Thomas Pynchon Wiki - User contributions [en]

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2007-05-03T10:20:07Z

Torerye: Asta Nielsen's nationality

'''NAAFI''' 
35; Navy, Army, Air Forces Institute; civilian support of war effort with entertainment, food, etc.; 134; NAAFI girls, 593, 710; [http://www.naafi.co.uk]

<div id="naming"></div>'''naming''' 
"Was Our Side seeking to demoralize the German Beast by broadcasting to him random thoughts of the mad, naming for him [...] the deep, the scarcely seen" 74; "snare them in words," 99; "words are only an eye-twitch away from the things they stand for," 100; "No language meant no chance of co-opting them in to what their round and flaxen invaders were calling Salvation" 110; "before wishes were given a separate name to warn that they might not come true" 177; "stuffed paper illusions. . .between him and this truth," 234; "fear of having a soul captured. . .by a name," 302; "Can his name. . .break their power?" 321; "the act of," 322, 366; Nameless Thing, 341; "How alphabetic the nature of molecules," 355; German mania for name-giving, separating namer from named, 391; 443; "those names are not magic," 464; "verbal, ranked and uniformed," 478; "children at the threshold of language," 487; "words. . .only delta-t from the things they stand for," 510; "worded over," 589; "secret Function whose name. . .cannot be spoken," 590; "a screen of words between himself and the numinous," 668; "holy names of God," 734; "Names of Power," 734; See also [[#nta|NTA]]; [[R#routinization|Routinization of Charisma]]

'''Nancy''' 
547; mentioned in Pirate's and Katje's How I Came To Love the People

'''Nansen, Fridtjof (1861-1930)''' 
589; Norwegian explorer, oceanographer, statesman, and humanitarian who led a number of expeditions to the Arctic (1888, 1893, 1895-96) and oceanographic expeditions in the North Atlantic (1900, 1910-14).

'''naphtha''' 
3; a colorless, volatile petroleum distillate, usually an intermediate product between gasoline and benzene, used as a solvent and as a fuel — Webster's; aka lighter fluid

'''Napolean Bonaparte (1769-1821)''' 
French general who was first consul and then emperor of the French, carried out many far-reaching reforms and through military force attempted to expand France's dominion (though he left France smaller than it had been at the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789). Until the end of the Second Empire under his nephew Napoleon III he was hailed as one of history's great heroes; "hats with and without Ns on them" 664

'''narodnik''' 
From "narod" - people. Idealistic movement among Russian intellectuals in the post-emancipation period of the 19th century. They quit their urban life and attempted to "go to the people". Establishing themselves in villages, they tried to be of use to the peasantry, to get them into motion, but the peasants were generally suspicious of outsiders from other orders of society. Their politics were greatly influenced by the works of Karl Marx; "No, they are making believe to be narodnik, but I know, they are of Iasi, of Codreanu" 11

'''narrative voices''' 
"Well Respected Man" (by The Kinks), 167 ("And the crowds they swarm in Knightsbridge, and the wordless carols drone [&c.]"); Rod Serling ("The Twilight Zone"), 202 ("Shortly, unpleasantly so, it will come to him that [...]");

'''Närrisch, Klaus''' 
456; German: "foolish, crazy"; "lumpy nose, stoop, week's growth of orange and gray whiskers"; worked with Achtfaden on S-gerät; at Peenemünde with Slothrop et al., 495; "guidance man," 516; "he worked in guidance, he was Schilling's best man, he knows more about integrating circuits than anybody" 527; under narcohypnosis - captured by Russians for his guidance knowledge, 563

'''National Research Council''' 
84; gave Jamf a grant for his Infant Tyrone study; "depth studies [...] that indicated an unacceptable 36% of the male work force weren't paying enough attention to their cocks" 581;

'''Nayland-Smith, Sir Denis''' 
83; Character in Sax Rohmer's (English, 1883-1959) Fu Manchu novels; first appeared in The Insidious Doctor Fu Manchu (originally titled The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu) (1913); Denis Nayland-Smith, nephew of Sherlock Holmes, was the detective who most commonly opposed the insidious schemes of Dr Fu Manchu. With the assistance of Dr Petrie he battled the devil doctor and his minions every time their evil reared it's ugly head.; 277-78, 592, 631; 751

'''Nazi Party''' 
"For every government agency, the Nazi Party set up a duplicate" 421;

'''Neubabelsberg''' 
364; location of the Havel in Berlin where Potsdam Conference was held; 371; See also Potsdam Conference

'''Neukölln''' 
651; where Byron is taken, to "the home of a glassblower"

'''New Dealers''' 
77; Started in 1933 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the "New Deal" program was set up to combat the Great Depression, by abandoning the gold standard, devaluing the dollar, state intervention in the credit market, agricultural price support, and the passage of the Social Security Act (1935) which provided for old-age and unemployment insurance.

'''Newton, Isaac''' 
555; "It was a little early for ~, but feelings about action and reaction were in the air"

'''Niederdorf''' 
261; in Zürich

'''Niedersächsisch''' 
465; Niedersachsen (Eng., Lower Saxony) is a north German state

'''Nielsen, Asta''' 
415; Nora D-T's "long Asta Nielsen upper lip." Weisenburger erroneously calls Asta Nielsen Swedish: She was Danish (born in Copenhagen, 1881)

'''Nieman-Marcus''' 
Nieman-Marcus is a higher-quality department store582; bowl from, at the Tracys' home

'''Night's Mad Carnival''' 
133

'''nihilism''' 
cheap nihilism, 57, 58, 129; Malcolm "the Unthinkable Nihilist," 64; "Nihilist transposition," 72; "nihilistic--pleasure," 96; Nora Dotson-Truck, "erotic nihilist," 149; "bones and heart alert to Nothing" 267; Tchitcherine "comes from Nihilist stock," 338; "Slothrop at the rail looking at nothing" 527; See also [[V#vacuum|vacuum]]; [[V#void|Void]]; [[XYZ#zero|Zero]]

'''Nikolaikirche''' 
398; "onion-topped" building at Zwölfkinder where Pökler is staying

'''1922 Committee''' 
Within the British Parliament, members of the Conservative party are organized into a group known as the 1922 Committee (so called because it first met in 1922); "coming in the windows" 615

'''Nipple, Lloyd''' 
374; from Slothrop's childhood

'''NISO''' 
273; According to McGovern, NISO is the Scientific Research Institute for Airplane Equipment

'''Noble, Charlie''' 
739; "A Raketen-Stadt Charlie Noble" 739

'''Norden device''' 
151;

'''Nordhausen''' 
240; city in central Germany in the Harz mountains, near which the Mittelwerke was located; given to Soviets per Yalta Agreement, 273; Americans crating out A4 rockets before Russians take over, 295; "Nordhausen means dwellings in the north. The Rocket had to be produced out of a place called Nordhausen." 322; 718 [[MAP]]

'''Norma''' 
22; a Wren Slothrop is dating; 25

'''Norrmalm, Södermalm, Deer Park and Old City''' 
141; all areas of Stockholm

'''Nosepicker, Neil''' 
83; Book of 50,000 Insults

'''Notgeld''' 
285; German: "Not" = "emergency" (issue of) "geld" = "money"

'''nouns used as verbs (and sometimes reconverted into nouns)''' 
chevroning, 64; sinewaving, 67; historied, 71; fingernailed, 117; tendoning, 124; osmosed, 213; "paranoids from door to door" 254; palimpsested, 266; dopplering, 310; "water squeegeeing off" 460; sneaky-peteing, 508; gangstering, 518; "another shot rattlesnaking off of a bulkhead" 529; worded over, 589

'''Novi Pazar''' 
The sanjak (district) of Novi Pazar is a primarily Moslem town in southwest Serbia; "Who'd ever think-it, could start such a flap? [...] the san-jak of Novi Pazar" 14-15; See also [[B#balkan|Balkan Intrigues]]

'''NSB credentials''' 
95; Nationalsocialistische Bewegung, the Dutch national socialist movement; See also Rexist

<div id="nta"></div>'''N.T.A.''' 
339; New Turkic Alphabet; written language imposed on Central Asia by Russians; 341; Cyrillic NTA, 354; plenary session, 355; "first Central Asian fuck you signs," 355; See also [[#naming|naming]]; [[R#routinization|Routinization/Rationalization of Charisma]]

<div id="nusselt"></div>'''Nusselt heart-transfer coefficient''' 
453; One would have expected "heat-transfer," but this "typo," having persisted since ''Gravity's Rainbow'''s publication in 1973, may be intentional, perhaps indicative of Slothrop's state when he's thinking of it, falling for Katje while, post-coitus, she has him running down boundary-layer temperatures. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_transfer_coefficient But if you're ''really'' curious about Nusselt heat-transfer coefficients...]

'''Nutria''' 
38; a nutria is a web-footed South American aquatic rodent whose fur is used in the same way as, say, the more expensive beaver fur

'''NW7''' 
344; IG office in Berlin to which its salesmen/spies reported; 630

'''Nymphenburg''' 
Hunting lodge in Amalienburg, designed by Cuvilliés; "von Göll on his camera dolly [...] barrel-assing down the long corridors at" 750

{{GR Alpha Nav}}

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2007-05-03T10:16:41Z

Torerye:

'''Tägliche Rundschau''' 
434; German: "The Daily Panorama"; "discarded copies of" in Berlin

'''Taj Mahal''' 
This mausoleum on the southern bank of the Yamuna (Jumna) River, outside Agra in India was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his wife, Arjumand Banu Begam, also called Mumtaz Mahal ("Chosen One of the Palace"), of which the name Taj Mahal is a corruption. It took 22 years to complete; 637

'''Takeshi''' 
See [[K#komical|Komical Kamikazes]]

'''Tamara''' 
247; at de la Perlimpinpin party; 261

'''Tannhäuser''' 
Tannhäuserism (love of being taken under mountains), 299; "even a Minnesinger needs to be alone" 299; "the Singing Nincompoop" 364; See also Lisaura

'''Tantivy''' 
See [[M#mucker|Mucker-Maffick, Oliver "Tantivy"]]

'''Tarot''' 
Judgment, 152; "shuffling the ancient decks oily and worn, throwing down swords and cups and trumps major" 413; The Fool, 501, 724, 742; "Der Grob Säugling, 23rd card of the Zone's trumps major" 707; "choose the world" 718; "The scene itself must be read as a card: what is to come" 724; Queen of Cups, 735; A.E. Waite, 738; 746-49; [[Weissmann's Tarot]]; [[Slothrop's Tarot]]; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rider-Waite The Entire Rider-Waite Deck]

'''Tauschzentrale''' 
366; German: "bartering" or "exchange" "center"; in Berlin; "all her husband's clothes have been traded for food at the" 572;

'''Tavistock Institute''' 
276; The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations is an interdisciplinary organization in London which concentrates on human relations in the family, the work group, and organizations. British psychiatrist R.D. Laing (1927-89) conducted research there from 1960-89.

'''Tchitcherine, Vaslav''' 
290; Soviet intelligence officer; half-brother of Enzian; "mad scavenger" who officially reports to the TsAGE (Central Aero & Hydrodynamics Institute in Moscow) (1935-36); has need to annihilate the Schwarzkommando and "his mythical half-brother Enzian"; described, 337, 383; comes from Nihilist stock, 338; stationed in Central Asia in "early Stalin days" 338; "a raving snowman over the winter marshes" "a giant supermolecule. . .so many open bonds available" 345; story of his father, 350-52; 499; Kirghiz Light, 508, 510; "fear would always keep him from going all the way in" 566; illumination of, 611; 700; initiation into "bodyhood of steel" 702; "her graying steel barbarian" 718; "the Red Doper" 719; meets Enzian, 734; stays with Geli, 735; See also Kirghiz Light

'''TDY''' 
54; temporary duty

'''Technische Hochschule (T.H.)''' 
Mondaugen: "[Pökler's] old friend from the T.H. Munich" 160; "Glimpf, Professor of Mathematics of the Technische Hochschule, Darmstadt, Scientific advisor to the Allied Military Government" 309; "Zwitter is from the T.H. Munich" 313; Jamf lecturing Pökler's class, 577; "the greyness of certain crowds in the beerhalls back at the T.H." 579; 580;

'''[[Technology in Gravity's Rainbow|TECHNOLOGY]]''' 
See also [[#technische|Technische Hochscule]]; [[#they|They]]

'''Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (d. 1955)''' 
539; Jesuit paleontologist and mystical philosopher

'''Telangiecstasis, Spyros ("Spider")''' 
389; Radarman 2nd Class on Badass

'''Tenniel's Alice''' 
247; Sir John Tenniel (1820-1914) was a cartoonist and artist who created almost 2000 cartoons for the humor magazine, Punch, but who is probably most famous for the illustrations he did for Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1864); [MORE]

'''Tennysonian comfort''' 
270; "of saying 'someone' has blundered"

'''TerBorch, Gerard (1617-81)''' 
Dutch Baroque painter whose genre pieces and portraits depict with grace and fidelity the atmosphere of middle-class life in 17th-century Holland. His works consist almost equally of portraits and genre pieces, with his usually delicate technique best reflected in the portraits which are painted on an almost miniature scale; "[Blicero] flings a boot-tree at a precious TerBorch" 104

'''Ter Meer, Dr. Fritz''' 
631; according to Sasuly, "Ter Meer was one of the half-dozen most important men in the IG: he was considered an outstanding scientiest; [...] he was a member of the IG managing board of directors. [...] [When asked after the war] if he felt that experiments on human beings were justifiable [,] he argued that ... no harm had been done to these KZ [concentration camp] inmates as they would have been killed anyway." (p.125-26)

'''T-Force''' 
558; "Officially [Chiclitz] is one of the American industrialists out here with the T Force, scouting German engineering, secret weaponry in particular"

