G
G-5
125; Weisenburger quoting A.M. Taylor: "that section of the Army set up to take over local government in lands occupied by invasion forces. Other sections are G-1 personnel, G-2 Intelligence, G-3 Training and Plans, G-4 Supply and Evacuation."; 290; 644;
Galina
339; worked for Tchitcherine in C. Asia; "connoisseuse of silences"; during Tchitcherine's haunting, 705
Gallaho Mews
217; alley in London where PISCES Twelfth House is located; "all-night cinema, around the corner from" 542; Mexico's arrival, 632
Ganister, Herbert
166; English chemist
Gantt, Dr. Horsley
W. Horsley Gantt's Russian Medicine (1937), shows the relation of Pavlov to prominent Russians in medicine; 88
Garmisch
Garmisch-Partenkirchen is a ski resort in the Bavarian Alps in southern Germany where the Allies held and interrogated von Braun, Dornberger and other Peenemünders; 273; 527; Website
gate
552; 40s slang: a swinger, as in a "swinging gate"; 594
Geigy
250; Swiss chemical company which joined Ciba and Sandoz in a cartel in the early '20s
Gemüse-Brücke
261; in Zürich
General Aniline
630; an American subsidiary/licensee of IG
General Electric (GE)
Project Hermes people from, 287; "helmet liners with GE stenciled on" 304; 307; Marvy together with, 326; interlocks, 332; interest in Toiletship, 448; Steve employee of, 449; connections with Siemens, 565; Swope/Business Advisory Council, 581; 654; Joe Kennedy and, 682; 712; [GE Website]
General Forces Programme
592;
General Staff
152; According to Sasuly: "the nerve center of the German Army [and] the ultimate citadel of Junkerdom". It was abolished by the terms of the Versailles Treaty after WWI, but was reorganized as the Ministry of Defense; 401; 630;
GEneRATor
734; an attempt at solving the hangman mystery word Slothrop discovers; but as normally played, every instance of a guessed letter is inserted in the mystery word, so it could not have more than one R or E. More likely just a diluted reference to the S-Gerät.
A flowering plant family with about 400 species; German name is Enzian; is sometimes used as a flavouring, for example in bitters, and the soft drink Moxie which contains "Gentian Root Extractives"; inspiration for Enzian's name, 101; "gentian brandy" 258; "tin Moxie signs gentian and bittersweet as the taste they were there to hustle" 471; "My mountain gentian always knew" 722
George, Lloyd
145; former British Prime Minister; "likeness of [...] in heliotrope and sea-green"; 237
George, Stefan
403; "One of these German mystics who grew up reading"
Georgian
340; Stalin was from Georgia
Gerda and her Fur Boa
451; one of the films on the "hand-cranked peep shows" on the Toiletship, which Achtfaden has watched 178 times; 455;
German Expressionist
"ripples" 513; "pig" 568; See also Metropolis/Metropolis
Germans
"German and precise confidence" 25; "Wuotan and his mad army" 72; the "Führer-principle" 81; "ein Volk, ein Führer" ["one people, one leader"], 131; "another comical German euphemism" 164; "crowded with German-Baroque perplexities of shape" 208; and Control, 238; Slothrop's dreaming in German, 240; "German-scientist mind" 268; "one of these little brightly painted German toys" 282; "You sound like a German [...] Forget subdivisions." 294; humor, 309; Brocken: "the very plexus of German evil" 329; "a wistful German thing with his upper lip" 333; "the Germans wasted their horses" 337; "German dreams of the Tenth-Elegy angel coming" 341; "the same German impulse that once rolled flower-boats through the towns" 361; "'They're deciding how to cut up Germany.' [...] They should call in the Germans, Kerl, we've been doing that for centuries" 370; "improvisation from a German?"--372; "German humor's a fine way to start the morning" 372; New German Architecture, 372; "the profound humility that only a German movie director can summon" 388; mania for subdividing, 391 ("German mania for name-giving, dividing the Creation finer and finer"), 448 ("Toiletship, a triumph of the German mania for subdividing"); "unpatriotic to say that a German ruler could also be a madman" 394; "One of these German mystics [...] ready to accept Hitler on the basis of Demian-metaphysics" 403; "connection between the German mind and the rapid flashing of successive stills to counterfeit movement" 407; Hoard of the Nibelungen, 419; dialectic, 440; analysis of pot, 442; "simple-minded German symphonic arc" 443; "you Germans are crazy, you all think the world's against you" 445; "the primitive German, God's poorest and most panicked creature" 465; "Looks like German movies have warped other outlooks around here too" 474; "A German Odyssey" 486; "'I'll sign a form if you want.' Well, that's Howdy Podner in German." 492; Schadenfreude [joy at another's misfortune], 526, 745; "German toilet jokes" 530; "anxieties about encirclement" 614; "Bodine's laugh [...] has grown more German" 742
