to smell familiar, especially with "a skulk of foxes, a cowardice of curs... whispering in the yards and lanes" farther down the page.

==Page 59==

59.01-02 '''Frank Bridge Variations''' 
The "Frank Bridge Variations" is a composition ("Variations on a Theme by Frank Bridge," Opus 10, 1937) by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Britten Benjamin Britten], named after one of his teachers. It was one of Britten's first works to win international notice. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variations_on_a_Theme_of_Frank_Bridge Wikipedia entry...]

59.03 '''Montrachet''' 
Montrachet is an ''Appellation d'origine contrôlée'' (AOC) and Grand Cru vineyard for white wine from Chardonnay in the Côte de Beaune subregion of Burgundy. It is situated across the border between the two communes of Chassagne-Montrachet and Puligny-Montrachet and produces what many consider to be the greatest dry white wine in the world. It is surrounded by four other Grand Cru vineyards all having "Montrachet" as part of their names. Montrachet itself is generally considered superior to its four Grand Cru neighbours.

59.09 '''"Don't be ridic, I'm serious, Roger..."''' 
Brings to mind the Carmen Sternwood character, played by Martha Vickers, in the 1946 film production of ''The Big Sleep''. If I remember correctly, Carmen used this "don't be ridic" phrase quite often, generally in conversation w/ Philip Marlowe/Humphrey Bogart. [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038355/]

59.16 '''Edward VIII abdicated''' 
Only months into his reign, he caused a constitutional crisis by proposing marriage to the American socialite Wallis Simpson, who had divorced her first husband and was seeking a divorce from her second. The prime ministers of the United Kingdom and the Dominions opposed the marriage, arguing that the people would never accept a divorced woman with two living ex-husbands as queen. Additionally, such a marriage would have conflicted with Edward's status as head of the Church of England, which opposed the remarriage of divorced people if their former spouses were still alive. Edward knew that the government led by British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin would resign if the marriage went ahead, which could have dragged the King into a general election and ruined irreparably his status as a politically neutral constitutional monarch. Rather than end his relationship with Mrs. Simpson, Edward abdicated. He was succeeded by his younger brother Albert, who chose the regnal name George VI. With a reign of 326 days, Edward was one of the shortest-reigning monarchs in British and Commonwealth history. He was never crowned. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_viii]

59.20 '''pinafores''' 
Pinafores may be worn by girls as a decorative garment and by both girls and women as a protective apron. A related term is pinafore dress, which is British English for what in American English is known as a jumper dress, i.e. a sleeveless dress intended to be worn over a top or blouse. A key difference between a pinafore and a jumper dress is that the pinafore is open in the back. In informal British usage however, a pinafore dress is sometimes referred to as simply a pinafore, which can lead to confusion. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinafores]

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==Page 20==

20.21 '''What it is is a graphite cylinder''' 
The contents wiull be revealed on pp. 71-72.

20.34 '''A-and''' 
Does anyone know how TRP pronounces this? Is it just a stutter? (It will recur in [http://www.google.com/search?tbs=bks:1&tbo=p&q=a-and+inauthor:thomas+inauthor:pynchon&num=10 all] his subsequent books.)

20.36 '''TDY''' 
Not "tour of duty," as in Weisenburger, but "temporary duty."

20.37 '''East End'''
This is the East End of London, particularly heavily bombed by the Germans in the war as London's docks were situated there. It was, and still is, the area where the poorest people of London live. Famously, Queen Elizabeth's mother made a royal visit there during the war where she was enthusiastically received.

==Page 21==

21.07 '''A lot of stuff prior to 1944 is getting blurry now.''' 
Even this early in the novel, Slothrop has problems with his "temporal bandwidth." His memories of the Blitz (21.08) put him in London no later than May 1941, and possibly as early as September 1940. Note also "I'm four years overdue" (25.17). The US did have military liaison missions in the UK long before entering the war, but we will get no details of Slothrop's role before the V-weapon campaign.

21.32 '''these three years''' 
This puts Slothrop and Tantivy together (presumably at ACHTUNG) since Dec. 1941. What technical intelligence from northern Germany had been targeted that far back? According to the history books, the Allies became aware of the V-weapons programs only in mid-1943.

21.35 '''Tantivy's guest at the Junior Athenaeum''' 
According to the London Encyclopedia the Junior Athenaeum purchased Hope House at 116 Piccadilly in 1868, owning it until the building was demolished in 1936. The JA appears to have closed its doors in 1931, making this a possible anachronism. The Athenaeum Club proper is the most intellectually elite of the gentlemen's clubs; Darwin, Dickens and Trollope were members and Michael Faraday was secretary of the first committee.

21.36 '''86’d''' 
While sources do agree with Weisenburger that the term "86" might originate in rhyming slang (for "nix"), they also agree that it was first used in the restaurant business to indicate menu items that were no longer available. The wider usage here may not have originated until the 1950s.

==Page 22==
22 '''a build out of the chorus line at the Windmill'''; also p39 "It's not backstage at the Windmill" 
The Windmill opened in 1932 in a building which had been the Palais de Luxe Cinema and then a theatre. It featured comedy and burlesque revues. The only London theatre to remain open throughout the war, the Windmill continued until 1964 when it became a cinema, reverted to a strip club in 1973, became a theatre/restaurant in 1982 and finally re-opened as a strip club in 1986. From a recent advertisement: "The Windmill International - London's Premier Tableside Dancing Club with 75 Beautiful Dancing Girls who will perform tableside for you - full Nudity - fantastic stage and light show - Dress Smart".

22.04 '''Frick Frack Club''' 
The term "frick and frack" is often used to designate two people or almost any two items closely associated with each other. The term originates from the stage names of a pair of Swiss skaters who starred in ice shows in the 1930s. Pynchon probably chose the name more for its senseless alliteration (like "Kit-Kat Club") than any specific meaning.

'''Thomas Hooker... wilde Thyme''' 
Thomas Hooker (July 5, 1586 – July 7, 1647) was a prominent Puritan religious and colonial leader, who founded the Colony of Connecticut after dissenting with Puritan leaders in Massachusetts. He was known as an outstanding speaker and a leader of universal Christian suffrage. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hooker]

"wilde Thyme" also brings to mind "Wild Tyme", song by Jefferson Airplane on their 1967 LP ''After Bathing At Baxter's'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_bathing_at_baxter%27s]

==Page 23==

23.10 '''Bovril''' 
A beef extract--its main use is as a flavouring for soups, and as a drink when you put a teaspoon of the stuff in a mug of boiling water. The method for making the extract was perfected by Justus von Liebig, who co-founded the eponymous London based company.

23.19 '''Wrens''' 
Women's Royal Naval Service - British civilian support group of war effort

23.25 '''Ike jacket''' 
[[image:Ike_Jacket.jpeg|thumb|75px|Ike jacket|right]]Eisenhower jacket-- officially the M-44; a waist-cropped style jacket designed in 1943 and meant to be worn beneath the standard US field jacket, the M-43, as an added layer of insulation; supposedly made at Eisenhower's request.

==Page 24==
'''Humber''' 
Humber is a British automobile marque which could date its beginnings to Thomas Humber's bicycle company founded in 1868. Following their involvement in Humber through Hillman in 1928 the Rootes brothers[1] acquired a controlling interest and joined the Humber board in 1932 making Humber part of their Rootes Group. The range focused on luxury models, such as the Humber Super Snipe. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humber_(car)]

'''Morrison shelter''' 
The Morrison shelter, officially termed ''Table (Morrison) Indoor Shelter'', had a cage-like construction beneath it. It was designed by John Baker and named after Herbert Morrison, the Minister of Home Security at the time. It was the result of the realisation that due to the lack of house cellars it was necessary to develop an effective type of indoor shelter. The shelters came in assembly kits, to be bolted together inside the home. They were approximately 6 ft 6 in (2 m) long, 4 ft (1.2 m) wide and 2 ft 6 in (0.75 m) high, had a solid 1/8 in (3 mm) steel plate “table” top, welded wire mesh sides, and a metal lath “mattress”- type floor. Altogether it had 359 parts and had 3 tools supplied with the pack. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrison_shelter#Morrison_shelter]

==Page 25==

25.06-07 '''Slothrop’s Progress . . . a parable''' 
"Slothrop’s Progress" echoes John Bunyan’s Puritan allegory ''The Pilgrim’s Progress''. The word "parable," interestingly, comes from the same root as "parabola."

Slothrop's Progress may be Time itself. Sir Arthur Eddington coined the term "time's arrow" to describe entropy's progress and time's irreversibility-- i.e. "as the universe gets older, it becomes more disordered, following the second law of thermodynamics." Entropy's progress defines time. Cf. ''Scientific American'', Jan 2008, p.26 for more.

25. 29 '''Bond Street Underground station'''
This is a station in the wealthier West End of London - also a site on the British version of 'Monopoly'

==Page 26==

26.30 '''back home in Mingeborough, Massachusetts''' 
The Berkshire town was first created by Pynchon in the short story "The Secret Integration," set in the mid-1960s. This story also introduced the Slothrop family, in the person of Hogan Slothrop, who is apparently the son of Tyrone’s brother. Minges (or "midges") are small, biting insects. However, "minge" was originally also a British slang term for a woman's pubic hair, now generalised to the female genitals.

26.33 '''British Double Summer Time''' 
Correspondent Igor Zabel explains this term:
" . . . in Britain they had, during the war, the clocks an hour ahead in the winter time and two hours in the summer time."

26.37-38 '''Death is a debt to nature due . . . so must you.''' 
Weisenburger claims that this epitaph, with its debt to "nature" rather than God, would be heretical to Puritans. That might be so, but the inscription was fairly common on tombstones in the northeast from the mid-1700s until the early 1800s, a range that includes Constant’s 1760 death.

==Page 27==

27.04 '''Variable Slothrop''' 
The son of "Constant": The two names play a mathematical pun and suggest the family’s decline as well. Both names seem to be a pun as well on the name of Puritan minister and Harvard president, the Rev. Increase Mather of Massachusetts Bay Colony and his son, Cotton Mather. Increase attempted to decrease the heat surrounding the Salem Witch Trials through a series of sermons seeking moderation in the use of spectral evidence, even though he defended the trials and the judges. Parallels: Second law of thermodynamics - heated trials cooling. Increase-Cotton-Constant-Variable -- 

27.31-33 '''They began as fur traders, cordwainers, salters and smokers of bacon, went on into glassmaking, became selectmen, builders of tanneries, quarriers of marble.''' 
[[image:berkshire.jpg|thumb|100px|right]]One source listed in Weisenburger but that he did not have time to consult closely is ''The Berkshire Hills'' <ref>''The Berkshire Hills''', Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York, 1939</ref>, a guidebook prepared for this western Massachusetts region by the Federal Writers Project during the Depression. (See Pynchon’s comments in his introduction to ''Slow Learner''.) Although not the sole source, the book provides important background for "The Secret Integration" and the Berkshire segments of ''Gravity’s Rainbow''. Most of the offices and trades listed here (except for "smokers and salters of bacon") are noted at one place or another in the guidebook. Also see my article "From the Berkshires to the Brocken: Transformations of a Source in "The Secret Integration" and Gravity’s Rainbow," Pynchon Notes 22-23 (Spring-Fall 1988): 87-98.[http://www.ham.miamioh.edu/krafftjm/pn/pn022.pdf]

==Page 28==

28.02 '''converted acres at a clip into paper''' 
A paper clip? A likely reference to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip Operation Paper Clip], the OSS program to recruit Nazi scientists to work for the US and deny them to the Russians. Von Braun was brought to the US under this program.

28.02-03 '''paper—toilet paper, banknote stock, newsprint''' 
The Berkshire Hills describes several paper mills in the region and notes the importance of the industry. One producer, Crane and Company, first used the term "bond" for high-quality paper and provided special paper for U.S. currency from 1879 on <ref>Ibid, p. 238</ref>. Another company, in the town of Lee, gave the "first practical demonstration in America of the process of manufacturing paper from wood pulp instead of rags" <ref>Ibid, p. 143</ref>.

28.05 '''Somerset Club''' 
The Somerset Club is a private social club in Boston, Massachusetts, founded perhaps as early as 1826. The original club was informal, without a clubhouse. By the 1830s this had evolved into a group called the Temple. In 1851 the group purchased the home of Benjamin W. Crowninshield, located at the corner of Beacon and Somerset Streets. Originally called the Beacon Club, it was renamed the Somerset Club in 1852. In 1871 the Somerset Club purchased the David Sears townhouse at 42 Beacon Street on Beacon Hill. Originally designed by Alexander Parris and built in 1819, Sears had added to the house in 1832 and had built the adjacent Crowninshield-Amory house at 43 Beacon Street for his daughter. The land on which the house stood was originally part of an 18-acre (73,000 m2) parcel owned by John Singleton Copley, who called it "his farm on Beacon Street." Eventually the Club bought 43 Beacon Street and joined the two houses into one large clubhouse. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_Club]

28.29-30 '''dying... but never quite to the zero''' 
The third in a series of zeros: 
Pirate's "idiot chase out to zero longitude" (20.8) 
Slothrop's fear of death by V-2: "the next second, right, just suddenly... shit... just zero, just nothing..."(25.18) 
And now the Slothrop family wealth diminishing towards zero 
The primary referent for the section title "Beyond the Zero" is a concept from Pavlov's theory of reflex conditioning -- but these three may also link it to the East (where the rockets come from), to what lies beyond death, and to negative wealth -- "a debt to nature due" (26.39), or a guilt accumulated by the Slothrops' spoiling of the New World.

28.33-34 '''Harrimans and Whitneys gone''' 
The Harrimans are mentioned in passing several times in The Berkshire Hills as being among the wealthy families who spent their summers in the region. William C. Whitney, President Cleveland’s Secretary of the Navy, is specifically mentioned as the founder of a vacation colony in Lenox in 1886 <ref>Ibid, p. 224</ref>. These decaying vacation homes also appear in "The Secret Integration": "...a miniaturized or toy Venice for the New York candy magnate Ellsworth Baffy, who had caused this place to be built originally. Like many who put castles up among these inland hills, he was a contemporary of Jay Gould and his partner, the jolly Berkshire peddler Jubilee Jim Fisk."

28.40 '''the Great Aspinwall Hotel Fire''' 
More historical fact, also possibly from The Berkshire Hills. [http://lostnewengland.com/2016/02/hotel-aspinwall-lenox-mass-1/]

==Page 29==

29.04 '''Hogan''' 
Tyrone Slothrop’s brother, presumably the father of the Hogan Slothrop of "The Secret Integration," set in the Berkshires a generation later.

==References==
<references/>

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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
[[http://www.en.wikipedia.org/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 the only currency-carrying element which does not absorb nor emit heat. Entropic, so to speak. Another resonance for "toward the zero"? 

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 71==
[[image:tyrosine.jpg|thumb|100px|Tyrosine Molecule|right]]71.15 '''Kryptosam''' 
Correspondent Matthias Bauer notes that "sam" derives from the German "samen," for "seed." "Krypto," of course, derives from the same word as "cryptography," the study of codes. [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] claims that the "tyrosine" from which kryptosam is supposed to derive is "undoubtedly fictional," but it is in fact an amino acid, which can convert to melanin, just as Jamf's note indicates (although it is unclear whether semen will in fact act as the catalytic agent). 

Tyrosine is found in casein, and the name derives from the Greek, ''tyros'' meaning cheese. 

Significant properties of note for Tyrosine: 
- Tyrosine functions as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol phenol], which Nazi doctors used in injections for rapid executions. Phenols were used extensively at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 
- Tyrosine occurs in proteins that are part of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_transduction signal transduction] process -- a biological processes that converts one kind of signal or stimulus into another -- cell signalling.

The SBB (SIS/MI6 forerunner) allegedly discovered that semen, if not a catalyst, did at least make a good invisible ink.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semen#Semen_in_espionage Semen in espionage],
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansfield_Smith-Cumming Mansfield Smith Cuming], and
[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-spymaster-who-was-stranger-than-fiction-737707.html Spymaster]

71.32 '''GEHEIME KOMMANDOSACHE''' 
Secret Air Command

71.33 '''... von Bayros or Beardsley.''' 
Marquis Franz von Bayros and Aubrey Beardsley were renowned for their erotic sketches in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Learn more about [http://beardsley.artpassions.net/ Beardsley] and [http://www.all-art.org/er_in_art/07.html von Bayros]

71.36 '''... a De Mille set really...''' 
This is open to skepticism, but I believe he's referring to Cecil B. DeMille, who was famous for his construction of grandiose sets, particularly "The City of the Pharaoh," the largest set in film history.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_B._DeMille Cecil B. Demille] at Wikipedia.

71.39 '''corselette''' 
Type of underwear that combines a bra and a girdle. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corselet Wiki]

==Page 72==
72.17 '''nacreous''' 
Nacre or "mother of pearl" coats the inner surface of many seashells. It appears iridescent because the thickness of its microscopic aragonite platelets is close to the wavelength of visible light. This results in constructive and destructive interference of different wavelengths of light, resulting in different colors of light being reflected at different viewing angles. [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nacreous]

72.27 '''...Wuotan and his mad army''' 
Wuotan is the Old High German spelling of Odin; the 'mad army' is mentioned again at [[Pages 72-83#Page 75|75.13]] in German as ''Wütende Heer''. It is interesting that Pynchon chose to translate ''wütende'' as 'mad' rather than, say, 'angry' or 'furious', thus allowing the reader to take 'mad' to mean 'insane'.
On the other hand, the disease rabies is called "Tollwut" in German, so "Wut" may not ring as a totally sane kind of rage. Historians and Nordic legends attributed a behavior called "bärsärkar-gång" (Swedish, same root of the English expression "going beserk") to Odin-worshiping proto-Lombard fighters. Rage, variously tied to willful adrenalin overload, traumatic stress, fly-agaric, or godly intervention, gave them superhuman strength but clouded their judgment and made them dangerous to friend and foe alike.

72.32 '''Was tust du für die Front, für den Sieg? Was has du heute für Deutschland getan?''' 
What are you doing for the front, for the victory? What have you done for Germany today? 
Also see [http://www.thomaspynchon.com/gravitys-rainbow/extra/german.html ThomasPynchon.com] for lots of ''GR'' translations.

Compare this with Roger and Jessica's not-quite-secession from the Home Front (41.20-27).

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==Page 71==
[[image:tyrosine.jpg|thumb|100px|Tyrosine Molecule|right]]71.15 '''Kryptosam''' 
Correspondent Matthias Bauer notes that "sam" derives from the German "samen," for "seed." "Krypto," of course, derives from the same word as "cryptography," the study of codes. [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] claims that the "tyrosine" from which kryptosam is supposed to derive is "undoubtedly fictional," but it is in fact an amino acid, which can convert to melanin, just as Jamf's note indicates (although it is unclear whether semen will in fact act as the catalytic agent). 

Tyrosine is found in casein, and the name derives from the Greek, ''tyros'' meaning cheese. 

Significant properties of note for Tyrosine: 
- Tyrosine functions as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol phenol], which Nazi doctors used in injections for rapid executions. Phenols were used extensively at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 
- Tyrosine occurs in proteins that are part of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_transduction signal transduction] process -- a biological processes that converts one kind of signal or stimulus into another -- cell signalling.

The SBB (SIS/MI6 forerunner) allegedly discovered that semen, if not a catalyst, did at least make a good invisible ink.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semen#Semen_in_espionage Semen in espionage],
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansfield_Smith-Cumming Mansfield Smith Cuming], and
[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-spymaster-who-was-stranger-than-fiction-737707.html Spymaster]

71.32 '''GEHEIME KOMMANDOSACHE''' 
Secret Air Command

71.33 '''... von Bayros or Beardsley.''' 
Marquis Franz von Bayros and Aubrey Beardsley were renowned for their erotic sketches in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Learn more about [http://beardsley.artpassions.net/ Beardsley] and [http://www.all-art.org/er_in_art/07.html von Bayros]

71.36 '''... a De Mille set really...''' 
This is open to skepticism, but I believe he's referring to Cecil B. DeMille, who was famous for his construction of grandiose sets, particularly "The City of the Pharaoh," the largest set in film history.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_B._DeMille Cecil B. Demille] at Wikipedia.

71.39 '''corselette''' 
Type of underwear that combines a bra and a girdle. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corselet Wiki]

==Page 72==
72.17 '''nacreous''' 
Nacre (the innr surface of seashells) appears iridescent because the thickness of its microscopic aragonite platelets is close to the wavelength of visible light. This results in constructive and destructive interference of different wavelengths of light, resulting in different colors of light being reflected at different viewing angles. [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nacreous]

72.27 '''...Wuotan and his mad army''' 
Wuotan is the Old High German spelling of Odin; the 'mad army' is mentioned again at [[Pages 72-83#Page 75|75.13]] in German as ''Wütende Heer''. It is interesting that Pynchon chose to translate ''wütende'' as 'mad' rather than, say, 'angry' or 'furious', thus allowing the reader to take 'mad' to mean 'insane'.
On the other hand, the disease rabies is called "Tollwut" in German, so "Wut" may not ring as a totally sane kind of rage. Historians and Nordic legends attributed a behavior called "bärsärkar-gång" (Swedish, same root of the English expression "going beserk") to Odin-worshiping proto-Lombard fighters. Rage, variously tied to willful adrenalin overload, traumatic stress, fly-agaric, or godly intervention, gave them superhuman strength but clouded their judgment and made them dangerous to friend and foe alike.

72.32 '''Was tust du für die Front, für den Sieg? Was has du heute für Deutschland getan?''' 
What are you doing for the front, for the victory? What have you done for Germany today? 
Also see [http://www.thomaspynchon.com/gravitys-rainbow/extra/german.html ThomasPynchon.com] for lots of ''GR'' translations.
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==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
[[http://www.en.wikipedia.org/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 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 the only currency-carrying element which does not absorb nor emit heat. Entropic, so to speak. Another resonance for "toward the zero"? 

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''."

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 3-7

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{{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
[[http://www.en.wikipedia.org/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 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 the only currency-carrying element which does not absorb nor emit heat. Entropic, so to speak. Another resonance for "toward the zero"? 

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)

==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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Pages 279-295

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==Page 281==
281.01-02 '''die kalte Sophie''' 
"cold wisdom"? Correspondent Morten Peters gives a better explanation!:
"-the allusion may be intended by Pynchon, but originally this is just the German traditional agricolan term for the last day of the "eisheiligen", which are normally the last days in the year that can be really cold."
Igor Zabel also offers the following:

:"The days of the three "ice-men" (May 12, 13 and 14) are followed by the day of Sophia, 15 May, called "the cold Sophia" because it is considered to be the conclusion of the cold days in May. The "ice-saints" are believed to be the end of the winter period; they represent a period when, in high spring, it can get quite cold and sometimes snow may fall. It is a dangerous time for peasants since the cold period can endanger or even destroy the harvest. In 1945, these days have passed without damaging the wine grapes. We have the same tradition in Slovenia, the popular name for the "kalte Sophie" is "polulana Zofka" which means the "wet" or "peed Sophy" (since it usually rains on that day)."

281.9 '''the revolutionaries of May''' 
Considering the unusual point of view as represented in the very first sentence("We are"), this may be a topical reference to May 1968 and the following Big Chill. The seemingly redundant interjection "this year" in the next sentence then signifies a shift back to narrative time. In Germany the only great vintage between the period of revolts and the publication of ''Gravity's Rainbow'' belongs to the year [http://www.thewinecurators.com/vntgChart.html 1971].

281.20 '''DP''' 
Displaced Person

281.35 '''WASPs''' 
A common wartime acronym is ''Women Airforce Service Pilots'', but the context suggests a more fitting acronym of ''White Anglo-Saxon Protestants''. The text here compares Herero beliefs to the beliefs of Slothrop's Protestant ancestors with their "buckled black" shoes, and views of God as present in natural phenomena.

==Page 285==
'''285.37 Jim Fisk style''' 
Before his involvement with gold markets and railroads, Fisk was a Yankee peddler working the Berkshires. There are several references to him in ''The Berkshire Hills'' (though his name is misspelled "Fiske").

==Page 287==
287.11-12 '''double row of shiny bright teeth hangs in the air''' 
Reminiscent of Alice and the Cheshire Cat:
:''Well! I’ve often seen a cat without a grin,” thought Alice; “but a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life!”'' [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rgs/alice-table.html ''Alice in Wonderland''], Chapter 6, "Pig and Pepper"

287.23 '''P-47''' 
P-47 Thunderbolt, also known as the "Jug," was one of the main United States Army Air Forces fighters of World War II, and served with other Allied air forces as well.

287.25-26 '''Project Hermes''' 
US Army missile program started in 1944 to develop guided missile systems; included study of captured German V-2s; General Electric (GE) ran the contract

287.30 '''Kraut''' 
Derogatory term for German soldiers or Germans in general; derives from sauerkraut, a popular German food

287.32 '''Limey''' 
Derogatory term for the British, originally referring to British sailors. It is believed to derive from lime juice, referring to the Royal Navy and Merchant Navy practice of supplying lime juice to British sailors to prevent scurvy.

287.37-38 '''Old Blood 'n' Guts handed Rommel's ass to him''' 
Refers to American General George Patton's defeat of German forces led by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in the North Africa campaign of WWII.

287.38-39 '''''Ach du lieber! Mein Arsch!''''' 
German: 'Oh my goodness! My ass!'

==Page 289==
289.29-30 '''Lotta those ''fags'' still around, with baskets and 175 badges''' 
''Fags'' of course being slang for homosexual men; 175 badges refer to the pink triangle badges worn by suspected or known homosexuals (usually men) under the Nazi regime. They are called 175 badges because [http://www.ushmm.org/learn/students/learning-materials-and-resources/homosexuals-victims-of-the-nazi-era/paragraph-175 paragraph 175 of the German criminal code], as revised by the Nazis in 1935, made a wide range of activities between men illegal.

==Page 290==
290.8 '''Under my linden tree''' 
Allusion to Middle High German lyric poet [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walther_von_der_Vogelweide Walter von der Vogelweide's] (c. 1170 - c. 1230) most famous love song [http://www.planck.com/rhymedtranslations/vogelweidelinden.htm "Under der linden"], where the singer implied is another young girl.

290.15 '''Geli Tripping''' 
Another name taken from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_and_Sullivan Gilbert and Sullivan], this time from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.M.S._Pinafore ''HMS Pinafore''] (1878). When the Female Relations of Sir Joseph Porter, the First Lord of the Admiralty, board the ship, they sing, "Gaily tripping,/ Lightly skipping,/ Flock the maidens to the shipping." ([http://www.audiosparx.com/sa/archive/Classical/Opera/Gaily-Tripping/285163 Have a listen...]) The name is not without psychedelic overtones reminiscent of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merry_Pranksters Merry Pranksters]. [[Sir Joseph's Barge is Seen|Read the lyrics...]]

290.16 '''A Soviet intelligence officer named Tchitcherine''' 
Explaining the sources for the name, Weisenburger cites Theodore von Kármán (''The Wind and Beyond''. Boston: Little, 1967), and David Seed ("Pynchon's Two Tchitcherines", ''Pynchon Notes'' 5:11-12). Kármán writes the following:

<blockquote>"Frank Tchitcherine was of Russian origin, and in fact had been related to the first minister of education in the Kerensky government. This Tchitcherine helped convince the Germans to disclose their hiding place for literally tons on research documents pertaining to the rocket and supersonic flight."</blockquote>

It seems Von Kármán was wrong about both the date and the function. There was only one Chicherin on the Russian political scene at that time. Kerensky's minister of education was [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Manuilov A. A. Manuilov], who was in no position to convince the Germans about anything as the two nations were at war while the Kerensky government was in office. (In fact, German rocket research began in earnest only after 1929, when Hermann Oberth published ''Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen''.) On the other hand, Georgy Chicherin, an aristocrat by birth and a lover of German culture, was an ideal diplomatic partner for German foreign ministers Von Brockdorff-Rantzau, Rathenau, and Stresemann.

"Vaslav" is obviously taken from Nijinsky's first name. There is no such Russian name as Vaslav. Originally it was Vatslav but the affricate [ts] was smoothed to [s], perhaps because it was easier for the French to pronounce.

It's likely that the following Frank W. Tchitcherine the subject of the above biographical sketch is the source of the character's surname. The Tchitcherines were active in Westport CT social circles. It's quite possible that Pynchon was aware of him. The following is from [http://www.achilles.org/ftp/annual/2005.pdf http://www.achilles.org/ftp/annual/2005.pdf]

<blockquote>
Frank Wirtheim Tchitcherine was born in Paris in 1907. His father, F.H. Wirtheim, had been a lion tamer, and it is tempting to conjecture that he was not entirely successful in his profession, for Frank’s mother, Clementine de Vere, a ‘performer’ subsequently remarried Prince Vladimir Titcherine. Having been duly adopted by his royal stepfather, Frank was educated at Brighton College, before studying at Corpus, Cambridge, from 1927 to 1929. As well as winning the 440y in the Varsity Match of 1929, he had also competed in the same event in 1928. He competed for Achilles in several major athletics meetings in the UK and Europe in 1929, and was part of the combined Oxford and Cambridge team which travelled to America that summer for matches against Harvard & Yale (he placed 2nd in the 440y on 13.7.1929) Princeton & Cornell, and Canadian universities. His best performance ever was 49.4 (or perhaps 49 4/5) seconds for 440y, winning for Achilles v Berliner and Deutsche Sports Clubs at Stamford Bridge on 20 May 1929 (see photo – Roger Leigh Wood was 2nd). Achilles lost track of Frank Tchitcherine, but we learn that he was based in Paris till about 1937, married an Englishwoman from Wimbledon, Sheila Ballingal, served with the US Army during the 2nd World War, described himself as a ‘self-employed consultant’ and died in Connecticut in 1984. [http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewtopic.php?topic=226303&forum=220]</blockquote>

[[File:Tchitcherine.jpg|thumb|left|200px]]In October 2013, a book formerly owned both by Frank W. Tchitcherine and Hermann Goering ''Combustion Flames & Explosions of Gases'' by Lewis & von Elbe was offered for sale on eBay.

290.21 '''Schattensaft''' 
German: shadow juice

==Page 293==
293.15
'''I was voted the Sweetheart of 3/Art. Abt. (mot) 485''' 
Contrary to what Weisenburger claims in his Companion, there ''was'' such a unit. In fact, their job was launching V2s. Under the supervision on SS-Gruppenführer Kammler, Division z. V. (zur Vergeltung) was set up for launching A4 rockets [http://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/Waffen/V2.htm]. Within the Division, Artillerie-Abteilung (motorisiert) 485 was part of Gruppe Nord, together with SS-Werfer-Batterie 500. The Abteilung (batalion) was transformed into a regiment in August 1944. While launching units 1 and 2 were in the Hague area, 3/Art. Abt. (mot) 485 was stationed in Western Germany, with targets in France and Belgium.

293.17
'''Have you been up to the Broken yet?''' 
When asked if she were a witch, Geli makes reference to the Brocken, a mountain in northern Germany which Goethe describes in Faust as the center of revelry for witches on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walpurgis_Night Walpurgisnacht]. This may again be a reference to Pynchon’s Cornell teacher Vladimir Nabokov and his book Pale Fire. In that book Nabokov indirectly (and humorously) references the Broken when Kinbote talks of "an anthology of poets and a brocken of their wives" as a way of comparing Sybil Shade to a witch. Interestingly, Blodgett Waxwing is mentioned again less than a page later. (See [[Pages_244-249#Page_246|246.35]] for discussion of Nabokov and "waxwing".)

==Page 294==
'''294.11 Ge-li, Ge-li, Ge-li''' 
Although often evoked by mimics, Cary Grant never actually said "Ju-dy, Ju-dy, Ju-dy." In the 1939 film ''Only Angels Have Wings'' he did say "Oh, Judy" and "Yes, Judy" to Rita Hayworth's character, and in 1938's ''Bringing Up Baby'' he says "Susan, Susan, Susan".

'''294.20-21 Thanx for the info, and a tip of the Scuffling hat to ya''' 
Slothrop copies the signoff to Jimmy Hatlo’s comic strip "They’ll Do It Every Time," which was based on ideas from readers. These contributors were typically acknowledged with the words, "Thanx, and a tip of the Hatlo hat to..."

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Pages 60-71

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==Page 61==
61.19 '''Sodium Amytal''' 
Also known as "truth serum", Amobarbital is a drug that is a barbiturate derivative. It has sedative-hypnotic and analgesic properties. It is a white crystalline powder with no odor and a slightly bitter taste. It was first synthesized in Germany in 1923. If amobarbital is taken for extended periods of time, physical and psychological dependence can develop.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_amytal]

61.25 '''Got a hardon in my fist...''' 
This song goes right along with the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird," starting with the "Pack up all my cares and woe..." refrain that, in this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO6PpD-tRLU YouTube], begins at about 0:52.

[[Image:Ruptured_Duck.jpeg|thumb|125px|Ruptured duck|right]]61.30 '''"ruptured duck"''' 
The sarcastic nickname for a lapel pin issued at honorable discharge from the US armed forces in WWII, depicting a screaming eagle inside a wreath. "Ruptured" = herniated.