'''Thanatz Alpdrucken, Reichssieger von''' 
142; "champion Weimaraner for 1941" in Pointsman's dreams of chase

'''Thanatz, Karel Miklos''' 
461; ["Thanatos" is Greek for "death]; husband of Greta Erdmann; aka Karel [a fairly common Czech name], 461; with Blicero, 464; reading whip scars, 484, 641; "he may have seen the actual firing" 562; with Pole who wants lightening to hit him, 663; 663-73; at homosexual community ("175-Stadt"), 666-67; at Sachsa's seances, 668; kidnapped by anti-Lublinites, 669; sex with Bianca, 670; taken by Schwarzkommando, 671; "he lost Gottfried" 671; "the angel [the Erdschweinhöhlers] have hoped for" 672; 736; "is [Sado-anarchism's] leading theoretician in the Zone these days" 737

'''Thayer's Slippery Elm Throat Lozenges''' 
18; sent to Slothrop in London by Nalline S.; 116; [Thayers.com]

'''theatre''' 
"it's all theatre" 3; "theatrically bitter" 133; "magnificent stone theatre" 148; "theatre nothing but Walter really look at head phony angle" 152; "just down the street from the theatre" 174; "you're in the wrong theatre of operations" 201; "every occupation town in the Theatre" 247; "only elaborate theatre to fool you" 267; "tears which are not all theatre" 302; "Perhaps it's theater" 326; "elaborate piece of theatre" 352; street-theatre, 399; "Mediterranean theatre" 438; "under a theatre marquee whose sentient bulbs may have looked on" 464; "this War. . .was all theatre" 521; "the elaborate theatrical foofooraw of Mob 'n' Masons" 586; "all become theatre" 722; "not without theatre" 743; "above the roof of this old theatre" 760; See also [[A#actors|actors/directors]]; [[F#film|film/cinema references]]; [[K#kingkong|King Kong]]; [[M#movies|movies]]; [[U#ufa|Ufa-theatre]]

'''Theil, Dr. Walter''' 
423; chemical engineer killed in British air-raid on Peenemünde in August 1943; 427

<div id="theophile"></div>'''Theophile''' 
247; [Greek: "god loving"]; friend of Italo's who is trying to smuggle a Sherman tank into Palestine

'''Thermidor''' 
"Thermidor" corresponded to July in the French republican calendar adopted in 1793 during the French Revolution, which dating system was intended to replace the Gregorian calendar with a more rational system devoid of Christian associations. The Gregorian calendar was reestablished by the Napoleonic regime on January 1, 1806; Mexico recalling "the sweaty evenings of" 713

'''Thesean brushings''' 
According to Greek myth, Theseus, the son of King Aegeus of Athens, went to Crete and slew the half-human, half-bull Minotaur, kept by King Minos (son of Zeus and Europa) in his Labyrinth (built by Daedalus). The Athenians had been sending seven youths and seven maidens to Crete each year to be set loose in the Labyrinth and eaten by the Minotaur. This yearly reparation was Minos' revenge for the jealous Athenians having killed Minos' son because of his victory over Athens in athletic games. King Aegeus sent his son Theseus as one of the seven youths in the next year's sacrifice. However, King Minos' daughter Ariadne had fallen in love with Theseus and so provided him with an indestructible clew to unwind as he entered the Labyrinth. He handily slew the Minotaur and was able to exit the Labyrinth; "[Pointsman's] lonely Thesean brushings down his polished corridors of years" 141; See also [[L#labyrinth|labyrinth]]; [[Weaving the Web]]

'''THEY''' 
::Jessica notes a coal-black Packard up a side street, filled with dark-suited civilians. Their white collars rigid in the shadows.

::"Who're they?"

::[Mexico] shrugs: "they" is good enough. "Not a friendly lot." (40)

"'They' embracing possibilities far far beyond Nazi Germany" 25; "They" conversation (Major-General), 33; "(They?)" 72; "he's begun to suspect, darkly, any number of Someones Over Here" 108; "an act of suicide [...] which in its pathology, in its dreamless version of the real, the Empire commits by the thousands every day, completely unaware of what it's doing" 129; "The true king only dies a mock death. [...] Any number of young men may be selected to die in his place while the real king, foxy old bastard, goes on." 131; "death-by-government" 176; 177; 195; "two orders of being" 202; "a clutch mechanism between [Slothrop] and Their iron-cased engine" 207; "Mothers work for Them!" 219; "if there is a life force operating in Nature, still there is nothing so analogous in a bureaucracy. . .It all comes down. . .to the desires of individual men" 228; "All the animals, the plants, the minerals, even other kinds of men, are being broken and reassembled every day, to preserve an elite few, who are the loudest to theorize on freedom, but the least free of all." 230; 285; "They extinguish. . .not remind" 438; no physical locale, 251; "They would not be who or where They are without a touch of Dante to Their notions of reprisal." 350; "They sure must have the budget, all right. Look at this desolation, all built then hammered back into pieces" 374; "a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back, [...] removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: [...] most of the World, animal, vegetable and mineral, is laid waste in the process" 412; "innocence and its many uses" 419; keeping Earth "for the numb and joyless hardons of. . .human elite" 521; "It is possible that They will not die. That it is now within the state of Their art to go on forever" 539; "They need our terror for Their survival" 539; "There's something still on, don't call it a 'war' if it makes you nervous, maybe the deasth rate's gone down a point or two [...] but Their enterprise goes on" 628; "necktie or cock" 637; "Creative paranoia means developing at least as thorough a We-system as a They-system" 638; "They will come and shut off the water first" 694; 697; "Their mission in this world is Bad Shit" 712; "Which is worse: living on as Their pet, or death? 713; "It is our mission to promote death. . .holding down the green uprising." 720; "submission and dominance are resources it needs for its very survival" 737; See also [[E#entropy|entropy/closed systems]]; [[Paranoia in Gravity's Rainbow|paranoia]]; [[Technology in Gravity's Rainbow|Technology]]

'''Things That Can Happen in European Politics''' 
77; Pudding's project which falls victim to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and/or Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem; 275

'''Third Term''' 
270; Franklin D. Roosevelt's third term, 1940-44

'''Throsp, Corydon''' 
5; erected maisonette where Pirate and Bloat live; cultivated pharmaceutical plants on the roof; medieval fantasies, 10

'''Throwster, Aaron''' 
82; colleague of Pointsman's; "ARF's resident neurosurgeon" 113; 146; 227

'''Thuringia''' 
640; central German state in which Nordhausen is located; Thuringian, 240; sands, 306 [MAP]

'''Thyssen, Fritz (1873-1951)''' 
Leading German industrialist was a member of one of the world's wealthiest families and a major financial backer of Adolf Hitler's rise to power. After inheriting his father's fortune and industrial empire, he shrewdly combined the family holdings into a trust (Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG [United Steelworks Co.]) which controlled more than 75 percent of Germany's ore reserve and employed 200,000 workers. Like many German industrial leaders, he worried about the rise of socialism and was an early backer of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. He worked hard to get Hitler elected and was then rewarded by being appointed to the German Economic Council. Because he really only supported the anti-socialist positions of the Nazis, he broke with Hitler and fled to Switzerland when Hitler led Germany into war and began persecuting Jews and Catholics (Thyssen was a Catholic); conspiring with Stinnes and Krupp to ruin the mark, after WWI, 285

'''T.I.''' 
20; Technical Intelligence wing of English army

'''Tiergarten''' 
367; German: "zoo (lit. animal garden); this is the central park in Berlin

'''Tierpark''' 
419; German: "zoological gardens"; at Zwölfkinder

'''time''' 
"He'd seen himself a point on a moving wavefront, propagating through sterile history--a known past, a projectable future" 126; "to keep Grid Time synchronized with Greenwich Mean Time" 133; "spirits from other parts of the veld--for time and space on their side have no meaning, all is together" 153; penetrating the moment, 158; "slices of time growing thinner" 159; "There is the moment, and its possibilities" 159; all at once,165; secular, 169; "the clock ratcheting time minutewise into their past" 193; war reconfiguring, 257; "isolate inside the way time is passing" 303; "the true momentum of his time" 312; "time- modulation peculiar to Oneirine" 389; future/past, 400; "the space and time were Blicero's own" 486; "no serial time over there; events all there in the same eternal moment" 624; "the oneway flow of European time" 724; "herding us through time" 724; "a presence, analogous to the Aether, flows through time" 726; "his time's assembly" 738; "time is a funny thing" 752; See also [[D#deltat|delta-t]]; [[H#history|history]]; [[Too late...|TOO LATE]];

'''Time magazine''' 
463; American weekly "news" magazine

'''Titaniapalast''' 
446; "Across the façade of the" in Berlin

'''Titanic, the''' 
British luxury passenger liner that struck an iceberg and sank on April 14-15, 1912, en route to New York City from Southampton, England, during its maiden voyage. at a point about 400 miles (640 km) south of Newfoundland. Of the 2200 aboard, about 1,515 perished; "And come aboard the Titanic, things'll really be manic/Folks'll panic the second that sunken iceberg is knocked" 462-63

'''Tivoli''' 
121; club in London

'''Togo, Admiral Heihachiro (1848-1934)''' 
Led the Japanese fleet to victory in the Russo-Japanese War in 1863. In a desperate move, the Russians dispatched their Baltic fleet to Japan, meeting Togo's forces on May 27 in the Tsushima Strait, which connects the Sea of Japan with the East China Sea. Togo "crossed the enemy's T"--i.e., he turned his column across the Russian line of advance--and destroyed 33 out of the 35 Russian ships, ending the war; "hand[ed] Rozhdestvenski's ass to him" in the waters between Japan and Korea, 350

'''Toiletship''' 
448; aka Rücksichtslos (German: "inconsiderate" or "ruthless"); Swinemünde to Helgoland, 450; "a wind tunnel's all it is. If tensor analysis is good enough for turbulence, it ought to be good enough for history" 451

'''Tootsie Roll''' 
493: "see the sugar bowl do the Tootsie Roll with the big, bad, Devil's food cake"; [http:/www.tootsie.com/]

'''Tosks and Ghegs''' 
Two distinct Albanian social groups/cultures each with its own dialect and separated geographically by the Shkumbin River with the Ghegs (or Gegs) in the north and the Tosks in the south. The Ghegs were renowned for their independent spirit and fighting abilities, while the Tosks were more of a semifeudal society and more subject to foregin influences due to their southern territories being more accessible to the ouside world. The communist movement drew most of its support from the Tosks, taking over in 1944. Since then, the differences between the two have greatly lessened; 549

'''Tracy, Alfonso''' 
582-83; owned the defective pinball machines; Great Pinball Difficulty, 581

'''Tracy, Mable''' 
582; wife of Alfonso

'''Treacle, Edwin''' 
85; 92; "most Freudian of psychic researchers" in Psi Section of White Visitation; 146; recent dreams of flight, 146; 153; "setting up a practice" 273; "I'll show you a giant ape" 276

'''Tree of Life''' 
"It is not only a sudden white genital onset in the sky--it is also, perhaps, a Tree...." 694; Kabbalist, 747; "Now the Sephiroth fall into a pattern, which is called the" 753; "the Tree itself is a unity, rooted exactly at the Bodenplatte" 753;

'''Trefoil, Gavin''' 
33; can change the melanin content of his skin to change his color; 124; 147; 215; 276

'''tripos''' 
31; a final honors exam at Cambridge university, originally in mathematics

'''Tripping, Geli (pronounced: "Gaily")''' 
290; lover of Tchitcherine; lives in Nordhausen; lover of Slothrop; "pretty young witch straddling an A4" 293; 494; thinks she's a witch, 500; witch ritual, 717; "the World-choosing sort" 718; with Tchitcherine, 733-35; "the young witch" 734

'''Trotha, Gen. Lothar von''' 
362; German who led wholesale slaughter of Hereros in Südwest in 1904; exhibit at Zwölfkinder, 422; 563

'''Trotsky''' 
Trotskyite block, 189; Trotsky a former patron at the Odeon, 262; 338; "some beasrded old unreconstructed geezer of a Trotskyite" 399;

'''Trudi''' 
365; Säure's sidekick; her boyfriend is Gustav, 366; 684-85; Bodine spending more time with, 741

'''Truman, Harry S. (1884-1972)''' 
Succeeding Roosevelt upon his death, Truman was the 33rd president of the United States (1945-53). He moved the U.S. into international confrontation with Soviet and Chinese communism and worked to preserve the New Deal reforms; "'Emil, who's that guy in the glasses?'" 373; "the dapper, bespectacled stranger [...] the face that has silently dissolved in to replace the one Slothrop never saw and now never will" 381; 382; "famous Missouri Mason" 588

'''TsAGI''' 
273; Tsentral'niy Aerogidrondinamicheskiy Institute; "Officially [Tchitcherine] reports to TsAGI, which is the Central Aero and Hydrodynamics Institute in Moscow" 337; 391; 706;

'''Tungsram''' 
647; light bulb manufacturer "in Budapest" that was supposed to have created Byron T.B.