Geschwindig, Hansel
651; (German: "swift") - Weimar street urchin who steals Byron the Bulb from the glassblower
Gessner
455; his section at Peenemünde
Ghislaine
183; girl on the beach, along with Françoise and Yvonne, who is a dancer at the Casino Hermann Goering; with Bloat;188-89 (named); 194; 204
Ginger Groupers
615; "jamming [Mossmoon's] switchboard and [...] mailbox day and night"
Gilbert & Sullivan
Composer Sir Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) and librettist W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911) collaboratively developed a distinctive English form of the operetta. The combination of Gilbert's satire and verbal ingenuity and Sullivan's melodiousness and sense of parody created such internationally acclaimed works as H.M.S. Pinafore (1878) and The Pirates of Penzance (1879). Sullivan's dislike of what he considered the artificial nature of Gilbert's plots led to their split; "a blithe, Gilbert & Sullivan ingenue's thewse" 116
Gimbel's
690; New York City department store since the early 1900s, located at 33rd & Broadway. The basement at Gimbel's featured "bargain-basement" buys. The store closed on September 27, 1986.
Giovanni, Don
270; his "map of Europe"
Giovinezza
The anthem of the Italian National Fascist Party; Italian for 'youth'
Glacists
73; "lords of the winter" who can decipher ice
Glass Mountain, the
419; at Zwölfkinder
Glimpf, Prof.
309; German: gentleness; Professor of Mathematics of the Technische Hochschule, Darmstadt; Scientific Advisor to the Allied Military Government
Glitherius Paint & Dye
581; "a Berlin firm" sold to Bland by the Alien Property Custodian
Gloaming, Milton
31; [gloaming = twilight]; friend of Roger Mexico; word-counting project in Psi Section of SOE, developing vocabulary of curves, 32; 629; "just back from a jaunt through the Zone" 630; 638
Gloob, Lady Mnemosyne
716; at Krupp party
Gloucester
52; Pointsman's springer spaniel
Gloucestershire Old Spots
82; pigs
Gnahb, Otto
492; aka "the silent Otto"; son of Frau Gnahb
Gnahb, Frau
492; "Queen of the coastal trade" runs black market along Baltic coast; 602; 623; [poss. etymology: "Gnahb" spelled backwards--bear with me here--is "bhang" the drink made from flowering tops of the marijuana plant, cannabis sativa]; See also Wilhelm Busch
Gnosticism
"the Director's clever Gnostic symbolism in the lighting scheme of the two shadows, Cain's and Abel's" 429; "heretics there will be: Gnostics who have been taken in a rush of wind and fire to chambers of the Rocket-throne" 727; "'That's why you see Gnostics so hunted. The sacrament of the Eucharist is really drinking the blood of the enemy. The Grail, the Sangraal, is the bloody vehicle.'" 739; "The Tower. [...] Others see a Gnostic or Cathar symbol for the Church of Rome" 747
Gobbitch, Bartley
9; at Pirate's maisonette
God
"God has plucked [the rocket] for him, out of its airless sky, like a steel banana" 8; "wasted gods urging on a tardy glacier" 9; "Putting control inside was ratifying what de facto had happened--that you had dispensed with God." 30; "every true god must be both organizer and destroyer" 99; "tried to cage his old gods, snare them in words" 99; Dodoes "so ugly as to embody argument against a Godly creation" 110; "For as much as [Dodoes] are the creatures of God, and have the gift of rational discourse" 111; "God could not be that cruel" 111; "when the land was still free [...] and the presence of the Creator much more direct" 214; "the numinous certainty of" 242; "his own WASPs in buckled black, who heard God clamoring to them in every turn of a leaf" 281; "multitudes passed over by God and History" 299; "Ndjambi Karunga and the Christian God were too far away. There was no difference between the behavior of a good and the operations of pure chance" 323; "Using a non-Arabic alphabet is felt to be a sin against" 354; "Will of God Theory" 362; "God's indifferent sunlight in all its bleaching and terror" 364; "Each plot carries its signature. Some are God's, some masquerade as God's" 464; "God's poorest and most panicked creature" 465; canine theology of "the remembered image of one human" 614; "God is who knows their number. Atropos is who severs them to different lengths. So, God under the aspet of Atropos, she who cannot be turned" 643; "Procalowski-down-out-of-the sky-in-a-machine" 672; "God, death, nothingness, redemption, salvation" 693; "What are the stars but points in the body of God where we insert the healing needles of our terror and longing?" 699; "Wimpe: 'I mean theophosphate, Vaslav,' indicating the Presence of God" 702; "God's spoilers. [...] It is our mission to promote death." 720; "By all the holy names of God" 734; "The Ravens of Death have now tasted of the Poison of God" 748; "'God sent out a pulse of energy into the void. [...] To return to God, the soul must negotiate each of the Sephiroth, from ten back to one." 753; "the Tree of Life. It is also the body of God" 753; See also Christianity; Mythology; Theophile
