Thomas Pynchon Wiki - User contributions [en]

Pages 7-16

2011-12-21T05:42:25Z

Pthomas: /* Page 12 */

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==Page 9==

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

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

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

Jungfrau is also the German for the zodiacal sign "Virgo."
Another female "V." -- which figures later in the story and in history.
Note as well the oblique reference to Venus, the "planet of love".
In astrology Venus is "fallen" in Virgo. Light.

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

9.14-15 '''Maurice "Saxophone" Reed''' More is Reed?. A saxophone is a single reed instrument.

9.19 '''the legend SNIPE AND SHAFT [as a pub sign]''' 
A snipe is naval slang for a member of the engineering crew on a ship. Historically, there was always tension between snipes and the deck crew. http://oldsnipe.com/SnipeBegin.html

shaft: Any sensible canal boater carries a wooden pole on the cabin top, in order to punt the boat afloat again when it runs aground, and the most suitable length just happens to be about ten feet. It will normally be about two inches in diameter, and usually made of a hard wood. 
However, the working boatmen of old called it a 'shaft', never a 'pole', and the term continues amongst experienced boaters today.http://www.grannybuttons.com/granny_buttons/2004/04/define_shaft.html

9.26 '''Vat 69''' A whiskey. A sexual pun. 
Vat 69 whisky is a scotch blended whisky.
In 1882 William Sanderson prepared one hundred casks of blended whiskey and hired a panel of experts to taste them. The batch from the vat with number 69 was proclaimed as the best tasting one and the famous blend got its name. The whisky was at first bottled in port wine bottles. Wikipedia

9.28 '''Joaquin Stick''' 
Say it out loud--another classic Pynchon name.

==Page 10==

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

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

==Page 11==

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

==Page 12==
12.07 '''to cup and bleed''' 
To bleed [into a cup]: To let blood from; to take or draw blood from, as by opening a vein. A medical way through the 16th Century to treat some illnesses.
Notice here Pynchon presents 'anxiety' as a physical illness treated in this old-fashioned discredited way (jokingly, of course). 
Blood-letting flourished under the theory of Humours [bodily fluids], the Four Temperaments and their corresponding liquid in the body: 

In re previous entry: "Cupping" is the application of heated cups to the skin. As the cup, and the air within, cool, a partial vacuum is created, drawing an increased amount of blood toward the surface. A lancet may then be used to release the blood in an attempt to "balance the humours" of the body. The "[into a cup]" as used above is incorrect, or at best misleading.

In ''On the Temperaments'' Galen said an ideal temperament involved a balanced mixture of the four qualities. Galen identified four temperaments in which one of the qualities dominated. These last four, sanguine, choleric, melancholic and phlegmatic, eventually became better known than the others. While the term "temperament" came to refer just to psychological dispositions, Galen used it to refer to bodily dispositions, which determined a person's susceptibility to particular diseases as well as behavioral and emotional inclinations. 

Methods of treatment like blood letting, emetics and purges were aimed at expelling a harmful surplus of a humour. They remained part of mainstream Western medicine into the 16th century when William Harvey investigated the circulatory system.

==Page 13==

13.05 '''he ''knew''''' 
We know from V. that TRP knows some of Wittgenstein's key ideas. This
italicized emphasis on knowing without analysis might be a nod to
the Witttenstein of ''On Certainty'' who argued that universal epistemological doubt was, simply, wrong. "The key, then, is not to claim certain knowledge of propositions like “here is a hand” but rather to recognize that these sorts of propositions lie beyond questions of knowledge or doubt." 
Universal epistemolgical doubt is said to start, historically, with Descartes, a philosopher TRP seems to dislike for his 'rationality'.
see ''Against the Day''.

13.14 '''Genital Brain'''. 
Both androgen and estrogen receptors have been identified in brains. Several sex-specific genes not dependent on sex steroids are expressed differently in male and female human brains. From wikipedia.

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

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

==Page 14==

14.07 '''H.A. Loaf''' 
As in "Half a loaf is better than none"? and
"There is at least one Loaf in every outfit".

14.22 '''committed to the Long Run as They are''' 
QUOTATION: Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. 
ATTRIBUTION: John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946), British economist. A Tract on Monetary Reform, ch. 3 (1923).

14.27 '''street-wake''' 
quantitative model of the “vortex street” wake as a double row of point vortices. An engineering term. Pynchon studied engineering.

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

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

14.36 '''sanjak''' 
Sanjak and Sandjak are the most common English transliterations of the Turkish word Sancak, which literally means "banner". They were the sub-divisions of the Ottoman provinces referred to as vilayet, eyalet or pashaluk.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanjak -

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

==Page 15==
15.25 '''the balloon rises''' 
Besides the barrage balloons above, "the balloon is up" is British slang for "fighting is engaged", "war has begun".

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Pages 626-640

2010-06-28T22:41:17Z

Pthomas:

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==Page 626==
626.20 '''Double-declutchingly, heel and toe...'''