'''Twelfth House''' 
274; new PISCES branch office on Gallaho Mews in London; so named by Webley Silvernail because Pisces is the 12th House in the Zodiac; Pointsman transferred there, 533

'''Typhoid Mary''' 
739; one who spreads a disease

'''typographical errors''' 
"pharnyx" should be "pharynx" 14; "at here at" should be "as here at" 32; "Strobe's" should be "Jamf's" (appears in early Viking editions), 86; "Nichols" should be "Nicholls" 94; "heart-transfer" should be "heat-transfer" 223 [[N#nusselt|perhaps not a typo]]; "Isle" should be "Ilse" 414; "airpseed" should be "airspeed" 454; "ecclesiatical" should be "ecclesiastical" 468; "elctro- decor" should be "electro-decor" 518; "Leunahalluziationen" should be "Leunahalluzinationen" 523; "is is" should be "it is" 715; "then" should be "than" 732; "Zundung" should be "Zündung" 758

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2007-05-03T10:14:23Z

Torerye: Added entry to list of typos

'''Tägliche Rundschau''' 
434; German: "The Daily Panorama"; "discarded copies of" in Berlin

'''Taj Mahal''' 
This mausoleum on the southern bank of the Yamuna (Jumna) River, outside Agra in India was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his wife, Arjumand Banu Begam, also called Mumtaz Mahal ("Chosen One of the Palace"), of which the name Taj Mahal is a corruption. It took 22 years to complete; 637

'''Takeshi''' 
See [[K#komical|Komical Kamikazes]]

'''Tamara''' 
247; at de la Perlimpinpin party; 261

'''Tannhäuser''' 
Tannhäuserism (love of being taken under mountains), 299; "even a Minnesinger needs to be alone" 299; "the Singing Nincompoop" 364; See also Lisaura

'''Tantivy''' 
See [[M#mucker|Mucker-Maffick, Oliver "Tantivy"]]

'''Tarot''' 
Judgment, 152; "shuffling the ancient decks oily and worn, throwing down swords and cups and trumps major" 413; The Fool, 501, 724, 742; "Der Grob Säugling, 23rd card of the Zone's trumps major" 707; "choose the world" 718; "The scene itself must be read as a card: what is to come" 724; Queen of Cups, 735; A.E. Waite, 738; 746-49; [[Weissmann's Tarot]]; [[Slothrop's Tarot]]; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rider-Waite The Entire Rider-Waite Deck]

'''Tauschzentrale''' 
366; German: "bartering" or "exchange" "center"; in Berlin; "all her husband's clothes have been traded for food at the" 572;

'''Tavistock Institute''' 
276; The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations is an interdisciplinary organization in London which concentrates on human relations in the family, the work group, and organizations. British psychiatrist R.D. Laing (1927-89) conducted research there from 1960-89.

'''Tchitcherine, Vaslav''' 
290; Soviet intelligence officer; half-brother of Enzian; "mad scavenger" who officially reports to the TsAGE (Central Aero & Hydrodynamics Institute in Moscow) (1935-36); has need to annihilate the Schwarzkommando and "his mythical half-brother Enzian"; described, 337, 383; comes from Nihilist stock, 338; stationed in Central Asia in "early Stalin days" 338; "a raving snowman over the winter marshes" "a giant supermolecule. . .so many open bonds available" 345; story of his father, 350-52; 499; Kirghiz Light, 508, 510; "fear would always keep him from going all the way in" 566; illumination of, 611; 700; initiation into "bodyhood of steel" 702; "her graying steel barbarian" 718; "the Red Doper" 719; meets Enzian, 734; stays with Geli, 735; See also Kirghiz Light

'''TDY''' 
54; temporary duty

'''Technische Hochschule (T.H.)''' 
Mondaugen: "[Pökler's] old friend from the T.H. Munich" 160; "Glimpf, Professor of Mathematics of the Technische Hochschule, Darmstadt, Scientific advisor to the Allied Military Government" 309; "Zwitter is from the T.H. Munich" 313; Jamf lecturing Pökler's class, 577; "the greyness of certain crowds in the beerhalls back at the T.H." 579; 580;

'''[[Technology in Gravity's Rainbow|TECHNOLOGY]]''' 
See also [[#technische|Technische Hochscule]]; [[#they|They]]

'''Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (d. 1955)''' 
539; Jesuit paleontologist and mystical philosopher

'''Telangiecstasis, Spyros ("Spider")''' 
389; Radarman 2nd Class on Badass

'''Tenniel's Alice''' 
247; Sir John Tenniel (1820-1914) was a cartoonist and artist who created almost 2000 cartoons for the humor magazine, Punch, but who is probably most famous for the illustrations he did for Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1864); [MORE]

'''Tennysonian comfort''' 
270; "of saying 'someone' has blundered"

'''TerBorch, Gerard (1617-81)''' 
Dutch Baroque painter whose genre pieces and portraits depict with grace and fidelity the atmosphere of middle-class life in 17th-century Holland. His works consist almost equally of portraits and genre pieces, with his usually delicate technique best reflected in the portraits which are painted on an almost miniature scale; "[Blicero] flings a boot-tree at a precious TerBorch" 104

'''Ter Meer, Dr. Fritz''' 
631; according to Sasuly, "Ter Meer was one of the half-dozen most important men in the IG: he was considered an outstanding scientiest; [...] he was a member of the IG managing board of directors. [...] [When asked after the war] if he felt that experiments on human beings were justifiable [,] he argued that ... no harm had been done to these KZ [concentration camp] inmates as they would have been killed anyway." (p.125-26)

'''T-Force''' 
558; "Officially [Chiclitz] is one of the American industrialists out here with the T Force, scouting German engineering, secret weaponry in particular"

'''Thanatz Alpdrucken, Reichssieger von''' 
142; "champion Weimaraner for 1941" in Pointsman's dreams of chase

'''Thanatz, Karel Miklos''' 
461; ["Thanatos" is Greek for "death]; husband of Greta Erdmann; aka Karel [a fairly common Czech name], 461; with Blicero, 464; reading whip scars, 484, 641; "he may have seen the actual firing" 562; with Pole who wants lightening to hit him, 663; 663-73; at homosexual community ("175-Stadt"), 666-67; at Sachsa's seances, 668; kidnapped by anti-Lublinites, 669; sex with Bianca, 670; taken by Schwarzkommando, 671; "he lost Gottfried" 671; "the angel [the Erdschweinhöhlers] have hoped for" 672; 736; "is [Sado-anarchism's] leading theoretician in the Zone these days" 737

'''Thayer's Slippery Elm Throat Lozenges''' 
18; sent to Slothrop in London by Nalline S.; 116; [Thayers.com]

'''theatre''' 
"it's all theatre" 3; "theatrically bitter" 133; "magnificent stone theatre" 148; "theatre nothing but Walter really look at head phony angle" 152; "just down the street from the theatre" 174; "you're in the wrong theatre of operations" 201; "every occupation town in the Theatre" 247; "only elaborate theatre to fool you" 267; "tears which are not all theatre" 302; "Perhaps it's theater" 326; "elaborate piece of theatre" 352; street-theatre, 399; "Mediterranean theatre" 438; "under a theatre marquee whose sentient bulbs may have looked on" 464; "this War. . .was all theatre" 521; "the elaborate theatrical foofooraw of Mob 'n' Masons" 586; "all become theatre" 722; "not without theatre" 743; "above the roof of this old theatre" 760; See also [[A#actors|actors/directors]]; [[F#film|film/cinema references]]; [[K#kingkong|King Kong]]; [[M#movies|movies]]; [[U#ufa|Ufa-theatre]]

'''Theil, Dr. Walter''' 
423; chemical engineer killed in British air-raid on Peenemünde in August 1943; 427

<div id="theophile"></div>'''Theophile''' 
247; [Greek: "god loving"]; friend of Italo's who is trying to smuggle a Sherman tank into Palestine

'''Thermidor''' 
"Thermidor" corresponded to July in the French republican calendar adopted in 1793 during the French Revolution, which dating system was intended to replace the Gregorian calendar with a more rational system devoid of Christian associations. The Gregorian calendar was reestablished by the Napoleonic regime on January 1, 1806; Mexico recalling "the sweaty evenings of" 713

'''Thesean brushings''' 
According to Greek myth, Theseus, the son of King Aegeus of Athens, went to Crete and slew the half-human, half-bull Minotaur, kept by King Minos (son of Zeus and Europa) in his Labyrinth (built by Daedalus). The Athenians had been sending seven youths and seven maidens to Crete each year to be set loose in the Labyrinth and eaten by the Minotaur. This yearly reparation was Minos' revenge for the jealous Athenians having killed Minos' son because of his victory over Athens in athletic games. King Aegeus sent his son Theseus as one of the seven youths in the next year's sacrifice. However, King Minos' daughter Ariadne had fallen in love with Theseus and so provided him with an indestructible clew to unwind as he entered the Labyrinth. He handily slew the Minotaur and was able to exit the Labyrinth; "[Pointsman's] lonely Thesean brushings down his polished corridors of years" 141; See also [[L#labyrinth|labyrinth]]; [[Weaving the Web]]

'''THEY''' 
::Jessica notes a coal-black Packard up a side street, filled with dark-suited civilians. Their white collars rigid in the shadows.

::"Who're they?"

::[Mexico] shrugs: "they" is good enough. "Not a friendly lot." (40)

"'They' embracing possibilities far far beyond Nazi Germany" 25; "They" conversation (Major-General), 33; "(They?)" 72; "he's begun to suspect, darkly, any number of Someones Over Here" 108; "an act of suicide [...] which in its pathology, in its dreamless version of the real, the Empire commits by the thousands every day, completely unaware of what it's doing" 129; "The true king only dies a mock death. [...] Any number of young men may be selected to die in his place while the real king, foxy old bastard, goes on." 131; "death-by-government" 176; 177; 195; "two orders of being" 202; "a clutch mechanism between [Slothrop] and Their iron-cased engine" 207; "Mothers work for Them!" 219; "if there is a life force operating in Nature, still there is nothing so analogous in a bureaucracy. . .It all comes down. . .to the desires of individual men" 228; "All the animals, the plants, the minerals, even other kinds of men, are being broken and reassembled every day, to preserve an elite few, who are the loudest to theorize on freedom, but the least free of all." 230; 285; "They extinguish. . .not remind" 438; no physical locale, 251; "They would not be who or where They are without a touch of Dante to Their notions of reprisal." 350; "They sure must have the budget, all right. Look at this desolation, all built then hammered back into pieces" 374; "a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back, [...] removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: [...] most of the World, animal, vegetable and mineral, is laid waste in the process" 412; "innocence and its many uses" 419; keeping Earth "for the numb and joyless hardons of. . .human elite" 521; "It is possible that They will not die. That it is now within the state of Their art to go on forever" 539; "They need our terror for Their survival" 539; "There's something still on, don't call it a 'war' if it makes you nervous, maybe the deasth rate's gone down a point or two [...] but Their enterprise goes on" 628; "necktie or cock" 637; "Creative paranoia means developing at least as thorough a We-system as a They-system" 638; "They will come and shut off the water first" 694; 697; "Their mission in this world is Bad Shit" 712; "Which is worse: living on as Their pet, or death? 713; "It is our mission to promote death. . .holding down the green uprising." 720; "submission and dominance are resources it needs for its very survival" 737; See also [[E#entropy|entropy/closed systems]]; [[Paranoia in Gravity's Rainbow|paranoia]]; [[Technology in Gravity's Rainbow|Technology]]

'''Things That Can Happen in European Politics''' 
77; Pudding's project which falls victim to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and/or Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem; 275

'''Third Term''' 
270; Franklin D. Roosevelt's third term, 1940-44

'''Throsp, Corydon''' 
5; erected maisonette where Pirate and Bloat live; cultivated pharmaceutical plants on the roof; medieval fantasies, 10

'''Throwster, Aaron''' 
82; colleague of Pointsman's; "ARF's resident neurosurgeon" 113; 146; 227

'''Thuringia''' 
640; central German state in which Nordhausen is located; Thuringian, 240; sands, 306 [MAP]

'''Thyssen, Fritz (1873-1951)''' 
Leading German industrialist was a member of one of the world's wealthiest families and a major financial backer of Adolf Hitler's rise to power. After inheriting his father's fortune and industrial empire, he shrewdly combined the family holdings into a trust (Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG [United Steelworks Co.]) which controlled more than 75 percent of Germany's ore reserve and employed 200,000 workers. Like many German industrial leaders, he worried about the rise of socialism and was an early backer of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. He worked hard to get Hitler elected and was then rewarded by being appointed to the German Economic Council. Because he really only supported the anti-socialist positions of the Nazis, he broke with Hitler and fled to Switzerland when Hitler led Germany into war and began persecuting Jews and Catholics (Thyssen was a Catholic); conspiring with Stinnes and Krupp to ruin the mark, after WWI, 285

'''T.I.''' 
20; Technical Intelligence wing of English army

'''Tiergarten''' 
367; German: "zoo (lit. animal garden); this is the central park in Berlin

'''Tierpark''' 
419; German: "zoological gardens"; at Zwölfkinder

'''time''' 
"He'd seen himself a point on a moving wavefront, propagating through sterile history--a known past, a projectable future" 126; "to keep Grid Time synchronized with Greenwich Mean Time" 133; "spirits from other parts of the veld--for time and space on their side have no meaning, all is together" 153; penetrating the moment, 158; "slices of time growing thinner" 159; "There is the moment, and its possibilities" 159; all at once,165; secular, 169; "the clock ratcheting time minutewise into their past" 193; war reconfiguring, 257; "isolate inside the way time is passing" 303; "the true momentum of his time" 312; "time- modulation peculiar to Oneirine" 389; future/past, 400; "the space and time were Blicero's own" 486; "no serial time over there; events all there in the same eternal moment" 624; "the oneway flow of European time" 724; "herding us through time" 724; "a presence, analogous to the Aether, flows through time" 726; "his time's assembly" 738; "time is a funny thing" 752; See also [[D#deltat|delta-t]]; [[H#history|history]]; [[Too late...|TOO LATE]];

'''Time magazine''' 
463; American weekly "news" magazine

'''Titaniapalast''' 
446; "Across the façade of the" in Berlin

'''Titanic, the''' 
British luxury passenger liner that struck an iceberg and sank on April 14-15, 1912, en route to New York City from Southampton, England, during its maiden voyage. at a point about 400 miles (640 km) south of Newfoundland. Of the 2200 aboard, about 1,515 perished; "And come aboard the Titanic, things'll really be manic/Folks'll panic the second that sunken iceberg is knocked" 462-63