==Page 62==
62.05 '''Roxbury''' 
The town of Roxbury was founded in 1630 by the author's ancestor William Pynchon, and is now a neighborhood of Boston, MA. It had been an immigrant neighborhood for generations before African-Americans began to migrate from the South after WWI. While writing GR, Pynchon would certainly have been aware of rioting there at the time of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxbury,_Boston]

==Page 63==
63.03 '''Roseland Ballroom''' 
Not the better-known Roseland Ballroom in New York City, but the one on Massachusetts Avenue in Roxbury. "The stretch of Mass. Ave. between Huntington and Columbus was, by the late ’40s, Boston’s answer to 52nd Street in Manhattan -— with not only the Roseland, but the Savoy Café, the Hi-Hat, Wally’s, and a handful of smaller clubs."[http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/the-shape-of-jazz-that-was/]

63.05 '''Moxie''' 
One of the first mass-produced carbonated soft drinks in the United States. In its advertising, it used “Make Mine Moxie!” advertising jingles, the slogan “Just Make It Moxie for Mine”, and a "Moxie Man" logo. Uncapitalized, "moxie" became slang for energy and daring. The brand suffered a significant decline in sales during the 1930s.

63.22 '''Red, the Negro shoeshine boy''' 
Stating the obvious, Red is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcom_X#_note-timeline Malcolm X], whose nickname "Red" referred to his hair color -- a dark cinnamon brown. In February 1941 Malcolm moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, worked a variety of jobs including shoeshine and became involved in Boston's "underworld fringe," pimping among other things. [http://www.baystate-banner.com/archives/stories/2006/02/021606-03.htm]

63.32-37 '''"Yardbird" Parker is finding out [ . . . ]''' 
Refers to jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Correspondent Igor Zabel offers the following addition to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]]'s note on this passage:
"On one of Parker's CDs (Swedish Schnapps +), I found the passage which was quoted by [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] after Max Harrison, but slightly different, and it is interesting because Parker directly mentions Cherokee: 'Well, that night, I was working over 'Cherokee' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.' The quotation is taken from 'Hear Me Talkin' To Ya'."

==Page 64==

64.19 '''"'Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!'"''' 
This homoerotic scene seems based on some facts. It is known that Malcolm X prostituted himself for money and according to Bruce Perry's biography, ''Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America'' (Station Hill, New York, 1991) he had various homosexual liaisons throughout his life. Interestingly, Malcolm worked as a butler to a wealthy Boston bachelor, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1486997,00.html William Paul Lennon]. According to Malcolm's sidekick Malcolm Jarvis, he [Malcolm] was paid to sprinkle Lennon with talcum powder and bring him to orgasm.

64.24 '''"any of those Sheiks in the drawer?"''' 
Sheik was a popular brand of condom. "Other brands evoked an exotic, Far Eastern world of harems and belly-dancers that automatically triggered sex in many adult minds... Giant [firm]s like Julius Schmid, who made Ramses and Sheiks..." [http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/getting-it-on-the-covert-history-of-the-american-condom/']

Hotel bellboys and washroom attendants could often sell these accessories as well as arranging contacts with amiable women ("another luck-changin' phone number there, Red..?").

64.30 '''Red Malcolm the Unthinkable Nihilist''' 
At this depth in the American dream, fears of ideology, race, and class are indistinguishable: after all, a Harvard man in an Arrow shirt is about to be anally gang-raped by Negroes while jazzmen above set fire to a song about love for a Cherokee maiden...

==Page 65==
65.09 '''Burma-Shave signs''' 
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, sequential highway billboard signs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave_signs]

65.15 '''"Gobbler" Biddle''' 
The Biddles are one of the leading families of Philadelphia, who sometimes vacationed in the Berkshires. Specifically, the "Gobbler" could be Nicholas Biddle (Harvard, 1944). 
Interestingly [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Beverly_Biddle Francis B. Biddle] (Harvard College 1909, Harvard Law 1911) was US Attorney General (1941-1945) at this time. FBB was responsible for directing the FBI to arrest "enemy aliens" leading to Japanese-American internment camps; served as the primary judge during the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal; and authored of ''The Fear of Freedom'' and other works.

65.16 '''Fu’s Folly in Cambridge''' 
Although, as [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] notes, the character is named for Fu Manchu (who is an important reference for Pointsman later in the novel), it should be recalled that there was also a "Fu" who was a member of the Whole Sick Crew in ''V.''

Resembles the old Young & Yee Restaurant (now closed) at 27 Church Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, which for over 40 years slopped greasy chop suey. An anachronism to the novel's time period, yes, but perhaps an inspiration to the author.

65.33 '''Jack Kennedy''' 
JFK (whose father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., was US Ambassador to the UK in 1938-1940) is said to be in Slothrop's Harvard class. Estimating, Slothrop was born ca 1917-18 and entered Harvard in 1936, the year of Harvard's tricentennial.So both were in their mid-20s, Kennedy a PT boat commander in the Pacific, during the action in ''GR''. The poignant "might Jack have kept it [the harmonica] from falling, violated gravity somehow?... yes it seems Jack might have" can be read as a retrodiction from the Vietnam War and urban-riot years of GR's composition: some believed that American life would not have taken its darker turn had Kennedy not been assassinated in November 1963.

Contrary to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]], Kennedy’s first book was titled '''''Why''' England Slept'' (not "When") [Corrected in 2nd edition] 

==Page 66==
66.39 '''Capehart''' 
The [http://www.myvintagetv.com/capehart.htm Capehart] automatic phonograph with a turn-over mechanism was the epitome of luxury phonographs, technical excellence and supreme electronics in the 1930s and 40s.

==Page 67==
67.32 '''Red Devil Lye in his hair''' 
Lye (sodium hydroxide) was an ingredient in home-made congolene or "conk" hair-straightening mixtures.

67.34-35 '''Not "archetypal" westwardman, but the only 
An explicit nod to psychologist Carl Jung, and beyond him to the Platonic strain in philosophy: that behind all the multiplicity, variety and changing detail of daylit life, there are (in our minds and/or metaphysical reality) singular, unchanging forms: in this case, the primal explorer-mountain man-cowboy-gunfighter hero.

Pynchon also works this trope in the other direction whenever he assimilates a character to archetypes in pop culture (often film), as when Jessica gave Roger "her Fay Wray look"(57) and Roger played the drooling Dirty Old Man (59).

==Page 68==

68.01 '''Half an Ark’s better than none.''' 
For Crutchfield, there is only '''one''' of everything, as opposed to two of every animal on Noah’s (whole) Ark. (And how much use is half an Ark in a flood, anyway?)

68.13 '''Red River Valley''' 
Original lyrics: 
From this valley they say you are going 
We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile 
For they say you are taking the sunshine 
That has brightened our pathways awhile 

Come and sit by my side, if you love me 
Do not hasten to bid me adieu 
Just remember the Red River Valley 
And the cowboy who loved you so true

==Page 69==

69.02 '''''terre mauvais''''' 
French "terre mauvaise" - the "badlands". A rare case of TRP misspelling a foreign word.

69.14 '''a bandana of the regulation magenta and green''' 
The coal-tar derived colors of organic chemistry that resonate throughout the novel. 
The visual clash between these colours appears elsewhere - 'A bit of lime green in with your rose' 12
Pynchon seems to associate positive things with these colors - see ''Against the Day'' particularly - as he does with bandanas. A-and bananas. For more on [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Coloring_Gravity%27s_Rainbow colors]....

69.16 '''Rancho Peligroso''' 
"Dangerous Ranch": evokes the Siege Perilous of the Arthurian Grail legend as well as ''Rancho Notorious'', a 1952 Western directed by Fritz Lang and starring Marlene Dietrich. See note at [[V321.06-07]]

69.27 '''callipygian rondure''' 
[http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cal3.htm callipygian] -- having shapely buttocks, originally used in conjunction with the noted statue of Aphrodite (which is itself a play on "Afro" and "Venus"), the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Kallipygos "Venus Kallipygos"]. This language parodies the typology of "scientific" racism from the late 19th and ealy 20th century.

rondure -- a circular or gracefully rounded object.

69.32 '''Toro Rojo''' 
Red Bull

==Page 70==
70.15 '''One ''mestiza''. One ''criolla''''' 
Mestiza: woman of mixed race, especially mixed of European and Native American ancestry. 
Criolla: woman of "pure" Spanish ancestry, but born in the New World.

70.29 '''the Ardennes''' 
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian (Devonian) Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France... The strategic position of the Ardennes has made it a battleground for European powers for centuries... in both World War I and World War II, Germany successfully gambled on making a rapid passage through the Ardennes to attack a relatively lightly defended part of France. The Ardennes was the site of three major battles during the world wars – the Battle of the Ardennes in World War I, and the Battle of France and Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Many of the towns of the region were badly damaged during the two world wars. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardennes]

70.32 '''Newton Upper Falls''' 
Newton Upper Falls is a village situated on the east bank of the Charles River in the city of Newton, Massachusetts, in the United States. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_Upper_Falls,_Massachusetts]

70.37 '''Ar'tics''' 
A regional name, dropping the first "c" in "Arctic," for metal-buckled rubber galoshes.[http://www.leroyhistoricalsociety.org/assets/011214---artics.pdf]

==Page 71==
71.02 '''Beacon Street''' 
Beacon Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and several of its western suburbs. Beacon Street in Boston, Brookline, Brighton, and Newton is not to be confused with the Beacon Street in nearby Somerville, or others elsewhere. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Street]

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==Page 61==
61.19 '''Sodium Amytal''' 
Also known as "truth serum", Amobarbital is a drug that is a barbiturate derivative. It has sedative-hypnotic and analgesic properties. It is a white crystalline powder with no odor and a slightly bitter taste. It was first synthesized in Germany in 1923. If amobarbital is taken for extended periods of time, physical and psychological dependence can develop.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_amytal]

61.25 '''Got a hardon in my fist...''' 
This song goes right along with the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird," starting with the "Pack up all my cares and woe..." refrain that, in this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO6PpD-tRLU YouTube], begins at about 0:52.

[[Image:Ruptured_Duck.jpeg|thumb|125px|Ruptured duck|right]]61.30 '''"ruptured duck"''' 
The sarcastic nickname for a lapel pin issued at honorable discharge from the US armed forces in WWII, depicting a screaming eagle inside a wreath. "Ruptured" = herniated.

==Page 62==
62.05 '''Roxbury''' 
The town of Roxbury was founded in 1630 by the author's ancestor William Pynchon, and is now a neighborhood of Boston, MA. It had been an immigrant neighborhood for generations before African-Americans began to migrate from the South after WWI. While writing GR, Pynchon would certainly have been aware of rioting there at the time of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxbury,_Boston]

==Page 63==
63.03 '''Roseland Ballroom''' 
Not the better-known Roseland Ballroom in New York City, but the one on Massachusetts Avenue in Roxbury. "The stretch of Mass. Ave. between Huntington and Columbus was, by the late ’40s, Boston’s answer to 52nd Street in Manhattan -— with not only the Roseland, but the Savoy Café, the Hi-Hat, Wally’s, and a handful of smaller clubs."[http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/the-shape-of-jazz-that-was/]

63.05 '''Moxie''' 
One of the first mass-produced carbonated soft drinks in the United States. In its advertising, it used “Make Mine Moxie!” advertising jingles, the slogan “Just Make It Moxie for Mine”, and a "Moxie Man" logo. Uncapitalized, "moxie" became slang for energy and daring. The brand suffered a significant decline in sales during the 1930s.

63.22 '''Red, the Negro shoeshine boy''' 
Stating the obvious, Red is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcom_X#_note-timeline Malcolm X], whose nickname "Red" referred to his hair color -- a dark cinnamon brown. In February 1941 Malcolm moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, worked a variety of jobs including shoeshine and became involved in Boston's "underworld fringe," pimping among other things. [http://www.baystate-banner.com/archives/stories/2006/02/021606-03.htm]

63.32-37 '''"Yardbird" Parker is finding out [ . . . ]''' 
Refers to jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Correspondent Igor Zabel offers the following addition to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]]'s note on this passage:
"On one of Parker's CDs (Swedish Schnapps +), I found the passage which was quoted by [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] after Max Harrison, but slightly different, and it is interesting because Parker directly mentions Cherokee: 'Well, that night, I was working over 'Cherokee' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.' The quotation is taken from 'Hear Me Talkin' To Ya'."

==Page 64==

64.19 '''"'Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!'"''' 
This homoerotic scene seems based on some facts. It is known that Malcolm X prostituted himself for money and according to Bruce Perry's biography, ''Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America'' (Station Hill, New York, 1991) he had various homosexual liaisons throughout his life. Interestingly, Malcolm worked as a butler to a wealthy Boston bachelor, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1486997,00.html William Paul Lennon]. According to Malcolm's sidekick Malcolm Jarvis, he [Malcolm] was paid to sprinkle Lennon with talcum powder and bring him to orgasm.

64.24 '''"any of those Sheiks in the drawer?"''' 
Sheik was a popular brand of condom. "Other brands evoked an exotic, Far Eastern world of harems and belly-dancers that automatically triggered sex in many adult minds... Giant [firm]s like Julius Schmid, who made Ramses and Sheiks..." [http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/getting-it-on-the-covert-history-of-the-american-condom/']

Hotel bellboys and washroom attendants could often sell these accessories as well as arranging contacts with amiable women ("another luck-changin' phone number there, Red..?").

64.30 '''Red Malcolm the Unthinkable Nihilist''' 
At this depth in the American dream, fears of ideology, race, and class are indistinguishable: after all, a Harvard man in an Arrow shirt is about to be anally gang-raped by Negroes while jazzmen above set fire to a song about love for a Cherokee maiden...

==Page 65==
65.09 '''Burma-Shave signs''' 
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, sequential highway billboard signs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave_signs]

65.15 '''"Gobbler" Biddle''' 
The Biddles are one of the leading families of Philadelphia, who sometimes vacationed in the Berkshires. Specifically, the "Gobbler" could be Nicholas Biddle (Harvard, 1944). 
Interestingly [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Beverly_Biddle Francis B. Biddle] (Harvard College 1909, Harvard Law 1911) was US Attorney General (1941-1945) at this time. FBB was responsible for directing the FBI to arrest "enemy aliens" leading to Japanese-American internment camps; served as the primary judge during the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal; and authored of ''The Fear of Freedom'' and other works.

65.16 '''Fu’s Folly in Cambridge''' 
Although, as [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] notes, the character is named for Fu Manchu (who is an important reference for Pointsman later in the novel), it should be recalled that there was also a "Fu" who was a member of the Whole Sick Crew in ''V.''

Resembles the old Young & Yee Restaurant (now closed) at 27 Church Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, which for over 40 years slopped greasy chop suey. An anachronism to the novel's time period, yes, but perhaps an inspiration to the author.

65.33 '''Jack Kennedy''' 
JFK (whose father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., was US Ambassador to the UK in 1938-1940) is said to be in Slothrop's Harvard class. Estimating, Slothrop was born ca 1917-18 and entered Harvard in 1936, the year of Harvard's tricentennial.So both were in their mid-20s, Kennedy a PT boat commander in the Pacific, during the action in ''GR''. The poignant "might Jack have kept it [the harmonica] from falling, violated gravity somehow?... yes it seems Jack might have" can be read as a retrodiction from the Vietnam War and urban-riot years of GR's composition: some believed that American life would not have taken its darker turn had Kennedy not been assassinated in November 1963.

Contrary to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]], Kennedy’s first book was titled '''''Why''' England Slept'' (not "When") [Corrected in 2nd edition] 

==Page 66==
66.39 '''Capehart''' 
The [http://www.myvintagetv.com/capehart.htm Capehart] automatic phonograph with a turn-over mechanism was the epitome of luxury phonographs, technical excellence and supreme electronics in the 1930s and 40s.

==Page 67==
67.32 '''Red Devil Lye in his hair''' 
Lye (sodium hydroxide) was an ind=gredient in home-made congolene or "conk" hair-straightening mixtures.

67.34-35 '''Not "archetypal" westwardman, but the only 
An explicit nod to psychologist Carl Jung, and beyond him to the Platonic strain in philosophy: that behind all the multiplicity, variety and changing detail of daylit life, there are (in our minds and/or metaphysical reality) singular, unchanging forms: in this case, the primal explorer-mountain man-cowboy-gunfighter hero.

Pynchon also works this trope in the other direction whenever he assimilates a character to archetypes in pop culture (often film), as when Jessica gave Roger "her Fay Wray look"(57) and Roger played the drooling Dirty Old Man (59).

==Page 68==

68.01 '''Half an Ark’s better than none.''' 
For Crutchfield, there is only '''one''' of everything, as opposed to two of every animal on Noah’s (whole) Ark. (And how much use is half an Ark in a flood, anyway?)

68.13 '''Red River Valley''' 
Original lyrics: 
From this valley they say you are going 
We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile 
For they say you are taking the sunshine 
That has brightened our pathways awhile 

Come and sit by my side, if you love me 
Do not hasten to bid me adieu 
Just remember the Red River Valley 
And the cowboy who loved you so true

==Page 69==

69.02 '''''terre mauvais''''' 
French "terre mauvaise" - the "badlands". A rare case of TRP misspelling a foreign word.

69.14 '''a bandana of the regulation magenta and green''' 
The coal-tar derived colors of organic chemistry that resonate throughout the novel. 
The visual clash between these colours appears elsewhere - 'A bit of lime green in with your rose' 12
Pynchon seems to associate positive things with these colors - see ''Against the Day'' particularly - as he does with bandanas. A-and bananas. For more on [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Coloring_Gravity%27s_Rainbow colors]....

69.16 '''Rancho Peligroso''' 
"Dangerous Ranch": evokes the Siege Perilous of the Arthurian Grail legend as well as ''Rancho Notorious'', a 1952 Western directed by Fritz Lang and starring Marlene Dietrich. See note at [[V321.06-07]]

69.27 '''callipygian rondure''' 
[http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cal3.htm callipygian] -- having shapely buttocks, originally used in conjunction with the noted statue of Aphrodite (which is itself a play on "Afro" and "Venus"), the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Kallipygos "Venus Kallipygos"]. This language parodies the typology of "scientific" racism from the late 19th and ealy 20th century.

rondure -- a circular or gracefully rounded object.

69.32 '''Toro Rojo''' 
Red Bull

==Page 70==
70.15 '''One ''mestiza''. One ''criolla''''' 
Mestiza: woman of mixed race, especially mixed of European and Native American ancestry. 
Criolla: woman of "pure" Spanish ancestry, but born in the New World.

70.29 '''the Ardennes''' 
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian (Devonian) Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France... The strategic position of the Ardennes has made it a battleground for European powers for centuries... in both World War I and World War II, Germany successfully gambled on making a rapid passage through the Ardennes to attack a relatively lightly defended part of France. The Ardennes was the site of three major battles during the world wars – the Battle of the Ardennes in World War I, and the Battle of France and Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Many of the towns of the region were badly damaged during the two world wars. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardennes]

70.32 '''Newton Upper Falls''' 
Newton Upper Falls is a village situated on the east bank of the Charles River in the city of Newton, Massachusetts, in the United States. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_Upper_Falls,_Massachusetts]

70.37 '''Ar'tics''' 
A regional name, dropping the first "c" in "Arctic," for metal-buckled rubber galoshes.[http://www.leroyhistoricalsociety.org/assets/011214---artics.pdf]

==Page 71==
71.02 '''Beacon Street''' 
Beacon Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and several of its western suburbs. Beacon Street in Boston, Brookline, Brighton, and Newton is not to be confused with the Beacon Street in nearby Somerville, or others elsewhere. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Street]

{{GR PbP}}

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==Page 61==
61.19 '''Sodium Amytal''' 
Also known as "truth serum", Amobarbital is a drug that is a barbiturate derivative. It has sedative-hypnotic and analgesic properties. It is a white crystalline powder with no odor and a slightly bitter taste. It was first synthesized in Germany in 1923. If amobarbital is taken for extended periods of time, physical and psychological dependence can develop.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_amytal]

61.25 '''Got a hardon in my fist...''' 
This song goes right along with the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird," starting with the "Pack up all my cares and woe..." refrain that, in this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO6PpD-tRLU YouTube], begins at about 0:52.

[[Image:Ruptured_Duck.jpeg|thumb|125px|Ruptured duck|right]]61.30 '''"ruptured duck"''' 
The sarcastic nickname for a lapel pin issued at honorable discharge from the US armed forces in WWII, depicting a screaming eagle inside a wreath. "Ruptured" = herniated.

==Page 62==
62.05 '''Roxbury''' 
The town of Roxbury was founded in 1630 by the author's ancestor William Pynchon, and is now a neighborhood of Boston, MA. It had been an immigrant neighborhood for generations before African-Americans began to migrate from the South after WWI. While writing GR, Pynchon would certainly have been aware of rioting there at the time of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxbury,_Boston]

==Page 63==
63.03 '''Roseland Ballroom''' 
Not the better-known Roseland Ballroom in New York City, but the one on Massachusetts Avenue in Roxbury. "The stretch of Mass. Ave. between Huntington and Columbus was, by the late ’40s, Boston’s answer to 52nd Street in Manhattan -— with not only the Roseland, but the Savoy Café, the Hi-Hat, Wally’s, and a handful of smaller clubs."[http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/the-shape-of-jazz-that-was/]

63.05 '''Moxie''' 
One of the first mass-produced carbonated soft drinks in the United States. In its advertising, it used “Make Mine Moxie!” advertising jingles, the slogan “Just Make It Moxie for Mine”, and a "Moxie Man" logo. Uncapitalized, "moxie" became slang for energy and daring. The brand suffered a significant decline in sales during the 1930s.

63.22 '''Red, the Negro shoeshine boy''' 
Stating the obvious, Red is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcom_X#_note-timeline Malcolm X], whose nickname "Red" referred to his hair color -- a dark cinnamon brown. In February 1941 Malcolm moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, worked a variety of jobs including shoeshine and became involved in Boston's "underworld fringe," pimping among other things. [http://www.baystate-banner.com/archives/stories/2006/02/021606-03.htm]

63.32-37 '''"Yardbird" Parker is finding out [ . . . ]''' 
Refers to jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Correspondent Igor Zabel offers the following addition to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]]'s note on this passage:
"On one of Parker's CDs (Swedish Schnapps +), I found the passage which was quoted by [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] after Max Harrison, but slightly different, and it is interesting because Parker directly mentions Cherokee: 'Well, that night, I was working over 'Cherokee' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.' The quotation is taken from 'Hear Me Talkin' To Ya'."

==Page 64==

64.19 '''"'Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!'"''' 
This homoerotic scene seems based on some facts. It is known that Malcolm X prostituted himself for money and according to Bruce Perry's biography, ''Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America'' (Station Hill, New York, 1991) he had various homosexual liaisons throughout his life. Interestingly, Malcolm worked as a butler to a wealthy Boston bachelor, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1486997,00.html William Paul Lennon]. According to Malcolm's sidekick Malcolm Jarvis, he [Malcolm] was paid to sprinkle Lennon with talcum powder and bring him to orgasm.

64.24 '''"any of those Sheiks in the drawer?"''' 
Sheik was a popular brand of condom. "Other brands evoked an exotic, Far Eastern world of harems and belly-dancers that automatically triggered sex in many adult minds... Giant [firm]s like Julius Schmid, who made Ramses and Sheiks..." [http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/getting-it-on-the-covert-history-of-the-american-condom/']

As well as selling accessories, hotel bellboys, shoeshine men and washroom attendants could often arrange
contacts with amiable women ("another luck-changin' phone number there, Red..?")

64.30 '''Red Malcolm the Unthinkable Nihilist''' 
At this depth in the American dream, fears of ideology, race, and class are indistinguishable: after all, a Harvard man in an Arrow shirt is about to be anally gang-raped by Negroes while jazzmen above set fire to a song about love for a Cherokee maiden...

==Page 65==
65.09 '''Burma-Shave signs''' 
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, sequential highway billboard signs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave_signs]

65.15 '''"Gobbler" Biddle''' 
The Biddles are one of the leading families of Philadelphia, who sometimes vacationed in the Berkshires. Specifically, the "Gobbler" could be Nicholas Biddle (Harvard, 1944). 
Interestingly [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Beverly_Biddle Francis B. Biddle] (Harvard College 1909, Harvard Law 1911) was US Attorney General (1941-1945) at this time. FBB was responsible for directing the FBI to arrest "enemy aliens" leading to Japanese-American internment camps; served as the primary judge during the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal; and authored of ''The Fear of Freedom'' and other works.

65.16 '''Fu’s Folly in Cambridge''' 
Although, as [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] notes, the character is named for Fu Manchu (who is an important reference for Pointsman later in the novel), it should be recalled that there was also a "Fu" who was a member of the Whole Sick Crew in ''V.''

Resembles the old Young & Yee Restaurant (now closed) at 27 Church Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, which for over 40 years slopped greasy chop suey. An anachronism to the novel's time period, yes, but perhaps an inspiration to the author.

65.33 '''Jack Kennedy''' 
JFK (whose father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., was US Ambassador to the UK in 1938-1940) is said to be in Slothrop's Harvard class. Estimating, Slothrop was born ca 1917-18 and entered Harvard in 1936, the year of Harvard's tricentennial.So both were in their mid-20s, Kennedy a PT boat commander in the Pacific, during the action in ''GR''. The poignant "might Jack have kept it [the harmonica] from falling, violated gravity somehow?... yes it seems Jack might have" can be read as a retrodiction from the Vietnam War and urban-riot years of GR's composition: some believed that American life would not have taken its darker turn had Kennedy not been assassinated in November 1963.

Contrary to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]], Kennedy’s first book was titled '''''Why''' England Slept'' (not "When") [Corrected in 2nd edition] 

==Page 66==
66.39 '''Capehart''' 
The [http://www.myvintagetv.com/capehart.htm Capehart] automatic phonograph with a turn-over mechanism was the epitome of luxury phonographs, technical excellence and supreme electronics in the 1930s and 40s.

==Page 67==
67.32 '''Red Devil Lye in his hair''' 
Lye (sodium hydroxide) was an ind=gredient in home-made congolene or "conk" hair-straightening mixtures.

67.34-35 '''Not "archetypal" westwardman, but the only 
An explicit nod to psychologist Carl Jung, and beyond him to the Platonic strain in philosophy: that behind all the multiplicity, variety and changing detail of daylit life, there are (in our minds and/or metaphysical reality) singular, unchanging forms: in this case, the primal explorer-mountain man-cowboy-gunfighter hero.

Pynchon also works this trope in the other direction whenever he assimilates a character to archetypes in pop culture (often film), as when Jessica gave Roger "her Fay Wray look"(57) and Roger played the drooling Dirty Old Man (59).

==Page 68==

68.01 '''Half an Ark’s better than none.''' 
For Crutchfield, there is only '''one''' of everything, as opposed to two of every animal on Noah’s (whole) Ark. (And how much use is half an Ark in a flood, anyway?)

68.13 '''Red River Valley''' 
Original lyrics: 
From this valley they say you are going 
We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile 
For they say you are taking the sunshine 
That has brightened our pathways awhile 

Come and sit by my side, if you love me 
Do not hasten to bid me adieu 
Just remember the Red River Valley 
And the cowboy who loved you so true

==Page 69==

69.02 '''''terre mauvais''''' 
French "terre mauvaise" - the "badlands". A rare case of TRP misspelling a foreign word.

69.14 '''a bandana of the regulation magenta and green''' 
The coal-tar derived colors of organic chemistry that resonate throughout the novel. 
The visual clash between these colours appears elsewhere - 'A bit of lime green in with your rose' 12
Pynchon seems to associate positive things with these colors - see ''Against the Day'' particularly - as he does with bandanas. A-and bananas. For more on [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Coloring_Gravity%27s_Rainbow colors]....

69.16 '''Rancho Peligroso''' 
"Dangerous Ranch": evokes the Siege Perilous of the Arthurian Grail legend as well as ''Rancho Notorious'', a 1952 Western directed by Fritz Lang and starring Marlene Dietrich. See note at [[V321.06-07]]

69.27 '''callipygian rondure''' 
[http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cal3.htm callipygian] -- having shapely buttocks, originally used in conjunction with the noted statue of Aphrodite (which is itself a play on "Afro" and "Venus"), the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Kallipygos "Venus Kallipygos"]. This language parodies the typology of "scientific" racism from the late 19th and ealy 20th century.

rondure -- a circular or gracefully rounded object.

69.32 '''Toro Rojo''' 
Red Bull

==Page 70==
70.15 '''One ''mestiza''. One ''criolla''''' 
Mestiza: woman of mixed race, especially mixed of European and Native American ancestry. 
Criolla: woman of "pure" Spanish ancestry, but born in the New World.

70.29 '''the Ardennes''' 
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian (Devonian) Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France... The strategic position of the Ardennes has made it a battleground for European powers for centuries... in both World War I and World War II, Germany successfully gambled on making a rapid passage through the Ardennes to attack a relatively lightly defended part of France. The Ardennes was the site of three major battles during the world wars – the Battle of the Ardennes in World War I, and the Battle of France and Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Many of the towns of the region were badly damaged during the two world wars. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardennes]

70.32 '''Newton Upper Falls''' 
Newton Upper Falls is a village situated on the east bank of the Charles River in the city of Newton, Massachusetts, in the United States. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_Upper_Falls,_Massachusetts]

70.37 '''Ar'tics''' 
A regional name, dropping the first "c" in "Arctic," for metal-buckled rubber galoshes.[http://www.leroyhistoricalsociety.org/assets/011214---artics.pdf]

==Page 71==
71.02 '''Beacon Street''' 
Beacon Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and several of its western suburbs. Beacon Street in Boston, Brookline, Brighton, and Newton is not to be confused with the Beacon Street in nearby Somerville, or others elsewhere. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Street]

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==Page 71==
[[image:tyrosine.jpg|thumb|100px|Tyrosine Molecule|right]]71.15 '''Kryptosam''' 
Correspondent Matthias Bauer notes that "sam" derives from the German "samen," for "seed." "Krypto," of course, derives from the same word as "cryptography," the study of codes. [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] claims that the "tyrosine" from which kryptosam is supposed to derive is "undoubtedly fictional," but it is in fact an amino acid, which can convert to melanin, just as Jamf's note indicates (although it is unclear whether semen will in fact act as the catalytic agent). 

Tyrosine is found in casein, and the name derives from the Greek, ''tyros'' meaning cheese. 

Significant properties of note for Tyrosine: 
- Tyrosine functions as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol phenol], which Nazi doctors used in injections for rapid executions. Phenols were used extensively at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 
- Tyrosine occurs in proteins that are part of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_transduction signal transduction] process -- a biological processes that converts one kind of signal or stimulus into another -- cell signalling.

The SBB (SIS/MI6 forerunner) allegedly discovered that semen, if not a catalyst, did at least make a good invisible ink.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semen#Semen_in_espionage Semen in espionage],
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansfield_Smith-Cumming Mansfield Smith Cuming], and
[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-spymaster-who-was-stranger-than-fiction-737707.html Spymaster]

71.32 '''GEHEIME KOMMANDOSACHE''' 
Secret Air Command

71.33 '''"... von Bayros or Beardsley."''' 
Marquis Franz von Bayros and Aubrey Beardsley were renowned for their erotic sketches in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Learn more about [http://beardsley.artpassions.net/ Beardsley] and [http://www.all-art.org/er_in_art/07.html von Bayros]

71.36 '''"... a De Mille set really..."''' 
This is open to skepticism, but I believe he's referring to Cecil B. DeMille, who was famous for his construction of grandiose sets, particularly "The City of the Pharaoh," the largest set in film history.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_B._DeMille Cecil B. Demille] at Wikipedia.

71.39 '''"corselette'''" 
Type of underwear that combines a bra and a girdle. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corselet Wiki]

==Page 72==
72.17 '''nacreous''' 
Nacre (the innr surface of seashells) appears iridescent because the thickness of its microscopic aragonite platelets is close to the wavelength of visible light. This results in constructive and destructive interference of different wavelengths of light, resulting in different colors of light being reflected at different viewing angles. [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nacreous]

72.27 '''...Wuotan and his mad army''' 
Wuotan is the Old High German spelling of Odin; the 'mad army' is mentioned again at [[Pages 72-83#Page 75|75.13]] in German as ''Wütende Heer''. It is interesting that Pynchon chose to translate ''wütende'' as 'mad' rather than, say, 'angry' or 'furious', thus allowing the reader to take 'mad' to mean 'insane'.
On the other hand, the disease rabies is called "Tollwut" in German, so "Wut" may not ring as a totally sane kind of rage. Historians and Nordic legends attributed a behavior called "bärsärkar-gång" (Swedish, same root of the English expression "going beserk") to Odin-worshiping proto-Lombard fighters. Rage, variously tied to willful adrenalin overload, traumatic stress, fly-agaric, or godly intervention, gave them superhuman strength but clouded their judgment and made them dangerous to friend and foe alike.

72.32 '''Was tust du für die Front, für den Sieg? Was has du heute für Deutschland getan?''' 
What are you doing for the front, for the victory? What have you done for Germany today? 
Also see [http://www.thomaspynchon.com/gravitys-rainbow/extra/german.html ThomasPynchon.com] for lots of ''GR'' translations.
{{GR PbP}}

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==Page 61==
61.19 '''Sodium Amytal''' 
Also known as "truth serum", Amobarbital is a drug that is a barbiturate derivative. It has sedative-hypnotic and analgesic properties. It is a white crystalline powder with no odor and a slightly bitter taste. It was first synthesized in Germany in 1923. If amobarbital is taken for extended periods of time, physical and psychological dependence can develop.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_amytal]

61.25 '''Got a hardon in my fist...''' 
This song goes right along with the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird," starting with the "Pack up all my cares and woe..." refrain that, in this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO6PpD-tRLU YouTube], begins at about 0:52.

[[Image:Ruptured_Duck.jpeg|thumb|125px|Ruptured duck|right]]61.30 '''"ruptured duck"''' 
The sarcastic nickname for a lapel pin issued at honorable discharge from the US armed forces in WWII, depicting a screaming eagle inside a wreath. "Ruptured" = herniated.