Gödel's Theorem
275; According to Hofstadter (p.17): "appears as Proposition VI in [Kurt Gödel's] 1931 paper 'On Formally Undecidable Propositions in Principia Mathematica and Related Systems I.' It states: [...] All consistent axiomatic formulations of number theory include undecidable propositions."; 320; See also Murphy's Law
Goebbels, Josef Paul (1897-1945)
287; Chief propagandist of the Nazi Party and Nazi Propaganda Minister; "less than giddy imagination reaching no further than Alpine Redoubts"; saw von Göll's Good Society three times, 394; footage of Erdmann's ravishing "found its way into [his] collection" 461; "believed in the Rocket as an avenger" 747;
Goetzke, Bernhardt
579; Actually 'Bernhard' Goetzke (1884-1964). German actor born in Danzig; played State Prosecutor von Wenk in Dr. Mabuse, and "tender, wistful bureaucratic Death in Der Müde Tod"; "bourgeois Goetzkian death" 579;
Going My Way
38; A 1944 film directed by Leo McCarey. It is a light-hearted musical comedy/drama about a new young priest (Bing Crosby) taking over a parish from an established old veteran (Barry Fitzgerald). Crosby sings five songs in the film. It was followed the next year by a sequel, The Bells of St. Mary's. This picture was the highest-grossing picture of 1944, and its success helped to make movie exhibitors choose Crosby as the biggest box-office draw of the year, a record he would hold for the remainder of the 1940s.
Gold Star
134; "your mother hoping to hang that"; The group American Gold Star Mothers was formed after WWI. The name derives from the custom of families of servicemen hanging a banner called a Service Flag in their front window. It had a star for each family member in the military. Living servicemen were represented by a blue star, and those who had lost their lives were represented by a gold star.
golf
See lawn sports
112; [Italian: "vongole" = "clams"] German filmmaker; making Schwarzkommando movie, 112-13; "commerce has not taken away von Göll's Touch" 112 (see also: Göllerei, 429); and Trefoil, 147; can be found "on the Strand-Promenade" 294; aka Der Springer--film director turned black-marketeer, 385; Martin Fierro film, 386; used "Emulsion J" which made the outer layer of skin translucent ["When something real is about to happen to you, you go toward it with a transparent surface parallel to your own front [. . .]" (p.754)], 387; thinks he brought Schwarzkommando into being, 388; Alpdrucken featured lighting from top and bottom (Gnostic symbolism - Cain & Abel [429]), 394; corridor metaphysics, 394; "About 50, bleak and neutral-colored eyes, hair thick at the sides of his head and brushed back" 494; no- show at Putzi's, 610; also made The Good Society; 611; "his corporate octopus wrapping every last negotiable item in the Zone" 611; floor movie at Der Platz (New Dope), 745; 750; See also Springer, Der
Gollin, Mr. Geoffrey
240; chief assistant to Isaac Lubbock and the person Hilary Bounce reports to; Tölölyan reports that Gollin was a British intelligence officer whom the Russians allowed to search Blizna after it was liberated. There he actually found rocket documents in the SS latrines; they had apparently tried to flush them down the toilets during their hasty retreat.
Gomerians
La Gomera is the most westward of the Canary Islands, off the coast of North Africa. Until Columbus "discovered" the New World, it was the westernmost land known to the Europeans. The inhabitants of the deep valleys used to communicate with each other in a whistling language, comparable to the "yodeling" in Central European Alps. Barbara Kingsolver has written about La Gomera; "whistling from the high ravines" 453; "Gomera was the last piece of land Columbus touched before America" 453; See also Chipuda
Gondwanaland
321; the super-continent that was the Americas and Europe, "before the continents drifted apart"; 388
Gongue, Jean-Claude
246; "notorious white slaver of Marseilles" at de la Perlimpinpin party
Gongylakis
544; someone Pirate "had to betray" "in the course of business for the Firm" (recalled at Double Agent Convention)
Gorr, Dr.