'''Tivoli''' 
121; club in London

'''Togo, Admiral Heihachiro (1848-1934)''' 
Led the Japanese fleet to victory in the Russo-Japanese War in 1863. In a desperate move, the Russians dispatched their Baltic fleet to Japan, meeting Togo's forces on May 27 in the Tsushima Strait, which connects the Sea of Japan with the East China Sea. Togo "crossed the enemy's T"--i.e., he turned his column across the Russian line of advance--and destroyed 33 out of the 35 Russian ships, ending the war; "hand[ed] Rozhdestvenski's ass to him" in the waters between Japan and Korea, 350

'''Toiletship''' 
448; aka Rücksichtslos (German: "inconsiderate" or "ruthless"); Swinemünde to Helgoland, 450; "a wind tunnel's all it is. If tensor analysis is good enough for turbulence, it ought to be good enough for history" 451

'''Tootsie Roll''' 
493: "see the sugar bowl do the Tootsie Roll with the big, bad, Devil's food cake"; [http:/www.tootsie.com/]

'''Tosks and Ghegs''' 
Two distinct Albanian social groups/cultures each with its own dialect and separated geographically by the Shkumbin River with the Ghegs (or Gegs) in the north and the Tosks in the south. The Ghegs were renowned for their independent spirit and fighting abilities, while the Tosks were more of a semifeudal society and more subject to foregin influences due to their southern territories being more accessible to the ouside world. The communist movement drew most of its support from the Tosks, taking over in 1944. Since then, the differences between the two have greatly lessened; 549

'''Tracy, Alfonso''' 
582-83; owned the defective pinball machines; Great Pinball Difficulty, 581

'''Tracy, Mable''' 
582; wife of Alfonso

'''Treacle, Edwin''' 
85; 92; "most Freudian of psychic researchers" in Psi Section of White Visitation; 146; recent dreams of flight, 146; 153; "setting up a practice" 273; "I'll show you a giant ape" 276

'''Tree of Life''' 
"It is not only a sudden white genital onset in the sky--it is also, perhaps, a Tree...." 694; Kabbalist, 747; "Now the Sephiroth fall into a pattern, which is called the" 753; "the Tree itself is a unity, rooted exactly at the Bodenplatte" 753;

'''Trefoil, Gavin''' 
33; can change the melanin content of his skin to change his color; 124; 147; 215; 276

'''tripos''' 
31; a final honors exam at Cambridge university, originally in mathematics

'''Tripping, Geli (pronounced: "Gaily")''' 
290; lover of Tchitcherine; lives in Nordhausen; lover of Slothrop; "pretty young witch straddling an A4" 293; 494; thinks she's a witch, 500; witch ritual, 717; "the World-choosing sort" 718; with Tchitcherine, 733-35; "the young witch" 734

'''Trotha, Gen. Lothar von''' 
362; German who led wholesale slaughter of Hereros in Südwest in 1904; exhibit at Zwölfkinder, 422; 563

'''Trotsky''' 
Trotskyite block, 189; Trotsky a former patron at the Odeon, 262; 338; "some beasrded old unreconstructed geezer of a Trotskyite" 399;

'''Trudi''' 
365; Säure's sidekick; her boyfriend is Gustav, 366; 684-85; Bodine spending more time with, 741

'''Truman, Harry S. (1884-1972)''' 
Succeeding Roosevelt upon his death, Truman was the 33rd president of the United States (1945-53). He moved the U.S. into international confrontation with Soviet and Chinese communism and worked to preserve the New Deal reforms; "'Emil, who's that guy in the glasses?'" 373; "the dapper, bespectacled stranger [...] the face that has silently dissolved in to replace the one Slothrop never saw and now never will" 381; 382; "famous Missouri Mason" 588

'''TsAGI''' 
273; Tsentral'niy Aerogidrondinamicheskiy Institute; "Officially [Tchitcherine] reports to TsAGI, which is the Central Aero and Hydrodynamics Institute in Moscow" 337; 391; 706;

'''Tungsram''' 
647; light bulb manufacturer "in Budapest" that was supposed to have created Byron T.B.

'''Twelfth House''' 
274; new PISCES branch office on Gallaho Mews in London; so named by Webley Silvernail because Pisces is the 12th House in the Zodiac; Pointsman transferred there, 533

'''Typhoid Mary''' 
739; one who spreads a disease

'''typographical errors''' 
"pharnyx" should be "pharynx" 14; "at here at" should be "as here at" 32; "Strobe's" should be "Jamf's" (appears in early Viking editions), 86; "Nichols" should be "Nicholls" 94; "heart-transfer" should be "heat-transfer" 223 [[N#nusselt|perhaps not a typo]]; "Isle" should be "Ilse" 414; "airpseed" should be "airspeed" 454; "elctro- decor" should be "electro-decor" 468; "ecclesiatical" should be "ecclesiastical" 518; "Leunahalluziationen" should be "Leunahalluzinationen" 523; "is is" should be "it is" 715; "then" should be "than" 732; "Zundung" should be "Zündung" 758

{{GR Alpha Nav}}

Pages 295-314

2007-02-21T11:11:42Z

Torerye:

{{GR PbP Text}}

==Page 297==
'''297.36 Articles of Immachination''' 
As opposed to Articles of Incorporation

==Page 299==
'''299.38 Picture the letters SS stretched lengthwise''' 
The tunnels are arranged like a two-dimensional parody of the DNA molecule. The 44 cross-tunnels might suggest the 22 pairs of chromosomes possessed by each individual. Correspondent Debby Katz adds the following comment:

:"Cross tunnels suggest often -illustrated base pairings in DNA (adenine-thymine A-T, or cytosine-guanine, C-G) the order of which defines the "sense" of the coded message within the molecule. We human-types possess 23 pairs of chromosomes, not 22. One pair, the X-X or X-Y is, of course, not an identical pairing in the male of the species. But the Y is without a doubt information-holding, as an X-O female (45 chromosomes, missing the second X chromosome) is not a male, but a female with a lot of problems."

==Page 300==
'''300.03 Hupla''' 
Or "hoopla," a big fuss.

==Page 301==
'''301.38 1000 yards east of Waterloo Station''' 
Coincidence?: About 1000 yards east (actually east-southeast) of Waterloo Station, off Southwark Bridge Road, near its intersection with Southwark Street, is a little ''cul-de-sac'' where the rocket might impact. Its name is America Street.

==Page 306==
'''306.19 hanging by the foot''' 
Note how Slothrop, as he hangs upside down by one foot, momentarily turns into a version of the Tarot card The Hanged Man, which also turns up in his Tarot reading on p. 738.

==Page 310==
'''310.06 "Gruss Gott"''' 
Glimpf's greeting to Slothrop makes more sense as explained by Igor Zabel:
"'Gruss Gott!' is not 'Great God!' but 'Greet (you) God!' a very common greeting in Austria, Bavaria and southern Germany, more common, in fact, than 'Good morning'. It should be written with an umlaut (grüss)."

==Page 312==
'''312.17 white Stetson''' 
Both Marvy’s dress and speech echo the character of Major Stanley "King" Kong, the bomber pilot played by Slim Pickens in Stanley Kubrick’s ''Dr. Strangelove'' (1964).

{{GR PbP}}

File:Mindless-Pleasures.jpg

2007-02-21T11:03:19Z

Torerye:

Trial cover with the title "Mindless Pleasures" - note how the image is based on the Tarot card The Tower, which - as we learn in Weissmann's Tarot (p. 746-47) - represents "any System which cannot tolerate heresy: a system which, by its nature, must sooner or later fall. We know by now that it is also the Rocket."

User:WikiAdmin

2007-01-26T10:30:13Z

Torerye:

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

Love the wiki. Thanks.

Mark Kohut

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

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

Gravity's Rainbow Title

2007-01-26T09:47:29Z

Torerye: Uploaded image of trial cover

In Genesis 9:13-15, the first rainbow is a token of God's covenant not to destroy humanity again or not with a flood, anyway. As an old spiritual has it: "God gave Noah the rainbow sign / No more water, the fire next time."

One reading of the title is that "gravity's rainbow" is the parabola of a ballistic missile's flight, halted on the final page a "last unmeasurable gap... the last delta-t" over our heads: fiery destruction held in abeyance. For now.

The connection between the parabolic flight path of the Rocket and a rainbow is made explicit in an important discussion of the rocket's trajectory (p. 209):

:"But it is a curve each of them feels, unmistakably. It is the parabola. They must have guessed, once or twice guessed and refused to believe that everything, always, collectively, had been moving toward that purified shape latent in the sky, that shape of no surprise, no second chances, no return. Yet they do move forever under it, reserved for its own black-and-white bad news certainly as if it were the Rainbow, and they its children...."

__FORCETOC__
==Mindless Pleasures==
[[image:Mindless-Pleasures.jpg|thumb|100px|Mindless Pleasures|right]]
Not universally known is the working title that the manuscript circulated with in publishing houses before it was changed: ''Mindless Pleasures''. Many paperback houses got the manuscript under that title to read for paperback consideration. At least one person claims to still have it that way. That title picks up a concept articulated in Pynchon's first published short story, ''The Small Rain''.

Why isn't it called "Mindless Pleasures" or one of the myriad other working titles (none of which I can remember, but they're hilarious and I just looked for an hour and can't for the life of me remember where I saw them all) it possessed prior to its settling on that perfect title. One interpretation that "gravity's rainbow" is the parabola described by the rocket's trajectory from launch to hit, as the projectile gradually loses its battle with gravity and is finally pulled back to earth following Brennschluss. This interpretation is reinforced by the original hard-cover editions of Gravity's Rainbow, which have a parabola intaglioed into the front cover. But! There are, as usual, many ways to skin this cat, to wit:

Gravity's rainbow could also be the many colors synthesized from coal-tar:

:"To find that Gravity [...] is really something eerie, Messianic, extrasensory in Earth's mindbody...having hugged to its holy center the wastes of dead species, gathered, packed, transmuted, realigned, and rewoven molecules to be taken up again by the coal-tar Kabbalists of the other side [...]" 590

:"We passed over the coal-tars. A thousand different molecules waited in the preterite dung. [...] This is one meaning of mauve, the first new color on Earth, leaping to Earth's light from its grave miles and aeons below." 166

==Andrew Dinn Speculates==
The following is one-time [http://waste.org/pynchon-l/ Pynchon List] member Andrew Dinn's speculation:

Leafing for a second time through a collection of Rilke's poems the other day, I noticed again, and this time paid attention to, a poem called "Schwerkraft ("Gravity") written in October 1924. I believe it is very likely to be be a source for Pynchon's title. Here is the poem:

:Mitte, wie du aus allen 
:dich ziest, auch noch aus Fliegenden dich 
:wiedergewinnst, Mitte, du Staerkste.

:Stehender: wie ein Trank den Durst 
:Durchstuerzt ihn die Schwerkraft.

:Doch aus dem Schlafenden faellt, 
:wie aus lagernder Wolke, 
:reichlicher Regen der Schwere.

The (not particularly lovely) translation I have is by Michael Hamburger and goes as follows:

:Centre, how from them all :you draw yourself, even from flying creatures :win back yourself, centre, the strongest.

:The standing man 
:as drink through thirst 
:gravity rushes through him.

:But from the sleeper falls, 
:as from a cloud at rest, 
:gravity's plentiful rain.

As far as my small German (and my not very large dictionary) goes, "Schwerkraft" is definitively "gravity," the attractive force, whereas "Schwere" in the last line suggests more gravity as in seriousness, although it can stand in for "Schwerkraft."

So, why is this a source for the title? Well, the mere mention of rain and gravity in the last line ought to be cause enough for speculation, as should the whole conceit of gravity/seriousness as a central force, weighing on those who try to stand against it, dragging down those who try to fly away.

But consider also the contrast in the second and third stanzas between the standing or striving? man, on whom gravity hangs heavy like an anchor chain and the sleeping man floating like a cloud, shedding his heaviness. Mindlessness, dreaming, has its own particular pleasures and achieves some form of liberation from heaviness, seriousness.

And, of course, after shedding one's burden of gravity like a rain shower, what else would you expect in the calm which follows the storm but a rainbow?

==Jules Siegel Speculates==
Jules was Pynchon's roommate at Cornell and they stayed in touch for some years after graduating. In 1977, Jules wrote an article for Playboy magazine, "Who is Thomas Pynchon ... and Why Did He Take Off with My Wife?". [[Pynchon and Brian Wilson|More here...]]

The following are Jules Siegel's speculations, with input from Sean Klein:

At 01:17 PM 05/21/97 PDT, wrote: <nowiki>[snip material about clarity, etc.]</nowiki>

I think that Pynchon is at his most superior when he's writing clearly. Someone said earlier that his writing is actually often quite clear, but his plots are difficult. I think that's because he doesn't have plots in the conventional sense. It's one of the more appealing qualities of his writing. You don't have to begin ''Gravity's Rainbow'' at the beginning. There is no beginning. It does open with a specific scene, but the book's organization is topological rather than logical. It describes a space and its contents, which relate to each other the way furniture and decorations in a room relate to the room and to each other. There is some sense of chronological time, but it is not very important in the novel's structure, which takes you through an exploration of a multi-dimensional map.

The space described by this map is ''Gravity's Rainbow'' the parabola of the rocket vs the arc of the rainbow, but also the whole range of life as seen in the most primitive form just shit rearranging itself in new forms through eternity. I think that's the reason for so much fecal imagery.

When I first started corresponding with Andrew Dinn, I wrote:

:"I wonder if anyone has commented on what it means: we are Gravity's Rainbow. You know the spectrum is a manifestation of light energy. So Gravity's Rainbow would be the spectrum of gravity all that has mass, I guess. But I don't really think it applies, because gravity isn't energy; it's an effect of the shape of space, supposedly. I think that gravity's really just another manifestation of what we call sexual attraction, love, that which brings one to join with another."