==Page 62==
62.05 '''Roxbury''' 
The town of Roxbury was founded in 1630 by the author's ancestor William Pynchon, and is now a neighborhood of Boston, MA. It had been an immigrant neighborhood for generations before African-Americans began to migrate from the South after WWI. While writing GR, Pynchon would certainly have been aware of rioting there at the time of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxbury,_Boston]

==Page 63==
63.03 '''Roseland Ballroom''' 
Not the better-known Roseland Ballroom in New York City, but the one on Massachusetts Avenue in Roxbury. "The stretch of Mass. Ave. between Huntington and Columbus was, by the late ’40s, Boston’s answer to 52nd Street in Manhattan -— with not only the Roseland, but the Savoy Café, the Hi-Hat, Wally’s, and a handful of smaller clubs."[http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/the-shape-of-jazz-that-was/]

63.05 '''Moxie''' 
One of the first mass-produced carbonated soft drinks in the United States. In its advertising, it used “Make Mine Moxie!” advertising jingles, the slogan “Just Make It Moxie for Mine”, and a "Moxie Man" logo. Uncapitalized, "moxie" became slang for energy and daring. The brand suffered a significant decline in sales during the 1930s.

63.22 '''Red, the Negro shoeshine boy''' 
Stating the obvious, Red is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcom_X#_note-timeline Malcolm X], whose nickname "Red" referred to his hair color -- a dark cinnamon brown. In February 1941 Malcolm moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, worked a variety of jobs including shoeshine and became involved in Boston's "underworld fringe," pimping among other things. [http://www.baystate-banner.com/archives/stories/2006/02/021606-03.htm]

63.32-37 '''"Yardbird" Parker is finding out [ . . . ]''' 
Refers to jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Correspondent Igor Zabel offers the following addition to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]]'s note on this passage:
"On one of Parker's CDs (Swedish Schnapps +), I found the passage which was quoted by [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] after Max Harrison, but slightly different, and it is interesting because Parker directly mentions Cherokee: 'Well, that night, I was working over 'Cherokee' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.' The quotation is taken from 'Hear Me Talkin' To Ya'."

==Page 64==

64.19 '''"'Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!'"''' 
This homoerotic scene seems based on some facts. It is known that Malcolm X prostituted himself for money and according to Bruce Perry's biography, ''Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America'' (Station Hill, New York, 1991) he had various homosexual liaisons throughout his life. Interestingly, Malcolm worked as a butler to a wealthy Boston bachelor, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1486997,00.html William Paul Lennon]. According to Malcolm's sidekick Malcolm Jarvis, he [Malcolm] was paid to sprinkle Lennon with talcum powder and bring him to orgasm.

64.24 '''"any of those Sheiks in the drawer?"''' 
Sheik was a popular brand of condom. "Other brands evoked an exotic, Far Eastern world of harems and belly-dancers that automatically triggered sex in many adult minds... Giant [firm]s like Julius Schmid, who made Ramses and Sheiks..." [http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/getting-it-on-the-covert-history-of-the-american-condom/']

As well as selling accessories, hotel bellboys, shoeshine men and washroom attendants could often arrange
contacts with amiable women ("another luck-changin' phone number there, Red..?")

64.30 '''Red Malcolm the Unthinkable Nihilist''' 
At this depth in the American dream, fears of ideology, race, and class are indistinguishable: after all, a Harvard man in an Arrow shirt is about to be anally gang-raped by Negroes while jazzmen above set fire to a song about love for a Cherokee maiden...

==Page 65==
65.09 '''Burma-Shave signs''' 
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, sequential highway billboard signs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave_signs]

65.15 '''"Gobbler" Biddle''' 
The Biddles are one of the leading families of Philadelphia, who sometimes vacationed in the Berkshires. Specifically, the "Gobbler" could be Nicholas Biddle (Harvard, 1944). 
Interestingly [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Beverly_Biddle Francis B. Biddle] (Harvard College 1909, Harvard Law 1911) was US Attorney General (1941-1945) at this time. FBB was responsible for directing the FBI to arrest "enemy aliens" leading to Japanese-American internment camps; served as the primary judge during the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal; and authored of ''The Fear of Freedom'' and other works.

65.16 '''Fu’s Folly in Cambridge''' 
Although, as [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] notes, the character is named for Fu Manchu (who is an important reference for Pointsman later in the novel), it should be recalled that there was also a "Fu" who was a member of the Whole Sick Crew in ''V.''

Resembles the old Young & Yee Restaurant (now closed) at 27 Church Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, which for over 40 years slopped greasy chop suey. An anachronism to the novel's time period, yes, but perhaps an inspiration to the author.

65.33 '''Jack Kennedy''' 
JFK (whose father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., was US Ambassador to the UK in 1938-1940) is said to be in Slothrop's Harvard class. Estimating, Slothrop was born ca 1917-18 and entered Harvard in 1936, the year of Harvard's tricentennial.So both were in their mid-20s, Kennedy a PT boat commander in the Pacific, during the action in ''GR''. The poignant "might Jack have kept it [the harmonica] from falling, violated gravity somehow?... yes it seems Jack might have" can be read as a retrodiction from the Vietnam War and urban-riot years of GR's composition: some believed that American life would not have taken its darker turn had Kennedy not been assassinated in November 1963.

Contrary to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]], Kennedy’s first book was titled '''''Why''' England Slept'' (not "When") [Corrected in 2nd edition] 

==Page 66==
66.39 '''Capehart''' 
The [http://www.myvintagetv.com/capehart.htm Capehart] automatic phonograph with a turn-over mechanism was the epitome of luxury phonographs, technical excellence and supreme electronics in the 1930s and 40s.

==Page 67==
67.32 '''Red Devil Lye in his hair''' 
Lye (sodium hydroxide) was an ind=gredient in home-made congolene or "conk" hair-straightening mixtures.

67.34-35 '''Not "archetypal" westwardman, but the only 
An explicit nod to psychologist Carl Jung, and beyond him to the Platonic strain in philosophy: that behind all the multiplicity, variety and changing detail of daylit life, there are (in our minds and/or metaphysical reality) singular, unchanging forms: in this case, the primal explorer-mountain man-cowboy-gunfighter hero.

Pynchon also works this trope in the other direction whenever he assimilates a character to archetypes in pop culture (often film), as when Jessica gave Roger "her Fay Wray look"(57) and Roger played the drooling Dirty Old Man (59).

==Page 68==

68.01 '''Half an Ark’s better than none.''' 
For Crutchfield, there is only '''one''' of everything, as opposed to two of every animal on Noah’s (whole) Ark. (And how much use is half an Ark in a flood, anyway?)

68.13 '''Red River Valley''' 
Original lyrics: 
From this valley they say you are going 
We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile 
For they say you are taking the sunshine 
That has brightened our pathways awhile 

Come and sit by my side, if you love me 
Do not hasten to bid me adieu 
Just remember the Red River Valley 
And the cowboy who loved you so true

==Page 69==

69.02 '''''terre mauvais''''' 
French "terre mauvaise" - the "badlands". A rare case of TRP misspelling a foreign word.

69.14 '''a bandana of the regulation magenta and green''' 
The coal-tar derived colors of organic chemistry that resonate throughout the novel. 
The visual clash between these colours appears elsewhere - 'A bit of lime green in with your rose' 12
Pynchon seems to associate positive things with these colors - see ''Against the Day'' particularly - as he does with bandanas. A-and bananas. For more on [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Coloring_Gravity%27s_Rainbow colors]....

69.16 '''Rancho Peligroso''' 
"Dangerous Ranch": evokes the Siege Perilous of the Arthurian Grail legend as well as ''Rancho Notorious'', a 1952 Western directed by Fritz Lang and starring Marlene Dietrich. See note at [[V321.06-07]]

69.27 '''callipygian rondure''' 
[http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cal3.htm callipygian] -- having shapely buttocks, originally used in conjunction with the noted statue of Aphrodite (which is itself a play on "Afro" and "Venus"), the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Kallipygos "Venus Kallipygos"]. This language parodies the typology of "scientific" racism from the late 19th and ealy 20th century.

rondure -- a circular or gracefully rounded object.

69.32 '''Toro Rojo''' 
Red Bull

==Page 70==
70.15 '''One ''mestiza''. One ''criolla''''' 
Mestiza: woman of mixed race, especially mixed of European and Native American ancestry. 
Criolla: woman of "pure" Spanish ancestry, but born in the New World.

70.29 '''the Ardennes''' 
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian (Devonian) Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France... The strategic position of the Ardennes has made it a battleground for European powers for centuries... in both World War I and World War II, Germany successfully gambled on making a rapid passage through the Ardennes to attack a relatively lightly defended part of France. The Ardennes was the site of three major battles during the world wars – the Battle of the Ardennes in World War I, and the Battle of France and Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Many of the towns of the region were badly damaged during the two world wars. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardennes]

70.32 '''Newton Upper Falls''' 
Newton Upper Falls is a village situated on the east bank of the Charles River in the city of Newton, Massachusetts, in the United States. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_Upper_Falls,_Massachusetts]

70.37 '''Ar'tics''' 
A regional name, dropping the first "c" in "Arctic," for metal-buckled rubber galoshes.[http://www.leroyhistoricalsociety.org/assets/011214---artics.pdf]

==Page 71==
71.02 '''Beacon Street''' 
Beacon Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and several of its western suburbs. Beacon Street in Boston, Brookline, Brighton, and Newton is not to be confused with the Beacon Street in nearby Somerville, or others elsewhere. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Street]

Pages 60-71

2016-04-23T00:21:37Z

Modavis: /* Page 70 */

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 61==
61.19 '''Sodium Amytal''' 
Also known as "truth serum", Amobarbital is a drug that is a barbiturate derivative. It has sedative-hypnotic and analgesic properties. It is a white crystalline powder with no odor and a slightly bitter taste. It was first synthesized in Germany in 1923. If amobarbital is taken for extended periods of time, physical and psychological dependence can develop.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_amytal]

61.25 '''Got a hardon in my fist...''' 
This song goes right along with the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird," starting with the "Pack up all my cares and woe..." refrain that, in this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO6PpD-tRLU YouTube], begins at about 0:52.

[[Image:Ruptured_Duck.jpeg|thumb|125px|Ruptured duck|right]]61.30 '''"ruptured duck"''' 
The sarcastic nickname for a lapel pin issued at honorable discharge from the US armed forces in WWII, depicting a screaming eagle inside a wreath. "Ruptured" = herniated.

==Page 62==
62.05 '''Roxbury''' 
The town of Roxbury was founded in 1630 by the author's ancestor William Pynchon, and is now a neighborhood of Boston, MA. It had been an immigrant neighborhood for generations before African-Americans began to migrate from the South after WWI. While writing GR, Pynchon would certainly have been aware of rioting there at the time of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxbury,_Boston]

==Page 63==
63.03 '''Roseland Ballroom''' 
Not the better-known Roseland Ballroom in New York City, but the one on Massachusetts Avenue in Roxbury. "The stretch of Mass. Ave. between Huntington and Columbus was, by the late ’40s, Boston’s answer to 52nd Street in Manhattan -— with not only the Roseland, but the Savoy Café, the Hi-Hat, Wally’s, and a handful of smaller clubs."[http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/the-shape-of-jazz-that-was/]

63.05 '''Moxie''' 
One of the first mass-produced carbonated soft drinks in the United States. In its advertising, it used “Make Mine Moxie!” advertising jingles, the slogan “Just Make It Moxie for Mine”, and a "Moxie Man" logo. Uncapitalized, "moxie" became slang for energy and daring. The brand suffered a significant decline in sales during the 1930s.

63.22 '''Red, the Negro shoeshine boy''' 
Stating the obvious, Red is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcom_X#_note-timeline Malcolm X], whose nickname "Red" referred to his hair color -- a dark cinnamon brown. In February 1941 Malcolm moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, worked a variety of jobs including shoeshine and became involved in Boston's "underworld fringe," pimping among other things. [http://www.baystate-banner.com/archives/stories/2006/02/021606-03.htm]

63.32-37 '''"Yardbird" Parker is finding out [ . . . ]''' 
Refers to jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Correspondent Igor Zabel offers the following addition to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]]'s note on this passage:
"On one of Parker's CDs (Swedish Schnapps +), I found the passage which was quoted by [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] after Max Harrison, but slightly different, and it is interesting because Parker directly mentions Cherokee: 'Well, that night, I was working over 'Cherokee' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.' The quotation is taken from 'Hear Me Talkin' To Ya'."

==Page 64==

64.19 '''"'Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!'"''' 
This homoerotic scene seems based on some facts. It is known that Malcolm X prostituted himself for money and according to Bruce Perry's biography, ''Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America'' (Station Hill, New York, 1991) he had various homosexual liaisons throughout his life. Interestingly, Malcolm worked as a butler to a wealthy Boston bachelor, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1486997,00.html William Paul Lennon]. According to Malcolm's sidekick Malcolm Jarvis, he [Malcolm] was paid to sprinkle Lennon with talcum powder and bring him to orgasm.

64.24 '''"any of those Sheiks in the drawer?"''' 
Sheik was a popular brand of condom. "Other brands evoked an exotic, Far Eastern world of harems and belly-dancers that automatically triggered sex in many adult minds... Giant [firm]s like Julius Schmid, who made Ramses and Sheiks..." [http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/getting-it-on-the-covert-history-of-the-american-condom/']

As well as selling accessories, hotel bellboys, shoeshine men and washroom attendants could often arrange
contacts with amiable women ("another luck-changin' phone number there, Red..?")

64.30 '''Red Malcolm the Unthinkable Nihilist''' 
At this depth in the American dream, fears of ideology, race, and class are indistinguishable: after all, a Harvard man in an Arrow shirt is about to be anally gang-raped by Negroes while jazzmen above set fire to a song about love for a Cherokee maiden...

==Page 65==
65.09 '''Burma-Shave signs''' 
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, sequential highway billboard signs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave_signs]

65.15 '''"Gobbler" Biddle''' 
The Biddles are one of the leading families of Philadelphia, who sometimes vacationed in the Berkshires. Specifically, the "Gobbler" could be Nicholas Biddle (Harvard, 1944). 
Interestingly [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Beverly_Biddle Francis B. Biddle] (Harvard College 1909, Harvard Law 1911) was US Attorney General (1941-1945) at this time. FBB was responsible for directing the FBI to arrest "enemy aliens" leading to Japanese-American internment camps; served as the primary judge during the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal; and authored of ''The Fear of Freedom'' and other works.

65.16 '''Fu’s Folly in Cambridge''' 
Although, as [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] notes, the character is named for Fu Manchu (who is an important reference for Pointsman later in the novel), it should be recalled that there was also a "Fu" who was a member of the Whole Sick Crew in ''V.''

Resembles the old Young & Yee Restaurant (now closed) at 27 Church Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, which for over 40 years slopped greasy chop suey. An anachronism to the novel's time period, yes, but perhaps an inspiration to the author.

65.33 '''Jack Kennedy''' 
JFK (whose father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., was US Ambassador to the UK in 1938-1940) is said to be in Slothrop's Harvard class. Estimating, Slothrop was born ca 1917-18 and entered Harvard in 1936, the year of Harvard's tricentennial.So both were in their mid-20s, Kennedy a PT boat commander in the Pacific, during the action in ''GR''. The poignant "might Jack have kept it [the harmonica] from falling, violated gravity somehow?... yes it seems Jack might have" can be read as a retrodiction from the Vietnam War and urban-riot years of GR's composition: some believed that American life would not have taken its darker turn had Kennedy not been assassinated in November 1963.

Contrary to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]], Kennedy’s first book was titled '''''Why''' England Slept'' (not "When") [Corrected in 2nd edition] 

==Page 66==
66.39 '''Capehart''' 
The [http://www.myvintagetv.com/capehart.htm Capehart] automatic phonograph with a turn-over mechanism was the epitome of luxury phonographs, technical excellence and supreme electronics in the 1930s and 40s.

==Page 67==
67.32 '''Red Devil Lye in his hair''' 
Lye (sodium hydroxide) was an ind=gredient in home-made congolene or "conk" hair-straightening mixtures.

67.34-35 '''Not "archetypal" westwardman, but the only 
An explicit nod to psychologist Carl Jung, and beyond him to the Platonic strain in philosophy: that behind all the multiplicity, variety and changing detail of daylit life, there are (in our minds and/or metaphysical reality) singular, unchanging forms: in this case, the primal explorer-mountain man-cowboy-gunfighter hero.

Pynchon also works this trope in the other direction whenever he assimilates a character to archetypes in pop culture (often film), as when Jessica gave Roger "her Fay Wray look"(57) and Roger played the drooling Dirty Old Man (59).

==Page 68==

68.01 '''Half an Ark’s better than none.''' 
For Crutchfield, there is only '''one''' of everything, as opposed to two of every animal on Noah’s (whole) Ark. (And how much use is half an Ark in a flood, anyway?)

68.13 '''Red River Valley''' 
Original lyrics: 
From this valley they say you are going 
We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile 
For they say you are taking the sunshine 
That has brightened our pathways awhile 

Come and sit by my side, if you love me 
Do not hasten to bid me adieu 
Just remember the Red River Valley 
And the cowboy who loved you so true

==Page 69==

69.02 '''''terre mauvais''''' 
French "terre mauvaise" - the "badlands". A rare case of TRP misspelling a foreign word.

69.14 '''a bandana of the regulation magenta and green''' 
The coal-tar derived colors of organic chemistry that resonate throughout the novel. 
The visual clash between these colours appears elsewhere - 'A bit of lime green in with your rose' 12
Pynchon seems to associate positive things with these colors - see ''Against the Day'' particularly - as he does with bandanas. A-and bananas. For more on [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Coloring_Gravity%27s_Rainbow colors]....

69.16 '''Rancho Peligroso''' 
"Dangerous Ranch": evokes the Siege Perilous of the Arthurian Grail legend as well as ''Rancho Notorious'', a 1952 Western directed by Fritz Lang and starring Marlene Dietrich. See note at [[V321.06-07]]

69.27 '''callipygian rondure''' 
[http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cal3.htm callipygian] -- having shapely buttocks, originally used in conjunction with the noted statue of Aphrodite (which is itself a play on "Afro" and "Venus"), the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Kallipygos "Venus Kallipygos"]. This language parodies the typology of "scientific" racism from the late 19th and ealy 20th century.

rondure -- a circular or gracefully rounded object.

69.32 '''Toro Rojo''' 
Red Bull

==Page 70==
70.15 '''One ''mestiza''. One ''criolla''''' 
Mestiza: woman of mixed race, especially mixed of European and Native American ancestry. 
Criolla: woman of "pure" Spanish ancestry, but born in the New World.

70.29 '''the Ardennes''' 
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian (Devonian) Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France... The strategic position of the Ardennes has made it a battleground for European powers for centuries... in both World War I and World War II, Germany successfully gambled on making a rapid passage through the Ardennes to attack a relatively lightly defended part of France. The Ardennes was the site of three major battles during the world wars – the Battle of the Ardennes in World War I, and the Battle of France and Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Many of the towns of the region were badly damaged during the two world wars. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardennes]

70.32 '''Newton Upper Falls''' 
Newton Upper Falls is a village situated on the east bank of the Charles River in the city of Newton, Massachusetts, in the United States. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_Upper_Falls,_Massachusetts]

70.37 '''Ar'tics''' 
A regional name, dropping the first "c" in "Arctic," for metal-buckled rubber galoshes.[http://www.leroyhistoricalsociety.org/assets/011214---artics.pdf]

==Page 71==
71.02 '''Beacon Street''' 
Beacon Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and several of its western suburbs. Beacon Street in Boston, Brookline, Brighton, and Newton is not to be confused with the Beacon Street in nearby Somerville, or others elsewhere. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Street]

==Page 71==
[[image:tyrosine.jpg|thumb|100px|Tyrosine Molecule|right]]71.11 '''kryptosam''' 
Correspondent Matthias Bauer notes that "sam" derives from the German "samen," for "seed." "Krypto," of course, derives from the same word as "cryptography," the study of codes. [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] claims that the "tyrosine" from which kryptosam is supposed to derive is "undoubtedly fictional," but it is in fact an amino acid, which can convert to melanin, just as Jamf's note indicates (although it is unclear whether semen will in fact act as the catalytic agent). 

Tyrosine is found in casein, and the name derives from the Greek, ''tyros'' meaning cheese. 

Significant properties of note for Tyrosine: 
- Tyrosine functions as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol phenol], which Nazi doctors used in injections for rapid executions. Phenols were used extensively at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 
- Tyrosine occurs in proteins that are part of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_transduction signal transduction] process -- a biological processes that converts one kind of signal or stimulus into another -- cell signalling.

The SBB (SIS/MI6 forerunner) allegedly discovered that semen, if not a catalyst, did at least make a good invisible ink.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semen#Semen_in_espionage Semen in espionage],
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansfield_Smith-Cumming Mansfield Smith Cuming], and
[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-spymaster-who-was-stranger-than-fiction-737707.html Spymaster]

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 60-71

2016-04-23T00:17:23Z

Modavis: /* Page 69 */

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 61==
61.19 '''Sodium Amytal''' 
Also known as "truth serum", Amobarbital is a drug that is a barbiturate derivative. It has sedative-hypnotic and analgesic properties. It is a white crystalline powder with no odor and a slightly bitter taste. It was first synthesized in Germany in 1923. If amobarbital is taken for extended periods of time, physical and psychological dependence can develop.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_amytal]

61.25 '''Got a hardon in my fist...''' 
This song goes right along with the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird," starting with the "Pack up all my cares and woe..." refrain that, in this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO6PpD-tRLU YouTube], begins at about 0:52.

[[Image:Ruptured_Duck.jpeg|thumb|125px|Ruptured duck|right]]61.30 '''"ruptured duck"''' 
The sarcastic nickname for a lapel pin issued at honorable discharge from the US armed forces in WWII, depicting a screaming eagle inside a wreath. "Ruptured" = herniated.

==Page 62==
62.05 '''Roxbury''' 
The town of Roxbury was founded in 1630 by the author's ancestor William Pynchon, and is now a neighborhood of Boston, MA. It had been an immigrant neighborhood for generations before African-Americans began to migrate from the South after WWI. While writing GR, Pynchon would certainly have been aware of rioting there at the time of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxbury,_Boston]

==Page 63==
63.03 '''Roseland Ballroom''' 
Not the better-known Roseland Ballroom in New York City, but the one on Massachusetts Avenue in Roxbury. "The stretch of Mass. Ave. between Huntington and Columbus was, by the late ’40s, Boston’s answer to 52nd Street in Manhattan -— with not only the Roseland, but the Savoy Café, the Hi-Hat, Wally’s, and a handful of smaller clubs."[http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/the-shape-of-jazz-that-was/]

63.05 '''Moxie''' 
One of the first mass-produced carbonated soft drinks in the United States. In its advertising, it used “Make Mine Moxie!” advertising jingles, the slogan “Just Make It Moxie for Mine”, and a "Moxie Man" logo. Uncapitalized, "moxie" became slang for energy and daring. The brand suffered a significant decline in sales during the 1930s.

63.22 '''Red, the Negro shoeshine boy''' 
Stating the obvious, Red is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcom_X#_note-timeline Malcolm X], whose nickname "Red" referred to his hair color -- a dark cinnamon brown. In February 1941 Malcolm moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, worked a variety of jobs including shoeshine and became involved in Boston's "underworld fringe," pimping among other things. [http://www.baystate-banner.com/archives/stories/2006/02/021606-03.htm]

63.32-37 '''"Yardbird" Parker is finding out [ . . . ]''' 
Refers to jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Correspondent Igor Zabel offers the following addition to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]]'s note on this passage:
"On one of Parker's CDs (Swedish Schnapps +), I found the passage which was quoted by [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] after Max Harrison, but slightly different, and it is interesting because Parker directly mentions Cherokee: 'Well, that night, I was working over 'Cherokee' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.' The quotation is taken from 'Hear Me Talkin' To Ya'."

==Page 64==

64.19 '''"'Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!'"''' 
This homoerotic scene seems based on some facts. It is known that Malcolm X prostituted himself for money and according to Bruce Perry's biography, ''Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America'' (Station Hill, New York, 1991) he had various homosexual liaisons throughout his life. Interestingly, Malcolm worked as a butler to a wealthy Boston bachelor, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1486997,00.html William Paul Lennon]. According to Malcolm's sidekick Malcolm Jarvis, he [Malcolm] was paid to sprinkle Lennon with talcum powder and bring him to orgasm.

64.24 '''"any of those Sheiks in the drawer?"''' 
Sheik was a popular brand of condom. "Other brands evoked an exotic, Far Eastern world of harems and belly-dancers that automatically triggered sex in many adult minds... Giant [firm]s like Julius Schmid, who made Ramses and Sheiks..." [http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/getting-it-on-the-covert-history-of-the-american-condom/']

As well as selling accessories, hotel bellboys, shoeshine men and washroom attendants could often arrange
contacts with amiable women ("another luck-changin' phone number there, Red..?")

64.30 '''Red Malcolm the Unthinkable Nihilist''' 
At this depth in the American dream, fears of ideology, race, and class are indistinguishable: after all, a Harvard man in an Arrow shirt is about to be anally gang-raped by Negroes while jazzmen above set fire to a song about love for a Cherokee maiden...

==Page 65==
65.09 '''Burma-Shave signs''' 
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, sequential highway billboard signs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave_signs]

65.15 '''"Gobbler" Biddle''' 
The Biddles are one of the leading families of Philadelphia, who sometimes vacationed in the Berkshires. Specifically, the "Gobbler" could be Nicholas Biddle (Harvard, 1944). 
Interestingly [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Beverly_Biddle Francis B. Biddle] (Harvard College 1909, Harvard Law 1911) was US Attorney General (1941-1945) at this time. FBB was responsible for directing the FBI to arrest "enemy aliens" leading to Japanese-American internment camps; served as the primary judge during the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal; and authored of ''The Fear of Freedom'' and other works.

65.16 '''Fu’s Folly in Cambridge''' 
Although, as [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] notes, the character is named for Fu Manchu (who is an important reference for Pointsman later in the novel), it should be recalled that there was also a "Fu" who was a member of the Whole Sick Crew in ''V.''

Resembles the old Young & Yee Restaurant (now closed) at 27 Church Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, which for over 40 years slopped greasy chop suey. An anachronism to the novel's time period, yes, but perhaps an inspiration to the author.

65.33 '''Jack Kennedy''' 
JFK (whose father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., was US Ambassador to the UK in 1938-1940) is said to be in Slothrop's Harvard class. Estimating, Slothrop was born ca 1917-18 and entered Harvard in 1936, the year of Harvard's tricentennial.So both were in their mid-20s, Kennedy a PT boat commander in the Pacific, during the action in ''GR''. The poignant "might Jack have kept it [the harmonica] from falling, violated gravity somehow?... yes it seems Jack might have" can be read as a retrodiction from the Vietnam War and urban-riot years of GR's composition: some believed that American life would not have taken its darker turn had Kennedy not been assassinated in November 1963.

Contrary to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]], Kennedy’s first book was titled '''''Why''' England Slept'' (not "When") [Corrected in 2nd edition] 

==Page 66==
66.39 '''Capehart''' 
The [http://www.myvintagetv.com/capehart.htm Capehart] automatic phonograph with a turn-over mechanism was the epitome of luxury phonographs, technical excellence and supreme electronics in the 1930s and 40s.

==Page 67==
67.32 '''Red Devil Lye in his hair''' 
Lye (sodium hydroxide) was an ind=gredient in home-made congolene or "conk" hair-straightening mixtures.

67.34-35 '''Not "archetypal" westwardman, but the only 
An explicit nod to psychologist Carl Jung, and beyond him to the Platonic strain in philosophy: that behind all the multiplicity, variety and changing detail of daylit life, there are (in our minds and/or metaphysical reality) singular, unchanging forms: in this case, the primal explorer-mountain man-cowboy-gunfighter hero.

Pynchon also works this trope in the other direction whenever he assimilates a character to archetypes in pop culture (often film), as when Jessica gave Roger "her Fay Wray look"(57) and Roger played the drooling Dirty Old Man (59).

==Page 68==

68.01 '''Half an Ark’s better than none.''' 
For Crutchfield, there is only '''one''' of everything, as opposed to two of every animal on Noah’s (whole) Ark. (And how much use is half an Ark in a flood, anyway?)

68.13 '''Red River Valley''' 
Original lyrics: 
From this valley they say you are going 
We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile 
For they say you are taking the sunshine 
That has brightened our pathways awhile 

Come and sit by my side, if you love me 
Do not hasten to bid me adieu 
Just remember the Red River Valley 
And the cowboy who loved you so true

==Page 69==

69.02 '''''terre mauvais''''' 
French "terre mauvaise" - the "badlands". A rare case of TRP misspelling a foreign word.

69.14 '''a bandana of the regulation magenta and green''' 
The coal-tar derived colors of organic chemistry that resonate throughout the novel. 
The visual clash between these colours appears elsewhere - 'A bit of lime green in with your rose' 12
Pynchon seems to associate positive things with these colors - see ''Against the Day'' particularly - as he does with bandanas. A-and bananas. For more on [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Coloring_Gravity%27s_Rainbow colors]....

69.16 '''Rancho Peligroso''' 
"Dangerous Ranch": evokes the Siege Perilous of the Arthurian Grail legend as well as ''Rancho Notorious'', a 1952 Western directed by Fritz Lang and starring Marlene Dietrich. See note at [[V321.06-07]]

69.27 '''callipygian rondure''' 
[http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cal3.htm callipygian] -- having shapely buttocks, originally used in conjunction with the noted statue of Aphrodite (which is itself a play on "Afro" and "Venus"), the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Kallipygos "Venus Kallipygos"]. This language parodies the typology of "scientific" racism from the late 19th and ealy 20th century.

rondure -- a circular or gracefully rounded object.

69.32 '''Toro Rojo''' 
Red Bull

==Page 70==
70.15 '''One ''mestiza''. One ''criolla''''' 
Mestiza: woman of mixed race, especially mixed of European and Native American ancestry. 
Criolla: Creole

70.29 '''the Ardennes''' 
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian (Devonian) Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France... The strategic position of the Ardennes has made it a battleground for European powers for centuries... in both World War I and World War II, Germany successfully gambled on making a rapid passage through the Ardennes to attack a relatively lightly defended part of France. The Ardennes was the site of three major battles during the world wars – the Battle of the Ardennes in World War I, and the Battle of France and Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Many of the towns of the region were badly damaged during the two world wars. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardennes]

70.32 '''Newton Upper Falls''' 
Newton Upper Falls is a village situated on the east bank of the Charles River in the city of Newton, Massachusetts, in the United States. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_Upper_Falls,_Massachusetts]

70.37 '''Ar'tics''' 
A regional name, dropping the first "c" in "Arctic," for metal-buckled rubber galoshes.[http://www.leroyhistoricalsociety.org/assets/011214---artics.pdf]

==Page 71==
71.02 '''Beacon Street''' 
Beacon Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and several of its western suburbs. Beacon Street in Boston, Brookline, Brighton, and Newton is not to be confused with the Beacon Street in nearby Somerville, or others elsewhere. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Street]

==Page 71==
[[image:tyrosine.jpg|thumb|100px|Tyrosine Molecule|right]]71.11 '''kryptosam''' 
Correspondent Matthias Bauer notes that "sam" derives from the German "samen," for "seed." "Krypto," of course, derives from the same word as "cryptography," the study of codes. [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] claims that the "tyrosine" from which kryptosam is supposed to derive is "undoubtedly fictional," but it is in fact an amino acid, which can convert to melanin, just as Jamf's note indicates (although it is unclear whether semen will in fact act as the catalytic agent). 

Tyrosine is found in casein, and the name derives from the Greek, ''tyros'' meaning cheese. 

Significant properties of note for Tyrosine: 
- Tyrosine functions as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol phenol], which Nazi doctors used in injections for rapid executions. Phenols were used extensively at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 
- Tyrosine occurs in proteins that are part of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_transduction signal transduction] process -- a biological processes that converts one kind of signal or stimulus into another -- cell signalling.

The SBB (SIS/MI6 forerunner) allegedly discovered that semen, if not a catalyst, did at least make a good invisible ink.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semen#Semen_in_espionage Semen in espionage],
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansfield_Smith-Cumming Mansfield Smith Cuming], and
[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-spymaster-who-was-stranger-than-fiction-737707.html Spymaster]

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 60-71

2016-04-23T00:15:01Z

Modavis: /* Page 69 */

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 61==
61.19 '''Sodium Amytal''' 
Also known as "truth serum", Amobarbital is a drug that is a barbiturate derivative. It has sedative-hypnotic and analgesic properties. It is a white crystalline powder with no odor and a slightly bitter taste. It was first synthesized in Germany in 1923. If amobarbital is taken for extended periods of time, physical and psychological dependence can develop.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_amytal]

61.25 '''Got a hardon in my fist...''' 
This song goes right along with the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird," starting with the "Pack up all my cares and woe..." refrain that, in this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO6PpD-tRLU YouTube], begins at about 0:52.

[[Image:Ruptured_Duck.jpeg|thumb|125px|Ruptured duck|right]]61.30 '''"ruptured duck"''' 
The sarcastic nickname for a lapel pin issued at honorable discharge from the US armed forces in WWII, depicting a screaming eagle inside a wreath. "Ruptured" = herniated.