630; ran Vermittlungsstelle W with Dr. Dieckmann
Goths
Goths: These Germanic people originated in southern Scandinavia and crossed in three ships under their king Berig to the southern shore of the Baltic Sea, where they settled after defeating the Vandals and other Germanic peoples in that area; 206
Gottfried
94-99; "ranked with his battery near Schußstelle 3" 95; with Katje and Blicero, 101-04; his perspective, 102-04; "Who was that, going by just then--who was the slender boy who flickered across her path, so blond, so white he was nearly invisible in the hot haze that had come to settle over Zwölfkinder? Did she see him, and did she know him for her own second shadow?" 429; German: "God's peace" 465; "the young pet and protege of Captain Blicero" 484; mapped on to Bianca, 484, 672, 723 (Gottfried to Blicero: "I remember that you used to whisper me to sleep with stories of us one day living on the moon"); "something was being planned" for, 485; "a load inside near vane 3 that complicated roll and yaw control almost impossibly" 564; and Thanatz, 670-71; 721; mapped onto Ilse (via Moon references), 723; his launch, 750; [Etymological Musings]
Gould, Jay (1836-1892)
Gould's reputation as one of the leading robber barons of his era was assured by his actions as a director of the Erie Railroad. In 1869, he worked with allies James Fisk and Daniel Drew to combat Cornelius Vanderbilt 's acquisition of the railroad in the infamous Erie War. Gould used every underhanded trick, from bribing public officials to massively watering stock. Later in 1869, Gould and his partners attempted to corner the gold market, but their scheme fell apart on Black Friday . The public was enraged and thousands of investors were ruined. In 1872, following Fisk's death, Gould was forced out as a director of the Erie [From U-S-History.com]; "what Jubilee Jim Fisk told the Congressional committee investigating his and Jay Gould's scheme to corner gold in 1869," 438
Goya
657; "even Goya couldn't draw ya"
Grafty Green
127; village in Kent, south of London
Graham, "Micro"
295; gives secret tours of the Mittelwerk during US occupation. A pun on 'microgram'.
Grant, Cary (1904-1986)
British-American actor, born Archibald Alexander Leach. With his distinctive yet not quite placeable Mid-Atlantic accent, he was noted as perhaps the foremost exemplar of the debonair leading man: handsome, virile, charismatic and charming. He was named the second Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute. "no Cary Grant larking in" 13; referring to Slothrop's faux British accent: "it keeps coming out like Cary Grant" 240; "best Cary Grant imitation" 292; "Ge-li, Ge-li, Ge-li" see note 294.11; "just as smooth as that Cary Grant" 661; 684
Graves Registration
643; "back there in Wisconsin"
gravity
Gravity's Rainbow - what is it? "violated gravity somehow" 65; "sigh of gravity" 296; "Gravity's grey eminence" 302; "the young scientist-surrogate will be going round and round with old Gravity" 361; "she wants to lose her gravity" 538; "always at the mercy of" 584; "caught in her gravitation" 546; "To find that gravity [...] is really something eerie" 590; "I am Gravity" 639; "generations of gravities" 672; "Center of Gravity" 700; "nothing but his asshole between Gravity and Roger" 709; "Gravity rules" 723; "modest preview of gravitational collapse" 737; "a wine rush is defying" 743; "gravity feed" 758; "Gravity dies away briefly" 759
Great Aspinwall Hotel Fire
- "In 1931, the year of the Great Aspinwall Hotel Fire, young Tyrone was visiting his aunt and uncle in Lenox. [...] The embers fell on and on for five hours [...]" 28-29
Great War, the
476; aka World War I
Green Reports
630; "flapping through the IG for weeks" after Bland's last transmural journey
Greenteeth, Jenny
147; The green hag of Lancashire. Jenny is an evil spirit who haunts stagnant pools in Lancashire. She preys on children who wander too close to the water, grabbing them in her long green fangs and pulling them underwater to drown. She can be found in any pool or pond which is covered in green scum. Obviously, she's invoked to keep the kids away from the water. [IMAGE]
Greifswalder Oie
404; small island off Usedom converted into a rocket launching site; 414; Greifswald, 681, 692
Gretchens
"Quit Kvetchin', Gretchen!" 289; participating in "roasting" of Mexico, 714; See also Slothrop's girls/stars
Grid