Andrew replied:

:"Bravo Jules, but you should be writing this to the list. Others have played with that idea but usually without communicating what lies behind it so succinctly and cogently."

This is how I got involved in all this to begin with. Thanks a lot, Andrew. But let us continue. I wrote that on the basis of skimming the book in 1974. In the past few weeks I've been looking through it more carefully. I think my initial reaction was correct.

Gravity's Rainbow is the Periodic Table of the Elements acted out by cartoon puppets. Think of a school play with kids in colored costumes being the different colors of the spectrum Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet and acting out little skits with songs symbolizing the nature of each color. Now extend the metaphor to the Elements, only use weirdos to play them. They are kind of crawling around in the muck bopping each other like the Three Stooges. They rise up in spirit and become beautiful and glowing and then they sink back into the muck again or the Rocket sinks them again. Or They contrive to keep them down.

These are preliminary thoughts. My main point is that the book is about the leap from shit through flesh to spirit and that this process is Gravity's Rainbow. The process is not described as a linear plot, but as eruptions along a continuum. The continuum is not any place in particular but the stuff of the book itself. If you look through the book, you'll find specific references to gravity as a manifestation of the life force and the planet as a living organism.

With a book of this magnitude with so many subjects and so many mystical and mathematical allusions, *any* number can be made to seem a significant number.

This is very true and is the basis of most mystical numerological confabulation.

I think it's helpful to look at mathematical representations of feedback, the way a rocket homes in on a target.

When you look at astrological signs as descriptions of states of energy this becomes even more interesting:

<div style="text-align:center">
'''Aries''' Seeds Springing forward Fire

'''Taurus''' Planting Ploughing forward Earth

'''Gemini''' Leaves and Flowers Opening outward Air

'''Cancer''' Nursing breasts Condensing tides Water

'''Leo''' Fruits Blazing summer Fire

'''Virgo''' Harvest Cooling off Earth

'''Libra''' Weighing Diffusion Air

'''Scorpio''' Storage Privacy Water

'''Sagittarius''' Hunting Arrow flight Fire

'''Capricorn''' Forage Nimble Earth

'''Aquarius''' Lightning Crackling Air

'''Pisces''' Rain Falling Water

</div>

Astrology is an agricultural almanac. Each sign represents a state of energy. Fire, Earth, Air and Water are actually almost exactly equivalent to Plasma, Solid, Gas, and Liquid. In the system above, you can see that a growth cycle is being described, beginning with the enthusiastic spurt of the germinating seed, which then turns to the plodding cow, then to the opening of the buds of the leaves and so on.

Each state of energy is opposite to (or a correction of) the previous one, but in a different direction. Now remove the astrological symbolism and simply view the transformations of energy as the underlying state of the cosmos. Whether you then translate this as Tarot or Astrology or I-Ching or whatever, you are always dealing with the same process of self correcting feedback.

In other words, Gravity's Rainbow.

© Jules Siegel

{{GR Alpha Nav}}

File:Mindless-Pleasures.jpg

2007-01-26T09:41:36Z

Torerye: Trial cover with the title "Mindless Pleasures"

Trial cover with the title "Mindless Pleasures"

User talk:WikiAdmin

2006-12-18T13:10:52Z

Torerye:

Hi, I added a few typographical errors to the list. May I ask why you removed the waits/waifs-mistake? It seems to me to be a perfectly good error. [[User:Torerye|Torerye]] 01:56, 18 December 2006 (PST)

Aah, scratch that thought: Just noticed the recent entry on 'waits' under W. [[User:Torerye|Torerye]] 05:10, 18 December 2006 (PST)

Talk:Sixes and Sevens

2006-12-18T13:08:13Z

Torerye:

I certainly agree on the Sixes and Sevens confusion being deliberate, but I'm not so sure about the Nusselt heart-transfer. You ascribe the error to Slothrop, but even though the narrative perspective does seem to be close to Slothrop in the relevant passage, the borders are fluid and one cannot pin down the narrative perspective with any certainty. And the fact that the typographical mistake is common hardly justifies its inclusion (and survival) in GR.
Other typos have survived the transition to the repaginated edition of GR as well (Leunahalluziationen on p. 523, e.g. - I've added this to the list of typographical errors elsewhere) so I think we should delete the speculation in note 4 that the heart-transfer mistake is deliberate. It may be, but then again, it may not, and the arguments for a deliberate mistake are not as convincing as the Sixes and Sevens discussion above. [[User:Torerye|Torerye]] 05:08, 18 December 2006 (PST)

Sixes and Sevens

2006-12-18T12:58:13Z

Torerye:

:To be "at sixes and sevens" is an English phrase and idiom, common in the United Kingdom. It is used to describe a state of confusion or disarray. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_sixes_and_sevens Wikipedia]

:"He'd never told her, he avoided telling himself, but that was the measure of his faith, as this seventh Christmas of the War came wheeling in another charge at his skinny, shivering flank..." - ''Gravity's Rainbow'', p.126 <ref>''Gravity's Rainbow'', Pynchon, Thomas, Viking Press, 1973, p.126</ref>

:"A miscount" - Weisenburger <ref>''A Gravity's Rainbow Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's Novel'', Second Edition, p.93</ref>

In the two consecutive sections on ''Gravity's Rainbow'''s star-crossed lovers, Roger Mexico (124-26) and Jessica Swanlake (126-27), Pynchon uses an interesting structural device to convey the confusion the two characters are experiencing. Using rhyming word-pairs in each section, "Eerie, dearie" and "faucet, Dorset" (p.124) in Roger's and "distress, Jess" and "fag, Mag" (p.127) in Jessica's, to reinforce the pairing of the two sections, Pynchon then plays off the old phrase "at sixes and sevens," which means "to be in a state of confusion," by using sevens in Roger's section and sixes in Jessica's.

Roger's section begins "One morning he had not seen her for about a fortnight [...]." The use of "fortnight" (14 days) establishes the sevens. The section ends with "as this seventh Christmas of the War came wheeling in another charge at his skinny, shivering flank [...]" [emphasis added] and it is this passage that clues in the reader that something is going on here, someone certainly is confused. In his ''A Gravity's Rainbow Companion'', Steven Weisenburger explains away Pynchon's count of seven Christmases: "A miscount: from the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 until V-J day in August 1945, this war encompassed six Christmas days. On the next page Pynchon gets it right: 'six years of slander, ambition and hysteria'." <ref>''A Gravity's Rainbow Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's Novel'', First Edition, p.78</ref>.

Not so fast, Steve. Pynchon simply does not make this kind of "mistake" in his novels. Surely the man can count to six! If he says "seventh," one should assume he means "seventh" and try to interpret the passage in that light. Roger is paranoid and confused. His section is about sevens, beginning with "fortnight" and ending with "seventh Christmas." And, if it was simply "a miscount," why is it still present in the latest editions of ''Gravity's Rainbow'', over three decades since publication?<ref>Checking the "Deluxe" Edition of ''Gravity's Rainbow'' (Penguin, 2006), most of the obvious typos have been corrected. Two of Weisenburger's ''suspected'' typos "seventh Christmas of the War" (Penguin, p.128) and "Nusselt heart-transfer coefficients" (Penguin, p.225) have never been changed. The "heart-transfer" (Weisenburger insists it ''should be'' "heat-transfer", which is ''technically'' correct, but Pynchon has Slothrop tripping over this phrase mentally, no less and, if you google "Nusselt heart-transfer" you get an amazing number of positives, indicating it's a common typographical error. And "heart-transfer" for "heat-transfer" is quite understandable given Slothrop's mental state at the time!</ref>

The section on Jessica (who "can't remember ever being so confused" [p.126]) is about sixes, using multiples and divisibles of six. First, "Three years with Jeremy." Then, "Weepers, he's supposed to be past thirty [...]." Then, "six years of slander, ambition and hysteria" (referring to the War). Numerically, the clincher is "unwholesome obsessions with who said what to whom in the spring of 1942 for God's sake [...]." As you math wizzes out there might already know, "42" is "6 x 7."

I believe this explanation transcends the trap of "Kute Korrespondences" to which we exegetes of Pynchon are so often prone. This explanation works, there's plenty to support it and nothing to contradict it. Rog and Jess are "at sixes and sevens" and Pynchon slyly reinforces this.

==References==
<references/>

{{GR Alpha Nav}}

B

2006-12-18T12:39:29Z

Torerye: Added reference to entry on "black and white"

'''Babington-Smith, Constance''' 
726; "and her colleagues at R.A.F. Medmenham [who] discovered the Rocket back in 1943 in recco photographs of Peenemünde"; Babington conducted aerial photo-surveillance for the Allies in WWII.

'''Badajoz''' 
234; The largest province in Spain, in the Extremadura comunidad autónoma ("autonomous community"), Badajoz borders on Portugal; on which, according to Pudding, "during the war in Spain ... a bandera of Franco's Legion advanced"

'''Bad Karma''' 
457; location of Spa (Kurhaus) where Margherita Erdmann killed Jewish boys

'''Badass, U.S.S. John E.''' 
388-89; US destroyer on which Seaman Bodine is stationed; Runcible Spoon Contest, 594; 623

'''BAFO''' 
391; U.S. Army Air Force: Base Accounting and Finance Office

'''Bai-u''' 
480; "the season of the plum rains [...] when all the plums are ripening" in Japan; Tsuyu (Baiu=plum rain)("Rainy Season"). Although this is Japan's "Rainy Season" (Tsuyu or Baiu), it is actually the second wet period (Winter Monsoon being the first). It typically begins in early June in Western Japan and ends in July. (Both dates are later in Northern Japan.) A stationary rain front forms over Japan between the very warm, moist tropical air to the south and the cooler, drier air to the north of the front. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiyu Wikipedia entry]

'''Baku''' 
352; seaport capital of Azerbaydzhanskaya SSR, Soviet Union, on the west coast of the Caspian Sea; 353; Blobadjian "pursued through the black end of Baku by a passel of screaming Arabists" 354

'''Bakunin, Mikhael Aleksandrovich (1814-76)''' 
386; A Russian anarchist who eventually settled in England, Mikhail Bakunin, as the leader of anarchism, was the opponent of Karl Marx in the Communist International. He believed that "the withering away of the state" effect by communism was an essential step towards anarchism. In 1866, he founded International Brotherhood, or the Alliance of Revolutionary Socialists; "19th century European anarchist Mason" 587; See also [[P#proudhon]]Proudhon and [[F#friscia|Friscia]]

'''Balaclava helmet''' 
42; a close-fitting woolen covering for the head and ears

'''Baldwin, Stanley (1867-1947)''' 
An English Conservative statesman, Baldwin, after university, became vice-chairman of his family's iron and steel business. He became premier in 1923. In the 1930s he was reluctant to re-arm Britain and was thus criticized for not recognizing the Nazi threat; Byron's Guerrilla Strike Force is "gonna get [him] right in the face" 647

'''[[Bananas|BANANAS]]'''

<div id="baseball"></div>'''baseball''' 
See [[L#lawn|lawn sports]]

'''Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij, N.V.''' 
240; Royal Dutch Shell headquarters being used for a radio guidance transmitter

'''Battle of Britain''' 
40-41; (June 1940-April 1941), series of intense raids directed against Great Britain by the German air force after the fall of France during World War II. Britain sustained 57 consecutive nights of air raids, but the RAF prevailed through superior tactics and cracking German secret codes.

'''Battle of the Bulge''' 
Led by Gerd von Rundstedt this German offensive began with a surprise attack in Luxembourg on December 16, 1944. Hitler hoped to revitalize the Western Front troops. The Germans were eventually beaten back in early January 1945 after suffering over 100,000 casualties and the loss of 1000 aircraft. It was called "Battle of the Bulge" because of the bulge it created in American lines along the Western Front. It disrupted the Western Allies' military timetable for several months; "the chaplains out in the Bulge are manly, haggard, hard drinkers" 135; 246; Red Cross "charging fifteen cents for coffee and donuts at" 600

'''Bauhaus''' 
582; "-style furniture" at the Tracys' home; The Bauhaus School was a design school in existence in Germany 1919 - 1933, established by Walter Gropius. Radically breaking with the past, the Bauhaus Masters and their students ushered in our modern times. The aesthetic was austere and functional. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus Wikipedia entry]

'''Bayer factory''' 
Major German company (dyes, aspirin), headed by Duisberg, that in 1904 was organized along with Badische Anilin und Soda Fabrik and the AGFA Company (film), into a cartel; 742; in Leverkusen; defectors from, at Der Platz, 746; [www.bayer.de/en/index_en.html Bayer Website]

'''Bayros, von (1866-1924)''' 
German illustrator and part of the resurgence of book illustration in German during the Weimar years. He illustrated an edition of Dante's Divina commedia (1921) which show the an Art Nouveau influence; "the drawing is in pen and ink, very finely textured, somewhat after the style of von Bayros or Beardsley" 71; "the hairless cunt derives from the women von Bayros drew" 330

'''BDM volunteers''' 
450; German: Bund Deutscher Mädel = German Girls League; German girls 14 years or older joined this Nazi youth group which included a year of farm or domestic service. Their motto was "Frisch, Fromm, Frölich, Frei".

'''BDST''' 
29: British Double Summer Time (-0200 offset from Greenwich Mean Time); same idea as Daylight Saving Time in the USA, but the clocks are advanced 2 hours, instead 1 hour, during the summer months.