==Page 62==
62.05 '''Roxbury''' 
The town of Roxbury was founded in 1630 by the author's ancestor William Pynchon, and is now a neighborhood of Boston, MA. It had been an immigrant neighborhood for generations before African-Americans began to migrate from the South after WWI. While writing GR, Pynchon would certainly have been aware of rioting there at the time of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxbury,_Boston]

==Page 63==
63.03 '''Roseland Ballroom''' 
Not the better-known Roseland Ballroom in New York City, but the one on Massachusetts Avenue in Roxbury. "The stretch of Mass. Ave. between Huntington and Columbus was, by the late ’40s, Boston’s answer to 52nd Street in Manhattan -— with not only the Roseland, but the Savoy Café, the Hi-Hat, Wally’s, and a handful of smaller clubs."[http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/the-shape-of-jazz-that-was/]

63.05 '''Moxie''' 
One of the first mass-produced carbonated soft drinks in the United States. In its advertising, it used “Make Mine Moxie!” advertising jingles, the slogan “Just Make It Moxie for Mine”, and a "Moxie Man" logo. Uncapitalized, "moxie" became slang for energy and daring. The brand suffered a significant decline in sales during the 1930s.

63.22 '''Red, the Negro shoeshine boy''' 
Stating the obvious, Red is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcom_X#_note-timeline Malcolm X], whose nickname "Red" referred to his hair color -- a dark cinnamon brown. In February 1941 Malcolm moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, worked a variety of jobs including shoeshine and became involved in Boston's "underworld fringe," pimping among other things. [http://www.baystate-banner.com/archives/stories/2006/02/021606-03.htm]

63.32-37 '''"Yardbird" Parker is finding out [ . . . ]''' 
Refers to jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Correspondent Igor Zabel offers the following addition to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]]'s note on this passage:
"On one of Parker's CDs (Swedish Schnapps +), I found the passage which was quoted by [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] after Max Harrison, but slightly different, and it is interesting because Parker directly mentions Cherokee: 'Well, that night, I was working over 'Cherokee' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.' The quotation is taken from 'Hear Me Talkin' To Ya'."

==Page 64==

64.19 '''"'Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!'"''' 
This homoerotic scene seems based on some facts. It is known that Malcolm X prostituted himself for money and according to Bruce Perry's biography, ''Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America'' (Station Hill, New York, 1991) he had various homosexual liaisons throughout his life. Interestingly, Malcolm worked as a butler to a wealthy Boston bachelor, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1486997,00.html William Paul Lennon]. According to Malcolm's sidekick Malcolm Jarvis, he [Malcolm] was paid to sprinkle Lennon with talcum powder and bring him to orgasm.

64.24 '''"any of those Sheiks in the drawer?"''' 
Sheik was a popular brand of condom. "Other brands evoked an exotic, Far Eastern world of harems and belly-dancers that automatically triggered sex in many adult minds... Giant [firm]s like Julius Schmid, who made Ramses and Sheiks..." [http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/getting-it-on-the-covert-history-of-the-american-condom/']

As well as selling accessories, hotel bellboys, shoeshine men and washroom attendants could often arrange
contacts with amiable women ("another luck-changin' phone number there, Red..?")

64.30 '''Red Malcolm the Unthinkable Nihilist''' 
At this depth in the American dream, fears of ideology, race, and class are indistinguishable: after all, a Harvard man in an Arrow shirt is about to be anally gang-raped by Negroes while jazzmen above set fire to a song about love for a Cherokee maiden...

==Page 65==
65.09 '''Burma-Shave signs''' 
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, sequential highway billboard signs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave_signs]

65.15 '''"Gobbler" Biddle''' 
The Biddles are one of the leading families of Philadelphia, who sometimes vacationed in the Berkshires. Specifically, the "Gobbler" could be Nicholas Biddle (Harvard, 1944). 
Interestingly [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Beverly_Biddle Francis B. Biddle] (Harvard College 1909, Harvard Law 1911) was US Attorney General (1941-1945) at this time. FBB was responsible for directing the FBI to arrest "enemy aliens" leading to Japanese-American internment camps; served as the primary judge during the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal; and authored of ''The Fear of Freedom'' and other works.

65.16 '''Fu’s Folly in Cambridge''' 
Although, as [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] notes, the character is named for Fu Manchu (who is an important reference for Pointsman later in the novel), it should be recalled that there was also a "Fu" who was a member of the Whole Sick Crew in ''V.''

Resembles the old Young & Yee Restaurant (now closed) at 27 Church Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, which for over 40 years slopped greasy chop suey. An anachronism to the novel's time period, yes, but perhaps an inspiration to the author.

65.33 '''Jack Kennedy''' 
JFK (whose father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., was US Ambassador to the UK in 1938-1940) is said to be in Slothrop's Harvard class. Estimating, Slothrop was born ca 1917-18 and entered Harvard in 1936, the year of Harvard's tricentennial.So both were in their mid-20s, Kennedy a PT boat commander in the Pacific, during the action in ''GR''. The poignant "might Jack have kept it [the harmonica] from falling, violated gravity somehow?... yes it seems Jack might have" can be read as a retrodiction from the Vietnam War and urban-riot years of GR's composition: some believed that American life would not have taken its darker turn had Kennedy not been assassinated in November 1963.

Contrary to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]], Kennedy’s first book was titled '''''Why''' England Slept'' (not "When") [Corrected in 2nd edition] 

==Page 66==
66.39 '''Capehart''' 
The [http://www.myvintagetv.com/capehart.htm Capehart] automatic phonograph with a turn-over mechanism was the epitome of luxury phonographs, technical excellence and supreme electronics in the 1930s and 40s.

==Page 67==
67.32 '''Red Devil Lye in his hair''' 
Lye (sodium hydroxide) was an ind=gredient in home-made congolene or "conk" hair-straightening mixtures.

67.34-35 '''Not "archetypal" westwardman, but the only 
An explicit nod to psychologist Carl Jung, and beyond him to the Platonic strain in philosophy: that behind all the multiplicity, variety and changing detail of daylit life, there are (in our minds and/or metaphysical reality) singular, unchanging forms: in this case, the primal explorer-mountain man-cowboy-gunfighter hero.

Pynchon also works this trope in the other direction whenever he assimilates a character to archetypes in pop culture (often film), as when Jessica gave Roger "her Fay Wray look"(57) and Roger played the drooling Dirty Old Man (59).

==Page 68==

68.01 '''Half an Ark’s better than none.''' 
For Crutchfield, there is only '''one''' of everything, as opposed to two of every animal on Noah’s (whole) Ark. (And how much use is half an Ark in a flood, anyway?)

68.13 '''Red River Valley''' 
Original lyrics: 
From this valley they say you are going 
We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile 
For they say you are taking the sunshine 
That has brightened our pathways awhile 

Come and sit by my side, if you love me 
Do not hasten to bid me adieu 
Just remember the Red River Valley 
And the cowboy who loved you so true

==Page 69==

69.02 '''''terre mauvais''''' 
French "terre mauvaise" - the "badlands". A rare case of TRP misspelling a foreign word.

69.14 '''a bandana of the regulation magenta and green''' 
The coal-tar derived colors of organic chemistry that resonate throughout the novel. 
The visual clash between these colours appears elsewhere - 'A bit of lime green in with your rose' 12
Pynchon seems to associate positive things with these colors - see ''Against the Day'' particularly - as he does with bandanas. A-and bananas. For more on colors...[ http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Coloring_Gravity%27s_Rainbow]

69.16 '''Rancho Peligroso''' 
"Dangerous Ranch": evokes the Siege Perilous of the Arthurian Grail legend as well as ''Rancho Notorious'', a 1952 Western directed by Fritz Lang and starring Marlene Dietrich. See note at [[V321.06-07]]

69.27 '''callipygian rondure''' 
[http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cal3.htm callipygian] -- having shapely buttocks, originally used in conjunction with the noted statue of Aphrodite (which is itself a play on "Afro" and "Venus"), the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Kallipygos "Venus Kallipygos"]. This language parodies the typology of "scientific" racism from the late 19th and ealy 20th century.

rondure -- a circular or gracefully rounded object.

69.32 '''Toro Rojo''' 
Red Bull

==Page 70==
70.15 '''One ''mestiza''. One ''criolla''''' 
Mestiza: woman of mixed race, especially mixed of European and Native American ancestry. 
Criolla: Creole

70.29 '''the Ardennes''' 
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian (Devonian) Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France... The strategic position of the Ardennes has made it a battleground for European powers for centuries... in both World War I and World War II, Germany successfully gambled on making a rapid passage through the Ardennes to attack a relatively lightly defended part of France. The Ardennes was the site of three major battles during the world wars – the Battle of the Ardennes in World War I, and the Battle of France and Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Many of the towns of the region were badly damaged during the two world wars. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardennes]

70.32 '''Newton Upper Falls''' 
Newton Upper Falls is a village situated on the east bank of the Charles River in the city of Newton, Massachusetts, in the United States. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_Upper_Falls,_Massachusetts]

70.37 '''Ar'tics''' 
A regional name, dropping the first "c" in "Arctic," for metal-buckled rubber galoshes.[http://www.leroyhistoricalsociety.org/assets/011214---artics.pdf]

==Page 71==
71.02 '''Beacon Street''' 
Beacon Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and several of its western suburbs. Beacon Street in Boston, Brookline, Brighton, and Newton is not to be confused with the Beacon Street in nearby Somerville, or others elsewhere. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Street]

==Page 71==
[[image:tyrosine.jpg|thumb|100px|Tyrosine Molecule|right]]71.11 '''kryptosam''' 
Correspondent Matthias Bauer notes that "sam" derives from the German "samen," for "seed." "Krypto," of course, derives from the same word as "cryptography," the study of codes. [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] claims that the "tyrosine" from which kryptosam is supposed to derive is "undoubtedly fictional," but it is in fact an amino acid, which can convert to melanin, just as Jamf's note indicates (although it is unclear whether semen will in fact act as the catalytic agent). 

Tyrosine is found in casein, and the name derives from the Greek, ''tyros'' meaning cheese. 

Significant properties of note for Tyrosine: 
- Tyrosine functions as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol phenol], which Nazi doctors used in injections for rapid executions. Phenols were used extensively at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 
- Tyrosine occurs in proteins that are part of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_transduction signal transduction] process -- a biological processes that converts one kind of signal or stimulus into another -- cell signalling.

The SBB (SIS/MI6 forerunner) allegedly discovered that semen, if not a catalyst, did at least make a good invisible ink.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semen#Semen_in_espionage Semen in espionage],
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansfield_Smith-Cumming Mansfield Smith Cuming], and
[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-spymaster-who-was-stranger-than-fiction-737707.html Spymaster]

{{GR PbP}}

Coloring Gravity's Rainbow

2016-04-23T00:13:41Z

Modavis:

N. Katherine Hayles and Mary B. Eiser, in
[http://www.ham.muohio.edu/~krafftjm/pynchon.html Pynchon Notes] #16, Spring 1985

:The possibility of co-option is inherent in the way Pynchon constructs his critique. He can create color within his text only by naming it, and he can name it only by classifying it as distinct and identifiable hues. Similarly, we can participate in Pynchon's creation of color only by decoding his color names, which implies that both reader and author are implicated in reducing the rainbow's "endless streaming" to the distinct hues of Newton's spectrum. At the same time, Pynchon's color coding achieves its force because it utilizes Newton's rules for color combination and refraction to creat precise transformations that connect the color names with such far-reaching themes as racism, the link between the dye and munitions industry, and the effect of synthetic chemicals and drugs upon the fragmented consciousness that they both create and control. As the color names become linked with these thematic concerns, a pervasive ambiguity arises: are Pynchon's acts of naming colors an escape from routinization, or an extension of "Their" totalizing patterns?

:Pynchon's strategies are correspondingly convoluted. They progress by defining colors through binary oppositions, then by seeking ways to elude or transform the very categories that give the colors significance. The overarching color code consists of a progressive bleaching of color, from the blackness of Pirate's opening dream to the whiteness of Gottfried's descent at the end. Within this framing black/white dichotomy, colors appear not "at random," but as systematic combinations in which complementary colors are paired. Newton showed that when a color is joined with its complement, the combination yields either black or white. The appearance of color in complementary pairs therefore suggests that color is constantly at risk, in danger of collapsing into one or the other of the framing dichotomy's terms.

:When colors arise that can mediate between the black/white poles, the implicit hope is that some way may be found to escape the rule of the excluded middle. When color disappears, it is a sign that the binary oppositions of a routinized mentality have taken over. The codes that govern this complex emergence and disappearance of color can be illustrated by three color groupings: the black-red-white triad, the three most pervasive colors; the blue/yellow complements associated with Gottfried and Enzian; and the color transformations that Slothrop undergoes.

:(pp.2-3)

This issue can be downloaded as a PDF file; hard copy back issues of ''Pynchon Notes'' can be obtained for a nominal fee. Check out the [http://www.ham.miamioh.edu/krafftjm/pynchon.html Pynchon Notes Website] to find out how.

{{GR Alpha Nav}}

Pages 60-71

2016-04-23T00:11:23Z

Modavis: /* Page 68 */

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 61==
61.19 '''Sodium Amytal''' 
Also known as "truth serum", Amobarbital is a drug that is a barbiturate derivative. It has sedative-hypnotic and analgesic properties. It is a white crystalline powder with no odor and a slightly bitter taste. It was first synthesized in Germany in 1923. If amobarbital is taken for extended periods of time, physical and psychological dependence can develop.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_amytal]

61.25 '''Got a hardon in my fist...''' 
This song goes right along with the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird," starting with the "Pack up all my cares and woe..." refrain that, in this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO6PpD-tRLU YouTube], begins at about 0:52.

[[Image:Ruptured_Duck.jpeg|thumb|125px|Ruptured duck|right]]61.30 '''"ruptured duck"''' 
The sarcastic nickname for a lapel pin issued at honorable discharge from the US armed forces in WWII, depicting a screaming eagle inside a wreath. "Ruptured" = herniated.

==Page 62==
62.05 '''Roxbury''' 
The town of Roxbury was founded in 1630 by the author's ancestor William Pynchon, and is now a neighborhood of Boston, MA. It had been an immigrant neighborhood for generations before African-Americans began to migrate from the South after WWI. While writing GR, Pynchon would certainly have been aware of rioting there at the time of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxbury,_Boston]

==Page 63==
63.03 '''Roseland Ballroom''' 
Not the better-known Roseland Ballroom in New York City, but the one on Massachusetts Avenue in Roxbury. "The stretch of Mass. Ave. between Huntington and Columbus was, by the late ’40s, Boston’s answer to 52nd Street in Manhattan -— with not only the Roseland, but the Savoy Café, the Hi-Hat, Wally’s, and a handful of smaller clubs."[http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/the-shape-of-jazz-that-was/]

63.05 '''Moxie''' 
One of the first mass-produced carbonated soft drinks in the United States. In its advertising, it used “Make Mine Moxie!” advertising jingles, the slogan “Just Make It Moxie for Mine”, and a "Moxie Man" logo. Uncapitalized, "moxie" became slang for energy and daring. The brand suffered a significant decline in sales during the 1930s.

63.22 '''Red, the Negro shoeshine boy''' 
Stating the obvious, Red is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcom_X#_note-timeline Malcolm X], whose nickname "Red" referred to his hair color -- a dark cinnamon brown. In February 1941 Malcolm moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, worked a variety of jobs including shoeshine and became involved in Boston's "underworld fringe," pimping among other things. [http://www.baystate-banner.com/archives/stories/2006/02/021606-03.htm]

63.32-37 '''"Yardbird" Parker is finding out [ . . . ]''' 
Refers to jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Correspondent Igor Zabel offers the following addition to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]]'s note on this passage:
"On one of Parker's CDs (Swedish Schnapps +), I found the passage which was quoted by [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] after Max Harrison, but slightly different, and it is interesting because Parker directly mentions Cherokee: 'Well, that night, I was working over 'Cherokee' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.' The quotation is taken from 'Hear Me Talkin' To Ya'."

==Page 64==

64.19 '''"'Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!'"''' 
This homoerotic scene seems based on some facts. It is known that Malcolm X prostituted himself for money and according to Bruce Perry's biography, ''Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America'' (Station Hill, New York, 1991) he had various homosexual liaisons throughout his life. Interestingly, Malcolm worked as a butler to a wealthy Boston bachelor, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1486997,00.html William Paul Lennon]. According to Malcolm's sidekick Malcolm Jarvis, he [Malcolm] was paid to sprinkle Lennon with talcum powder and bring him to orgasm.

64.24 '''"any of those Sheiks in the drawer?"''' 
Sheik was a popular brand of condom. "Other brands evoked an exotic, Far Eastern world of harems and belly-dancers that automatically triggered sex in many adult minds... Giant [firm]s like Julius Schmid, who made Ramses and Sheiks..." [http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/getting-it-on-the-covert-history-of-the-american-condom/']

As well as selling accessories, hotel bellboys, shoeshine men and washroom attendants could often arrange
contacts with amiable women ("another luck-changin' phone number there, Red..?")

64.30 '''Red Malcolm the Unthinkable Nihilist''' 
At this depth in the American dream, fears of ideology, race, and class are indistinguishable: after all, a Harvard man in an Arrow shirt is about to be anally gang-raped by Negroes while jazzmen above set fire to a song about love for a Cherokee maiden...

==Page 65==
65.09 '''Burma-Shave signs''' 
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, sequential highway billboard signs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave_signs]

65.15 '''"Gobbler" Biddle''' 
The Biddles are one of the leading families of Philadelphia, who sometimes vacationed in the Berkshires. Specifically, the "Gobbler" could be Nicholas Biddle (Harvard, 1944). 
Interestingly [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Beverly_Biddle Francis B. Biddle] (Harvard College 1909, Harvard Law 1911) was US Attorney General (1941-1945) at this time. FBB was responsible for directing the FBI to arrest "enemy aliens" leading to Japanese-American internment camps; served as the primary judge during the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal; and authored of ''The Fear of Freedom'' and other works.

65.16 '''Fu’s Folly in Cambridge''' 
Although, as [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] notes, the character is named for Fu Manchu (who is an important reference for Pointsman later in the novel), it should be recalled that there was also a "Fu" who was a member of the Whole Sick Crew in ''V.''

Resembles the old Young & Yee Restaurant (now closed) at 27 Church Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, which for over 40 years slopped greasy chop suey. An anachronism to the novel's time period, yes, but perhaps an inspiration to the author.

65.33 '''Jack Kennedy''' 
JFK (whose father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., was US Ambassador to the UK in 1938-1940) is said to be in Slothrop's Harvard class. Estimating, Slothrop was born ca 1917-18 and entered Harvard in 1936, the year of Harvard's tricentennial.So both were in their mid-20s, Kennedy a PT boat commander in the Pacific, during the action in ''GR''. The poignant "might Jack have kept it [the harmonica] from falling, violated gravity somehow?... yes it seems Jack might have" can be read as a retrodiction from the Vietnam War and urban-riot years of GR's composition: some believed that American life would not have taken its darker turn had Kennedy not been assassinated in November 1963.

Contrary to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]], Kennedy’s first book was titled '''''Why''' England Slept'' (not "When") [Corrected in 2nd edition] 

==Page 66==
66.39 '''Capehart''' 
The [http://www.myvintagetv.com/capehart.htm Capehart] automatic phonograph with a turn-over mechanism was the epitome of luxury phonographs, technical excellence and supreme electronics in the 1930s and 40s.

==Page 67==
67.32 '''Red Devil Lye in his hair''' 
Lye (sodium hydroxide) was an ind=gredient in home-made congolene or "conk" hair-straightening mixtures.

67.34-35 '''Not "archetypal" westwardman, but the only 
An explicit nod to psychologist Carl Jung, and beyond him to the Platonic strain in philosophy: that behind all the multiplicity, variety and changing detail of daylit life, there are (in our minds and/or metaphysical reality) singular, unchanging forms: in this case, the primal explorer-mountain man-cowboy-gunfighter hero.

Pynchon also works this trope in the other direction whenever he assimilates a character to archetypes in pop culture (often film), as when Jessica gave Roger "her Fay Wray look"(57) and Roger played the drooling Dirty Old Man (59).

==Page 68==

68.01 '''Half an Ark’s better than none.''' 
For Crutchfield, there is only '''one''' of everything, as opposed to two of every animal on Noah’s (whole) Ark. (And how much use is half an Ark in a flood, anyway?)

68.13 '''Red River Valley''' 
Original lyrics: 
From this valley they say you are going 
We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile 
For they say you are taking the sunshine 
That has brightened our pathways awhile 

Come and sit by my side, if you love me 
Do not hasten to bid me adieu 
Just remember the Red River Valley 
And the cowboy who loved you so true

==Page 69==

69.02 '''''terre mauvais''''' 
French "terre mauvaise" - the "badlands". A rare case of TRP misspelling a foreign word.

69.14 '''a bandana of the regulation magenta and green''' 
The coal-tar derived colors of organic chemistry that resonate throughout the novel. 
The visual clash between these colours appears elsewhere - 'A bit of lime green in with your rose' 12
Pynchon seems to associate positive things with these colors - see ''Against the Day'' particularly - as he does with bandanas. A-and bananas.

69.16 '''Rancho Peligroso''' 
"Dangerous Ranch": evokes the Siege Perilous of the Arthurian Grail legend as well as ''Rancho Notorious'', a 1952 Western directed by Fritz Lang and starring Marlene Dietrich. See note at [[V321.06-07]]

69.27 '''callipygian rondure''' 
[http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cal3.htm callipygian] -- having shapely buttocks, originally used in conjunction with the noted statue of Aphrodite (which is itself a play on "Afro" and "Venus"), the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Kallipygos "Venus Kallipygos"]. This language parodies the typology of "scientific" racism from the late 19th and ealy 20th century.

rondure -- a circular or gracefully rounded object.

69.32 '''Toro Rojo''' 
Red Bull

==Page 70==
70.15 '''One ''mestiza''. One ''criolla''''' 
Mestiza: woman of mixed race, especially mixed of European and Native American ancestry. 
Criolla: Creole

70.29 '''the Ardennes''' 
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian (Devonian) Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France... The strategic position of the Ardennes has made it a battleground for European powers for centuries... in both World War I and World War II, Germany successfully gambled on making a rapid passage through the Ardennes to attack a relatively lightly defended part of France. The Ardennes was the site of three major battles during the world wars – the Battle of the Ardennes in World War I, and the Battle of France and Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Many of the towns of the region were badly damaged during the two world wars. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardennes]

70.32 '''Newton Upper Falls''' 
Newton Upper Falls is a village situated on the east bank of the Charles River in the city of Newton, Massachusetts, in the United States. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_Upper_Falls,_Massachusetts]

70.37 '''Ar'tics''' 
A regional name, dropping the first "c" in "Arctic," for metal-buckled rubber galoshes.[http://www.leroyhistoricalsociety.org/assets/011214---artics.pdf]

==Page 71==
71.02 '''Beacon Street''' 
Beacon Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and several of its western suburbs. Beacon Street in Boston, Brookline, Brighton, and Newton is not to be confused with the Beacon Street in nearby Somerville, or others elsewhere. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Street]

==Page 71==
[[image:tyrosine.jpg|thumb|100px|Tyrosine Molecule|right]]71.11 '''kryptosam''' 
Correspondent Matthias Bauer notes that "sam" derives from the German "samen," for "seed." "Krypto," of course, derives from the same word as "cryptography," the study of codes. [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] claims that the "tyrosine" from which kryptosam is supposed to derive is "undoubtedly fictional," but it is in fact an amino acid, which can convert to melanin, just as Jamf's note indicates (although it is unclear whether semen will in fact act as the catalytic agent). 

Tyrosine is found in casein, and the name derives from the Greek, ''tyros'' meaning cheese. 

Significant properties of note for Tyrosine: 
- Tyrosine functions as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol phenol], which Nazi doctors used in injections for rapid executions. Phenols were used extensively at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 
- Tyrosine occurs in proteins that are part of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_transduction signal transduction] process -- a biological processes that converts one kind of signal or stimulus into another -- cell signalling.

The SBB (SIS/MI6 forerunner) allegedly discovered that semen, if not a catalyst, did at least make a good invisible ink.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semen#Semen_in_espionage Semen in espionage],
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansfield_Smith-Cumming Mansfield Smith Cuming], and
[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-spymaster-who-was-stranger-than-fiction-737707.html Spymaster]

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 60-71

2016-04-23T00:05:00Z

Modavis: /* Page 67 */

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 61==
61.19 '''Sodium Amytal''' 
Also known as "truth serum", Amobarbital is a drug that is a barbiturate derivative. It has sedative-hypnotic and analgesic properties. It is a white crystalline powder with no odor and a slightly bitter taste. It was first synthesized in Germany in 1923. If amobarbital is taken for extended periods of time, physical and psychological dependence can develop.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_amytal]

61.25 '''Got a hardon in my fist...''' 
This song goes right along with the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird," starting with the "Pack up all my cares and woe..." refrain that, in this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO6PpD-tRLU YouTube], begins at about 0:52.

[[Image:Ruptured_Duck.jpeg|thumb|125px|Ruptured duck|right]]61.30 '''"ruptured duck"''' 
The sarcastic nickname for a lapel pin issued at honorable discharge from the US armed forces in WWII, depicting a screaming eagle inside a wreath. "Ruptured" = herniated.

==Page 62==
62.05 '''Roxbury''' 
The town of Roxbury was founded in 1630 by the author's ancestor William Pynchon, and is now a neighborhood of Boston, MA. It had been an immigrant neighborhood for generations before African-Americans began to migrate from the South after WWI. While writing GR, Pynchon would certainly have been aware of rioting there at the time of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxbury,_Boston]

==Page 63==
63.03 '''Roseland Ballroom''' 
Not the better-known Roseland Ballroom in New York City, but the one on Massachusetts Avenue in Roxbury. "The stretch of Mass. Ave. between Huntington and Columbus was, by the late ’40s, Boston’s answer to 52nd Street in Manhattan -— with not only the Roseland, but the Savoy Café, the Hi-Hat, Wally’s, and a handful of smaller clubs."[http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/the-shape-of-jazz-that-was/]

63.05 '''Moxie''' 
One of the first mass-produced carbonated soft drinks in the United States. In its advertising, it used “Make Mine Moxie!” advertising jingles, the slogan “Just Make It Moxie for Mine”, and a "Moxie Man" logo. Uncapitalized, "moxie" became slang for energy and daring. The brand suffered a significant decline in sales during the 1930s.

63.22 '''Red, the Negro shoeshine boy''' 
Stating the obvious, Red is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcom_X#_note-timeline Malcolm X], whose nickname "Red" referred to his hair color -- a dark cinnamon brown. In February 1941 Malcolm moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, worked a variety of jobs including shoeshine and became involved in Boston's "underworld fringe," pimping among other things. [http://www.baystate-banner.com/archives/stories/2006/02/021606-03.htm]

63.32-37 '''"Yardbird" Parker is finding out [ . . . ]''' 
Refers to jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Correspondent Igor Zabel offers the following addition to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]]'s note on this passage:
"On one of Parker's CDs (Swedish Schnapps +), I found the passage which was quoted by [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] after Max Harrison, but slightly different, and it is interesting because Parker directly mentions Cherokee: 'Well, that night, I was working over 'Cherokee' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.' The quotation is taken from 'Hear Me Talkin' To Ya'."

==Page 64==

64.19 '''"'Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!'"''' 
This homoerotic scene seems based on some facts. It is known that Malcolm X prostituted himself for money and according to Bruce Perry's biography, ''Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America'' (Station Hill, New York, 1991) he had various homosexual liaisons throughout his life. Interestingly, Malcolm worked as a butler to a wealthy Boston bachelor, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1486997,00.html William Paul Lennon]. According to Malcolm's sidekick Malcolm Jarvis, he [Malcolm] was paid to sprinkle Lennon with talcum powder and bring him to orgasm.

64.24 '''"any of those Sheiks in the drawer?"''' 
Sheik was a popular brand of condom. "Other brands evoked an exotic, Far Eastern world of harems and belly-dancers that automatically triggered sex in many adult minds... Giant [firm]s like Julius Schmid, who made Ramses and Sheiks..." [http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/getting-it-on-the-covert-history-of-the-american-condom/']

As well as selling accessories, hotel bellboys, shoeshine men and washroom attendants could often arrange
contacts with amiable women ("another luck-changin' phone number there, Red..?")

64.30 '''Red Malcolm the Unthinkable Nihilist''' 
At this depth in the American dream, fears of ideology, race, and class are indistinguishable: after all, a Harvard man in an Arrow shirt is about to be anally gang-raped by Negroes while jazzmen above set fire to a song about love for a Cherokee maiden...

==Page 65==
65.09 '''Burma-Shave signs''' 
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, sequential highway billboard signs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave_signs]

65.15 '''"Gobbler" Biddle''' 
The Biddles are one of the leading families of Philadelphia, who sometimes vacationed in the Berkshires. Specifically, the "Gobbler" could be Nicholas Biddle (Harvard, 1944). 
Interestingly [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Beverly_Biddle Francis B. Biddle] (Harvard College 1909, Harvard Law 1911) was US Attorney General (1941-1945) at this time. FBB was responsible for directing the FBI to arrest "enemy aliens" leading to Japanese-American internment camps; served as the primary judge during the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal; and authored of ''The Fear of Freedom'' and other works.

65.16 '''Fu’s Folly in Cambridge''' 
Although, as [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] notes, the character is named for Fu Manchu (who is an important reference for Pointsman later in the novel), it should be recalled that there was also a "Fu" who was a member of the Whole Sick Crew in ''V.''

Resembles the old Young & Yee Restaurant (now closed) at 27 Church Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, which for over 40 years slopped greasy chop suey. An anachronism to the novel's time period, yes, but perhaps an inspiration to the author.

65.33 '''Jack Kennedy''' 
JFK (whose father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., was US Ambassador to the UK in 1938-1940) is said to be in Slothrop's Harvard class. Estimating, Slothrop was born ca 1917-18 and entered Harvard in 1936, the year of Harvard's tricentennial.So both were in their mid-20s, Kennedy a PT boat commander in the Pacific, during the action in ''GR''. The poignant "might Jack have kept it [the harmonica] from falling, violated gravity somehow?... yes it seems Jack might have" can be read as a retrodiction from the Vietnam War and urban-riot years of GR's composition: some believed that American life would not have taken its darker turn had Kennedy not been assassinated in November 1963.

Contrary to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]], Kennedy’s first book was titled '''''Why''' England Slept'' (not "When") [Corrected in 2nd edition] 

==Page 66==
66.39 '''Capehart''' 
The [http://www.myvintagetv.com/capehart.htm Capehart] automatic phonograph with a turn-over mechanism was the epitome of luxury phonographs, technical excellence and supreme electronics in the 1930s and 40s.

==Page 67==
67.32 '''Red Devil Lye in his hair''' 
Lye (sodium hydroxide) was an ind=gredient in home-made congolene or "conk" hair-straightening mixtures.

67.34-35 '''Not "archetypal" westwardman, but the only 
An explicit nod to psychologist Carl Jung, and beyond him to the Platonic strain in philosophy: that behind all the multiplicity, variety and changing detail of daylit life, there are (in our minds and/or metaphysical reality) singular, unchanging forms: in this case, the primal explorer-mountain man-cowboy-gunfighter hero.

Pynchon also works this trope in the other direction whenever he assimilates a character to archetypes in pop culture (often film), as when Jessica gave Roger "her Fay Wray look"(57) and Roger played the drooling Dirty Old Man (59).

==Page 68==

68.01 '''Half an Ark’s better than none.''' 
For Crutchfield, there is only '''one''' of everything, as opposed to two of every animal on Noah’s (whole) Ark. (And how much use is half an Ark in a flood, anyway?)

==Page 69==

69.02 '''''terre mauvais''''' 
French "terre mauvaise" - the "badlands". A rare case of TRP misspelling a foreign word.

69.14 '''a bandana of the regulation magenta and green''' 
The coal-tar derived colors of organic chemistry that resonate throughout the novel. 
The visual clash between these colours appears elsewhere - 'A bit of lime green in with your rose' 12
Pynchon seems to associate positive things with these colors - see ''Against the Day'' particularly - as he does with bandanas. A-and bananas.

69.16 '''Rancho Peligroso''' 
"Dangerous Ranch": evokes the Siege Perilous of the Arthurian Grail legend as well as ''Rancho Notorious'', a 1952 Western directed by Fritz Lang and starring Marlene Dietrich. See note at [[V321.06-07]]

69.27 '''callipygian rondure''' 
[http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cal3.htm callipygian] -- having shapely buttocks, originally used in conjunction with the noted statue of Aphrodite (which is itself a play on "Afro" and "Venus"), the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Kallipygos "Venus Kallipygos"]. This language parodies the typology of "scientific" racism from the late 19th and ealy 20th century.

rondure -- a circular or gracefully rounded object.

69.32 '''Toro Rojo''' 
Red Bull

==Page 70==
70.15 '''One ''mestiza''. One ''criolla''''' 
Mestiza: woman of mixed race, especially mixed of European and Native American ancestry. 
Criolla: Creole

70.29 '''the Ardennes''' 
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian (Devonian) Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France... The strategic position of the Ardennes has made it a battleground for European powers for centuries... in both World War I and World War II, Germany successfully gambled on making a rapid passage through the Ardennes to attack a relatively lightly defended part of France. The Ardennes was the site of three major battles during the world wars – the Battle of the Ardennes in World War I, and the Battle of France and Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Many of the towns of the region were badly damaged during the two world wars. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardennes]

70.32 '''Newton Upper Falls''' 
Newton Upper Falls is a village situated on the east bank of the Charles River in the city of Newton, Massachusetts, in the United States. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_Upper_Falls,_Massachusetts]

70.37 '''Ar'tics''' 
A regional name, dropping the first "c" in "Arctic," for metal-buckled rubber galoshes.[http://www.leroyhistoricalsociety.org/assets/011214---artics.pdf]

==Page 71==
71.02 '''Beacon Street''' 
Beacon Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and several of its western suburbs. Beacon Street in Boston, Brookline, Brighton, and Newton is not to be confused with the Beacon Street in nearby Somerville, or others elsewhere. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Street]

==Page 71==
[[image:tyrosine.jpg|thumb|100px|Tyrosine Molecule|right]]71.11 '''kryptosam''' 
Correspondent Matthias Bauer notes that "sam" derives from the German "samen," for "seed." "Krypto," of course, derives from the same word as "cryptography," the study of codes. [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] claims that the "tyrosine" from which kryptosam is supposed to derive is "undoubtedly fictional," but it is in fact an amino acid, which can convert to melanin, just as Jamf's note indicates (although it is unclear whether semen will in fact act as the catalytic agent). 