Another concealed poem (others on 167, 451, and 508). See also ''Inherent Vice'' p. 134.
==Page 637==
[[image:saboteur.jpg|thumb|Chase scene from ''Saboteur''|100px|right]]637.10 '''aficionados of the chase scene, those who cannot look at the Taj Mahal, the Uffizi, the Statue of Liberty...''' 

The Uffizi chase scene Pynchon is referencing here may be from one of the six vignettes that comprise [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Rossellini Roberto Rossellini's] ''Paisà'' (1946), a military travelogue, following Allied (mainly American) soldiers during the 1943 invasion of Italy as they eventually wrest the country from Fascist control. In one of the vignettes, a nurse and her friend are running through the maze-like Uffizi, its treasures packed in crates, trying to cross into occupied Florence.

The Statue of Liberty references the final chase scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saboteur_%28film%29 ''Saboteur''] (1942).

637.11 '''Douglas Fairbanks scampering across that moon minaret''' 
Refers to the 1924 film [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thief_of_Baghdad_%281924%29 ''The Thief of Baghdad''] in which swashbuckling [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Fairbanks Douglas Fairbanks] plays a thief who falls in love with the Caliph's beautiful daughter.

637.37-38 '''Dick Whittington''' 
According to popular legend, Whittington (c. 1350-1423) was one of the preterite who made good, a penniless boy who was about to leave London when he heard the city’s bells calling, "Turn back, Dick Whittington, Lord Mayor of London!" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Whittington Wikipedia entry]

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Pages 505-518

2010-06-28T22:34:55Z

Pthomas:

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==Page 508==
508.26 '''Now Narrisch here's a guidance man'''

Another concealed poem (or lyric?) See pages 167, 451, and 626.

==Page 513==
513.9 '''pogoni''' 
Plural of ''pogon'', 'insignia of grade rank' in Russian, epaulet with stars.

==Page 516==
516.3-17 '''John Dillinger...easier into death''' 
On July 22, 1934, the police and FBI, lead by agent Melvin Purvis, closed in on the Biograph Theater in Chicago where Dillinger had gone to see a movie, ''Manhattan Melodrama'', starring Clark Gable as gangster "Blackie" Gallagher and William Powell as politician Jim Wade. Dillinger was shot three times as he attempted to flee the theater.

516.22 '''''Der Müde Tod''''' 
A 1921 Fritz Lang film. There is an interesting sidelight to this film. In order to win her lover back from Death, the heroine must try to save his life in three different times and places. (Death wins each time, natch.) The second episode of the film is set in Renaissance Italy, where a courier is attacked by a group of men dressed in black. Could this episode have inspired "The Courier’s Tragedy" and the Tristero of ''The Crying of Lot 49''?

==Page 518==
518.06 '''Driwelling and Schmeill''' 
The former’s name, as pronounced in German, would sound like "drivelling"—drooling, talking on in a childish manner.

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Pages 505-518

2010-06-28T22:33:21Z

Pthomas:

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==Page 508==
508.26 '''Now Narrisch here's a guidance man'''
Another concealed poem (or lyric?) See pages 167, 451, and 626.

==Page 513==
513.9 '''pogoni''' 
Plural of ''pogon'', 'insignia of grade rank' in Russian, epaulet with stars.

==Page 516==
516.3-17 '''John Dillinger...easier into death''' 
On July 22, 1934, the police and FBI, lead by agent Melvin Purvis, closed in on the Biograph Theater in Chicago where Dillinger had gone to see a movie, ''Manhattan Melodrama'', starring Clark Gable as gangster "Blackie" Gallagher and William Powell as politician Jim Wade. Dillinger was shot three times as he attempted to flee the theater.

516.22 '''''Der Müde Tod''''' 
A 1921 Fritz Lang film. There is an interesting sidelight to this film. In order to win her lover back from Death, the heroine must try to save his life in three different times and places. (Death wins each time, natch.) The second episode of the film is set in Renaissance Italy, where a courier is attacked by a group of men dressed in black. Could this episode have inspired "The Courier’s Tragedy" and the Tristero of ''The Crying of Lot 49''?

==Page 518==
518.06 '''Driwelling and Schmeill''' 
The former’s name, as pronounced in German, would sound like "drivelling"—drooling, talking on in a childish manner.

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Pages 448-456

2010-06-28T22:29:37Z

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==Page 448==
448.4 '''''Rücksichtslos''''' 
German: inconsiderate or reckless; Pynchon might have been having some fun though--a translation of the three parts of the word would be something like 'back-view-less', an interesting choice for the name of a Toiletship.

448.23-24 '''like American cowboy actor Henry Fonda''' 
Contrary to [[Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow|Weisenburger]], Fonda did not appear "almost exclusively" in Westerns before ''The Grapes of Wrath'' in 1940. He did appear in ''The Trail of the Lonesome Pine'' (1936), but that film is set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and is not a Western as such. He played Frank James in ''Jesse James'' (1939) but did not make ''The Return of Frank James'' until 1940. Other Fonda roles in the 1930s included crime dramas (''You Only Live Once''), comedies (''The Male Animal'', ''The Lady Eve''), historical dramas (''Drums along the Mohawk''), and biographical films (''Young Mr. Lincoln''). The description of Albert Speer "leaning akimbo against the wall" bears an anachronistic resemblance to Fonda as Wyatt Earp in some scenes of John Ford’s ''My Darling Clementine'' (1946). (As a side note, both ''The Return of Frank James'' and ''You Only Live Once'' were directed by Fritz Lang, after he had fled Nazi Germany to America.)