'''Beal, Mary F. (b. 1937)''' 
612; American novelist

'''Beardsley, Aubry (1872-1898)''' 
An English illustrator, Beardsley is known for his (often erotically charged) illustrations for Oscar Wilde's Salome, Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock and other black-and-white works. Along with Oscar Wilde, he was considered a leader of "The Decadents" of the 1890s; 71; 634; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aubrey_Beardsley Wikipedia entry]

'''Beaton, Cecil (1904-80)''' 
78; Beaton was an English photographer of fashion and high-society celebrities (including royalty), as well as a designer of costumes and sets for ballet; his "photograph of [[A#asquith|Margot Asquith]]"

'''Beatriz the Bulb''' 
653; another long-living bulb hunted by Phoebus, believed to be in the Amazon

'''Beaver, "Old" Jeremy the''' 
36; 121; boyfriend of Jessica Swanlake; works for Operation Backfire in Cuxhaven; is the War, 177; meets Mexico at Gross Suckling Conference, 709

'''Beaverboard Row''' 
538; at the Double-Agent Convention, "comprising the offices of all the Committees"

'''Beaverbrook, Lord William Maxwell (1879-1964)''' 
615; Max Beaverbrook was a Canadian-born British newspaper magnate and politician. He became rich as a stockbroker by 1910. He moved to Britain in 1910 and was private secretary to premier Bonar Law, minister of information under Lloyd George, and minister of supply under Churchill. As a newspaper magnate, he founded the Sunday Express in 1921 and bought the Evening Standard in 1929; "it isn't as if the election put [him] out of a job or something"

'''Becket''' 
"Lost, again and again, past poor dam-busted and drowned Becket" 471

'''Beethoven, Ludwig von (1770-1827)''' 
German composer whose harmonic and formal innovations pushed the boundaries of the music of his day; "Rossini's overture to La Gazza Ladra (which, as we shall see later, in Berlin, marks a high point in music which everybody ignored, preferring Beethoven, who never got further than statements of intention)" 273; "a raging debate with Säure over who is better, [[Beethoven & Rossini|Beethoven or Rossini]] [...] "'I'm not so much for Beethoven qua Beethoven," Gustav argues, "but as he represents the German dialectic, the incorporation of more and more notes into the scale, culminating with dodecaphonic democracy, where all notes get an equal hearing. Beethoven was one of the architects of musical freedom--he submitted to the demands of history, despite his deafness. While Rossini was retiring at the age of 36, womanizing and getting fat, Beethoven was living a life filled with tragedy and grandeur.'" 440; "All you feel like listening to Beethoven is going out and invading Poland." 440 (this pre-dates Woody Allen's use of the same joke in his movie [http://www.woodyallenmovies.com/movies/manhattan.htm ''Manhattan''] (1979)); "Nor as grand as Bach, or Beethoven-or-Brahms/(bubububoo[oo] oo [sung to opening of Beethoven 5th, with full band]" 685

'''Beláustegui''' 
383; U-boat's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism positivist] engineer; 613

'''Belleau Wood''' 
Battle fought outside Paris for approximately three weeks in June 1918, between the U.S. Marines and the Germans. The Marines prevailed, but only after the death of over 1000 men; "[Lyle Bland] lay there, more terrified than he'd ever been, even at Belleau Wood" 588

'''Benito the Bulb''' 
649; "at an all-girl opium den in Charlottenburg [...] who's always planning an escape"

'''Bereshith''' 
Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament (after the Hebrew word meaning "in the beginning"); 77

'''Beria, Lavrenti Pavlovich (1899-1953)''' 
Sometimes called the "Himmler of Russia," Beria was a ruthless and ambitious Soviet secret police chief. Stalin appointed him minister of internal affairs in 1938, and he served as vice-president of the State Committee for Defense during WWII. He attempted to seize power when Stalin died, but was foiled and executed; "Beria's top man, the sinister N. Ripov himself" 719

'''Berliner Luft''' 
372;

'''Berlin Snoot''' 
660; aka Enzian

'''Bernie the Bulb''' 
649; "at an all-girl opium den in Charlottenburg [...] who has all kinds of urolagnia jokes"

'''Bernreuter Inventory''' 
In 1931, psychologist Robert Bernreuter began refining his "Bernreuter Personality Inventory," a pioneer multiphastic test of traits that became the standard against which other personality tests were measured and is still used worldwide for counseling and personnel selection; "as revied by Flanagan in '35" 81

'''Bessarabia''' 
Bessarabia is the territory in the eastern part of Moldavia (now Romania), between the Prut and Dniester rivers, near the Russian border; Background regarding "1878 during the intrigues over" 119

'''Bevin, Mr. Ernest (1881-1951)''' 
106; Considered the pioneer of modern trade unionism, Bevin became minister of labor and nation service in Churchill's coalition government. He became foreign secretary in the Labour government (1945-51).Labor Minister

<div id="bianca"></div>'''Bianca''' 
393; daughter of Greta Erdmann & Miklos Thanatz; "I think Bianca is [Schlepzig's] child." 395; 457; disappears, 480; mapped on to Gottfried, 484, 672;"Bianca's a knockout, alright: [[Bianca|11 or 12 [...] ]]" 463; going overboard, 491; "a clever child" 494; body discovered, 531; mapped on to Ilse, 576-77; "her dead flesh" 576; 672;

'''Bibescue, Count''' 
491; passenger aboard the Anubis "dreaming by the fo'c'sle of Bucharest four years ago, the January terror, the Iron Guard on the radio screaming Long Live Death"

'''Biddle, "Gobbler"''' 
65; college buddy of Slothrop's who appears in toilet episode

'''Big and Little Anita''' 
129; character conjured by the presence of the black man in choir at the Advent service attended by Roger and Jessica

'''Big Apple''' 
60; dance in Slothrop's Sodium Amytal session

'''Bingen pencils''' 
Bingen is a city in southwestern Germany, with a port at the confluence of the Rhine and Nahe rivers, near the whirlpool known as Binger Loch. It joined the Hanseatic League in 1254; "the helical contrails in the sky" 452

'''Birches, The''' 
616; Sir Marcus Scammony's estate

'''Birdbury, Pharmacist''' 
595; dope dealer at the old Krupp works where Badass is docked

'''Bismarck, Otto Edward Leopold von (1815-98)''' 
165; As a Prussian statesman, Bismarck rose to eventually become president of the cabinet. Under his leadership, Prussia humiliated Austria in the "Seven Weeks' War which lead to the reorganization of Germany under the leadership of Prussia. After provoking the Franco-Prussian war (1870-71) and eventually dictating the peace terms to France, Bismarck was made a prince and chancellor (the "Iron Chancellor") of the new German empire. He also represented Germany at the Congress of Berlin in 1878; "impressive re-enactment of Bismarck's elevation, at the spring equinox of 1871, to prince and imperial chancellor" 419;

'''black & white''' 
The Rocket described as "black-and-white bad news" 209; "Dominus Blicero" 30; white - 342, 398, 501, 506, 508, 519, 524, 549, 551; 579; bleaching 364; black - 350, 354; "feelings about blackness tied to feelings about shit" 276; white=death, 372; white woman with ring of keys, 374; Caligari gloves - bone white, 385; Slothrop's sodium amytal dreams, 390; 392; "we live. . .beneath the black mud" 483; "A white land" 486; 488; black polymer costume, 488; baseball, 508; boneblack, 509; Egg, 510; "black apes" 513; 650; 657; 666; 688; white albatross, 713; 722; 723; 741; death a whitening, 750 [inversion: black=life; white=death]

'''Blackett, P.M.S. (1897-1974)''' 
12; 1932 (independent of Carl Anderson) he discovered the positron. He also pioneered research on cosmic radiation and, in 1948, won the Nobel prize for physics; "You can't run a war on gusts of emotion"

'''Bladdery, St. John''' 
594; English Commando in First International Runcible Spoon Fight

'''Bland, Buddy''' 
591; Lyle's son; 652

'''Bland, Lyle''' 
284; "Uncle" Lyle to Slothrop; lived in Boston; involved with Hugo Stinnes; 306; and the Masons, 580; specialized in psychological studies in '30s, 581; becomes Mason, 587; journeying "underneath history" 589; leaves body, 591; "last transmural journey" 630; "who was likely to take over the Slothrop surveillance, now that Bland was gone" 630

'''Bland, Lyle Jr.''' 
652; Lyle's son

'''Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna (1831-91)''' 
269; A Russian-born American psychic and mystic. She founded the Theosophical Society in New York in 1875 and later continued her work in India. Although her psychic powers were widely acclaimed, they did not withstand the scrutiny of the Society for Psychical Research, though this had little effect on her following; the Blavatskian wing in Psi section. Her day of death (May 8) is commemorated as White Lotus Day.

'''Blazzo''' 
483; "Italian stuntman" who doubled for Erdmann in Jugend Herauf! - Erdmann "wouldn't go to bed with him, unless he wore that wig!"

'''Bleagh, Dr.''' 
91; "and his young nurse Ivy"; performs lobotomies at White Visitation

'''Bleicheröde''' 
According to McGovern, a cotton-mill town near Nordhausen where most of the rocket specialists and their families were resettled after Peenemünde was abandoned; "Across the Western Front, up in the Harz in Bleicheröde, Wernher von Braun, lately wrecked arm in a plaster cast, prepares to celebrate his 33rd birthday." 236-37; "Enzian of Bleicheröde" 314; "In the mountains around Nordhausen and Bleicheröde, down in abandoned mine shafts, live the Schwarzkommando." 315; "There are several underground communities now near Nordhausen/Bleicheröde. Around here they are known collectively as the Erdschweinhöhle." 315; "The Rocket had to be produced out of a place called Nordhausen. The town adjoining was named Bleicheröde as a validation, a bit of redundancy so that the message would not be lost." 322; "Enzian's found the name Bleicheröde close enough to "Blicker," the nickname the early Germans gave to Death. They saw him white bleaching and blankness." 322; "the names of death-towns unreel, and surely Bleicheröde or Blicero will be spoken any minute now...." 695; "is he Blicker, Bleicheröde, Bleacher, Blicero, extending, rarefying the Caucasian pallor to an abolition of pigment, of melanin, of spectrum, of separateness from shade to shade" 759

'''Blicero, Capt.
See [[W#weissman|Weissmann]]

'''Blizna''' 
424; in Poland; site of A4 testing in 1943; SS project run by Kammler

'''Bloat, Teddy''' 
5; rooms with Pirate and friend of Tantivy; microfilms Slothrop's map (then gives film to Mexico who takes it to Pointsman), 17; 34; 181; gives Slothrop a crab to distract the octopus, 186-87; discussed, 192-93

'''Blobadjian, Igor''' 
353; party representative in the G Committee (WLA); death of, 354-55; [[Igor Blobadjian|Etymological Musings]]

'''Blohm & Voss''' 
521; Hamburg shipbuilding company that expanded into building military aircraft for the German war effort

'''Bloth, Mindy''' 
735-36; guide on elevator; "of Carbon City, Illinois"

'''Blowitt''' 
151; reported to psychiatric "for his rainbowed Valkyrie over Peenemünde"

'''BMRs''' 
170; Basic Metabolic Rates

'''Bodine, Seaman''' 
369; Doper's Dream; was on the Destroyer John E. Badass docked in Cuxhaven; spikes coffee on Badass with Oneirine, 389; First Int'l Runcible Spoon Fight, 394; "specializes in supporting roles" 684; My Doper's Cadenza, 685; foam-rubber phalli, 708; "just a freckleface kid from Albert Lea, Minnesota" 710; Krupp, 711; "surprise roast" 714; "beginning. . .to let Slothrop go" 741-42; "Pig" Bodine is also a major character in V.; Pig's ancestor, Fender-Belly Bodine, shows up in Mason & Dixon.

'''Bokhara rug''' 
246;

<div id="bolshevik"></div>'''Bolshevik''' 
338; Russian: bol'she = "more"; The Bolsheviks were the members of the Russian Social Democratic Party who sided with Lenin in the split after the party congress of 1903. They were the majority and the Mensheviks (in favor of bourgeois reform) were the minority party. The Bolsheviks seized power after the Revolution of 1917 and became the Communist Party; "the godless Mesopotamian Bolshevik" 383; "Lucky the Bolshies didn't get it, huh, Charles?" 448; "The lion [...] He takes, he holds! He is not a Bolshevik or Jew" 577; See also [[L#lenin|Lenin]]; [[S#stalin|Stalin]]

'''Bondelswaartz''' 
403; Herero tribe; 1922 uprising, 403

'''Book, The''' 
47, 75, 87-88, 139, 140; [What Book?]; See also Pavlov, Ivan Petrovich

'''Book of Memorabilia''' 
739; pertaining to Slothrop's dispersal

'''Booth, John Wilkes (1839-65)''' 
210; This unsuccessful actor assassinated President Abraham Lincoln, apparently to avenge the defeat of the Confederates in the Civil War.

'''BOQ''' 
6; bachelor officers' quarters

'''Borges, Jorge Luis (1899-1986)''' 
264; Argentinian writer of fiction/fantasy; dedicated poem to G. I. Portales, 383; [http://www.themodernword.com/borges/index.html The Modern Word's Borges Section (the best!)] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Luis_Borges Wikipedia Entry]; [[Borges - The Game of Chess|"The Game of Chess"]] See also [[R#rivadavia|Rivadavia]].