Tyrosine is found in casein, and the name derives from the Greek, ''tyros'' meaning cheese. 

Significant properties of note for Tyrosine: 
- Tyrosine functions as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol phenol], which Nazi doctors used in injections for rapid executions. Phenols were used extensively at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 
- Tyrosine occurs in proteins that are part of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_transduction signal transduction] process -- a biological processes that converts one kind of signal or stimulus into another -- cell signalling.

The SBB (SIS/MI6 forerunner) allegedly discovered that semen, if not a catalyst, did at least make a good invisible ink.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semen#Semen_in_espionage Semen in espionage],
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansfield_Smith-Cumming Mansfield Smith Cuming], and
[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-spymaster-who-was-stranger-than-fiction-737707.html Spymaster]

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 60-71

2016-04-22T23:58:18Z

Modavis: /* Page 65 */

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 61==
61.19 '''Sodium Amytal''' 
Also known as "truth serum", Amobarbital is a drug that is a barbiturate derivative. It has sedative-hypnotic and analgesic properties. It is a white crystalline powder with no odor and a slightly bitter taste. It was first synthesized in Germany in 1923. If amobarbital is taken for extended periods of time, physical and psychological dependence can develop.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_amytal]

61.25 '''Got a hardon in my fist...''' 
This song goes right along with the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird," starting with the "Pack up all my cares and woe..." refrain that, in this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO6PpD-tRLU YouTube], begins at about 0:52.

[[Image:Ruptured_Duck.jpeg|thumb|125px|Ruptured duck|right]]61.30 '''"ruptured duck"''' 
The sarcastic nickname for a lapel pin issued at honorable discharge from the US armed forces in WWII, depicting a screaming eagle inside a wreath. "Ruptured" = herniated.

==Page 62==
62.05 '''Roxbury''' 
The town of Roxbury was founded in 1630 by the author's ancestor William Pynchon, and is now a neighborhood of Boston, MA. It had been an immigrant neighborhood for generations before African-Americans began to migrate from the South after WWI. While writing GR, Pynchon would certainly have been aware of rioting there at the time of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxbury,_Boston]

==Page 63==
63.03 '''Roseland Ballroom''' 
Not the better-known Roseland Ballroom in New York City, but the one on Massachusetts Avenue in Roxbury. "The stretch of Mass. Ave. between Huntington and Columbus was, by the late ’40s, Boston’s answer to 52nd Street in Manhattan -— with not only the Roseland, but the Savoy Café, the Hi-Hat, Wally’s, and a handful of smaller clubs."[http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/the-shape-of-jazz-that-was/]

63.05 '''Moxie''' 
One of the first mass-produced carbonated soft drinks in the United States. In its advertising, it used “Make Mine Moxie!” advertising jingles, the slogan “Just Make It Moxie for Mine”, and a "Moxie Man" logo. Uncapitalized, "moxie" became slang for energy and daring. The brand suffered a significant decline in sales during the 1930s.

63.22 '''Red, the Negro shoeshine boy''' 
Stating the obvious, Red is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcom_X#_note-timeline Malcolm X], whose nickname "Red" referred to his hair color -- a dark cinnamon brown. In February 1941 Malcolm moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, worked a variety of jobs including shoeshine and became involved in Boston's "underworld fringe," pimping among other things. [http://www.baystate-banner.com/archives/stories/2006/02/021606-03.htm]

63.32-37 '''"Yardbird" Parker is finding out [ . . . ]''' 
Refers to jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Correspondent Igor Zabel offers the following addition to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]]'s note on this passage:
"On one of Parker's CDs (Swedish Schnapps +), I found the passage which was quoted by [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] after Max Harrison, but slightly different, and it is interesting because Parker directly mentions Cherokee: 'Well, that night, I was working over 'Cherokee' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.' The quotation is taken from 'Hear Me Talkin' To Ya'."

==Page 64==

64.19 '''"'Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!'"''' 
This homoerotic scene seems based on some facts. It is known that Malcolm X prostituted himself for money and according to Bruce Perry's biography, ''Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America'' (Station Hill, New York, 1991) he had various homosexual liaisons throughout his life. Interestingly, Malcolm worked as a butler to a wealthy Boston bachelor, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1486997,00.html William Paul Lennon]. According to Malcolm's sidekick Malcolm Jarvis, he [Malcolm] was paid to sprinkle Lennon with talcum powder and bring him to orgasm.

64.24 '''"any of those Sheiks in the drawer?"''' 
Sheik was a popular brand of condom. "Other brands evoked an exotic, Far Eastern world of harems and belly-dancers that automatically triggered sex in many adult minds... Giant [firm]s like Julius Schmid, who made Ramses and Sheiks..." [http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/getting-it-on-the-covert-history-of-the-american-condom/']

As well as selling accessories, hotel bellboys, shoeshine men and washroom attendants could often arrange
contacts with amiable women ("another luck-changin' phone number there, Red..?")

64.30 '''Red Malcolm the Unthinkable Nihilist''' 
At this depth in the American dream, fears of ideology, race, and class are indistinguishable: after all, a Harvard man in an Arrow shirt is about to be anally gang-raped by Negroes while jazzmen above set fire to a song about love for a Cherokee maiden...

==Page 65==
65.09 '''Burma-Shave signs''' 
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, sequential highway billboard signs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave_signs]

65.15 '''"Gobbler" Biddle''' 
The Biddles are one of the leading families of Philadelphia, who sometimes vacationed in the Berkshires. Specifically, the "Gobbler" could be Nicholas Biddle (Harvard, 1944). 
Interestingly [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Beverly_Biddle Francis B. Biddle] (Harvard College 1909, Harvard Law 1911) was US Attorney General (1941-1945) at this time. FBB was responsible for directing the FBI to arrest "enemy aliens" leading to Japanese-American internment camps; served as the primary judge during the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal; and authored of ''The Fear of Freedom'' and other works.

65.16 '''Fu’s Folly in Cambridge''' 
Although, as [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] notes, the character is named for Fu Manchu (who is an important reference for Pointsman later in the novel), it should be recalled that there was also a "Fu" who was a member of the Whole Sick Crew in ''V.''

Resembles the old Young & Yee Restaurant (now closed) at 27 Church Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, which for over 40 years slopped greasy chop suey. An anachronism to the novel's time period, yes, but perhaps an inspiration to the author.

65.33 '''Jack Kennedy''' 
JFK (whose father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., was US Ambassador to the UK in 1938-1940) is said to be in Slothrop's Harvard class. Estimating, Slothrop was born ca 1917-18 and entered Harvard in 1936, the year of Harvard's tricentennial.So both were in their mid-20s, Kennedy a PT boat commander in the Pacific, during the action in ''GR''. The poignant "might Jack have kept it [the harmonica] from falling, violated gravity somehow?... yes it seems Jack might have" can be read as a retrodiction from the Vietnam War and urban-riot years of GR's composition: some believed that American life would not have taken its darker turn had Kennedy not been assassinated in November 1963.

Contrary to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]], Kennedy’s first book was titled '''''Why''' England Slept'' (not "When") [Corrected in 2nd edition] 

==Page 66==
66.39 '''Capehart''' 
The [http://www.myvintagetv.com/capehart.htm Capehart] automatic phonograph with a turn-over mechanism was the epitome of luxury phonographs, technical excellence and supreme electronics in the 1930s and 40s.

==Page 67==
67.34-35 '''Not "archetypal" westwardman, but the only 
An explicit nod to psychologist Carl Jung, and beyond him to the Platonic strain in philosophy: that behind all the multiplicity, variety and changing detail of daylit life, there are (in our minds and/or metaphysical reality) singular, unchanging forms: in this case, the primal explorer-mountain man-cowboy-gunfighter hero.

Pynchon also works this trope in the other direction whenever he assimilates a character to archetypes in pop culture (often film), as when Jessica gave Roger "her Fay Wray look"(57) and Roger played the drooling Dirty Old Man (59).

==Page 68==

68.01 '''Half an Ark’s better than none.''' 
For Crutchfield, there is only '''one''' of everything, as opposed to two of every animal on Noah’s (whole) Ark. (And how much use is half an Ark in a flood, anyway?)

==Page 69==

69.02 '''''terre mauvais''''' 
French "terre mauvaise" - the "badlands". A rare case of TRP misspelling a foreign word.

69.14 '''a bandana of the regulation magenta and green''' 
The coal-tar derived colors of organic chemistry that resonate throughout the novel. 
The visual clash between these colours appears elsewhere - 'A bit of lime green in with your rose' 12
Pynchon seems to associate positive things with these colors - see ''Against the Day'' particularly - as he does with bandanas. A-and bananas.

69.16 '''Rancho Peligroso''' 
"Dangerous Ranch": evokes the Siege Perilous of the Arthurian Grail legend as well as ''Rancho Notorious'', a 1952 Western directed by Fritz Lang and starring Marlene Dietrich. See note at [[V321.06-07]]

69.27 '''callipygian rondure''' 
[http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cal3.htm callipygian] -- having shapely buttocks, originally used in conjunction with the noted statue of Aphrodite (which is itself a play on "Afro" and "Venus"), the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Kallipygos "Venus Kallipygos"]. This language parodies the typology of "scientific" racism from the late 19th and ealy 20th century.

rondure -- a circular or gracefully rounded object.

69.32 '''Toro Rojo''' 
Red Bull

==Page 70==
70.15 '''One ''mestiza''. One ''criolla''''' 
Mestiza: woman of mixed race, especially mixed of European and Native American ancestry. 
Criolla: Creole

70.29 '''the Ardennes''' 
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian (Devonian) Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France... The strategic position of the Ardennes has made it a battleground for European powers for centuries... in both World War I and World War II, Germany successfully gambled on making a rapid passage through the Ardennes to attack a relatively lightly defended part of France. The Ardennes was the site of three major battles during the world wars – the Battle of the Ardennes in World War I, and the Battle of France and Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Many of the towns of the region were badly damaged during the two world wars. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardennes]

70.32 '''Newton Upper Falls''' 
Newton Upper Falls is a village situated on the east bank of the Charles River in the city of Newton, Massachusetts, in the United States. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_Upper_Falls,_Massachusetts]

70.37 '''Ar'tics''' 
A regional name, dropping the first "c" in "Arctic," for metal-buckled rubber galoshes.[http://www.leroyhistoricalsociety.org/assets/011214---artics.pdf]

==Page 71==
71.02 '''Beacon Street''' 
Beacon Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and several of its western suburbs. Beacon Street in Boston, Brookline, Brighton, and Newton is not to be confused with the Beacon Street in nearby Somerville, or others elsewhere. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Street]

==Page 71==
[[image:tyrosine.jpg|thumb|100px|Tyrosine Molecule|right]]71.11 '''kryptosam''' 
Correspondent Matthias Bauer notes that "sam" derives from the German "samen," for "seed." "Krypto," of course, derives from the same word as "cryptography," the study of codes. [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] claims that the "tyrosine" from which kryptosam is supposed to derive is "undoubtedly fictional," but it is in fact an amino acid, which can convert to melanin, just as Jamf's note indicates (although it is unclear whether semen will in fact act as the catalytic agent). 

Tyrosine is found in casein, and the name derives from the Greek, ''tyros'' meaning cheese. 

Significant properties of note for Tyrosine: 
- Tyrosine functions as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol phenol], which Nazi doctors used in injections for rapid executions. Phenols were used extensively at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 
- Tyrosine occurs in proteins that are part of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_transduction signal transduction] process -- a biological processes that converts one kind of signal or stimulus into another -- cell signalling.

The SBB (SIS/MI6 forerunner) allegedly discovered that semen, if not a catalyst, did at least make a good invisible ink.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semen#Semen_in_espionage Semen in espionage],
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansfield_Smith-Cumming Mansfield Smith Cuming], and
[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-spymaster-who-was-stranger-than-fiction-737707.html Spymaster]

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 60-71

2016-04-22T23:55:36Z

Modavis: /* Page 65 */

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 61==
61.19 '''Sodium Amytal''' 
Also known as "truth serum", Amobarbital is a drug that is a barbiturate derivative. It has sedative-hypnotic and analgesic properties. It is a white crystalline powder with no odor and a slightly bitter taste. It was first synthesized in Germany in 1923. If amobarbital is taken for extended periods of time, physical and psychological dependence can develop.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_amytal]

61.25 '''Got a hardon in my fist...''' 
This song goes right along with the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird," starting with the "Pack up all my cares and woe..." refrain that, in this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO6PpD-tRLU YouTube], begins at about 0:52.

[[Image:Ruptured_Duck.jpeg|thumb|125px|Ruptured duck|right]]61.30 '''"ruptured duck"''' 
The sarcastic nickname for a lapel pin issued at honorable discharge from the US armed forces in WWII, depicting a screaming eagle inside a wreath. "Ruptured" = herniated.

==Page 62==
62.05 '''Roxbury''' 
The town of Roxbury was founded in 1630 by the author's ancestor William Pynchon, and is now a neighborhood of Boston, MA. It had been an immigrant neighborhood for generations before African-Americans began to migrate from the South after WWI. While writing GR, Pynchon would certainly have been aware of rioting there at the time of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxbury,_Boston]

==Page 63==
63.03 '''Roseland Ballroom''' 
Not the better-known Roseland Ballroom in New York City, but the one on Massachusetts Avenue in Roxbury. "The stretch of Mass. Ave. between Huntington and Columbus was, by the late ’40s, Boston’s answer to 52nd Street in Manhattan -— with not only the Roseland, but the Savoy Café, the Hi-Hat, Wally’s, and a handful of smaller clubs."[http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/the-shape-of-jazz-that-was/]

63.05 '''Moxie''' 
One of the first mass-produced carbonated soft drinks in the United States. In its advertising, it used “Make Mine Moxie!” advertising jingles, the slogan “Just Make It Moxie for Mine”, and a "Moxie Man" logo. Uncapitalized, "moxie" became slang for energy and daring. The brand suffered a significant decline in sales during the 1930s.

63.22 '''Red, the Negro shoeshine boy''' 
Stating the obvious, Red is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcom_X#_note-timeline Malcolm X], whose nickname "Red" referred to his hair color -- a dark cinnamon brown. In February 1941 Malcolm moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, worked a variety of jobs including shoeshine and became involved in Boston's "underworld fringe," pimping among other things. [http://www.baystate-banner.com/archives/stories/2006/02/021606-03.htm]

63.32-37 '''"Yardbird" Parker is finding out [ . . . ]''' 
Refers to jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Correspondent Igor Zabel offers the following addition to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]]'s note on this passage:
"On one of Parker's CDs (Swedish Schnapps +), I found the passage which was quoted by [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] after Max Harrison, but slightly different, and it is interesting because Parker directly mentions Cherokee: 'Well, that night, I was working over 'Cherokee' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.' The quotation is taken from 'Hear Me Talkin' To Ya'."

==Page 64==

64.19 '''"'Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!'"''' 
This homoerotic scene seems based on some facts. It is known that Malcolm X prostituted himself for money and according to Bruce Perry's biography, ''Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America'' (Station Hill, New York, 1991) he had various homosexual liaisons throughout his life. Interestingly, Malcolm worked as a butler to a wealthy Boston bachelor, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1486997,00.html William Paul Lennon]. According to Malcolm's sidekick Malcolm Jarvis, he [Malcolm] was paid to sprinkle Lennon with talcum powder and bring him to orgasm.

64.24 '''"any of those Sheiks in the drawer?"''' 
Sheik was a popular brand of condom. "Other brands evoked an exotic, Far Eastern world of harems and belly-dancers that automatically triggered sex in many adult minds... Giant [firm]s like Julius Schmid, who made Ramses and Sheiks..." [http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/getting-it-on-the-covert-history-of-the-american-condom/']

As well as selling accessories, hotel bellboys, shoeshine men and washroom attendants could often arrange
contacts with amiable women ("another luck-changin' phone number there, Red..?")

64.30 '''Red Malcolm the Unthinkable Nihilist''' 
At this depth in the American dream, fears of ideology, race, and class are indistinguishable: after all, a Harvard man in an Arrow shirt is about to be anally gang-raped by Negroes while jazzmen above set fire to a song about love for a Cherokee maiden...

==Page 65==
65.09 '''Burma-Shave signs''' 
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, sequential highway billboard signs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave_signs]

65.15 '''"Gobbler" Biddle''' 
The Biddles are one of the leading families of Philadelphia, who sometimes vacationed in the Berkshires. Specifically, the "Gobbler" could be Nicholas Biddle (Harvard, 1944). 
Interestingly [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Beverly_Biddle Francis B. Biddle] (Harvard College 1909, Harvard Law 1911) was US Attorney General (1941-1945) at this time. FBB was responsible for directing the FBI to arrest "enemy aliens" leading to Japanese-American internment camps; served as the primary judge during the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal; and authored of ''The Fear of Freedom'' and other works.

65.16 '''Fu’s Folly in Cambridge''' 
Although, as [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] notes, the character is named for Fu Manchu (who is an important reference for Pointsman later in the novel), it should be recalled that there was also a "Fu" who was a member of the Whole Sick Crew in ''V.''

Resembles the old Young & Yee Restaurant (now closed) at 27 Church Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, which for over 40 years slopped greasey chop suey. An anachronism to the novel's time period, yes, but perhaps an inspiration to the author.

65.33 '''Jack Kennedy''' 
JFK (whose father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., was US Ambassador to the UK in 1938-1940) is said to be in Slothrop's Harvard class. Estimating, Slothrop was born ca 1917-18 and entered Harvard in 1936, the year of Harvard's tricentennial.So both were in their mid-20s, Kennedy a PT boat commander in the Pacific, during the action in ''GR''. The poignant "might Jack have kept it [the harmonica] from falling, violated gravity somehow?... yes it seems Jack might have" can be read as a retrodiction from the Vietnam War and urban-riot years of GR's composition: some believed that American life would not have taken its darker turn had Kennedy not been assassinated in November 1963.

Contrary to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]], Kennedy’s first book was titled '''''Why''' England Slept'' (not "When"). 

==Page 66==
66.39 '''Capehart''' 
The [http://www.myvintagetv.com/capehart.htm Capehart] automatic phonograph with a turn-over mechanism was the epitome of luxury phonographs, technical excellence and supreme electronics in the 1930s and 40s.

==Page 67==
67.34-35 '''Not "archetypal" westwardman, but the only 
An explicit nod to psychologist Carl Jung, and beyond him to the Platonic strain in philosophy: that behind all the multiplicity, variety and changing detail of daylit life, there are (in our minds and/or metaphysical reality) singular, unchanging forms: in this case, the primal explorer-mountain man-cowboy-gunfighter hero.

Pynchon also works this trope in the other direction whenever he assimilates a character to archetypes in pop culture (often film), as when Jessica gave Roger "her Fay Wray look"(57) and Roger played the drooling Dirty Old Man (59).

==Page 68==

68.01 '''Half an Ark’s better than none.''' 
For Crutchfield, there is only '''one''' of everything, as opposed to two of every animal on Noah’s (whole) Ark. (And how much use is half an Ark in a flood, anyway?)

==Page 69==

69.02 '''''terre mauvais''''' 
French "terre mauvaise" - the "badlands". A rare case of TRP misspelling a foreign word.

69.14 '''a bandana of the regulation magenta and green''' 
The coal-tar derived colors of organic chemistry that resonate throughout the novel. 
The visual clash between these colours appears elsewhere - 'A bit of lime green in with your rose' 12
Pynchon seems to associate positive things with these colors - see ''Against the Day'' particularly - as he does with bandanas. A-and bananas.

69.16 '''Rancho Peligroso''' 
"Dangerous Ranch": evokes the Siege Perilous of the Arthurian Grail legend as well as ''Rancho Notorious'', a 1952 Western directed by Fritz Lang and starring Marlene Dietrich. See note at [[V321.06-07]]

69.27 '''callipygian rondure''' 
[http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cal3.htm callipygian] -- having shapely buttocks, originally used in conjunction with the noted statue of Aphrodite (which is itself a play on "Afro" and "Venus"), the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Kallipygos "Venus Kallipygos"]. This language parodies the typology of "scientific" racism from the late 19th and ealy 20th century.

rondure -- a circular or gracefully rounded object.

69.32 '''Toro Rojo''' 
Red Bull

==Page 70==
70.15 '''One ''mestiza''. One ''criolla''''' 
Mestiza: woman of mixed race, especially mixed of European and Native American ancestry. 
Criolla: Creole

70.29 '''the Ardennes''' 
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian (Devonian) Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France... The strategic position of the Ardennes has made it a battleground for European powers for centuries... in both World War I and World War II, Germany successfully gambled on making a rapid passage through the Ardennes to attack a relatively lightly defended part of France. The Ardennes was the site of three major battles during the world wars – the Battle of the Ardennes in World War I, and the Battle of France and Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Many of the towns of the region were badly damaged during the two world wars. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardennes]

70.32 '''Newton Upper Falls''' 
Newton Upper Falls is a village situated on the east bank of the Charles River in the city of Newton, Massachusetts, in the United States. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_Upper_Falls,_Massachusetts]

70.37 '''Ar'tics''' 
A regional name, dropping the first "c" in "Arctic," for metal-buckled rubber galoshes.[http://www.leroyhistoricalsociety.org/assets/011214---artics.pdf]

==Page 71==
71.02 '''Beacon Street''' 
Beacon Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and several of its western suburbs. Beacon Street in Boston, Brookline, Brighton, and Newton is not to be confused with the Beacon Street in nearby Somerville, or others elsewhere. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Street]

==Page 71==
[[image:tyrosine.jpg|thumb|100px|Tyrosine Molecule|right]]71.11 '''kryptosam''' 
Correspondent Matthias Bauer notes that "sam" derives from the German "samen," for "seed." "Krypto," of course, derives from the same word as "cryptography," the study of codes. [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] claims that the "tyrosine" from which kryptosam is supposed to derive is "undoubtedly fictional," but it is in fact an amino acid, which can convert to melanin, just as Jamf's note indicates (although it is unclear whether semen will in fact act as the catalytic agent). 

Tyrosine is found in casein, and the name derives from the Greek, ''tyros'' meaning cheese. 

Significant properties of note for Tyrosine: 
- Tyrosine functions as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol phenol], which Nazi doctors used in injections for rapid executions. Phenols were used extensively at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 
- Tyrosine occurs in proteins that are part of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_transduction signal transduction] process -- a biological processes that converts one kind of signal or stimulus into another -- cell signalling.

The SBB (SIS/MI6 forerunner) allegedly discovered that semen, if not a catalyst, did at least make a good invisible ink.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semen#Semen_in_espionage Semen in espionage],
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansfield_Smith-Cumming Mansfield Smith Cuming], and
[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-spymaster-who-was-stranger-than-fiction-737707.html Spymaster]

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 60-71

2016-04-22T23:48:32Z

Modavis: /* Page 64 */

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 61==
61.19 '''Sodium Amytal''' 
Also known as "truth serum", Amobarbital is a drug that is a barbiturate derivative. It has sedative-hypnotic and analgesic properties. It is a white crystalline powder with no odor and a slightly bitter taste. It was first synthesized in Germany in 1923. If amobarbital is taken for extended periods of time, physical and psychological dependence can develop.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_amytal]

61.25 '''Got a hardon in my fist...''' 
This song goes right along with the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird," starting with the "Pack up all my cares and woe..." refrain that, in this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO6PpD-tRLU YouTube], begins at about 0:52.

[[Image:Ruptured_Duck.jpeg|thumb|125px|Ruptured duck|right]]61.30 '''"ruptured duck"''' 
The sarcastic nickname for a lapel pin issued at honorable discharge from the US armed forces in WWII, depicting a screaming eagle inside a wreath. "Ruptured" = herniated.

==Page 62==
62.05 '''Roxbury''' 
The town of Roxbury was founded in 1630 by the author's ancestor William Pynchon, and is now a neighborhood of Boston, MA. It had been an immigrant neighborhood for generations before African-Americans began to migrate from the South after WWI. While writing GR, Pynchon would certainly have been aware of rioting there at the time of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxbury,_Boston]

==Page 63==
63.03 '''Roseland Ballroom''' 
Not the better-known Roseland Ballroom in New York City, but the one on Massachusetts Avenue in Roxbury. "The stretch of Mass. Ave. between Huntington and Columbus was, by the late ’40s, Boston’s answer to 52nd Street in Manhattan -— with not only the Roseland, but the Savoy Café, the Hi-Hat, Wally’s, and a handful of smaller clubs."[http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/the-shape-of-jazz-that-was/]

63.05 '''Moxie''' 
One of the first mass-produced carbonated soft drinks in the United States. In its advertising, it used “Make Mine Moxie!” advertising jingles, the slogan “Just Make It Moxie for Mine”, and a "Moxie Man" logo. Uncapitalized, "moxie" became slang for energy and daring. The brand suffered a significant decline in sales during the 1930s.

63.22 '''Red, the Negro shoeshine boy''' 
Stating the obvious, Red is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcom_X#_note-timeline Malcolm X], whose nickname "Red" referred to his hair color -- a dark cinnamon brown. In February 1941 Malcolm moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, worked a variety of jobs including shoeshine and became involved in Boston's "underworld fringe," pimping among other things. [http://www.baystate-banner.com/archives/stories/2006/02/021606-03.htm]

63.32-37 '''"Yardbird" Parker is finding out [ . . . ]''' 
Refers to jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Correspondent Igor Zabel offers the following addition to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]]'s note on this passage:
"On one of Parker's CDs (Swedish Schnapps +), I found the passage which was quoted by [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] after Max Harrison, but slightly different, and it is interesting because Parker directly mentions Cherokee: 'Well, that night, I was working over 'Cherokee' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.' The quotation is taken from 'Hear Me Talkin' To Ya'."

==Page 64==

64.19 '''"'Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!'"''' 
This homoerotic scene seems based on some facts. It is known that Malcolm X prostituted himself for money and according to Bruce Perry's biography, ''Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America'' (Station Hill, New York, 1991) he had various homosexual liaisons throughout his life. Interestingly, Malcolm worked as a butler to a wealthy Boston bachelor, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1486997,00.html William Paul Lennon]. According to Malcolm's sidekick Malcolm Jarvis, he [Malcolm] was paid to sprinkle Lennon with talcum powder and bring him to orgasm.

64.24 '''"any of those Sheiks in the drawer?"''' 
Sheik was a popular brand of condom. "Other brands evoked an exotic, Far Eastern world of harems and belly-dancers that automatically triggered sex in many adult minds... Giant [firm]s like Julius Schmid, who made Ramses and Sheiks..." [http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/getting-it-on-the-covert-history-of-the-american-condom/']

As well as selling accessories, hotel bellboys, shoeshine men and washroom attendants could often arrange
contacts with amiable women ("another luck-changin' phone number there, Red..?")

64.30 '''Red Malcolm the Unthinkable Nihilist''' 
At this depth in the American dream, fears of ideology, race, and class are indistinguishable: after all, a Harvard man in an Arrow shirt is about to be anally gang-raped by Negroes while jazzmen above set fire to a song about love for a Cherokee maiden...

==Page 65==
65.09 '''Burma-Shave signs''' 
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, sequential highway billboard signs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave_signs]

65.15 '''"Gobbler" Biddle''' 
The Biddles are one of the leading families of Philadelphia, who sometimes vacationed in the Berkshires. Specifically, the "Gobbler" could be Nicholas Biddle (Harvard, 1944). 
Interestingly [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Beverly_Biddle Francis B. Biddle] (Harvard College 1909, Harvard Law 1911) was US Attorney General (1941-1945) at this time. FBB was responsible for directing the FBI to arrest "enemy aliens" leading to Japanese-American internment camps; served as the primary judge during the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal; and authored of ''The Fear of Freedom'' and other works.

65.16 '''Fu’s Folly in Cambridge''' 
Although, as [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] notes, the character is named for Fu Manchu (who is an important reference for Pointsman later in the novel), it should be recalled that there was also a "Fu" who was a member of the Whole Sick Crew in ''V.''

Resembles the old Young & Yee Restaurant (now closed) at 27 Church Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, which for over 40 years slopped greasey chop suey. An anachronism to the novel's time period, yes, but perhaps an inspiration to the author.

65.33 '''Jack Kennedy''' 
Contrary to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]], Kennedy’s first book was titled '''''Why''' England Slept'' (not "When"). 

JFK is said to be in Slothrop's Harvard class. Estimating, Slothrop was born ca 1917-18 and entered Harvard in 1936, the year of Harvard's tricentennial. They were both in their mid-20s, Kennedy a PT boat commander in the Pacific, during the action in ''GR''. The poignant "might Jack have kept it [the harmonica] from falling, violated gravity somehow?... yes it seems Jack might have" can be read as a retrodiction from the Vietnam War and urban-riot years of GR's composition: some believed that American life would not have taken its darker turn had Kennedy not been assassinated in November 1963.

==Page 66==
66.39 '''Capehart''' 
The [http://www.myvintagetv.com/capehart.htm Capehart] automatic phonograph with a turn-over mechanism was the epitome of luxury phonographs, technical excellence and supreme electronics in the 1930s and 40s.

==Page 67==
67.34-35 '''Not "archetypal" westwardman, but the only 
An explicit nod to psychologist Carl Jung, and beyond him to the Platonic strain in philosophy: that behind all the multiplicity, variety and changing detail of daylit life, there are (in our minds and/or metaphysical reality) singular, unchanging forms: in this case, the primal explorer-mountain man-cowboy-gunfighter hero.

Pynchon also works this trope in the other direction whenever he assimilates a character to archetypes in pop culture (often film), as when Jessica gave Roger "her Fay Wray look"(57) and Roger played the drooling Dirty Old Man (59).

==Page 68==

68.01 '''Half an Ark’s better than none.''' 
For Crutchfield, there is only '''one''' of everything, as opposed to two of every animal on Noah’s (whole) Ark. (And how much use is half an Ark in a flood, anyway?)

==Page 69==

69.02 '''''terre mauvais''''' 
French "terre mauvaise" - the "badlands". A rare case of TRP misspelling a foreign word.

69.14 '''a bandana of the regulation magenta and green''' 
The coal-tar derived colors of organic chemistry that resonate throughout the novel. 
The visual clash between these colours appears elsewhere - 'A bit of lime green in with your rose' 12
Pynchon seems to associate positive things with these colors - see ''Against the Day'' particularly - as he does with bandanas. A-and bananas.

69.16 '''Rancho Peligroso''' 
"Dangerous Ranch": evokes the Siege Perilous of the Arthurian Grail legend as well as ''Rancho Notorious'', a 1952 Western directed by Fritz Lang and starring Marlene Dietrich. See note at [[V321.06-07]]

69.27 '''callipygian rondure''' 
[http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cal3.htm callipygian] -- having shapely buttocks, originally used in conjunction with the noted statue of Aphrodite (which is itself a play on "Afro" and "Venus"), the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Kallipygos "Venus Kallipygos"]. This language parodies the typology of "scientific" racism from the late 19th and ealy 20th century.

rondure -- a circular or gracefully rounded object.

69.32 '''Toro Rojo''' 
Red Bull

==Page 70==
70.15 '''One ''mestiza''. One ''criolla''''' 
Mestiza: woman of mixed race, especially mixed of European and Native American ancestry. 
Criolla: Creole

70.29 '''the Ardennes''' 
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian (Devonian) Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France... The strategic position of the Ardennes has made it a battleground for European powers for centuries... in both World War I and World War II, Germany successfully gambled on making a rapid passage through the Ardennes to attack a relatively lightly defended part of France. The Ardennes was the site of three major battles during the world wars – the Battle of the Ardennes in World War I, and the Battle of France and Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Many of the towns of the region were badly damaged during the two world wars. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardennes]

70.32 '''Newton Upper Falls''' 
Newton Upper Falls is a village situated on the east bank of the Charles River in the city of Newton, Massachusetts, in the United States. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_Upper_Falls,_Massachusetts]

70.37 '''Ar'tics''' 
A regional name, dropping the first "c" in "Arctic," for metal-buckled rubber galoshes.[http://www.leroyhistoricalsociety.org/assets/011214---artics.pdf]

==Page 71==
71.02 '''Beacon Street''' 
Beacon Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and several of its western suburbs. Beacon Street in Boston, Brookline, Brighton, and Newton is not to be confused with the Beacon Street in nearby Somerville, or others elsewhere. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Street]

==Page 71==
[[image:tyrosine.jpg|thumb|100px|Tyrosine Molecule|right]]71.11 '''kryptosam''' 
Correspondent Matthias Bauer notes that "sam" derives from the German "samen," for "seed." "Krypto," of course, derives from the same word as "cryptography," the study of codes. [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] claims that the "tyrosine" from which kryptosam is supposed to derive is "undoubtedly fictional," but it is in fact an amino acid, which can convert to melanin, just as Jamf's note indicates (although it is unclear whether semen will in fact act as the catalytic agent). 

Tyrosine is found in casein, and the name derives from the Greek, ''tyros'' meaning cheese. 

Significant properties of note for Tyrosine: 
- Tyrosine functions as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol phenol], which Nazi doctors used in injections for rapid executions. Phenols were used extensively at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 
- Tyrosine occurs in proteins that are part of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_transduction signal transduction] process -- a biological processes that converts one kind of signal or stimulus into another -- cell signalling.