"a glittering map. . .ruled off into 576 squares" 55; sieves, 56; "crosshatchings of his black rubber soles" 70; "corporate lattice" 75; "Dutch grid's 380 volts" 101; "to keep Grid Time synchronized with Greenwich Mean Time" 133; "the Grid runs inching ever faster" 134; "Quisling molecules have shifted in latticelike ways" 176; "back in France's power grid" 190; "Forget subdivisions" 294; 400; ego as grid, 404; "the holy grid" 404; "screen door salesman" 447; the Iron Toad "hooked up to the European Grid" 604; Byron's "many agents in the Grid" 649; "when folklore comes flickering in from other parts of the Grid" 650; "a sin against the" 652; "noticed a fall-off in revenues" 654; "the Grid is wide open, all messages can be heard" 655; "the Grid's big function in this System is iceboxery" 678; "along the grooves of the Raketen-Stadt's street-grid" 674; See also chess; routinization/rationalization of charisma
Grigori
51; aka Grischa (diminutive of Grigori); octopus conditioned by Pointsman to abduct Katje in order to get at Slothrop; "unconditioned response to prey is very reliable" 52; shown movie of Katje, 113; attacks Katje, 186; Waxwing sez it never happened, 248; 533; octopus as metaphor, 611; 662; See also City Dactylic; octopus
Grimm, the Brothers
74; Brothers Jacob Grimm (1785-1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786-1859) are known for their collections of folk songs and folktales, especially Kinder- und Hausmärchen ("Child and Family Fairy Tales," aka "Grimm's Fairy Tales") (1812-22), which formed a foundation for the science of comparative folklore. Apparently, Jacob Grimm's large work Teutonic Mythology provided source material for Gravity's Rainbow.
Groast, Dr. (the elder)
147; Rollo's father, in Lancashire
Groast, Dr. Rollo
34; works in ARF wing; 79; 85; 147; "assumed back into the Society for Psychical Research" 273; with Greta, 474
Gross Suckling Conference
706; attended by Eventyr, Gwinhidwy, Mexico, Morituri - discuss mandalas in relation to rocket firings
Grosser Stern
365; German: "Great Star"; This is a traffic circle in the middle of the Tiergarten (zoo) in Berlin; near where Slothrop is "orbiting" 365
Grössli Chemical Corporation
250; became Psychochemie AG; spinoff from Sandoz; 284; 286
Grunt-Gobbinette, Sir Hannibal
716-17; at Krupp party
Grunton, Myron
74; worked for BBC; instrumental in creating Operation Black Wing; works at White Visitation; 92; 112; 227; "again a full-time wireless personality" 273
Guardian, the
293; The Manchester Guardian (now The Guardian) is (according to Evan Corcoran) the farthest left-wing of the major English papers, though it is traditionally the centrist Liberals' and teachers' newspaper. At the time also the only major English paper not based in London; the paper that Ian Scuffling allegedly works for. Weisenburger to the contrary, it is a daily paper.
Guinan, Texas (1884-1933)
657; This colorful divorcee ran one ofthe most notorious and outrageous speakeasies in Manhattan in the 1920s. By 1928, four of her roving clubs had been raided and closed, but a fifth was going strong. Perched on top of a piano, Guinan held court and let fly with bawdy anecdotes, and emceed performances by singers and dancers from 11 p.m. until 7 a.m. "Curfew shall not ring tonight!" was her rallying cry. She greeted her patrons with the shriek of a police whistle and a derisive, "Hello, Suckers!" Mae West was a fan of hers and incorporated much of Guinan's style and material into her own act (though she never acknowledged the contribution). Phyllis Diller played her in the 1961 film, Splendor in the Grass. After her club was finally shut down in 1929 she took a troupe of dancing girls to Paris. When French officials in the U.S. tried to block her departure, there was a popular outcry in Paris in her support, to which she responded "Fifty million Frenchmen can't be wrong." The Paris stint was unsuccessful.
Gülcher Thermosäule
518; Gülcher Thermostat
Gustav
See Schlabone, Gustav
Guthrie, Tyrone (1900-71)
148; British theatrical producer and administrator of the Old Vic and Sadler's Wells between 1939 and 1945.
Gutiérrez, Ricky
249; involved in Zoot Suit Riots of 1943 in Los Angeles
Gwenhidwy, Thomas
52; at White Visitation; one of the keepers of The Book; "inside his fluffy beard" 139; singing "Diadem" at fighter runways,169; at Pirate's, singing, 639; 706. In Welsh mythology, Gwenhidwy is a beautiful mermaid bringing luck to fishermen.
Gymanfa Ganu
171; Welsh: songfest; these group-singing events are still held throughout Wales. Pronounced (approximately) 'goumanva gani'.