<div id="katje"></div>'''Borgesius, Katje (rhymes with "Got-ya")''' 
her message in cylinder delivered by rocket, 20; "the operative" 72; an ice-queen, her hair secured with "an old, tarnished silver crown [...] frozen on top in a hundred vortices" 92; "A woman with some background in mathematics, and with reasons" 97; was in Blicero's Hansel & Gretel game with Gottfried in the house "west of Duindigt racecourse" 94-99, 101-04; turned in Jews to keep the Germans from suspecting her, 97, 105; spying for allies, 104-05; "Her only debt outstanding is to Captain Prentice" 104; "stepped back into the void" 106; quits the game, 107; Pirate takes her to White Visitation, 106; secretly filmed, 92-113; "quits the game" 104; octopus incident, 185-89; "Meet me in my room" 191; with Slothrop in her room, 194-98; escapes to Arnhem [MAP] [actually to Scheveningen: 535-36], 195; "Wired into the Slothropian Run-together they briefed her on." 196; futureless look, 208, 209; roulette wheel metaphor, 209; "A rain-witch." 221; "a noseless mask of the Other Order of Being, of Katje's being--the lifeless non-face that is the only face of hers he really knows, or will ever remember" 222; "mask of no luck, no future--her face's rest state" 225; disappears, 226; "on her wheel" 257; with Pointsman, 273-74; "under the Wheel of Fortune" 277; 281-83; "a red tulip between Slothrop's toes. A reminder of Katje" 281; discovers film used with Grigori, 533; looking for Pirate, 536; with Pirate again ("she has lost her surface"), 545; her little brother Louis, 546; going to Nordhausen, 620; loss of "futureless look" 656; "she's not of our moment, our time, at all" 656; Golden Bitch, 658; Principle of Maximizing Risk, 659; "Shouldn't I be going all the way in?" 662; "her masochism" 662; travelling with Enzian, 729

'''Borgesius, Louis''' 
546; Katje's little brother

'''Borsalini''' 
254; Borsalino hats are a quality-made felt hat with broad brim manufactured in Italy. The company has been in existence since 1857. "Borsalini" is Pynchon's plural.

'''Bounce, Capt. Hillary''' 
240; works for Shell Int'l Petroleum; had dealings with IG Farben in '32; teaches Slothrop about propulsion at Casino; at de la Perlimpinpin's party, 245; 253

'''Bovril''' 
23; Bovril is cow extract, and 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; [http://www.bovril.com]

'''Boxing Day''' 
132; In England, the first weekday after Christmas, observed by the giving of Christmas boxes to service workers; 174

'''Bracken, Brendan (1901-58)''' 
615; First a successful journalist, Irishman Bracken was elected to the British in 1929, was minister of information (1941-45) and was first Lord of the Admiralty in the 1945 "caretaker" government; "it isn't as if the election put [him] out of a job or something"

'''Bradbury Building''' 
752; "Philip Marlowe will [...] feel homesick for the lacework balconies of the"

'''Brain Trust''' 
565

'''Brain War''' 
726; "a Victorian kind [...] as between quaternions and vector analysis in the 1880s, the nostalgia of Aether" 727

'''Braun, Wernher von (1923-77)''' 
German rocket engineer who came to the U.S. after the war; "Nature does not know extinction" 1; arm in a cast in the Harz, 237; "They've already rounded up von Braun and 500 others, and interned them at Garmisch" 273; Geli's owl, 291; "how close Wernher von Braun's birthday is to the Spring Equinox" 361, 588; "the Prussian aristocrat" 402; "a palace revolt against" 416; "I couldn't go with von Braun, not to the Americans" 456

'''Brenda''' 
547; mentioned in Pirate's and Katje's How I Came To Love the People

'''Brenda the Bulb''' 
649; mother of Bernie "who talks of hashish hush puppies"

'''Brennan, Peewee''' 
584; a pinball wizard, one of "the great thumbs of Koekuk and Puyallup, Oyster Bay, Inglewood"

'''Brennschluss''' 
6; German: "end of burning"; end of rocket's ascent when fuel is cut-off and it gives way to gravity; "a ritual of love" 222-23; "Rocket's. . .feminine counterpart" 223; 239; "The moving vehicle is frozen, in space, to become architecture, and timeless. It was never launched. It will never fall" 301; "for every firing site" 302; "of the Sun" (Sound-Shadow), 711; 759

'''British Military Intelligence''' 
384;

'''British Ministry of Supply''' 
240;

'''British Plastics''' 
615; discarded back issues scattered about Mossmoon's and Scammony's club

'''Brocken''' 
329; mountain 20 miles NW of Mittelwerke in the Harz Mountains; "plexus of German evil"; place where God-shadows ("Brockengespenstphänomen" - p.331) occur at sunrise, 330; specter, 759

'''Bruce''' 
544; "who got burned"; one whom Pirate had to betray "in the course of business for the Firm"

'''Buchenwald''' 
666;

'''Buffalo Bayou''' 
449; song about

'''Bugnogorkov''' 
353; "infamous Ukrainian doper [...] of the glottal K Committee"

'''Bukhara''' 
in Uzbekistan, this city is one of the most ancient in Central Asia. According to the decree of the 4th Assembly of all-Bukhara Soviets (11-17 October, 1923), certain degrees of autonomy and administrative rights were granted to areas inhabited by Turkmens, and local dialects (eg Tajiki) were to be replaced by Turkish as the official language; "reformed Arabic scripts [...] ratified at ~ in 1923" 354; [http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/bashiri/Masov/bukhara.html Website]

'''Bukharin, Nikolai Ivanovich (1888-1938)''' 
Bukharin was a Russian Communist leader and theoretician, and a member of the Bolshevik wing of the Social Democratic party. In 1924 he was made a full member of the politburo. As Stalin rose to power in the 1920s, Bukharin was advocating policies which were not in line with Stalin's, eg slow agricultural collectivization and industrialization. A victim of Stalin's purges, in 1938 he was tried publicly for treason and was executed (shot). In the Gorbachev era, Bukharin was rehabilitated and posthumously reinstated (1988) as a party member; "evidence linking [Porkyevitch] to the Bukharin conspiracy" 189

'''bulbs''' 
anemone bulbs, 104; at Rathenau seance, 165; "staring bulb" 194; "one of the great secret ikons of the Humility" 299; dream of bulb/Weissmann, 426-27; Weissmann's soul, 427; sentient bulbs, 464; 506; Mutter: what Germans call female threads of light bulb sockets, 299, 653; "Azos looking down the empty back Bakelite streets, Nitralampen and Wotan Gs at night soccer matches, Just-Wolframs, Monowatts and Siriuses" 650; "an electrical tidal wave" 665; bulbshine, 697; See also [[#byron|Byron the Bulb]]

'''Bulgars''' 
549;

'''Bull, John''' 
nickname for an Englishman or Englishmen collectively; "our cousin" 697

'''Bummer, Emil ("Säure" [German: acid])''' 
365; 434-43; papyromancy, 442, 641; wheelerdealer in Berlin; no stomping on bugs, 621; "Ass-backwards" 683; "Der Platz" 686; "optimum hashpipe design" 745

'''Burgundians''' 
159; wiped out by Attila the Hun (as depicted in Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen); in what is now Eastern France [MAP]; held together by "precious structure of magic and incest" 578-79

'''Busch, Wilhelm (1832-1908)''' 
501; This German cartoonist and writer created Max und Moritz (the prototypes for the Katzenjammer Kids--see page 757) and Herr und Frau Knopp; "a Wilhelm Busch cartoon face"; "a Wilhelm Busch original" 568

'''Busemann''' 
German rocket scientist; 452

'''Business Advisory Council''' 
581; "set up by Swope of General Electric"; 587;

'''butadiene''' 
487; a flammable gaseous hydrocarbon used in making synthetic rubbers

<div id="byron"></div>'''Byron the Bulb''' 
"a bulb over his head burning all night long. He dreamed that the bulb was a representative of Weissmann, a creature whose bright filament was its soul" 426-27; "a theatre marquee whose sentient bulbs may have looked on [...] witnesses to grave and historical encounters" 464; "The Story of" 647-55; "Someday he will know everything, and be just as impotent as before" 654; "electrical tidal wave" 665; "young Jack may have had one of them Immortal Lightbulbs then go on overhead" 688; screwed into Gustav's kazoo hashpipe, 745

'''Byzantium''' 
Ancient Greek city on the Sea of Marmara which was the capital of the Byzantine (or Greek) Empire, in what is now NW Turkey. From 7th century BC to 3rd century AD, Byzantium was a thriving center for the arts, especially architecture (its chief features: circle, dome and round arch). It was renamed Constantinople in 330AD when Constantine captured it and established it as the new capital for the Turkish Empire; it was renamed Istanbul in 1930; Vikings sailing to, 549; [[Sailing to Byzantium|"Sailing to Byzantium" by W.B. Yeats]] [http://www.tmbg.org/band-info/songs/lyrics/IstanbulNotConstantinople.html "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" by They Might Be Giants]

{{GR Alpha Nav}}

Gravity's Rainbow Title

2006-12-18T12:35:25Z

Torerye: Added quote to title speculation

In Genesis 9:13-15, the first rainbow is a token of God's covenant not to destroy humanity again -- or not with a flood, anyway. As an old spiritual has it: "God gave Noah the rainbow sign / No more water, the fire next time."

One reading of the title is that "gravity's rainbow" is the parabola of a ballistic missile's flight, halted on the final page a "last unmeasurable gap... the last delta-t" over our heads: fiery destruction held in abeyance. For now.

The connection between the parabolic flight path of the Rocket and a rainbow is made explicit in an important discussion of the rocket's trajectory (p. 209):

"But it is a curve each of them feels, unmistakably. It is the parabola. They must have guessed, once or twice - guessed and refused to believe - that everything, always, collectively, had been moving toward that purified shape latent in the sky, that shape of no surprise, no second chances, no return. Yet they do move forever under it, reserved for its own black-and-white bad news certainly as if it were the Rainbow, and they its children...."

User talk:WikiAdmin

2006-12-18T09:56:08Z

Torerye:

T

2006-12-18T09:52:17Z

Torerye: Added some typographical errors

'''Tägliche Rundschau''' 
434; German: "The Daily Panorama"; "discarded copies of" in Berlin

'''Taj Mahal''' 
This mausoleum on the southern bank of the Yamuna (Jumna) River, outside Agra in India was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his wife, Arjumand Banu Begam, also called Mumtaz Mahal ("Chosen One of the Palace"), of which the name Taj Mahal is a corruption. It took 22 years to complete; 637

'''Takeshi

'''See Komical Kamikazes''' 
Tamara''' 
247; at de la Perlimpinpin party; 261

'''Tannhäuser''' 
Tannhäuserism (love of being taken under mountains), 299; "even a Minnesinger needs to be alone" 299; "the Singing Nincompoop" 364; See also Lisaura

'''Tantivy''' 
See [[M#mucker|Mucker-Maffick, Oliver "Tantivy"]]

'''Tarot''' 
Judgment, 152; "shuffling the ancient decks oily and worn, throwing down swords and cups and trumps major" 413; The Fool, 501, 724, 742; "Der Grob Säugling, 23rd card of the Zone's trumps major" 707; "choose the world" 718; "The scene itself must be read as a card: what is to come" 724; Queen of Cups, 735; A.E. Waite, 738; 746-49; [[Weissmann's Tarot]]; [[Slothrop's Tarot]]

'''Tauschzentrale''' 
366; German: "bartering" or "exchange" "center"; in Berlin; "all her husband's clothes have been traded for food at the" 572;

'''Tavistock Institute''' 
276; The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations is an interdisciplinary organization in London which concentrates on human relations in the family, the work group, and organizations. British psychiatrist R.D. Laing (1927-89) conducted research there from 1960-89.

'''Tchitcherine, Vaslav''' 
290; Soviet intelligence officer; half-brother of Enzian; "mad scavenger" who officially reports to the TsAGE (Central Aero & Hydrodynamics Institute in Moscow) (1935-36); has need to annihilate the Schwarzkommando and "his mythical half-brother Enzian"; described, 337, 383; comes from Nihilist stock, 338; stationed in Central Asia in "early Stalin days" 338; "a raving snowman over the winter marshes" "a giant supermolecule. . .so many open bonds available" 345; story of his father, 350-52; 499; Kirghiz Light, 508, 510; "fear would always keep him from going all the way in" 566; illumination of, 611; 700; initiation into "bodyhood of steel" 702; "her graying steel barbarian" 718; "the Red Doper" 719; meets Enzian, 734; stays with Geli, 735; See also Kirghiz Light

'''TDY''' 
54; temporary duty

'''Technische Hochschule (T.H.)''' 
Mondaugen: "[Pökler's] old friend from the T.H. Munich" 160; "Glimpf, Professor of Mathematics of the Technische Hochschule, Darmstadt, Scientific advisor to the Allied Military Government" 309; "Zwitter is from the T.H. Munich" 313; Jamf lecturing Pökler's class, 577; "the greyness of certain crowds in the beerhalls back at the T.H." 579; 580;

'''[[Technology in Gravity's Rainbow|TECHNOLOGY]]''' 
See also [[#technische|Technische Hochscule]]; [[#they|They]]

'''Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (d. 1955)''' 
539; Jesuit paleontologist and mystical philosopher

'''Telangiecstasis, Spyros ("Spider")''' 
389; Radarman 2nd Class on Badass

'''Tenniel's Alice''' 
247; Sir John Tenniel (1820-1914) was a cartoonist and artist who created almost 2000 cartoons for the humor magazine, Punch, but who is probably most famous for the illustrations he did for Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1864); [MORE]

'''Tennysonian comfort''' 
270; "of saying 'someone' has blundered"

'''TerBorch, Gerard (1617-81)''' 
Dutch Baroque painter whose genre pieces and portraits depict with grace and fidelity the atmosphere of middle-class life in 17th-century Holland. His works consist almost equally of portraits and genre pieces, with his usually delicate technique best reflected in the portraits which are painted on an almost miniature scale; "[Blicero] flings a boot-tree at a precious TerBorch" 104

'''Ter Meer, Dr. Fritz''' 
631; according to Sasuly, "Ter Meer was one of the half-dozen most important men in the IG: he was considered an outstanding scientiest; [...] he was a member of the IG managing board of directors. [...] [When asked after the war] if he felt that experiments on human beings were justifiable [,] he argued that ... no harm had been done to these KZ [concentration camp] inmates as they would have been killed anyway." (p.125-26)

'''T-Force''' 
558; "Officially [Chiclitz] is one of the American industrialists out here with the T Force, scouting German engineering, secret weaponry in particular"