The SBB (SIS/MI6 forerunner) allegedly discovered that semen, if not a catalyst, did at least make a good invisible ink.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semen#Semen_in_espionage Semen in espionage],
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansfield_Smith-Cumming Mansfield Smith Cuming], and
[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-spymaster-who-was-stranger-than-fiction-737707.html Spymaster]

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 60-71

2016-04-22T23:48:18Z

Modavis: /* Page 64 */

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 61==
61.19 '''Sodium Amytal''' 
Also known as "truth serum", Amobarbital is a drug that is a barbiturate derivative. It has sedative-hypnotic and analgesic properties. It is a white crystalline powder with no odor and a slightly bitter taste. It was first synthesized in Germany in 1923. If amobarbital is taken for extended periods of time, physical and psychological dependence can develop.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_amytal]

61.25 '''Got a hardon in my fist...''' 
This song goes right along with the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird," starting with the "Pack up all my cares and woe..." refrain that, in this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO6PpD-tRLU YouTube], begins at about 0:52.

[[Image:Ruptured_Duck.jpeg|thumb|125px|Ruptured duck|right]]61.30 '''"ruptured duck"''' 
The sarcastic nickname for a lapel pin issued at honorable discharge from the US armed forces in WWII, depicting a screaming eagle inside a wreath. "Ruptured" = herniated.

==Page 62==
62.05 '''Roxbury''' 
The town of Roxbury was founded in 1630 by the author's ancestor William Pynchon, and is now a neighborhood of Boston, MA. It had been an immigrant neighborhood for generations before African-Americans began to migrate from the South after WWI. While writing GR, Pynchon would certainly have been aware of rioting there at the time of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxbury,_Boston]

==Page 63==
63.03 '''Roseland Ballroom''' 
Not the better-known Roseland Ballroom in New York City, but the one on Massachusetts Avenue in Roxbury. "The stretch of Mass. Ave. between Huntington and Columbus was, by the late ’40s, Boston’s answer to 52nd Street in Manhattan -— with not only the Roseland, but the Savoy Café, the Hi-Hat, Wally’s, and a handful of smaller clubs."[http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/the-shape-of-jazz-that-was/]

63.05 '''Moxie''' 
One of the first mass-produced carbonated soft drinks in the United States. In its advertising, it used “Make Mine Moxie!” advertising jingles, the slogan “Just Make It Moxie for Mine”, and a "Moxie Man" logo. Uncapitalized, "moxie" became slang for energy and daring. The brand suffered a significant decline in sales during the 1930s.

63.22 '''Red, the Negro shoeshine boy''' 
Stating the obvious, Red is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcom_X#_note-timeline Malcolm X], whose nickname "Red" referred to his hair color -- a dark cinnamon brown. In February 1941 Malcolm moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, worked a variety of jobs including shoeshine and became involved in Boston's "underworld fringe," pimping among other things. [http://www.baystate-banner.com/archives/stories/2006/02/021606-03.htm]

63.32-37 '''"Yardbird" Parker is finding out [ . . . ]''' 
Refers to jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Correspondent Igor Zabel offers the following addition to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]]'s note on this passage:
"On one of Parker's CDs (Swedish Schnapps +), I found the passage which was quoted by [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] after Max Harrison, but slightly different, and it is interesting because Parker directly mentions Cherokee: 'Well, that night, I was working over 'Cherokee' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.' The quotation is taken from 'Hear Me Talkin' To Ya'."

==Page 64==

64.19 '''"'Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!'"''' 
This homoerotic scene seems based on some facts. It is known that Malcolm X prostituted himself for money and according to Bruce Perry's biography, ''Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America'' (Station Hill, New York, 1991) he had various homosexual liaisons throughout his life. Interestingly, Malcolm worked as a butler to a wealthy Boston bachelor, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1486997,00.html William Paul Lennon]. According to Malcolm's sidekick Malcolm Jarvis, he [Malcolm] was paid to sprinkle Lennon with talcum powder and bring him to orgasm.

64.24 '''"any of those Sheiks in the drawer?"''' 
Sheik was a popular brand of condom. "Other brands evoked an exotic, Far Eastern world of harems and belly-dancers that automatically triggered sex in many adult minds... Giant [firm]s like Julius Schmid, who made Ramses and Sheiks..." [http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/getting-it-on-the-covert-history-of-the-american-condom/']

As well as selling accessories, hotel bellboys, shoeshine men and washroom attendants could often arrange
contacts with amiable women ("another luck-changin' phone number there, Red..?")

64.30 '''Red Malcolm the Unthinkable Nihilist''' 
At this depth in the American dream, fears of ideology, race, and class are indistinguishable: after all, a Harvard man in an Arrow shirt is about to be anally gang-raped by Negroes while jazzmen above set fire to a song about love for a Cherokee maiden...

==Page 65==
65.09 '''Burma-Shave signs''' 
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, sequential highway billboard signs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave_signs]

65.15 '''"Gobbler" Biddle''' 
The Biddles are one of the leading families of Philadelphia, who sometimes vacationed in the Berkshires. Specifically, the "Gobbler" could be Nicholas Biddle (Harvard, 1944). 
Interestingly [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Beverly_Biddle Francis B. Biddle] (Harvard College 1909, Harvard Law 1911) was US Attorney General (1941-1945) at this time. FBB was responsible for directing the FBI to arrest "enemy aliens" leading to Japanese-American internment camps; served as the primary judge during the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal; and authored of ''The Fear of Freedom'' and other works.

65.16 '''Fu’s Folly in Cambridge''' 
Although, as [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] notes, the character is named for Fu Manchu (who is an important reference for Pointsman later in the novel), it should be recalled that there was also a "Fu" who was a member of the Whole Sick Crew in ''V.''

Resembles the old Young & Yee Restaurant (now closed) at 27 Church Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, which for over 40 years slopped greasey chop suey. An anachronism to the novel's time period, yes, but perhaps an inspiration to the author.

65.33 '''Jack Kennedy''' 
Contrary to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]], Kennedy’s first book was titled '''''Why''' England Slept'' (not "When"). 

JFK is said to be in Slothrop's Harvard class. Estimating, Slothrop was born ca 1917-18 and entered Harvard in 1936, the year of Harvard's tricentennial. They were both in their mid-20s, Kennedy a PT boat commander in the Pacific, during the action in ''GR''. The poignant "might Jack have kept it [the harmonica] from falling, violated gravity somehow?... yes it seems Jack might have" can be read as a retrodiction from the Vietnam War and urban-riot years of GR's composition: some believed that American life would not have taken its darker turn had Kennedy not been assassinated in November 1963.

==Page 66==
66.39 '''Capehart''' 
The [http://www.myvintagetv.com/capehart.htm Capehart] automatic phonograph with a turn-over mechanism was the epitome of luxury phonographs, technical excellence and supreme electronics in the 1930s and 40s.

==Page 67==
67.34-35 '''Not "archetypal" westwardman, but the only 
An explicit nod to psychologist Carl Jung, and beyond him to the Platonic strain in philosophy: that behind all the multiplicity, variety and changing detail of daylit life, there are (in our minds and/or metaphysical reality) singular, unchanging forms: in this case, the primal explorer-mountain man-cowboy-gunfighter hero.

Pynchon also works this trope in the other direction whenever he assimilates a character to archetypes in pop culture (often film), as when Jessica gave Roger "her Fay Wray look"(57) and Roger played the drooling Dirty Old Man (59).

==Page 68==

68.01 '''Half an Ark’s better than none.''' 
For Crutchfield, there is only '''one''' of everything, as opposed to two of every animal on Noah’s (whole) Ark. (And how much use is half an Ark in a flood, anyway?)

==Page 69==

69.02 '''''terre mauvais''''' 
French "terre mauvaise" - the "badlands". A rare case of TRP misspelling a foreign word.

69.14 '''a bandana of the regulation magenta and green''' 
The coal-tar derived colors of organic chemistry that resonate throughout the novel. 
The visual clash between these colours appears elsewhere - 'A bit of lime green in with your rose' 12
Pynchon seems to associate positive things with these colors - see ''Against the Day'' particularly - as he does with bandanas. A-and bananas.

69.16 '''Rancho Peligroso''' 
"Dangerous Ranch": evokes the Siege Perilous of the Arthurian Grail legend as well as ''Rancho Notorious'', a 1952 Western directed by Fritz Lang and starring Marlene Dietrich. See note at [[V321.06-07]]

69.27 '''callipygian rondure''' 
[http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cal3.htm callipygian] -- having shapely buttocks, originally used in conjunction with the noted statue of Aphrodite (which is itself a play on "Afro" and "Venus"), the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Kallipygos "Venus Kallipygos"]. This language parodies the typology of "scientific" racism from the late 19th and ealy 20th century.

rondure -- a circular or gracefully rounded object.

69.32 '''Toro Rojo''' 
Red Bull

==Page 70==
70.15 '''One ''mestiza''. One ''criolla''''' 
Mestiza: woman of mixed race, especially mixed of European and Native American ancestry. 
Criolla: Creole

70.29 '''the Ardennes''' 
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian (Devonian) Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France... The strategic position of the Ardennes has made it a battleground for European powers for centuries... in both World War I and World War II, Germany successfully gambled on making a rapid passage through the Ardennes to attack a relatively lightly defended part of France. The Ardennes was the site of three major battles during the world wars – the Battle of the Ardennes in World War I, and the Battle of France and Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Many of the towns of the region were badly damaged during the two world wars. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardennes]

70.32 '''Newton Upper Falls''' 
Newton Upper Falls is a village situated on the east bank of the Charles River in the city of Newton, Massachusetts, in the United States. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_Upper_Falls,_Massachusetts]

70.37 '''Ar'tics''' 
A regional name, dropping the first "c" in "Arctic," for metal-buckled rubber galoshes.[http://www.leroyhistoricalsociety.org/assets/011214---artics.pdf]

==Page 71==
71.02 '''Beacon Street''' 
Beacon Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and several of its western suburbs. Beacon Street in Boston, Brookline, Brighton, and Newton is not to be confused with the Beacon Street in nearby Somerville, or others elsewhere. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Street]

==Page 71==
[[image:tyrosine.jpg|thumb|100px|Tyrosine Molecule|right]]71.11 '''kryptosam''' 
Correspondent Matthias Bauer notes that "sam" derives from the German "samen," for "seed." "Krypto," of course, derives from the same word as "cryptography," the study of codes. [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] claims that the "tyrosine" from which kryptosam is supposed to derive is "undoubtedly fictional," but it is in fact an amino acid, which can convert to melanin, just as Jamf's note indicates (although it is unclear whether semen will in fact act as the catalytic agent). 

Tyrosine is found in casein, and the name derives from the Greek, ''tyros'' meaning cheese. 

Significant properties of note for Tyrosine: 
- Tyrosine functions as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol phenol], which Nazi doctors used in injections for rapid executions. Phenols were used extensively at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 
- Tyrosine occurs in proteins that are part of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_transduction signal transduction] process -- a biological processes that converts one kind of signal or stimulus into another -- cell signalling.

The SBB (SIS/MI6 forerunner) allegedly discovered that semen, if not a catalyst, did at least make a good invisible ink.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semen#Semen_in_espionage Semen in espionage],
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansfield_Smith-Cumming Mansfield Smith Cuming], and
[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-spymaster-who-was-stranger-than-fiction-737707.html Spymaster]

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 60-71

2016-04-22T23:28:42Z

Modavis: /* Page 63 */

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 61==
61.19 '''Sodium Amytal''' 
Also known as "truth serum", Amobarbital is a drug that is a barbiturate derivative. It has sedative-hypnotic and analgesic properties. It is a white crystalline powder with no odor and a slightly bitter taste. It was first synthesized in Germany in 1923. If amobarbital is taken for extended periods of time, physical and psychological dependence can develop.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_amytal]

61.25 '''Got a hardon in my fist...''' 
This song goes right along with the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird," starting with the "Pack up all my cares and woe..." refrain that, in this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO6PpD-tRLU YouTube], begins at about 0:52.

[[Image:Ruptured_Duck.jpeg|thumb|125px|Ruptured duck|right]]61.30 '''"ruptured duck"''' 
The sarcastic nickname for a lapel pin issued at honorable discharge from the US armed forces in WWII, depicting a screaming eagle inside a wreath. "Ruptured" = herniated.

==Page 62==
62.05 '''Roxbury''' 
The town of Roxbury was founded in 1630 by the author's ancestor William Pynchon, and is now a neighborhood of Boston, MA. It had been an immigrant neighborhood for generations before African-Americans began to migrate from the South after WWI. While writing GR, Pynchon would certainly have been aware of rioting there at the time of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxbury,_Boston]

==Page 63==
63.03 '''Roseland Ballroom''' 
Not the better-known Roseland Ballroom in New York City, but the one on Massachusetts Avenue in Roxbury. "The stretch of Mass. Ave. between Huntington and Columbus was, by the late ’40s, Boston’s answer to 52nd Street in Manhattan -— with not only the Roseland, but the Savoy Café, the Hi-Hat, Wally’s, and a handful of smaller clubs."[http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/the-shape-of-jazz-that-was/]

63.05 '''Moxie''' 
One of the first mass-produced carbonated soft drinks in the United States. In its advertising, it used “Make Mine Moxie!” advertising jingles, the slogan “Just Make It Moxie for Mine”, and a "Moxie Man" logo. Uncapitalized, "moxie" became slang for energy and daring. The brand suffered a significant decline in sales during the 1930s.

63.22 '''Red, the Negro shoeshine boy''' 
Stating the obvious, Red is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcom_X#_note-timeline Malcolm X], whose nickname "Red" referred to his hair color -- a dark cinnamon brown. In February 1941 Malcolm moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, worked a variety of jobs including shoeshine and became involved in Boston's "underworld fringe," pimping among other things. [http://www.baystate-banner.com/archives/stories/2006/02/021606-03.htm]

63.32-37 '''"Yardbird" Parker is finding out [ . . . ]''' 
Refers to jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Correspondent Igor Zabel offers the following addition to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]]'s note on this passage:
"On one of Parker's CDs (Swedish Schnapps +), I found the passage which was quoted by [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] after Max Harrison, but slightly different, and it is interesting because Parker directly mentions Cherokee: 'Well, that night, I was working over 'Cherokee' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.' The quotation is taken from 'Hear Me Talkin' To Ya'."

==Page 64==

64.19 '''"'Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!'"''' 
This homoerotic scene seems based on some facts. It is known that Malcolm X prostituted himself for money and according to Bruce Perry's biography, ''Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America'' (Station Hill, New York, 1991) he had various homosexual liaisons throughout his life. Interestingly, Malcolm worked as a butler to a wealthy Boston bachelor, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1486997,00.html William Paul Lennon]. According to Malcolm's sidekick Malcolm Jarvis, he [Malcolm] was paid to sprinkle Lennon with talcum powder and bring him to orgasm.

==Page 65==
65.09 '''Burma-Shave signs''' 
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, sequential highway billboard signs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave_signs]

65.15 '''"Gobbler" Biddle''' 
The Biddles are one of the leading families of Philadelphia, who sometimes vacationed in the Berkshires. Specifically, the "Gobbler" could be Nicholas Biddle (Harvard, 1944). 
Interestingly [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Beverly_Biddle Francis B. Biddle] (Harvard College 1909, Harvard Law 1911) was US Attorney General (1941-1945) at this time. FBB was responsible for directing the FBI to arrest "enemy aliens" leading to Japanese-American internment camps; served as the primary judge during the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal; and authored of ''The Fear of Freedom'' and other works.

65.16 '''Fu’s Folly in Cambridge''' 
Although, as [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] notes, the character is named for Fu Manchu (who is an important reference for Pointsman later in the novel), it should be recalled that there was also a "Fu" who was a member of the Whole Sick Crew in ''V.''

Resembles the old Young & Yee Restaurant (now closed) at 27 Church Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, which for over 40 years slopped greasey chop suey. An anachronism to the novel's time period, yes, but perhaps an inspiration to the author.

65.33 '''Jack Kennedy''' 
Contrary to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]], Kennedy’s first book was titled '''''Why''' England Slept'' (not "When"). 

JFK is said to be in Slothrop's Harvard class. Estimating, Slothrop was born ca 1917-18 and entered Harvard in 1936, the year of Harvard's tricentennial. They were both in their mid-20s, Kennedy a PT boat commander in the Pacific, during the action in ''GR''. The poignant "might Jack have kept it [the harmonica] from falling, violated gravity somehow?... yes it seems Jack might have" can be read as a retrodiction from the Vietnam War and urban-riot years of GR's composition: some believed that American life would not have taken its darker turn had Kennedy not been assassinated in November 1963.

==Page 66==
66.39 '''Capehart''' 
The [http://www.myvintagetv.com/capehart.htm Capehart] automatic phonograph with a turn-over mechanism was the epitome of luxury phonographs, technical excellence and supreme electronics in the 1930s and 40s.

==Page 67==
67.34-35 '''Not "archetypal" westwardman, but the only 
An explicit nod to psychologist Carl Jung, and beyond him to the Platonic strain in philosophy: that behind all the multiplicity, variety and changing detail of daylit life, there are (in our minds and/or metaphysical reality) singular, unchanging forms: in this case, the primal explorer-mountain man-cowboy-gunfighter hero.

Pynchon also works this trope in the other direction whenever he assimilates a character to archetypes in pop culture (often film), as when Jessica gave Roger "her Fay Wray look"(57) and Roger played the drooling Dirty Old Man (59).

==Page 68==

68.01 '''Half an Ark’s better than none.''' 
For Crutchfield, there is only '''one''' of everything, as opposed to two of every animal on Noah’s (whole) Ark. (And how much use is half an Ark in a flood, anyway?)

==Page 69==

69.02 '''''terre mauvais''''' 
French "terre mauvaise" - the "badlands". A rare case of TRP misspelling a foreign word.

69.14 '''a bandana of the regulation magenta and green''' 
The coal-tar derived colors of organic chemistry that resonate throughout the novel. 
The visual clash between these colours appears elsewhere - 'A bit of lime green in with your rose' 12
Pynchon seems to associate positive things with these colors - see ''Against the Day'' particularly - as he does with bandanas. A-and bananas.

69.16 '''Rancho Peligroso''' 
"Dangerous Ranch": evokes the Siege Perilous of the Arthurian Grail legend as well as ''Rancho Notorious'', a 1952 Western directed by Fritz Lang and starring Marlene Dietrich. See note at [[V321.06-07]]

69.27 '''callipygian rondure''' 
[http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cal3.htm callipygian] -- having shapely buttocks, originally used in conjunction with the noted statue of Aphrodite (which is itself a play on "Afro" and "Venus"), the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Kallipygos "Venus Kallipygos"]. This language parodies the typology of "scientific" racism from the late 19th and ealy 20th century.

rondure -- a circular or gracefully rounded object.

69.32 '''Toro Rojo''' 
Red Bull

==Page 70==
70.15 '''One ''mestiza''. One ''criolla''''' 
Mestiza: woman of mixed race, especially mixed of European and Native American ancestry. 
Criolla: Creole

70.29 '''the Ardennes''' 
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian (Devonian) Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France... The strategic position of the Ardennes has made it a battleground for European powers for centuries... in both World War I and World War II, Germany successfully gambled on making a rapid passage through the Ardennes to attack a relatively lightly defended part of France. The Ardennes was the site of three major battles during the world wars – the Battle of the Ardennes in World War I, and the Battle of France and Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Many of the towns of the region were badly damaged during the two world wars. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardennes]

70.32 '''Newton Upper Falls''' 
Newton Upper Falls is a village situated on the east bank of the Charles River in the city of Newton, Massachusetts, in the United States. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_Upper_Falls,_Massachusetts]

70.37 '''Ar'tics''' 
A regional name, dropping the first "c" in "Arctic," for metal-buckled rubber galoshes.[http://www.leroyhistoricalsociety.org/assets/011214---artics.pdf]

==Page 71==
71.02 '''Beacon Street''' 
Beacon Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and several of its western suburbs. Beacon Street in Boston, Brookline, Brighton, and Newton is not to be confused with the Beacon Street in nearby Somerville, or others elsewhere. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Street]

==Page 71==
[[image:tyrosine.jpg|thumb|100px|Tyrosine Molecule|right]]71.11 '''kryptosam''' 
Correspondent Matthias Bauer notes that "sam" derives from the German "samen," for "seed." "Krypto," of course, derives from the same word as "cryptography," the study of codes. [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] claims that the "tyrosine" from which kryptosam is supposed to derive is "undoubtedly fictional," but it is in fact an amino acid, which can convert to melanin, just as Jamf's note indicates (although it is unclear whether semen will in fact act as the catalytic agent). 

Tyrosine is found in casein, and the name derives from the Greek, ''tyros'' meaning cheese. 

Significant properties of note for Tyrosine: 
- Tyrosine functions as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol phenol], which Nazi doctors used in injections for rapid executions. Phenols were used extensively at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 
- Tyrosine occurs in proteins that are part of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_transduction signal transduction] process -- a biological processes that converts one kind of signal or stimulus into another -- cell signalling.

The SBB (SIS/MI6 forerunner) allegedly discovered that semen, if not a catalyst, did at least make a good invisible ink.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semen#Semen_in_espionage Semen in espionage],
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansfield_Smith-Cumming Mansfield Smith Cuming], and
[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-spymaster-who-was-stranger-than-fiction-737707.html Spymaster]

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 60-71

2016-04-22T20:14:24Z

Modavis: /* Page 63 */

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 61==
61.19 '''Sodium Amytal''' 
Also known as "truth serum", Amobarbital is a drug that is a barbiturate derivative. It has sedative-hypnotic and analgesic properties. It is a white crystalline powder with no odor and a slightly bitter taste. It was first synthesized in Germany in 1923. If amobarbital is taken for extended periods of time, physical and psychological dependence can develop.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_amytal]

61.25 '''Got a hardon in my fist...''' 
This song goes right along with the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird," starting with the "Pack up all my cares and woe..." refrain that, in this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO6PpD-tRLU YouTube], begins at about 0:52.

[[Image:Ruptured_Duck.jpeg|thumb|125px|Ruptured duck|right]]61.30 '''"ruptured duck"''' 
The sarcastic nickname for a lapel pin issued at honorable discharge from the US armed forces in WWII, depicting a screaming eagle inside a wreath. "Ruptured" = herniated.

==Page 62==
62.05 '''Roxbury''' 
The town of Roxbury was founded in 1630 by the author's ancestor William Pynchon, and is now a neighborhood of Boston, MA. It had been an immigrant neighborhood for generations before African-Americans began to migrate from the South after WWI. While writing GR, Pynchon would certainly have been aware of rioting there at the time of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxbury,_Boston]

==Page 63==
63.03 '''Roseland Ballroom''' 
Not the better-known Roseland Ballroom in New York City, but the one on Massachusetts Avenue in Roxbury. "The stretch of Mass. Ave. between Huntington and Columbus was, by the late ’40s, Boston’s answer to 52nd Street in Manhattan -— with not only the Roseland, but the Savoy Café, the Hi-Hat, Wally’s, and a handful of smaller clubs."[http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/the-shape-of-jazz-that-was/]

63.05 '''Moxie''' 
A carbonated beverage that was one of the first mass-produced soft drinks in the United States. In its advertising, it used “Make Mine Moxie!” advertising jingles, the slogan “Just Make It Moxie for Mine”, and a "Moxie Man" logo. The brand suffered a significant decline in sales during the 1930s.

63.22 '''Red, the Negro shoeshine boy''' 
Stating the obvious, Red is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcom_X#_note-timeline Malcolm X], whose nickname "Red" referred to his hair color -- a dark cinnamon brown. In February 1941 Malcolm moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, worked a variety of jobs including shoeshine and became involved in Boston's "underworld fringe," pimping among other things. [http://www.baystate-banner.com/archives/stories/2006/02/021606-03.htm]

63.32-37 '''"Yardbird" Parker is finding out [ . . . ]''' 
Refers to jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Correspondent Igor Zabel offers the following addition to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]]'s note on this passage:
"On one of Parker's CDs (Swedish Schnapps +), I found the passage which was quoted by [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] after Max Harrison, but slightly different, and it is interesting because Parker directly mentions Cherokee: 'Well, that night, I was working over 'Cherokee' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.' The quotation is taken from 'Hear Me Talkin' To Ya'."

==Page 64==

64.19 '''"'Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!'"''' 
This homoerotic scene seems based on some facts. It is known that Malcolm X prostituted himself for money and according to Bruce Perry's biography, ''Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America'' (Station Hill, New York, 1991) he had various homosexual liaisons throughout his life. Interestingly, Malcolm worked as a butler to a wealthy Boston bachelor, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1486997,00.html William Paul Lennon]. According to Malcolm's sidekick Malcolm Jarvis, he [Malcolm] was paid to sprinkle Lennon with talcum powder and bring him to orgasm.

==Page 65==
65.09 '''Burma-Shave signs''' 
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, sequential highway billboard signs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave_signs]

65.15 '''"Gobbler" Biddle''' 
The Biddles are one of the leading families of Philadelphia, who sometimes vacationed in the Berkshires. Specifically, the "Gobbler" could be Nicholas Biddle (Harvard, 1944). 
Interestingly [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Beverly_Biddle Francis B. Biddle] (Harvard College 1909, Harvard Law 1911) was US Attorney General (1941-1945) at this time. FBB was responsible for directing the FBI to arrest "enemy aliens" leading to Japanese-American internment camps; served as the primary judge during the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal; and authored of ''The Fear of Freedom'' and other works.

65.16 '''Fu’s Folly in Cambridge''' 
Although, as [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] notes, the character is named for Fu Manchu (who is an important reference for Pointsman later in the novel), it should be recalled that there was also a "Fu" who was a member of the Whole Sick Crew in ''V.''

Resembles the old Young & Yee Restaurant (now closed) at 27 Church Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, which for over 40 years slopped greasey chop suey. An anachronism to the novel's time period, yes, but perhaps an inspiration to the author.

65.33 '''Jack Kennedy''' 
Contrary to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]], Kennedy’s first book was titled '''''Why''' England Slept'' (not "When"). 

JFK is said to be in Slothrop's Harvard class. Estimating, Slothrop was born ca 1917-18 and entered Harvard in 1936, the year of Harvard's tricentennial. They were both in their mid-20s, Kennedy a PT boat commander in the Pacific, during the action in ''GR''. The poignant "might Jack have kept it [the harmonica] from falling, violated gravity somehow?... yes it seems Jack might have" can be read as a retrodiction from the Vietnam War and urban-riot years of GR's composition: some believed that American life would not have taken its darker turn had Kennedy not been assassinated in November 1963.

==Page 66==
66.39 '''Capehart''' 
The [http://www.myvintagetv.com/capehart.htm Capehart] automatic phonograph with a turn-over mechanism was the epitome of luxury phonographs, technical excellence and supreme electronics in the 1930s and 40s.

==Page 67==
67.34-35 '''Not "archetypal" westwardman, but the only 
An explicit nod to psychologist Carl Jung, and beyond him to the Platonic strain in philosophy: that behind all the multiplicity, variety and changing detail of daylit life, there are (in our minds and/or metaphysical reality) singular, unchanging forms: in this case, the primal explorer-mountain man-cowboy-gunfighter hero.

Pynchon also works this trope in the other direction whenever he assimilates a character to archetypes in pop culture (often film), as when Jessica gave Roger "her Fay Wray look"(57) and Roger played the drooling Dirty Old Man (59).

==Page 68==

68.01 '''Half an Ark’s better than none.''' 
For Crutchfield, there is only '''one''' of everything, as opposed to two of every animal on Noah’s (whole) Ark. (And how much use is half an Ark in a flood, anyway?)

==Page 69==

69.02 '''''terre mauvais''''' 
French "terre mauvaise" - the "badlands". A rare case of TRP misspelling a foreign word.

69.14 '''a bandana of the regulation magenta and green''' 
The coal-tar derived colors of organic chemistry that resonate throughout the novel. 
The visual clash between these colours appears elsewhere - 'A bit of lime green in with your rose' 12
Pynchon seems to associate positive things with these colors - see ''Against the Day'' particularly - as he does with bandanas. A-and bananas.

69.16 '''Rancho Peligroso''' 
"Dangerous Ranch": evokes the Siege Perilous of the Arthurian Grail legend as well as ''Rancho Notorious'', a 1952 Western directed by Fritz Lang and starring Marlene Dietrich. See note at [[V321.06-07]]

69.27 '''callipygian rondure''' 
[http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cal3.htm callipygian] -- having shapely buttocks, originally used in conjunction with the noted statue of Aphrodite (which is itself a play on "Afro" and "Venus"), the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Kallipygos "Venus Kallipygos"]. This language parodies the typology of "scientific" racism from the late 19th and ealy 20th century.

rondure -- a circular or gracefully rounded object.

69.32 '''Toro Rojo''' 
Red Bull

==Page 70==
70.15 '''One ''mestiza''. One ''criolla''''' 
Mestiza: woman of mixed race, especially mixed of European and Native American ancestry. 
Criolla: Creole

70.29 '''the Ardennes''' 
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian (Devonian) Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France... The strategic position of the Ardennes has made it a battleground for European powers for centuries... in both World War I and World War II, Germany successfully gambled on making a rapid passage through the Ardennes to attack a relatively lightly defended part of France. The Ardennes was the site of three major battles during the world wars – the Battle of the Ardennes in World War I, and the Battle of France and Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Many of the towns of the region were badly damaged during the two world wars. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardennes]

70.32 '''Newton Upper Falls''' 
Newton Upper Falls is a village situated on the east bank of the Charles River in the city of Newton, Massachusetts, in the United States. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_Upper_Falls,_Massachusetts]

70.37 '''Ar'tics''' 
A regional name, dropping the first "c" in "Arctic," for metal-buckled rubber galoshes.[http://www.leroyhistoricalsociety.org/assets/011214---artics.pdf]

==Page 71==
71.02 '''Beacon Street''' 
Beacon Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and several of its western suburbs. Beacon Street in Boston, Brookline, Brighton, and Newton is not to be confused with the Beacon Street in nearby Somerville, or others elsewhere. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Street]

==Page 71==
[[image:tyrosine.jpg|thumb|100px|Tyrosine Molecule|right]]71.11 '''kryptosam''' 
Correspondent Matthias Bauer notes that "sam" derives from the German "samen," for "seed." "Krypto," of course, derives from the same word as "cryptography," the study of codes. [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] claims that the "tyrosine" from which kryptosam is supposed to derive is "undoubtedly fictional," but it is in fact an amino acid, which can convert to melanin, just as Jamf's note indicates (although it is unclear whether semen will in fact act as the catalytic agent). 

Tyrosine is found in casein, and the name derives from the Greek, ''tyros'' meaning cheese. 

Significant properties of note for Tyrosine: 
- Tyrosine functions as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol phenol], which Nazi doctors used in injections for rapid executions. Phenols were used extensively at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 
- Tyrosine occurs in proteins that are part of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_transduction signal transduction] process -- a biological processes that converts one kind of signal or stimulus into another -- cell signalling.

The SBB (SIS/MI6 forerunner) allegedly discovered that semen, if not a catalyst, did at least make a good invisible ink.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semen#Semen_in_espionage Semen in espionage],
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansfield_Smith-Cumming Mansfield Smith Cuming], and
[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-spymaster-who-was-stranger-than-fiction-737707.html Spymaster]

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 60-71

2016-04-22T20:13:11Z

Modavis: /* Page 63 */

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 61==
61.19 '''Sodium Amytal''' 
Also known as "truth serum", Amobarbital is a drug that is a barbiturate derivative. It has sedative-hypnotic and analgesic properties. It is a white crystalline powder with no odor and a slightly bitter taste. It was first synthesized in Germany in 1923. If amobarbital is taken for extended periods of time, physical and psychological dependence can develop.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_amytal]

61.25 '''Got a hardon in my fist...''' 
This song goes right along with the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird," starting with the "Pack up all my cares and woe..." refrain that, in this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO6PpD-tRLU YouTube], begins at about 0:52.

[[Image:Ruptured_Duck.jpeg|thumb|125px|Ruptured duck|right]]61.30 '''"ruptured duck"''' 
The sarcastic nickname for a lapel pin issued at honorable discharge from the US armed forces in WWII, depicting a screaming eagle inside a wreath. "Ruptured" = herniated.

==Page 62==
62.05 '''Roxbury''' 
The town of Roxbury was founded in 1630 by the author's ancestor William Pynchon, and is now a neighborhood of Boston, MA. It had been an immigrant neighborhood for generations before African-Americans began to migrate from the South after WWI. While writing GR, Pynchon would certainly have been aware of rioting there at the time of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxbury,_Boston]

==Page 63==
63.03 '''Roseland Ballroom''' 
Not the better-known Roseland Ballroom in New York City, but the one on Massachusetts Avenue in Roxbury. A look at the jazz history of Boston and the ballroom by Nat Hentoff: [http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/the-shape-of-jazz-that-was/]

63.05 '''Moxie''' 
A carbonated beverage that was one of the first mass-produced soft drinks in the United States. In its advertising, it used “Make Mine Moxie!” advertising jingles, the slogan “Just Make It Moxie for Mine”, and a "Moxie Man" logo. The brand suffered a significant decline in sales during the 1930s.

63.22 '''Red, the Negro shoeshine boy''' 
Stating the obvious, Red is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcom_X#_note-timeline Malcolm X], whose nickname "Red" referred to his hair color -- a dark cinnamon brown. In February 1941 Malcolm moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, worked a variety of jobs including shoeshine and became involved in Boston's "underworld fringe," pimping among other things. [http://www.baystate-banner.com/archives/stories/2006/02/021606-03.htm]

63.32-37 '''"Yardbird" Parker is finding out [ . . . ]''' 
Refers to jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Correspondent Igor Zabel offers the following addition to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]]'s note on this passage:
"On one of Parker's CDs (Swedish Schnapps +), I found the passage which was quoted by [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] after Max Harrison, but slightly different, and it is interesting because Parker directly mentions Cherokee: 'Well, that night, I was working over 'Cherokee' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.' The quotation is taken from 'Hear Me Talkin' To Ya'."