448.26 '''''Kriegsmarine''''' 
German: Navy

448.29 '''''Geschwader''''' 
German: squadron

==Page 449==
[[image:buffalo-bayou.jpg|thumb|Buffalo Bayou|120px|right]]449.15 '''Buf-falo Bayou''' 
Buffalo Bayou is in Houston, Texas. Part of it was dredged and cleared over the years to create the Houston Ship Channel.

==Page 451==
451.25 '''A good ship...'''

A short concealed poem. See also pages 167, 508, and 626.

==Page 452==
452.39-40 '''Ackeret, Busemann, von Kármán and Moore, some Volta Congress papers''' 
Jacob Ackeret, Adolf Busemann, Theodore von Kármán, Norton B. Moore: all experts on supersonic flight; 5th Volta Congress on High Speeds in Aviation, held in Rome in 1935

==Page 453==
453.3 '''the Gomerians whistling... as you sat out on counter the KdF ship''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silbo_Gomero_language Silbo Gomero] (Gomeran whistle) was the unique whistle language invented by the extinct Guanche people in the Canary Islands, later adapted to Castilian by Spanish settlers. The purpose of the Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy) movement was "to inculcate workers with a sense of being an integral part of the racially based national community" (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15. edition, 1994. 20:122) Among several attractive leisure-time projects, this program subsidized workers' vacations, including cruises on the Mediterranean or the Baltic Sea; there were [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraft_durch_Freude four cruisers], see ''Tätigkeiten''. Sailing past the Canary Islands may be pure fiction, enhancing the extinction/genocide theme.

==Page 454==
454.01 '''in the Pentagon''' 
The world’s largest office building was completed in 1943.

==Page 455==
455.35 '''"Sporri" and "Hawasch"''' 
Doctor Mabuse’s two assistants in Lang’s 1922 film.

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Pages 557-563

2010-06-28T05:55:51Z

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==Page 558==
'''558.06 old Bloody Chiclitz''' 
Chiclitz’s name does derive from Chiclets chewing gum, but only metaphorically. Since the white, candy-coated gum tablets resembled teeth, "bloody chiclets" became slang for "broken teeth," as in the threat, "How would you like a mouth full of bloody chiclets?"

===Page 559===
'''559.03-17 There are about 30 kids...'''

Perhaps the most laboriously set up pun in Western literature.
If you don't get it--
''They say the French are naughty,
''They say the French are bad...''

==Page 561==
'''561.26 LOOK-IN’ FAWR A NEEDLE IN A HAAAAY-STACK!''' 
[[image:haystack.jpg|thumb|100px|A "cute meet"|right]]Song written by Con Conrad and Herb Magidson, from the Astaire-Rogers musical ''The Gay Divorcee'' (originally titled ''The Gay Divorce on Broadway''), directed by Mark Sandrich in 1934. Guy Holden, played by Astaire, has met Ginger Rogers but not learned her name and sings about the improbability of finding her again. Note the similarity to Ludwig's quest for Ursula the lemming at [[Pages 549-557#Page 553|553.34]]. Dance critic Arlene Croce writes that this number "first defined the Astaire character on the screen. . . . Everything comes easily to him and we believe in him as in no screen hero since Keaton." ''See next note below.''

'''561.30-31 Fred Astaire . . . Ginger Rogers again''' 
Missing the song reference above causes Weisenburger to strain for an interpretation. Astaire and Rogers did team up once again after 1939, for ''The Barkleys of Broadway'' (1949). That fact aside, it is certainly stretching a point to say that Astaire’s career "took a downward turn" after 1939. Among many other films, he continued to be a popular star in such musicals as ''You’ll Never Get Rich'' (1940), ''Holiday Inn'' (1942), ''You Were Never Lovelier'' (1942), ''Yolanda and the Thief'' (1945), ''Royal Wedding'' (1953), ''The Bandwagon'' (1953), ''Daddy Longlegs'' (1955), ''Silk Stockings'' (1957), and ''Easter Parade'' (1957), and won respect as a serious actor in ''On the Beach'' (1959). He also had two acclaimed television specials and won an Honorary Oscar in 1950 and the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award in 1981. In the "Looking for a Needle" number, Astaire sings about finding the woman of his dreams whose name he never learned after they had had a "cute meet." (He had torn her dress.) The music continues over a montage sequence of Astaire walking and driving around London watching various women until his car runs into Rogers’.

==Page 562==
'''562.01 --searchin’ for a (hmm) cellar full of saffron''' 
Not, needless to say, a line from the song, but Slothrop is filling in, trying to remember. This launches him into yet another mindlessly pleasurable pursuit (for lyrics) that threatens to abort his mission.

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