'''Thanatz Alpdrucken, Reichssieger von''' 
142; "champion Weimaraner for 1941" in Pointsman's dreams of chase

'''Thanatz, Karel Miklos''' 
461; ["Thanatos" is Greek for "death]; husband of Greta Erdmann; aka Karel [a fairly common Czech name], 461; with Blicero, 464; reading whip scars, 484, 641; "he may have seen the actual firing" 562; with Pole who wants lightening to hit him, 663; 663-73; at homosexual community ("175-Stadt"), 666-67; at Sachsa's seances, 668; kidnapped by anti-Lublinites, 669; sex with Bianca, 670; taken by Schwarzkommando, 671; "he lost Gottfried" 671; "the angel [the Erdschweinhöhlers] have hoped for" 672; 736; "is [Sado-anarchism's] leading theoretician in the Zone these days" 737

'''Thayer's Slippery Elm Throat Lozenges''' 
18; sent to Slothrop in London by Nalline S.; 116; [Thayers.com]

'''theatre''' 
"it's all theatre" 3; "theatrically bitter" 133; "magnificent stone theatre" 148; "theatre nothing but Walter really look at head phony angle" 152; "just down the street from the theatre" 174; "you're in the wrong theatre of operations" 201; "every occupation town in the Theatre" 247; "only elaborate theatre to fool you" 267; "tears which are not all theatre" 302; "Perhaps it's theater" 326; "elaborate piece of theatre" 352; street-theatre, 399; "Mediterranean theatre" 438; "under a theatre marquee whose sentient bulbs may have looked on" 464; "this War. . .was all theatre" 521; "the elaborate theatrical foofooraw of Mob 'n' Masons" 586; "all become theatre" 722; "not without theatre" 743; "above the roof of this old theatre" 760; See also [[A#actors|actors/directors]]; [[F#film|film/cinema references]]; [[K#kingkong|King Kong]]; [[M#movies|movies]]; [[U#ufa|Ufa-theatre]]

'''Theil, Dr. Walter''' 
423; chemical engineer killed in British air-raid on Peenemünde in August 1943; 427

<div id="theophile"></div>'''Theophile''' 
247; [Greek: "god loving"]; friend of Italo's who is trying to smuggle a Sherman tank into Palestine

'''Thermidor''' 
"Thermidor" corresponded to July in the French republican calendar adopted in 1793 during the French Revolution, which dating system was intended to replace the Gregorian calendar with a more rational system devoid of Christian associations. The Gregorian calendar was reestablished by the Napoleonic regime on January 1, 1806; Mexico recalling "the sweaty evenings of" 713

'''Thesean brushings''' 
According to Greek myth, Theseus, the son of King Aegeus of Athens, went to Crete and slew the half-human, half-bull Minotaur, kept by King Minos (son of Zeus and Europa) in his Labyrinth (built by Daedalus). The Athenians had been sending seven youths and seven maidens to Crete each year to be set loose in the Labyrinth and eaten by the Minotaur. This yearly reparation was Minos' revenge for the jealous Athenians having killed Minos' son because of his victory over Athens in athletic games. King Aegeus sent his son Theseus as one of the seven youths in the next year's sacrifice. However, King Minos' daughter Ariadne had fallen in love with Theseus and so provided him with an indestructible clew to unwind as he entered the Labyrinth. He handily slew the Minotaur and was able to exit the Labyrinth; "[Pointsman's] lonely Thesean brushings down his polished corridors of years" 141; See also [[L#labyrinth|labyrinth]]; [[Weaving the Web]]

'''THEY''' 
::Jessica notes a coal-black Packard up a side street, filled with dark-suited civilians. Their white collars rigid in the shadows.

::"Who're they?"

::[Mexico] shrugs: "they" is good enough. "Not a friendly lot." (40)

"'They' embracing possibilities far far beyond Nazi Germany" 25; "They" conversation (Major-General), 33; "(They?)" 72; "he's begun to suspect, darkly, any number of Someones Over Here" 108; "an act of suicide [...] which in its pathology, in its dreamless version of the real, the Empire commits by the thousands every day, completely unaware of what it's doing" 129; "The true king only dies a mock death. [...] Any number of young men may be selected to die in his place while the real king, foxy old bastard, goes on." 131; "death-by-government" 176; 177; 195; "two orders of being" 202; "a clutch mechanism between [Slothrop] and Their iron-cased engine" 207; "Mothers work for Them!" 219; "if there is a life force operating in Nature, still there is nothing so analogous in a bureaucracy. . .It all comes down. . .to the desires of individual men" 228; "All the animals, the plants, the minerals, even other kinds of men, are being broken and reassembled every day, to preserve an elite few, who are the loudest to theorize on freedom, but the least free of all." 230; 285; "They extinguish. . .not remind" 438; no physical locale, 251; "They would not be who or where They are without a touch of Dante to Their notions of reprisal." 350; "They sure must have the budget, all right. Look at this desolation, all built then hammered back into pieces" 374; "a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back, [...] removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: [...] most of the World, animal, vegetable and mineral, is laid waste in the process" 412; "innocence and its many uses" 419; keeping Earth "for the numb and joyless hardons of. . .human elite" 521; "It is possible that They will not die. That it is now within the state of Their art to go on forever" 539; "They need our terror for Their survival" 539; "There's something still on, don't call it a 'war' if it makes you nervous, maybe the deasth rate's gone down a point or two [...] but Their enterprise goes on" 628; "necktie or cock" 637; "Creative paranoia means developing at least as thorough a We-system as a They-system" 638; "They will come and shut off the water first" 694; 697; "Their mission in this world is Bad Shit" 712; "Which is worse: living on as Their pet, or death? 713; "It is our mission to promote death. . .holding down the green uprising." 720; "submission and dominance are resources it needs for its very survival" 737; See also [[E#entropy|entropy/closed systems]]; [[Paranoia in Gravity's Rainbow|paranoia]]; [[Technology in Gravity's Rainbow|Technology]]

'''Things That Can Happen in European Politics''' 
77; Pudding's project which falls victim to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and/or Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem; 275

'''Third Term''' 
270; Franklin D. Roosevelt's third term, 1940-44

'''Throsp, Corydon''' 
5; erected maisonette where Pirate and Bloat live; cultivated pharmaceutical plants on the roof; medieval fantasies, 10

'''Throwster, Aaron''' 
82; colleague of Pointsman's; "ARF's resident neurosurgeon" 113; 146; 227

'''Thuringia''' 
640; central German state in which Nordhausen is located; Thuringian, 240; sands, 306 [MAP]

'''Thyssen, Fritz (1873-1951)''' 
Leading German industrialist was a member of one of the world's wealthiest families and a major financial backer of Adolf Hitler's rise to power. After inheriting his father's fortune and industrial empire, he shrewdly combined the family holdings into a trust (Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG [United Steelworks Co.]) which controlled more than 75 percent of Germany's ore reserve and employed 200,000 workers. Like many German industrial leaders, he worried about the rise of socialism and was an early backer of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. He worked hard to get Hitler elected and was then rewarded by being appointed to the German Economic Council. Because he really only supported the anti-socialist positions of the Nazis, he broke with Hitler and fled to Switzerland when Hitler led Germany into war and began persecuting Jews and Catholics (Thyssen was a Catholic); conspiring with Stinnes and Krupp to ruin the mark, after WWI, 285

'''T.I.''' 
20; Technical Intelligence wing of English army

'''Tiergarten''' 
367; German: "zoo (lit. animal garden); this is the central park in Berlin

'''Tierpark''' 
419; German: "zoological gardens"; at Zwölfkinder

'''time''' 
"He'd seen himself a point on a moving wavefront, propagating through sterile history--a known past, a projectable future" 126; "to keep Grid Time synchronized with Greenwich Mean Time" 133; "spirits from other parts of the veld--for time and space on their side have no meaning, all is together" 153; penetrating the moment, 158; "slices of time growing thinner" 159; "There is the moment, and its possibilities" 159; all at once,165; secular, 169; "the clock ratcheting time minutewise into their past" 193; war reconfiguring, 257; "isolate inside the way time is passing" 303; "the true momentum of his time" 312; "time- modulation peculiar to Oneirine" 389; future/past, 400; "the space and time were Blicero's own" 486; "no serial time over there; events all there in the same eternal moment" 624; "the oneway flow of European time" 724; "herding us through time" 724; "a presence, analogous to the Aether, flows through time" 726; "his time's assembly" 738; "time is a funny thing" 752; See also [[D#deltat|delta-t]]; [[H#history|history]]; [[Too late...|TOO LATE]];

'''Time magazine''' 
463; American weekly "news" magazine

'''Titaniapalast''' 
446; "Across the façade of the" in Berlin

'''Titanic, the''' 
British luxury passenger liner that struck an iceberg and sank on April 14-15, 1912, en route to New York City from Southampton, England, during its maiden voyage. at a point about 400 miles (640 km) south of Newfoundland. Of the 2200 aboard, about 1,515 perished; "And come aboard the Titanic, things'll really be manic/Folks'll panic the second that sunken iceberg is knocked" 462-63

'''Tivoli''' 
121; club in London

'''Togo, Admiral Heihachiro (1848-1934)''' 
Led the Japanese fleet to victory in the Russo-Japanese War in 1863. In a desperate move, the Russians dispatched their Baltic fleet to Japan, meeting Togo's forces on May 27 in the Tsushima Strait, which connects the Sea of Japan with the East China Sea. Togo "crossed the enemy's T"--i.e., he turned his column across the Russian line of advance--and destroyed 33 out of the 35 Russian ships, ending the war; "hand[ed] Rozhdestvenski's ass to him" in the waters between Japan and Korea, 350

'''Toiletship''' 
448; aka Rücksichtslos (German: "inconsiderate" or "ruthless"); Swinemünde to Helgoland, 450; "a wind tunnel's all it is. If tensor analysis is good enough for turbulence, it ought to be good enough for history" 451

'''Tootsie Roll''' 
493: "see the sugar bowl do the Tootsie Roll with the big, bad, Devil's food cake"; [http:/www.tootsie.com/]

'''Tosks and Ghegs''' 
Two distinct Albanian social groups/cultures each with its own dialect and separated geographically by the Shkumbin River with the Ghegs (or Gegs) in the north and the Tosks in the south. The Ghegs were renowned for their independent spirit and fighting abilities, while the Tosks were more of a semifeudal society and more subject to foregin influences due to their southern territories being more accessible to the ouside world. The communist movement drew most of its support from the Tosks, taking over in 1944. Since then, the differences between the two have greatly lessened; 549

'''Tracy, Alfonso''' 
582-83; owned the defective pinball machines; Great Pinball Difficulty, 581

'''Tracy, Mable''' 
582; wife of Alfonso

'''Treacle, Edwin''' 
85; 92; "most Freudian of psychic researchers" in Psi Section of White Visitation; 146; recent dreams of flight, 146; 153; "setting up a practice" 273; "I'll show you a giant ape" 276

'''Tree of Life''' 
"It is not only a sudden white genital onset in the sky--it is also, perhaps, a Tree...." 694; Kabbalist, 747; "Now the Sephiroth fall into a pattern, which is called the" 753; "the Tree itself is a unity, rooted exactly at the Bodenplatte" 753;

'''Trefoil, Gavin''' 
33; can change the melanin content of his skin to change his color; 124; 147; 215; 276

'''tripos''' 
31; a final honors exam at Cambridge university, originally in mathematics

'''Tripping, Geli (pronounced: "Gaily")''' 
290; lover of Tchitcherine; lives in Nordhausen; lover of Slothrop; "pretty young witch straddling an A4" 293; 494; thinks she's a witch, 500; witch ritual, 717; "the World-choosing sort" 718; with Tchitcherine, 733-35; "the young witch" 734

'''Trotha, Gen. Lothar von''' 
362; German who led wholesale slaughter of Hereros in Südwest in 1904; exhibit at Zwölfkinder, 422; 563

'''Trotsky''' 
Trotskyite block, 189; Trotsky a former patron at the Odeon, 262; 338; "some beasrded old unreconstructed geezer of a Trotskyite" 399;

'''Trudi''' 
365; Säure's sidekick; her boyfriend is Gustav, 366; 684-85; Bodine spending more time with, 741

'''Truman, Harry S. (1884-1972)''' 
Succeeding Roosevelt upon his death, Truman was the 33rd president of the United States (1945-53). He moved the U.S. into international confrontation with Soviet and Chinese communism and worked to preserve the New Deal reforms; "'Emil, who's that guy in the glasses?'" 373; "the dapper, bespectacled stranger [...] the face that has silently dissolved in to replace the one Slothrop never saw and now never will" 381; 382; "famous Missouri Mason" 588

'''TsAGI''' 
273; Tsentral'niy Aerogidrondinamicheskiy Institute; "Officially [Tchitcherine] reports to TsAGI, which is the Central Aero and Hydrodynamics Institute in Moscow" 337; 391; 706;

'''Tungsram''' 
647; light bulb manufacturer "in Budapest" that was supposed to have created Byron T.B.

'''Twelfth House''' 
274; new PISCES branch office on Gallaho Mews in London; so named by Webley Silvernail because Pisces is the 12th House in the Zodiac; Pointsman transferred there, 533

'''Typhoid Mary''' 
739; one who spreads a disease

'''typographical errors''' 
"pharnyx" should be "pharynx" 14; "at here at" should be "as here at" 32; "Strobe's" should be "Jamf's" (appears in early Viking editions), 86; "Nichols" should be "Nicholls" 94; "heart-transfer" should be "heat-transfer" 223; "Isle" should be "Ilse" 414; "airpseed" should be "airspeed" 454; "elctro- decor" should be "electro-decor" 518; "Leunahalluziationen" should be "Leunahalluzinationen" 523; "is is" should be "it is" 715; "then" should be "than" 732; "Zundung" should be "Zündung" 758

{{GR Alpha Nav}}