==Page 64==

64.19 '''"'Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!'"''' 
This homoerotic scene seems based on some facts. It is known that Malcolm X prostituted himself for money and according to Bruce Perry's biography, ''Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America'' (Station Hill, New York, 1991) he had various homosexual liaisons throughout his life. Interestingly, Malcolm worked as a butler to a wealthy Boston bachelor, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1486997,00.html William Paul Lennon]. According to Malcolm's sidekick Malcolm Jarvis, he [Malcolm] was paid to sprinkle Lennon with talcum powder and bring him to orgasm.

==Page 65==
65.09 '''Burma-Shave signs''' 
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, sequential highway billboard signs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave_signs]

65.15 '''"Gobbler" Biddle''' 
The Biddles are one of the leading families of Philadelphia, who sometimes vacationed in the Berkshires. Specifically, the "Gobbler" could be Nicholas Biddle (Harvard, 1944). 
Interestingly [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Beverly_Biddle Francis B. Biddle] (Harvard College 1909, Harvard Law 1911) was US Attorney General (1941-1945) at this time. FBB was responsible for directing the FBI to arrest "enemy aliens" leading to Japanese-American internment camps; served as the primary judge during the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal; and authored of ''The Fear of Freedom'' and other works.

65.16 '''Fu’s Folly in Cambridge''' 
Although, as [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] notes, the character is named for Fu Manchu (who is an important reference for Pointsman later in the novel), it should be recalled that there was also a "Fu" who was a member of the Whole Sick Crew in ''V.''

Resembles the old Young & Yee Restaurant (now closed) at 27 Church Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, which for over 40 years slopped greasey chop suey. An anachronism to the novel's time period, yes, but perhaps an inspiration to the author.

65.33 '''Jack Kennedy''' 
Contrary to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]], Kennedy’s first book was titled '''''Why''' England Slept'' (not "When"). 

JFK is said to be in Slothrop's Harvard class. Estimating, Slothrop was born ca 1917-18 and entered Harvard in 1936, the year of Harvard's tricentennial. They were both in their mid-20s, Kennedy a PT boat commander in the Pacific, during the action in ''GR''. The poignant "might Jack have kept it [the harmonica] from falling, violated gravity somehow?... yes it seems Jack might have" can be read as a retrodiction from the Vietnam War and urban-riot years of GR's composition: some believed that American life would not have taken its darker turn had Kennedy not been assassinated in November 1963.

==Page 66==
66.39 '''Capehart''' 
The [http://www.myvintagetv.com/capehart.htm Capehart] automatic phonograph with a turn-over mechanism was the epitome of luxury phonographs, technical excellence and supreme electronics in the 1930s and 40s.

==Page 67==
67.34-35 '''Not "archetypal" westwardman, but the only 
An explicit nod to psychologist Carl Jung, and beyond him to the Platonic strain in philosophy: that behind all the multiplicity, variety and changing detail of daylit life, there are (in our minds and/or metaphysical reality) singular, unchanging forms: in this case, the primal explorer-mountain man-cowboy-gunfighter hero.

Pynchon also works this trope in the other direction whenever he assimilates a character to archetypes in pop culture (often film), as when Jessica gave Roger "her Fay Wray look"(57) and Roger played the drooling Dirty Old Man (59).

==Page 68==

68.01 '''Half an Ark’s better than none.''' 
For Crutchfield, there is only '''one''' of everything, as opposed to two of every animal on Noah’s (whole) Ark. (And how much use is half an Ark in a flood, anyway?)

==Page 69==

69.02 '''''terre mauvais''''' 
French "terre mauvaise" - the "badlands". A rare case of TRP misspelling a foreign word.

69.14 '''a bandana of the regulation magenta and green''' 
The coal-tar derived colors of organic chemistry that resonate throughout the novel. 
The visual clash between these colours appears elsewhere - 'A bit of lime green in with your rose' 12
Pynchon seems to associate positive things with these colors - see ''Against the Day'' particularly - as he does with bandanas. A-and bananas.

69.16 '''Rancho Peligroso''' 
"Dangerous Ranch": evokes the Siege Perilous of the Arthurian Grail legend as well as ''Rancho Notorious'', a 1952 Western directed by Fritz Lang and starring Marlene Dietrich. See note at [[V321.06-07]]

69.27 '''callipygian rondure''' 
[http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cal3.htm callipygian] -- having shapely buttocks, originally used in conjunction with the noted statue of Aphrodite (which is itself a play on "Afro" and "Venus"), the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Kallipygos "Venus Kallipygos"]. This language parodies the typology of "scientific" racism from the late 19th and ealy 20th century.

rondure -- a circular or gracefully rounded object.

69.32 '''Toro Rojo''' 
Red Bull

==Page 70==
70.15 '''One ''mestiza''. One ''criolla''''' 
Mestiza: woman of mixed race, especially mixed of European and Native American ancestry. 
Criolla: Creole

70.29 '''the Ardennes''' 
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian (Devonian) Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France... The strategic position of the Ardennes has made it a battleground for European powers for centuries... in both World War I and World War II, Germany successfully gambled on making a rapid passage through the Ardennes to attack a relatively lightly defended part of France. The Ardennes was the site of three major battles during the world wars – the Battle of the Ardennes in World War I, and the Battle of France and Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Many of the towns of the region were badly damaged during the two world wars. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardennes]

70.32 '''Newton Upper Falls''' 
Newton Upper Falls is a village situated on the east bank of the Charles River in the city of Newton, Massachusetts, in the United States. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_Upper_Falls,_Massachusetts]

70.37 '''Ar'tics''' 
A regional name, dropping the first "c" in "Arctic," for metal-buckled rubber galoshes.[http://www.leroyhistoricalsociety.org/assets/011214---artics.pdf]

==Page 71==
71.02 '''Beacon Street''' 
Beacon Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and several of its western suburbs. Beacon Street in Boston, Brookline, Brighton, and Newton is not to be confused with the Beacon Street in nearby Somerville, or others elsewhere. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Street]

==Page 71==
[[image:tyrosine.jpg|thumb|100px|Tyrosine Molecule|right]]71.11 '''kryptosam''' 
Correspondent Matthias Bauer notes that "sam" derives from the German "samen," for "seed." "Krypto," of course, derives from the same word as "cryptography," the study of codes. [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] claims that the "tyrosine" from which kryptosam is supposed to derive is "undoubtedly fictional," but it is in fact an amino acid, which can convert to melanin, just as Jamf's note indicates (although it is unclear whether semen will in fact act as the catalytic agent). 

Tyrosine is found in casein, and the name derives from the Greek, ''tyros'' meaning cheese. 

Significant properties of note for Tyrosine: 
- Tyrosine functions as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol phenol], which Nazi doctors used in injections for rapid executions. Phenols were used extensively at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 
- Tyrosine occurs in proteins that are part of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_transduction signal transduction] process -- a biological processes that converts one kind of signal or stimulus into another -- cell signalling.

The SBB (SIS/MI6 forerunner) allegedly discovered that semen, if not a catalyst, did at least make a good invisible ink.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semen#Semen_in_espionage Semen in espionage],
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansfield_Smith-Cumming Mansfield Smith Cuming], and
[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-spymaster-who-was-stranger-than-fiction-737707.html Spymaster]

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 60-71

2016-04-22T20:11:13Z

Modavis: /* Page 62 */

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 61==
61.19 '''Sodium Amytal''' 
Also known as "truth serum", Amobarbital is a drug that is a barbiturate derivative. It has sedative-hypnotic and analgesic properties. It is a white crystalline powder with no odor and a slightly bitter taste. It was first synthesized in Germany in 1923. If amobarbital is taken for extended periods of time, physical and psychological dependence can develop.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_amytal]

61.25 '''Got a hardon in my fist...''' 
This song goes right along with the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird," starting with the "Pack up all my cares and woe..." refrain that, in this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO6PpD-tRLU YouTube], begins at about 0:52.

[[Image:Ruptured_Duck.jpeg|thumb|125px|Ruptured duck|right]]61.30 '''"ruptured duck"''' 
The sarcastic nickname for a lapel pin issued at honorable discharge from the US armed forces in WWII, depicting a screaming eagle inside a wreath. "Ruptured" = herniated.

==Page 62==
62.05 '''Roxbury''' 
The town of Roxbury was founded in 1630 by the author's ancestor William Pynchon, and is now a neighborhood of Boston, MA. It had been an immigrant neighborhood for generations before African-Americans began to migrate from the South after WWI. While writing GR, Pynchon would certainly have been aware of rioting there at the time of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxbury,_Boston]

==Page 63==
63.03 '''Roseland Ballroom''' 
Not the better-known Roseland Ballroom in New York City, but the one on Massachusetts Avenue in Roxbury. A look at the jazz history of Boston: [http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/the-shape-of-jazz-that-was/]

63.05 '''Moxie''' 
A carbonated beverage that was one of the first mass-produced soft drinks in the United States. In its advertising, it used “Make Mine Moxie!” advertising jingles, the slogan “Just Make It Moxie for Mine”, and a "Moxie Man" logo. The brand suffered a significant decline in sales during the 1930s.

63.22 '''Red, the Negro shoeshine boy''' 
Stating the obvious, Red is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcom_X#_note-timeline Malcolm X], whose nickname "Red" referred to his hair color -- a dark cinnamon brown. In February 1941 Malcolm moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, worked a variety of jobs including shoeshine and became involved in Boston's "underworld fringe," pimping among other things. [http://www.baystate-banner.com/archives/stories/2006/02/021606-03.htm]

63.32-37 '''"Yardbird" Parker is finding out [ . . . ]''' 
Refers to jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Correspondent Igor Zabel offers the following addition to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]]'s note on this passage:
"On one of Parker's CDs (Swedish Schnapps +), I found the passage which was quoted by [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] after Max Harrison, but slightly different, and it is interesting because Parker directly mentions Cherokee: 'Well, that night, I was working over 'Cherokee' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.' The quotation is taken from 'Hear Me Talkin' To Ya'."

==Page 64==

64.19 '''"'Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!'"''' 
This homoerotic scene seems based on some facts. It is known that Malcolm X prostituted himself for money and according to Bruce Perry's biography, ''Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America'' (Station Hill, New York, 1991) he had various homosexual liaisons throughout his life. Interestingly, Malcolm worked as a butler to a wealthy Boston bachelor, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1486997,00.html William Paul Lennon]. According to Malcolm's sidekick Malcolm Jarvis, he [Malcolm] was paid to sprinkle Lennon with talcum powder and bring him to orgasm.

==Page 65==
65.09 '''Burma-Shave signs''' 
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, sequential highway billboard signs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave_signs]

65.15 '''"Gobbler" Biddle''' 
The Biddles are one of the leading families of Philadelphia, who sometimes vacationed in the Berkshires. Specifically, the "Gobbler" could be Nicholas Biddle (Harvard, 1944). 
Interestingly [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Beverly_Biddle Francis B. Biddle] (Harvard College 1909, Harvard Law 1911) was US Attorney General (1941-1945) at this time. FBB was responsible for directing the FBI to arrest "enemy aliens" leading to Japanese-American internment camps; served as the primary judge during the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal; and authored of ''The Fear of Freedom'' and other works.

65.16 '''Fu’s Folly in Cambridge''' 
Although, as [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] notes, the character is named for Fu Manchu (who is an important reference for Pointsman later in the novel), it should be recalled that there was also a "Fu" who was a member of the Whole Sick Crew in ''V.''

Resembles the old Young & Yee Restaurant (now closed) at 27 Church Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, which for over 40 years slopped greasey chop suey. An anachronism to the novel's time period, yes, but perhaps an inspiration to the author.

65.33 '''Jack Kennedy''' 
Contrary to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]], Kennedy’s first book was titled '''''Why''' England Slept'' (not "When"). 

JFK is said to be in Slothrop's Harvard class. Estimating, Slothrop was born ca 1917-18 and entered Harvard in 1936, the year of Harvard's tricentennial. They were both in their mid-20s, Kennedy a PT boat commander in the Pacific, during the action in ''GR''. The poignant "might Jack have kept it [the harmonica] from falling, violated gravity somehow?... yes it seems Jack might have" can be read as a retrodiction from the Vietnam War and urban-riot years of GR's composition: some believed that American life would not have taken its darker turn had Kennedy not been assassinated in November 1963.

==Page 66==
66.39 '''Capehart''' 
The [http://www.myvintagetv.com/capehart.htm Capehart] automatic phonograph with a turn-over mechanism was the epitome of luxury phonographs, technical excellence and supreme electronics in the 1930s and 40s.

==Page 67==
67.34-35 '''Not "archetypal" westwardman, but the only 
An explicit nod to psychologist Carl Jung, and beyond him to the Platonic strain in philosophy: that behind all the multiplicity, variety and changing detail of daylit life, there are (in our minds and/or metaphysical reality) singular, unchanging forms: in this case, the primal explorer-mountain man-cowboy-gunfighter hero.

Pynchon also works this trope in the other direction whenever he assimilates a character to archetypes in pop culture (often film), as when Jessica gave Roger "her Fay Wray look"(57) and Roger played the drooling Dirty Old Man (59).

==Page 68==

68.01 '''Half an Ark’s better than none.''' 
For Crutchfield, there is only '''one''' of everything, as opposed to two of every animal on Noah’s (whole) Ark. (And how much use is half an Ark in a flood, anyway?)

==Page 69==

69.02 '''''terre mauvais''''' 
French "terre mauvaise" - the "badlands". A rare case of TRP misspelling a foreign word.

69.14 '''a bandana of the regulation magenta and green''' 
The coal-tar derived colors of organic chemistry that resonate throughout the novel. 
The visual clash between these colours appears elsewhere - 'A bit of lime green in with your rose' 12
Pynchon seems to associate positive things with these colors - see ''Against the Day'' particularly - as he does with bandanas. A-and bananas.

69.16 '''Rancho Peligroso''' 
"Dangerous Ranch": evokes the Siege Perilous of the Arthurian Grail legend as well as ''Rancho Notorious'', a 1952 Western directed by Fritz Lang and starring Marlene Dietrich. See note at [[V321.06-07]]

69.27 '''callipygian rondure''' 
[http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cal3.htm callipygian] -- having shapely buttocks, originally used in conjunction with the noted statue of Aphrodite (which is itself a play on "Afro" and "Venus"), the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Kallipygos "Venus Kallipygos"]. This language parodies the typology of "scientific" racism from the late 19th and ealy 20th century.

rondure -- a circular or gracefully rounded object.

69.32 '''Toro Rojo''' 
Red Bull

==Page 70==
70.15 '''One ''mestiza''. One ''criolla''''' 
Mestiza: woman of mixed race, especially mixed of European and Native American ancestry. 
Criolla: Creole

70.29 '''the Ardennes''' 
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian (Devonian) Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France... The strategic position of the Ardennes has made it a battleground for European powers for centuries... in both World War I and World War II, Germany successfully gambled on making a rapid passage through the Ardennes to attack a relatively lightly defended part of France. The Ardennes was the site of three major battles during the world wars – the Battle of the Ardennes in World War I, and the Battle of France and Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Many of the towns of the region were badly damaged during the two world wars. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardennes]

70.32 '''Newton Upper Falls''' 
Newton Upper Falls is a village situated on the east bank of the Charles River in the city of Newton, Massachusetts, in the United States. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_Upper_Falls,_Massachusetts]

70.37 '''Ar'tics''' 
A regional name, dropping the first "c" in "Arctic," for metal-buckled rubber galoshes.[http://www.leroyhistoricalsociety.org/assets/011214---artics.pdf]

==Page 71==
71.02 '''Beacon Street''' 
Beacon Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and several of its western suburbs. Beacon Street in Boston, Brookline, Brighton, and Newton is not to be confused with the Beacon Street in nearby Somerville, or others elsewhere. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Street]

==Page 71==
[[image:tyrosine.jpg|thumb|100px|Tyrosine Molecule|right]]71.11 '''kryptosam''' 
Correspondent Matthias Bauer notes that "sam" derives from the German "samen," for "seed." "Krypto," of course, derives from the same word as "cryptography," the study of codes. [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] claims that the "tyrosine" from which kryptosam is supposed to derive is "undoubtedly fictional," but it is in fact an amino acid, which can convert to melanin, just as Jamf's note indicates (although it is unclear whether semen will in fact act as the catalytic agent). 

Tyrosine is found in casein, and the name derives from the Greek, ''tyros'' meaning cheese. 

Significant properties of note for Tyrosine: 
- Tyrosine functions as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol phenol], which Nazi doctors used in injections for rapid executions. Phenols were used extensively at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 
- Tyrosine occurs in proteins that are part of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_transduction signal transduction] process -- a biological processes that converts one kind of signal or stimulus into another -- cell signalling.

The SBB (SIS/MI6 forerunner) allegedly discovered that semen, if not a catalyst, did at least make a good invisible ink.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semen#Semen_in_espionage Semen in espionage],
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansfield_Smith-Cumming Mansfield Smith Cuming], and
[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-spymaster-who-was-stranger-than-fiction-737707.html Spymaster]

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 60-71

2016-04-22T20:10:48Z

Modavis: /* Page 61 */

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 61==
61.19 '''Sodium Amytal''' 
Also known as "truth serum", Amobarbital is a drug that is a barbiturate derivative. It has sedative-hypnotic and analgesic properties. It is a white crystalline powder with no odor and a slightly bitter taste. It was first synthesized in Germany in 1923. If amobarbital is taken for extended periods of time, physical and psychological dependence can develop.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_amytal]

61.25 '''Got a hardon in my fist...''' 
This song goes right along with the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird," starting with the "Pack up all my cares and woe..." refrain that, in this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO6PpD-tRLU YouTube], begins at about 0:52.

[[Image:Ruptured_Duck.jpeg|thumb|125px|Ruptured duck|right]]61.30 '''"ruptured duck"''' 
The sarcastic nickname for a lapel pin issued at honorable discharge from the US armed forces in WWII, depicting a screaming eagle inside a wreath. "Ruptured" = herniated.

==Page 62==
62.05 '''Roxbury''' 
The town of Roxbury was founded in 1630 by our author's ancestor William Pynchon, and is now a neighborhood of Boston, MA. It had been an immigrant neighborhood for generations before African-Americans began to migrate from the South after WWI. While writing GR, Pynchon would certainly have been aware of rioting there at the time of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxbury,_Boston]

==Page 63==
63.03 '''Roseland Ballroom''' 
Not the better-known Roseland Ballroom in New York City, but the one on Massachusetts Avenue in Roxbury. A look at the jazz history of Boston: [http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/the-shape-of-jazz-that-was/]

63.05 '''Moxie''' 
A carbonated beverage that was one of the first mass-produced soft drinks in the United States. In its advertising, it used “Make Mine Moxie!” advertising jingles, the slogan “Just Make It Moxie for Mine”, and a "Moxie Man" logo. The brand suffered a significant decline in sales during the 1930s.

63.22 '''Red, the Negro shoeshine boy''' 
Stating the obvious, Red is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcom_X#_note-timeline Malcolm X], whose nickname "Red" referred to his hair color -- a dark cinnamon brown. In February 1941 Malcolm moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, worked a variety of jobs including shoeshine and became involved in Boston's "underworld fringe," pimping among other things. [http://www.baystate-banner.com/archives/stories/2006/02/021606-03.htm]

63.32-37 '''"Yardbird" Parker is finding out [ . . . ]''' 
Refers to jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Correspondent Igor Zabel offers the following addition to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]]'s note on this passage:
"On one of Parker's CDs (Swedish Schnapps +), I found the passage which was quoted by [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] after Max Harrison, but slightly different, and it is interesting because Parker directly mentions Cherokee: 'Well, that night, I was working over 'Cherokee' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.' The quotation is taken from 'Hear Me Talkin' To Ya'."

==Page 64==

64.19 '''"'Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!'"''' 
This homoerotic scene seems based on some facts. It is known that Malcolm X prostituted himself for money and according to Bruce Perry's biography, ''Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America'' (Station Hill, New York, 1991) he had various homosexual liaisons throughout his life. Interestingly, Malcolm worked as a butler to a wealthy Boston bachelor, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1486997,00.html William Paul Lennon]. According to Malcolm's sidekick Malcolm Jarvis, he [Malcolm] was paid to sprinkle Lennon with talcum powder and bring him to orgasm.

==Page 65==
65.09 '''Burma-Shave signs''' 
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, sequential highway billboard signs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave_signs]

65.15 '''"Gobbler" Biddle''' 
The Biddles are one of the leading families of Philadelphia, who sometimes vacationed in the Berkshires. Specifically, the "Gobbler" could be Nicholas Biddle (Harvard, 1944). 
Interestingly [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Beverly_Biddle Francis B. Biddle] (Harvard College 1909, Harvard Law 1911) was US Attorney General (1941-1945) at this time. FBB was responsible for directing the FBI to arrest "enemy aliens" leading to Japanese-American internment camps; served as the primary judge during the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal; and authored of ''The Fear of Freedom'' and other works.

65.16 '''Fu’s Folly in Cambridge''' 
Although, as [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] notes, the character is named for Fu Manchu (who is an important reference for Pointsman later in the novel), it should be recalled that there was also a "Fu" who was a member of the Whole Sick Crew in ''V.''

Resembles the old Young & Yee Restaurant (now closed) at 27 Church Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, which for over 40 years slopped greasey chop suey. An anachronism to the novel's time period, yes, but perhaps an inspiration to the author.

65.33 '''Jack Kennedy''' 
Contrary to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]], Kennedy’s first book was titled '''''Why''' England Slept'' (not "When"). 

JFK is said to be in Slothrop's Harvard class. Estimating, Slothrop was born ca 1917-18 and entered Harvard in 1936, the year of Harvard's tricentennial. They were both in their mid-20s, Kennedy a PT boat commander in the Pacific, during the action in ''GR''. The poignant "might Jack have kept it [the harmonica] from falling, violated gravity somehow?... yes it seems Jack might have" can be read as a retrodiction from the Vietnam War and urban-riot years of GR's composition: some believed that American life would not have taken its darker turn had Kennedy not been assassinated in November 1963.

==Page 66==
66.39 '''Capehart''' 
The [http://www.myvintagetv.com/capehart.htm Capehart] automatic phonograph with a turn-over mechanism was the epitome of luxury phonographs, technical excellence and supreme electronics in the 1930s and 40s.

==Page 67==
67.34-35 '''Not "archetypal" westwardman, but the only 
An explicit nod to psychologist Carl Jung, and beyond him to the Platonic strain in philosophy: that behind all the multiplicity, variety and changing detail of daylit life, there are (in our minds and/or metaphysical reality) singular, unchanging forms: in this case, the primal explorer-mountain man-cowboy-gunfighter hero.

Pynchon also works this trope in the other direction whenever he assimilates a character to archetypes in pop culture (often film), as when Jessica gave Roger "her Fay Wray look"(57) and Roger played the drooling Dirty Old Man (59).

==Page 68==

68.01 '''Half an Ark’s better than none.''' 
For Crutchfield, there is only '''one''' of everything, as opposed to two of every animal on Noah’s (whole) Ark. (And how much use is half an Ark in a flood, anyway?)

==Page 69==

69.02 '''''terre mauvais''''' 
French "terre mauvaise" - the "badlands". A rare case of TRP misspelling a foreign word.

69.14 '''a bandana of the regulation magenta and green''' 
The coal-tar derived colors of organic chemistry that resonate throughout the novel. 
The visual clash between these colours appears elsewhere - 'A bit of lime green in with your rose' 12
Pynchon seems to associate positive things with these colors - see ''Against the Day'' particularly - as he does with bandanas. A-and bananas.

69.16 '''Rancho Peligroso''' 
"Dangerous Ranch": evokes the Siege Perilous of the Arthurian Grail legend as well as ''Rancho Notorious'', a 1952 Western directed by Fritz Lang and starring Marlene Dietrich. See note at [[V321.06-07]]

69.27 '''callipygian rondure''' 
[http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cal3.htm callipygian] -- having shapely buttocks, originally used in conjunction with the noted statue of Aphrodite (which is itself a play on "Afro" and "Venus"), the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Kallipygos "Venus Kallipygos"]. This language parodies the typology of "scientific" racism from the late 19th and ealy 20th century.

rondure -- a circular or gracefully rounded object.

69.32 '''Toro Rojo''' 
Red Bull

==Page 70==
70.15 '''One ''mestiza''. One ''criolla''''' 
Mestiza: woman of mixed race, especially mixed of European and Native American ancestry. 
Criolla: Creole

70.29 '''the Ardennes''' 
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian (Devonian) Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France... The strategic position of the Ardennes has made it a battleground for European powers for centuries... in both World War I and World War II, Germany successfully gambled on making a rapid passage through the Ardennes to attack a relatively lightly defended part of France. The Ardennes was the site of three major battles during the world wars – the Battle of the Ardennes in World War I, and the Battle of France and Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Many of the towns of the region were badly damaged during the two world wars. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardennes]

70.32 '''Newton Upper Falls''' 
Newton Upper Falls is a village situated on the east bank of the Charles River in the city of Newton, Massachusetts, in the United States. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_Upper_Falls,_Massachusetts]

70.37 '''Ar'tics''' 
A regional name, dropping the first "c" in "Arctic," for metal-buckled rubber galoshes.[http://www.leroyhistoricalsociety.org/assets/011214---artics.pdf]

==Page 71==
71.02 '''Beacon Street''' 
Beacon Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and several of its western suburbs. Beacon Street in Boston, Brookline, Brighton, and Newton is not to be confused with the Beacon Street in nearby Somerville, or others elsewhere. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Street]

==Page 71==
[[image:tyrosine.jpg|thumb|100px|Tyrosine Molecule|right]]71.11 '''kryptosam''' 
Correspondent Matthias Bauer notes that "sam" derives from the German "samen," for "seed." "Krypto," of course, derives from the same word as "cryptography," the study of codes. [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] claims that the "tyrosine" from which kryptosam is supposed to derive is "undoubtedly fictional," but it is in fact an amino acid, which can convert to melanin, just as Jamf's note indicates (although it is unclear whether semen will in fact act as the catalytic agent). 

Tyrosine is found in casein, and the name derives from the Greek, ''tyros'' meaning cheese. 

Significant properties of note for Tyrosine: 
- Tyrosine functions as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol phenol], which Nazi doctors used in injections for rapid executions. Phenols were used extensively at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 
- Tyrosine occurs in proteins that are part of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_transduction signal transduction] process -- a biological processes that converts one kind of signal or stimulus into another -- cell signalling.

The SBB (SIS/MI6 forerunner) allegedly discovered that semen, if not a catalyst, did at least make a good invisible ink.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semen#Semen_in_espionage Semen in espionage],
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansfield_Smith-Cumming Mansfield Smith Cuming], and
[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-spymaster-who-was-stranger-than-fiction-737707.html Spymaster]

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 60-71

2016-04-22T20:04:26Z

Modavis: /* Page 63 */

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 61==
61.19 '''Sodium Amytal''' 
Also known as "truth serum", Amobarbital is a drug that is a barbiturate derivative. It has sedative-hypnotic and analgesic properties. It is a white crystalline powder with no odor and a slightly bitter taste. It was first synthesized in Germany in 1923. If amobarbital is taken for extended periods of time, physical and psychological dependence can develop.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_amytal]

61.25 '''Got a hardon in my fist...''' 
This song goes right along with the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird," starting with the "Pack up all my cares and woe..." refrain that, in this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO6PpD-tRLU YouTube], begins at about 0:52.

[[Image:Ruptured_Duck.jpeg|thumb|125px|Ruptured duck|right]]61.30 '''"ruptured duck"''' 
A [http://www.therupturedduck.com/WebPages/Whatis/whatis.htm cloth insignia] depicting a screaming eagle inside a wreath. 

==Page 62==
62.05 '''Roxbury''' 
The town of Roxbury was founded in 1630 by our author's ancestor William Pynchon, and is now a neighborhood of Boston, MA. It had been an immigrant neighborhood for generations before African-Americans began to migrate from the South after WWI. While writing GR, Pynchon would certainly have been aware of rioting there at the time of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxbury,_Boston]

==Page 63==
63.03 '''Roseland Ballroom''' 
Not the better-known Roseland Ballroom in New York City, but the one on Massachusetts Avenue in Roxbury. A look at the jazz history of Boston: [http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/the-shape-of-jazz-that-was/]

63.05 '''Moxie''' 
A carbonated beverage that was one of the first mass-produced soft drinks in the United States. In its advertising, it used “Make Mine Moxie!” advertising jingles, the slogan “Just Make It Moxie for Mine”, and a "Moxie Man" logo. The brand suffered a significant decline in sales during the 1930s.

63.22 '''Red, the Negro shoeshine boy''' 
Stating the obvious, Red is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcom_X#_note-timeline Malcolm X], whose nickname "Red" referred to his hair color -- a dark cinnamon brown. In February 1941 Malcolm moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, worked a variety of jobs including shoeshine and became involved in Boston's "underworld fringe," pimping among other things. [http://www.baystate-banner.com/archives/stories/2006/02/021606-03.htm]

63.32-37 '''"Yardbird" Parker is finding out [ . . . ]''' 
Refers to jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Correspondent Igor Zabel offers the following addition to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]]'s note on this passage:
"On one of Parker's CDs (Swedish Schnapps +), I found the passage which was quoted by [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] after Max Harrison, but slightly different, and it is interesting because Parker directly mentions Cherokee: 'Well, that night, I was working over 'Cherokee' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.' The quotation is taken from 'Hear Me Talkin' To Ya'."

==Page 64==

64.19 '''"'Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!'"''' 
This homoerotic scene seems based on some facts. It is known that Malcolm X prostituted himself for money and according to Bruce Perry's biography, ''Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America'' (Station Hill, New York, 1991) he had various homosexual liaisons throughout his life. Interestingly, Malcolm worked as a butler to a wealthy Boston bachelor, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1486997,00.html William Paul Lennon]. According to Malcolm's sidekick Malcolm Jarvis, he [Malcolm] was paid to sprinkle Lennon with talcum powder and bring him to orgasm.

==Page 65==
65.09 '''Burma-Shave signs''' 
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, sequential highway billboard signs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave_signs]

65.15 '''"Gobbler" Biddle''' 
The Biddles are one of the leading families of Philadelphia, who sometimes vacationed in the Berkshires. Specifically, the "Gobbler" could be Nicholas Biddle (Harvard, 1944). 
Interestingly [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Beverly_Biddle Francis B. Biddle] (Harvard College 1909, Harvard Law 1911) was US Attorney General (1941-1945) at this time. FBB was responsible for directing the FBI to arrest "enemy aliens" leading to Japanese-American internment camps; served as the primary judge during the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal; and authored of ''The Fear of Freedom'' and other works.

65.16 '''Fu’s Folly in Cambridge''' 
Although, as [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] notes, the character is named for Fu Manchu (who is an important reference for Pointsman later in the novel), it should be recalled that there was also a "Fu" who was a member of the Whole Sick Crew in ''V.''

Resembles the old Young & Yee Restaurant (now closed) at 27 Church Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, which for over 40 years slopped greasey chop suey. An anachronism to the novel's time period, yes, but perhaps an inspiration to the author.

65.33 '''Jack Kennedy''' 
Contrary to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]], Kennedy’s first book was titled '''''Why''' England Slept'' (not "When"). 

JFK is said to be in Slothrop's Harvard class. Estimating, Slothrop was born ca 1917-18 and entered Harvard in 1936, the year of Harvard's tricentennial. They were both in their mid-20s, Kennedy a PT boat commander in the Pacific, during the action in ''GR''. The poignant "might Jack have kept it [the harmonica] from falling, violated gravity somehow?... yes it seems Jack might have" can be read as a retrodiction from the Vietnam War and urban-riot years of GR's composition: some believed that American life would not have taken its darker turn had Kennedy not been assassinated in November 1963.

==Page 66==
66.39 '''Capehart''' 
The [http://www.myvintagetv.com/capehart.htm Capehart] automatic phonograph with a turn-over mechanism was the epitome of luxury phonographs, technical excellence and supreme electronics in the 1930s and 40s.

==Page 67==
67.34-35 '''Not "archetypal" westwardman, but the only 
An explicit nod to psychologist Carl Jung, and beyond him to the Platonic strain in philosophy: that behind all the multiplicity, variety and changing detail of daylit life, there are (in our minds and/or metaphysical reality) singular, unchanging forms: in this case, the primal explorer-mountain man-cowboy-gunfighter hero.

Pynchon also works this trope in the other direction whenever he assimilates a character to archetypes in pop culture (often film), as when Jessica gave Roger "her Fay Wray look"(57) and Roger played the drooling Dirty Old Man (59).

==Page 68==

68.01 '''Half an Ark’s better than none.''' 
For Crutchfield, there is only '''one''' of everything, as opposed to two of every animal on Noah’s (whole) Ark. (And how much use is half an Ark in a flood, anyway?)

==Page 69==

69.02 '''''terre mauvais''''' 
French "terre mauvaise" - the "badlands". A rare case of TRP misspelling a foreign word.

69.14 '''a bandana of the regulation magenta and green''' 
The coal-tar derived colors of organic chemistry that resonate throughout the novel. 
The visual clash between these colours appears elsewhere - 'A bit of lime green in with your rose' 12
Pynchon seems to associate positive things with these colors - see ''Against the Day'' particularly - as he does with bandanas. A-and bananas.

69.16 '''Rancho Peligroso''' 
"Dangerous Ranch": evokes the Siege Perilous of the Arthurian Grail legend as well as ''Rancho Notorious'', a 1952 Western directed by Fritz Lang and starring Marlene Dietrich. See note at [[V321.06-07]]

69.27 '''callipygian rondure''' 
[http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cal3.htm callipygian] -- having shapely buttocks, originally used in conjunction with the noted statue of Aphrodite (which is itself a play on "Afro" and "Venus"), the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Kallipygos "Venus Kallipygos"]. This language parodies the typology of "scientific" racism from the late 19th and ealy 20th century.

rondure -- a circular or gracefully rounded object.

69.32 '''Toro Rojo''' 
Red Bull

==Page 70==
70.15 '''One ''mestiza''. One ''criolla''''' 
Mestiza: woman of mixed race, especially mixed of European and Native American ancestry. 
Criolla: Creole

70.29 '''the Ardennes''' 
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian (Devonian) Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France... The strategic position of the Ardennes has made it a battleground for European powers for centuries... in both World War I and World War II, Germany successfully gambled on making a rapid passage through the Ardennes to attack a relatively lightly defended part of France. The Ardennes was the site of three major battles during the world wars – the Battle of the Ardennes in World War I, and the Battle of France and Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Many of the towns of the region were badly damaged during the two world wars. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardennes]

70.32 '''Newton Upper Falls''' 
Newton Upper Falls is a village situated on the east bank of the Charles River in the city of Newton, Massachusetts, in the United States. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_Upper_Falls,_Massachusetts]

70.37 '''Ar'tics''' 
A regional name, dropping the first "c" in "Arctic," for metal-buckled rubber galoshes.[http://www.leroyhistoricalsociety.org/assets/011214---artics.pdf]

==Page 71==
71.02 '''Beacon Street''' 
Beacon Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and several of its western suburbs. Beacon Street in Boston, Brookline, Brighton, and Newton is not to be confused with the Beacon Street in nearby Somerville, or others elsewhere. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Street]

==Page 71==
[[image:tyrosine.jpg|thumb|100px|Tyrosine Molecule|right]]71.11 '''kryptosam''' 
Correspondent Matthias Bauer notes that "sam" derives from the German "samen," for "seed." "Krypto," of course, derives from the same word as "cryptography," the study of codes. [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] claims that the "tyrosine" from which kryptosam is supposed to derive is "undoubtedly fictional," but it is in fact an amino acid, which can convert to melanin, just as Jamf's note indicates (although it is unclear whether semen will in fact act as the catalytic agent). 

Tyrosine is found in casein, and the name derives from the Greek, ''tyros'' meaning cheese. 

Significant properties of note for Tyrosine: 
- Tyrosine functions as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol phenol], which Nazi doctors used in injections for rapid executions. Phenols were used extensively at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 
- Tyrosine occurs in proteins that are part of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_transduction signal transduction] process -- a biological processes that converts one kind of signal or stimulus into another -- cell signalling.

The SBB (SIS/MI6 forerunner) allegedly discovered that semen, if not a catalyst, did at least make a good invisible ink.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semen#Semen_in_espionage Semen in espionage],
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansfield_Smith-Cumming Mansfield Smith Cuming], and
[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-spymaster-who-was-stranger-than-fiction-737707.html Spymaster]

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 60-71

2016-04-22T19:59:07Z

Modavis: /* Page 63 */

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 61==
61.19 '''Sodium Amytal''' 
Also known as "truth serum", Amobarbital is a drug that is a barbiturate derivative. It has sedative-hypnotic and analgesic properties. It is a white crystalline powder with no odor and a slightly bitter taste. It was first synthesized in Germany in 1923. If amobarbital is taken for extended periods of time, physical and psychological dependence can develop.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_amytal]

61.25 '''Got a hardon in my fist...''' 
This song goes right along with the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird," starting with the "Pack up all my cares and woe..." refrain that, in this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO6PpD-tRLU YouTube], begins at about 0:52.

[[Image:Ruptured_Duck.jpeg|thumb|125px|Ruptured duck|right]]61.30 '''"ruptured duck"''' 
A [http://www.therupturedduck.com/WebPages/Whatis/whatis.htm cloth insignia] depicting a screaming eagle inside a wreath. 

==Page 62==
62.05 '''Roxbury''' 
The town of Roxbury was founded in 1630 by our author's ancestor William Pynchon, and is now a neighborhood of Boston, MA. It had been an immigrant neighborhood for generations before African-Americans began to migrate from the South after WWI. While writing GR, Pynchon would certainly have been aware of rioting there at the time of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxbury,_Boston]

==Page 63==
63.03 '''Roseland Ballroom''' 
Not the better-known Roseland Ballroom in New York City, but the one on Massachusetts Avenue in Roxbury.

63.05 '''Moxie''' 
A carbonated beverage that was one of the first mass-produced soft drinks in the United States. In its advertising, it used “Make Mine Moxie!” advertising jingles, the slogan “Just Make It Moxie for Mine”, and a "Moxie Man" logo. The brand suffered a significant decline in sales during the 1930s.

63.22 '''Red, the Negro shoeshine boy''' 
Stating the obvious, Red is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcom_X#_note-timeline Malcolm X], whose nickname "Red" referred to his hair color -- a dark cinnamon brown. In February 1941 Malcolm moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, worked a variety of jobs including shoeshine and became involved in Boston's "underworld fringe," pimping among other things. [http://www.baystate-banner.com/archives/stories/2006/02/021606-03.htm]

63.32-37 '''"Yardbird" Parker is finding out [ . . . ]''' 
Refers to jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Correspondent Igor Zabel offers the following addition to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]]'s note on this passage:
"On one of Parker's CDs (Swedish Schnapps +), I found the passage which was quoted by [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] after Max Harrison, but slightly different, and it is interesting because Parker directly mentions Cherokee: 'Well, that night, I was working over 'Cherokee' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.' The quotation is taken from 'Hear Me Talkin' To Ya'."

==Page 64==

64.19 '''"'Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!'"''' 
This homoerotic scene seems based on some facts. It is known that Malcolm X prostituted himself for money and according to Bruce Perry's biography, ''Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America'' (Station Hill, New York, 1991) he had various homosexual liaisons throughout his life. Interestingly, Malcolm worked as a butler to a wealthy Boston bachelor, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1486997,00.html William Paul Lennon]. According to Malcolm's sidekick Malcolm Jarvis, he [Malcolm] was paid to sprinkle Lennon with talcum powder and bring him to orgasm.

==Page 65==
65.09 '''Burma-Shave signs''' 
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, sequential highway billboard signs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave_signs]

65.15 '''"Gobbler" Biddle''' 
The Biddles are one of the leading families of Philadelphia, who sometimes vacationed in the Berkshires. Specifically, the "Gobbler" could be Nicholas Biddle (Harvard, 1944). 
Interestingly [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Beverly_Biddle Francis B. Biddle] (Harvard College 1909, Harvard Law 1911) was US Attorney General (1941-1945) at this time. FBB was responsible for directing the FBI to arrest "enemy aliens" leading to Japanese-American internment camps; served as the primary judge during the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal; and authored of ''The Fear of Freedom'' and other works.

65.16 '''Fu’s Folly in Cambridge''' 
Although, as [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] notes, the character is named for Fu Manchu (who is an important reference for Pointsman later in the novel), it should be recalled that there was also a "Fu" who was a member of the Whole Sick Crew in ''V.''

Resembles the old Young & Yee Restaurant (now closed) at 27 Church Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, which for over 40 years slopped greasey chop suey. An anachronism to the novel's time period, yes, but perhaps an inspiration to the author.

65.33 '''Jack Kennedy''' 
Contrary to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]], Kennedy’s first book was titled '''''Why''' England Slept'' (not "When"). 

JFK is said to be in Slothrop's Harvard class. Estimating, Slothrop was born ca 1917-18 and entered Harvard in 1936, the year of Harvard's tricentennial. They were both in their mid-20s, Kennedy a PT boat commander in the Pacific, during the action in ''GR''. The poignant "might Jack have kept it [the harmonica] from falling, violated gravity somehow?... yes it seems Jack might have" can be read as a retrodiction from the Vietnam War and urban-riot years of GR's composition: some believed that American life would not have taken its darker turn had Kennedy not been assassinated in November 1963.

==Page 66==
66.39 '''Capehart''' 
The [http://www.myvintagetv.com/capehart.htm Capehart] automatic phonograph with a turn-over mechanism was the epitome of luxury phonographs, technical excellence and supreme electronics in the 1930s and 40s.

==Page 67==
67.34-35 '''Not "archetypal" westwardman, but the only 
An explicit nod to psychologist Carl Jung, and beyond him to the Platonic strain in philosophy: that behind all the multiplicity, variety and changing detail of daylit life, there are (in our minds and/or metaphysical reality) singular, unchanging forms: in this case, the primal explorer-mountain man-cowboy-gunfighter hero.

Pynchon also works this trope in the other direction whenever he assimilates a character to archetypes in pop culture (often film), as when Jessica gave Roger "her Fay Wray look"(57) and Roger played the drooling Dirty Old Man (59).

==Page 68==

68.01 '''Half an Ark’s better than none.''' 
For Crutchfield, there is only '''one''' of everything, as opposed to two of every animal on Noah’s (whole) Ark. (And how much use is half an Ark in a flood, anyway?)

==Page 69==

69.02 '''''terre mauvais''''' 
French "terre mauvaise" - the "badlands". A rare case of TRP misspelling a foreign word.

69.14 '''a bandana of the regulation magenta and green''' 
The coal-tar derived colors of organic chemistry that resonate throughout the novel. 
The visual clash between these colours appears elsewhere - 'A bit of lime green in with your rose' 12
Pynchon seems to associate positive things with these colors - see ''Against the Day'' particularly - as he does with bandanas. A-and bananas.

69.16 '''Rancho Peligroso''' 
"Dangerous Ranch": evokes the Siege Perilous of the Arthurian Grail legend as well as ''Rancho Notorious'', a 1952 Western directed by Fritz Lang and starring Marlene Dietrich. See note at [[V321.06-07]]

69.27 '''callipygian rondure''' 
[http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cal3.htm callipygian] -- having shapely buttocks, originally used in conjunction with the noted statue of Aphrodite (which is itself a play on "Afro" and "Venus"), the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Kallipygos "Venus Kallipygos"]. This language parodies the typology of "scientific" racism from the late 19th and ealy 20th century.

rondure -- a circular or gracefully rounded object.

69.32 '''Toro Rojo''' 
Red Bull

==Page 70==
70.15 '''One ''mestiza''. One ''criolla''''' 
Mestiza: woman of mixed race, especially mixed of European and Native American ancestry. 
Criolla: Creole

70.29 '''the Ardennes''' 
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian (Devonian) Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France... The strategic position of the Ardennes has made it a battleground for European powers for centuries... in both World War I and World War II, Germany successfully gambled on making a rapid passage through the Ardennes to attack a relatively lightly defended part of France. The Ardennes was the site of three major battles during the world wars – the Battle of the Ardennes in World War I, and the Battle of France and Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Many of the towns of the region were badly damaged during the two world wars. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardennes]

70.32 '''Newton Upper Falls''' 
Newton Upper Falls is a village situated on the east bank of the Charles River in the city of Newton, Massachusetts, in the United States. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_Upper_Falls,_Massachusetts]

70.37 '''Ar'tics''' 
A regional name, dropping the first "c" in "Arctic," for metal-buckled rubber galoshes.[http://www.leroyhistoricalsociety.org/assets/011214---artics.pdf]

==Page 71==
71.02 '''Beacon Street''' 
Beacon Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and several of its western suburbs. Beacon Street in Boston, Brookline, Brighton, and Newton is not to be confused with the Beacon Street in nearby Somerville, or others elsewhere. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Street]

==Page 71==
[[image:tyrosine.jpg|thumb|100px|Tyrosine Molecule|right]]71.11 '''kryptosam''' 
Correspondent Matthias Bauer notes that "sam" derives from the German "samen," for "seed." "Krypto," of course, derives from the same word as "cryptography," the study of codes. [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] claims that the "tyrosine" from which kryptosam is supposed to derive is "undoubtedly fictional," but it is in fact an amino acid, which can convert to melanin, just as Jamf's note indicates (although it is unclear whether semen will in fact act as the catalytic agent). 

Tyrosine is found in casein, and the name derives from the Greek, ''tyros'' meaning cheese. 

Significant properties of note for Tyrosine: 
- Tyrosine functions as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol phenol], which Nazi doctors used in injections for rapid executions. Phenols were used extensively at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 
- Tyrosine occurs in proteins that are part of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_transduction signal transduction] process -- a biological processes that converts one kind of signal or stimulus into another -- cell signalling.

The SBB (SIS/MI6 forerunner) allegedly discovered that semen, if not a catalyst, did at least make a good invisible ink.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semen#Semen_in_espionage Semen in espionage],
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansfield_Smith-Cumming Mansfield Smith Cuming], and
[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-spymaster-who-was-stranger-than-fiction-737707.html Spymaster]

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 60-71

2016-04-22T19:55:27Z

Modavis: /* Page 62 */

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 61==
61.19 '''Sodium Amytal''' 
Also known as "truth serum", Amobarbital is a drug that is a barbiturate derivative. It has sedative-hypnotic and analgesic properties. It is a white crystalline powder with no odor and a slightly bitter taste. It was first synthesized in Germany in 1923. If amobarbital is taken for extended periods of time, physical and psychological dependence can develop.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_amytal]

61.25 '''Got a hardon in my fist...''' 
This song goes right along with the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird," starting with the "Pack up all my cares and woe..." refrain that, in this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO6PpD-tRLU YouTube], begins at about 0:52.

[[Image:Ruptured_Duck.jpeg|thumb|125px|Ruptured duck|right]]61.30 '''"ruptured duck"''' 
A [http://www.therupturedduck.com/WebPages/Whatis/whatis.htm cloth insignia] depicting a screaming eagle inside a wreath. 

==Page 62==
62.05 '''Roxbury''' 
The town of Roxbury was founded in 1630 by our author's ancestor William Pynchon, and is now a neighborhood of Boston, MA. It had been an immigrant neighborhood for generations before African-Americans began to migrate from the South after WWI. While writing GR, Pynchon would certainly have been aware of rioting there at the time of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxbury,_Boston]

==Page 63==
63.03 '''Roseland Ballroom''' 
Roseland was founded initially in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1917 by Louis Brecker with financing by Frank Yuengling of the D. G. Yuengling & Son beer family, but in 1919, moved to 1658 Broadway at 51st Street in New York City. It was a "whites only" dance club called the "home of refined dancing", famed for the big band groups that played there, starting with Sam Lanin and his Ipana Troubadours. Couples danced the jitterbug, Lindy Hop, and Charleston under the Roseland's famed star-studded ceiling. The Fletcher Henderson Band played at the Roseland throughout the 1920 and 1930's. Orchestras that played the venue included Vincent Lopez, Harry James, Louis Armstrong, Tommy Dorsey, and Glenn Miller. The appearance by Count Basie was a turning point in his career and a break though in the all-white atmosphere of the club. One of his songs was to be the "Roseland Shuffle". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roseland_Ballroom]

63.05 '''Moxie''' 
A carbonated beverage that was one of the first mass-produced soft drinks in the United States. In its advertising, it used “Make Mine Moxie!” advertising jingles, the slogan “Just Make It Moxie for Mine”, and a "Moxie Man" logo. The brand suffered a significant decline in sales during the 1930s.

63.22 '''Red, the Negro shoeshine boy''' 
Stating the obvious, Red is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcom_X#_note-timeline Malcolm X], whose nickname "Red" referred to his hair color -- a dark cinnamon brown. In February 1941 Malcolm moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, worked a variety of jobs including shoeshine and became involved in Boston's "underworld fringe," pimping among other things.

63.32-37 '''"Yardbird" Parker is finding out [ . . . ]''' 
Refers to jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Correspondent Igor Zabel offers the following addition to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]]'s note on this passage:
"On one of Parker's CDs (Swedish Schnapps +), I found the passage which was quoted by [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] after Max Harrison, but slightly different, and it is interesting because Parker directly mentions Cherokee: 'Well, that night, I was working over 'Cherokee' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.' The quotation is taken from 'Hear Me Talkin' To Ya'."

==Page 64==

64.19 '''"'Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!'"''' 
This homoerotic scene seems based on some facts. It is known that Malcolm X prostituted himself for money and according to Bruce Perry's biography, ''Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America'' (Station Hill, New York, 1991) he had various homosexual liaisons throughout his life. Interestingly, Malcolm worked as a butler to a wealthy Boston bachelor, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1486997,00.html William Paul Lennon]. According to Malcolm's sidekick Malcolm Jarvis, he [Malcolm] was paid to sprinkle Lennon with talcum powder and bring him to orgasm.

==Page 65==
65.09 '''Burma-Shave signs''' 
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, sequential highway billboard signs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave_signs]

65.15 '''"Gobbler" Biddle''' 
The Biddles are one of the leading families of Philadelphia, who sometimes vacationed in the Berkshires. Specifically, the "Gobbler" could be Nicholas Biddle (Harvard, 1944). 
Interestingly [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Beverly_Biddle Francis B. Biddle] (Harvard College 1909, Harvard Law 1911) was US Attorney General (1941-1945) at this time. FBB was responsible for directing the FBI to arrest "enemy aliens" leading to Japanese-American internment camps; served as the primary judge during the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal; and authored of ''The Fear of Freedom'' and other works.

65.16 '''Fu’s Folly in Cambridge''' 
Although, as [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] notes, the character is named for Fu Manchu (who is an important reference for Pointsman later in the novel), it should be recalled that there was also a "Fu" who was a member of the Whole Sick Crew in ''V.''

Resembles the old Young & Yee Restaurant (now closed) at 27 Church Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, which for over 40 years slopped greasey chop suey. An anachronism to the novel's time period, yes, but perhaps an inspiration to the author.

65.33 '''Jack Kennedy''' 
Contrary to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]], Kennedy’s first book was titled '''''Why''' England Slept'' (not "When"). 

JFK is said to be in Slothrop's Harvard class. Estimating, Slothrop was born ca 1917-18 and entered Harvard in 1936, the year of Harvard's tricentennial. They were both in their mid-20s, Kennedy a PT boat commander in the Pacific, during the action in ''GR''. The poignant "might Jack have kept it [the harmonica] from falling, violated gravity somehow?... yes it seems Jack might have" can be read as a retrodiction from the Vietnam War and urban-riot years of GR's composition: some believed that American life would not have taken its darker turn had Kennedy not been assassinated in November 1963.

==Page 66==
66.39 '''Capehart''' 
The [http://www.myvintagetv.com/capehart.htm Capehart] automatic phonograph with a turn-over mechanism was the epitome of luxury phonographs, technical excellence and supreme electronics in the 1930s and 40s.

==Page 67==
67.34-35 '''Not "archetypal" westwardman, but the only 
An explicit nod to psychologist Carl Jung, and beyond him to the Platonic strain in philosophy: that behind all the multiplicity, variety and changing detail of daylit life, there are (in our minds and/or metaphysical reality) singular, unchanging forms: in this case, the primal explorer-mountain man-cowboy-gunfighter hero.

Pynchon also works this trope in the other direction whenever he assimilates a character to archetypes in pop culture (often film), as when Jessica gave Roger "her Fay Wray look"(57) and Roger played the drooling Dirty Old Man (59).

==Page 68==

68.01 '''Half an Ark’s better than none.''' 
For Crutchfield, there is only '''one''' of everything, as opposed to two of every animal on Noah’s (whole) Ark. (And how much use is half an Ark in a flood, anyway?)

==Page 69==

69.02 '''''terre mauvais''''' 
French "terre mauvaise" - the "badlands". A rare case of TRP misspelling a foreign word.

69.14 '''a bandana of the regulation magenta and green''' 
The coal-tar derived colors of organic chemistry that resonate throughout the novel. 
The visual clash between these colours appears elsewhere - 'A bit of lime green in with your rose' 12
Pynchon seems to associate positive things with these colors - see ''Against the Day'' particularly - as he does with bandanas. A-and bananas.

69.16 '''Rancho Peligroso''' 
"Dangerous Ranch": evokes the Siege Perilous of the Arthurian Grail legend as well as ''Rancho Notorious'', a 1952 Western directed by Fritz Lang and starring Marlene Dietrich. See note at [[V321.06-07]]

69.27 '''callipygian rondure''' 
[http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cal3.htm callipygian] -- having shapely buttocks, originally used in conjunction with the noted statue of Aphrodite (which is itself a play on "Afro" and "Venus"), the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Kallipygos "Venus Kallipygos"]. This language parodies the typology of "scientific" racism from the late 19th and ealy 20th century.

rondure -- a circular or gracefully rounded object.

69.32 '''Toro Rojo''' 
Red Bull

==Page 70==
70.15 '''One ''mestiza''. One ''criolla''''' 
Mestiza: woman of mixed race, especially mixed of European and Native American ancestry. 
Criolla: Creole

70.29 '''the Ardennes''' 
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian (Devonian) Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France... The strategic position of the Ardennes has made it a battleground for European powers for centuries... in both World War I and World War II, Germany successfully gambled on making a rapid passage through the Ardennes to attack a relatively lightly defended part of France. The Ardennes was the site of three major battles during the world wars – the Battle of the Ardennes in World War I, and the Battle of France and Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Many of the towns of the region were badly damaged during the two world wars. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardennes]

70.32 '''Newton Upper Falls''' 
Newton Upper Falls is a village situated on the east bank of the Charles River in the city of Newton, Massachusetts, in the United States. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_Upper_Falls,_Massachusetts]

70.37 '''Ar'tics''' 
A regional name, dropping the first "c" in "Arctic," for metal-buckled rubber galoshes.[http://www.leroyhistoricalsociety.org/assets/011214---artics.pdf]

==Page 71==
71.02 '''Beacon Street''' 
Beacon Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and several of its western suburbs. Beacon Street in Boston, Brookline, Brighton, and Newton is not to be confused with the Beacon Street in nearby Somerville, or others elsewhere. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Street]

==Page 71==
[[image:tyrosine.jpg|thumb|100px|Tyrosine Molecule|right]]71.11 '''kryptosam''' 
Correspondent Matthias Bauer notes that "sam" derives from the German "samen," for "seed." "Krypto," of course, derives from the same word as "cryptography," the study of codes. [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] claims that the "tyrosine" from which kryptosam is supposed to derive is "undoubtedly fictional," but it is in fact an amino acid, which can convert to melanin, just as Jamf's note indicates (although it is unclear whether semen will in fact act as the catalytic agent). 

Tyrosine is found in casein, and the name derives from the Greek, ''tyros'' meaning cheese. 

Significant properties of note for Tyrosine: 
- Tyrosine functions as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol phenol], which Nazi doctors used in injections for rapid executions. Phenols were used extensively at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 
- Tyrosine occurs in proteins that are part of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_transduction signal transduction] process -- a biological processes that converts one kind of signal or stimulus into another -- cell signalling.

The SBB (SIS/MI6 forerunner) allegedly discovered that semen, if not a catalyst, did at least make a good invisible ink.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semen#Semen_in_espionage Semen in espionage],
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansfield_Smith-Cumming Mansfield Smith Cuming], and
[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-spymaster-who-was-stranger-than-fiction-737707.html Spymaster]

{{GR PbP}}

Pages 60-71

2016-04-22T19:54:04Z

Modavis: /* Page 62 */

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 61==
61.19 '''Sodium Amytal''' 
Also known as "truth serum", Amobarbital is a drug that is a barbiturate derivative. It has sedative-hypnotic and analgesic properties. It is a white crystalline powder with no odor and a slightly bitter taste. It was first synthesized in Germany in 1923. If amobarbital is taken for extended periods of time, physical and psychological dependence can develop.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_amytal]

61.25 '''Got a hardon in my fist...''' 
This song goes right along with the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird," starting with the "Pack up all my cares and woe..." refrain that, in this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO6PpD-tRLU YouTube], begins at about 0:52.

[[Image:Ruptured_Duck.jpeg|thumb|125px|Ruptured duck|right]]61.30 '''"ruptured duck"''' 
A [http://www.therupturedduck.com/WebPages/Whatis/whatis.htm cloth insignia] depicting a screaming eagle inside a wreath. 

==Page 62==
62.05 '''Roxbury''' 
The town of Roxbury was founded in 1630 by our author's ancestor William Pynchon, and is now a neighborhood of Boston, MA. It had been an immigrant neighborhood for generations before African-Americans began to migrate from the South after WWI. While writing GR, Pynchon would certainly have been aware of rioting there at the time of Martin Luther King Jr.s's assassination [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxbury,_Boston]

==Page 63==
63.03 '''Roseland Ballroom''' 
Roseland was founded initially in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1917 by Louis Brecker with financing by Frank Yuengling of the D. G. Yuengling & Son beer family, but in 1919, moved to 1658 Broadway at 51st Street in New York City. It was a "whites only" dance club called the "home of refined dancing", famed for the big band groups that played there, starting with Sam Lanin and his Ipana Troubadours. Couples danced the jitterbug, Lindy Hop, and Charleston under the Roseland's famed star-studded ceiling. The Fletcher Henderson Band played at the Roseland throughout the 1920 and 1930's. Orchestras that played the venue included Vincent Lopez, Harry James, Louis Armstrong, Tommy Dorsey, and Glenn Miller. The appearance by Count Basie was a turning point in his career and a break though in the all-white atmosphere of the club. One of his songs was to be the "Roseland Shuffle". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roseland_Ballroom]

63.05 '''Moxie''' 
A carbonated beverage that was one of the first mass-produced soft drinks in the United States. In its advertising, it used “Make Mine Moxie!” advertising jingles, the slogan “Just Make It Moxie for Mine”, and a "Moxie Man" logo. The brand suffered a significant decline in sales during the 1930s.

63.22 '''Red, the Negro shoeshine boy''' 
Stating the obvious, Red is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcom_X#_note-timeline Malcolm X], whose nickname "Red" referred to his hair color -- a dark cinnamon brown. In February 1941 Malcolm moved to Boston to live with his older half-sister, worked a variety of jobs including shoeshine and became involved in Boston's "underworld fringe," pimping among other things.

63.32-37 '''"Yardbird" Parker is finding out [ . . . ]''' 
Refers to jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Correspondent Igor Zabel offers the following addition to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]]'s note on this passage:
"On one of Parker's CDs (Swedish Schnapps +), I found the passage which was quoted by [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] after Max Harrison, but slightly different, and it is interesting because Parker directly mentions Cherokee: 'Well, that night, I was working over 'Cherokee' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.' The quotation is taken from 'Hear Me Talkin' To Ya'."

==Page 64==

64.19 '''"'Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!'"''' 
This homoerotic scene seems based on some facts. It is known that Malcolm X prostituted himself for money and according to Bruce Perry's biography, ''Malcolm: The Life of a Man Who Changed Black America'' (Station Hill, New York, 1991) he had various homosexual liaisons throughout his life. Interestingly, Malcolm worked as a butler to a wealthy Boston bachelor, [http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1486997,00.html William Paul Lennon]. According to Malcolm's sidekick Malcolm Jarvis, he [Malcolm] was paid to sprinkle Lennon with talcum powder and bring him to orgasm.

==Page 65==
65.09 '''Burma-Shave signs''' 
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, sequential highway billboard signs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave_signs]

65.15 '''"Gobbler" Biddle''' 
The Biddles are one of the leading families of Philadelphia, who sometimes vacationed in the Berkshires. Specifically, the "Gobbler" could be Nicholas Biddle (Harvard, 1944). 
Interestingly [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Beverly_Biddle Francis B. Biddle] (Harvard College 1909, Harvard Law 1911) was US Attorney General (1941-1945) at this time. FBB was responsible for directing the FBI to arrest "enemy aliens" leading to Japanese-American internment camps; served as the primary judge during the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal; and authored of ''The Fear of Freedom'' and other works.

65.16 '''Fu’s Folly in Cambridge''' 
Although, as [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] notes, the character is named for Fu Manchu (who is an important reference for Pointsman later in the novel), it should be recalled that there was also a "Fu" who was a member of the Whole Sick Crew in ''V.''

Resembles the old Young & Yee Restaurant (now closed) at 27 Church Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, which for over 40 years slopped greasey chop suey. An anachronism to the novel's time period, yes, but perhaps an inspiration to the author.

65.33 '''Jack Kennedy''' 
Contrary to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]], Kennedy’s first book was titled '''''Why''' England Slept'' (not "When"). 

JFK is said to be in Slothrop's Harvard class. Estimating, Slothrop was born ca 1917-18 and entered Harvard in 1936, the year of Harvard's tricentennial. They were both in their mid-20s, Kennedy a PT boat commander in the Pacific, during the action in ''GR''. The poignant "might Jack have kept it [the harmonica] from falling, violated gravity somehow?... yes it seems Jack might have" can be read as a retrodiction from the Vietnam War and urban-riot years of GR's composition: some believed that American life would not have taken its darker turn had Kennedy not been assassinated in November 1963.

==Page 66==
66.39 '''Capehart''' 
The [http://www.myvintagetv.com/capehart.htm Capehart] automatic phonograph with a turn-over mechanism was the epitome of luxury phonographs, technical excellence and supreme electronics in the 1930s and 40s.

==Page 67==
67.34-35 '''Not "archetypal" westwardman, but the only 
An explicit nod to psychologist Carl Jung, and beyond him to the Platonic strain in philosophy: that behind all the multiplicity, variety and changing detail of daylit life, there are (in our minds and/or metaphysical reality) singular, unchanging forms: in this case, the primal explorer-mountain man-cowboy-gunfighter hero.

Pynchon also works this trope in the other direction whenever he assimilates a character to archetypes in pop culture (often film), as when Jessica gave Roger "her Fay Wray look"(57) and Roger played the drooling Dirty Old Man (59).

==Page 68==

68.01 '''Half an Ark’s better than none.''' 
For Crutchfield, there is only '''one''' of everything, as opposed to two of every animal on Noah’s (whole) Ark. (And how much use is half an Ark in a flood, anyway?)

==Page 69==

69.02 '''''terre mauvais''''' 
French "terre mauvaise" - the "badlands". A rare case of TRP misspelling a foreign word.

69.14 '''a bandana of the regulation magenta and green''' 
The coal-tar derived colors of organic chemistry that resonate throughout the novel. 
The visual clash between these colours appears elsewhere - 'A bit of lime green in with your rose' 12
Pynchon seems to associate positive things with these colors - see ''Against the Day'' particularly - as he does with bandanas. A-and bananas.

69.16 '''Rancho Peligroso''' 
"Dangerous Ranch": evokes the Siege Perilous of the Arthurian Grail legend as well as ''Rancho Notorious'', a 1952 Western directed by Fritz Lang and starring Marlene Dietrich. See note at [[V321.06-07]]

69.27 '''callipygian rondure''' 
[http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-cal3.htm callipygian] -- having shapely buttocks, originally used in conjunction with the noted statue of Aphrodite (which is itself a play on "Afro" and "Venus"), the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_Kallipygos "Venus Kallipygos"]. This language parodies the typology of "scientific" racism from the late 19th and ealy 20th century.

rondure -- a circular or gracefully rounded object.

69.32 '''Toro Rojo''' 
Red Bull

==Page 70==
70.15 '''One ''mestiza''. One ''criolla''''' 
Mestiza: woman of mixed race, especially mixed of European and Native American ancestry. 
Criolla: Creole

70.29 '''the Ardennes''' 
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian (Devonian) Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France... The strategic position of the Ardennes has made it a battleground for European powers for centuries... in both World War I and World War II, Germany successfully gambled on making a rapid passage through the Ardennes to attack a relatively lightly defended part of France. The Ardennes was the site of three major battles during the world wars – the Battle of the Ardennes in World War I, and the Battle of France and Battle of the Bulge in World War II. Many of the towns of the region were badly damaged during the two world wars. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardennes]

70.32 '''Newton Upper Falls''' 
Newton Upper Falls is a village situated on the east bank of the Charles River in the city of Newton, Massachusetts, in the United States. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_Upper_Falls,_Massachusetts]

70.37 '''Ar'tics''' 
A regional name, dropping the first "c" in "Arctic," for metal-buckled rubber galoshes.[http://www.leroyhistoricalsociety.org/assets/011214---artics.pdf]

==Page 71==
71.02 '''Beacon Street''' 
Beacon Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and several of its western suburbs. Beacon Street in Boston, Brookline, Brighton, and Newton is not to be confused with the Beacon Street in nearby Somerville, or others elsewhere. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Street]

==Page 71==
[[image:tyrosine.jpg|thumb|100px|Tyrosine Molecule|right]]71.11 '''kryptosam''' 
Correspondent Matthias Bauer notes that "sam" derives from the German "samen," for "seed." "Krypto," of course, derives from the same word as "cryptography," the study of codes. [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]] claims that the "tyrosine" from which kryptosam is supposed to derive is "undoubtedly fictional," but it is in fact an amino acid, which can convert to melanin, just as Jamf's note indicates (although it is unclear whether semen will in fact act as the catalytic agent). 

Tyrosine is found in casein, and the name derives from the Greek, ''tyros'' meaning cheese. 

Significant properties of note for Tyrosine: 
- Tyrosine functions as a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol phenol], which Nazi doctors used in injections for rapid executions. Phenols were used extensively at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 
- Tyrosine occurs in proteins that are part of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_transduction signal transduction] process -- a biological processes that converts one kind of signal or stimulus into another -- cell signalling.

The SBB (SIS/MI6 forerunner) allegedly discovered that semen, if not a catalyst, did at least make a good invisible ink.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semen#Semen_in_espionage Semen in espionage],
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansfield_Smith-Cumming Mansfield Smith Cuming], and
[http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-spymaster-who-was-stranger-than-fiction-737707.html Spymaster]

{{GR PbP}}

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