C
Caesar, Gaius Julius (100 or 102-44 BC)
136; Roman general and statesman Caesar, after numerous military victories, was named "Father of his Country" and was made dictator for life, which glorious life (he was declared sacred, had the month of Quintilis renamed after him, statues in his likeness were placed in temples, &c.) ended when he was assassinated on the Ides of March by a group led by Brutus and Cassius who believed he was too powerful and wished to restore republican freedom. Unfortunately, the assassination engendered chaos in the Roman world which led to its eventual collapse; 164; "sacrifice has become a political act, an act of Caesar" 749;
Cafe l'Eclipse
266; in Geneva, where Slothrop is to meet his Argentinian contact; Slothrop finds the message he received there in his pocket, 681
567; 572; Calculus is an important branch of mathematics. The word stems from the ancient Greeks' use of pebbles arranged in patterns to study arithmetic and geometry. The Latin word for "pebble" is "calculus." Two complementary disciplines comprise calculus, both of which rely on the concept of a limit. The first is differential calculus, which is concerned with the instantaneous, as opposed to average, rate of change of a quantity. This can be illustrated by the slope of a function's graph at a particular point. The second is integral calculus, which studies the accumulation of infinitely small quantities, summing to areas under a curve, linear distance travelled, or volume displaced. These two processes act inversely to each other, as shown by the fundamental theorem of calculus. See also delta-q; delta-t; Wikipedia entry
Calkins, Minnie
665; Mason who married screen-door salesman
Camerons officers
30;
Cap, the
181; near Casino Hermann Goering on the Riviera; 185; where Raoul de la Perlimpinpin's residence is located, 243;
Captain Midnight Show
Enormously popular U.S. radio show of the 1930s and 40s, sponsored by Ovaltine; Capt. Midnight Homepage; Wikipedia entry; 375
Carnegie, Dale (1888-1955)
77; Pioneer in public speaking and personality development. He became famous by showing others how to become successful. His book How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936) has sold more than 10 million copies and has been translated into many languages. His books became popular because of his illustrative stories and simple, well-phrased rules. Two of his most famous maxims are, "Believe that you will succeed, and you will," and "Learn to love, respect and enjoy other people."
Carothers, Wallace Hume (1896-1937)
American industrial chemist who discovered nylon. While working for Du Pont, he developed the first successful synthetic rubber, Neoprene, then nylon. He committed suicide and the nylon patent was given to Du Pont; "famous employee" of du Pont, known as "The Great Synthesist" 249; "the classic study of large molecules being carried on by" 348;
Cartesian
of or relating to French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes (1596-1650) or his philosophy. In his vision of 1619, he conceived a reconstruction of the whole of philosophy, and of knowledge, into a unified system of certain truth modelled on mathematics and supported by a rigorous rationalism; "the Cartesian x and y of the laboratory" 400
cartoon characters
See comicbook/cartoon/fictional characters
Caserne Martier
246; stockade from which Waxwing escaped
Casino Hermann Goering
181; casino on French Riviera where Slothrop is sent; Himmler-Spielsaal gaming room; 3 girls: Ghislaine, Francois & Yvonne, 183, 187; 491; 656; 659; See also Forbidden Wing
Castle Walk
60; dance in Slothrop's Sodium Amytal session
Cathar
With roots in primitive Christianity, the Cathars declared themselves the heirs of a tradition that was older than that held by the Church of Rome--and, by implication, both less contaminated and nearer in spirit to the Apostolic tradition. They claimed to be the only persons who had kept and cherished the Holy Spirit which Christ had bestowed upon His Church, a claim that was at least partially justified; "a commercial full of Cathar horror at the practice of imprisoning souls in the bodies of newborns" 732; Cathar Homepage
Catherine the Great (1729-96)
Born in Stettin, she married Grand Duke Peter, an heir to Russian throne, and when Peter was dethroned several days after ascending to the throne, she was empress of Russia. She was known for her libertine ways and Russia thrived under her reign; "Horse-fucking" Catherine, ermined and brilliant" with whom Tchitcherine had an affair, 343; carbon called "the Great Catherine of the periodic table" because of its myriad possibilities for bonding, 344; "Did Prince Potemkin's fake villages survive Catherine's royal progress?" 388;
"these things explode first, a-and then you hear them coming in" 23; "'The illusion of control. That A could do B. But that was false. [...] Things only happen, A and B are unreal, are names for parts that ought to be inseparable....'" 30; "in his play [Mexico] wrecks the elegant rooms of history, threatens the idea of cause and effect itself." 56; "No effect without cause, and a clear train of linkages" 89; "'there's a feeling about that cause-and-effect may have been taken as far as it will go [...] The next great breakthrough may come when we have the courage to junk cause-and-effect, entirely, and strike off at some other angle'" 89; "I have only [...] what appears to be a reversal of cause-and-effect. I'm not as ready as you to junk cause-and-effect" 90; "She came twice before cock was ever officially put inside cunt, and this is important to both of them though neither has figured out why" 120; "Each firebloom, followed by blast then by sound of arrival, is a mockery [...] of the reversible process" 139; "When one event happens after another with this awful regularity, of course you don't automatically assume that it's cause-and-effect" 144; "'You're the cause-and-effect man,' she cried. How did he connect together the fragments he saw while his eyes were open? He was the cause-and-effect man" 159; "Parallel, not series. Metaphor. Signs and symptoms. Mapping on to different coordinate systems." 159; "Liebig to August Wilhelm von Hofmann, to Herbert Ganister to Laszlo Jamf, a direct chain, cause-and-effect" 161; "All talk of cause and effect is secular history, and secular history is a diversionary tactic." 167; "some promise of events without cause" 253; "Freud [...] facing a similar violation of probability--all those Papi has-raped-me stories" 272; "his wife bitched at Pökler for dozing off, ridiculed his engineer's devotion to cause-and-effect" 579; Karmic Hammer, 644; Karmic wheel, 651; "You will want cause and effect. All right." 663; "he'll be left only with Cause and Effect, and the rest of his sterile armamentarium" 752;See also history; time
Cavendish Laboratory
15; This Cambridge University physics laboratory was founded in 1874 and named for physicist Henry Cavendish (1731-1810). In 1953, Scottish scientists Francis Crick and James Watson, while researchers here, identified the double-helix structure of DNA.
CBI
132; China-Burma-India theatre of WWII; 370; "a connection from the CBI theatre with close to a ton of bhang" 594;
Center
"In ordinary times [...] the center always wins [...] Decentralizing, back towards anarchism, needs extraordinary times" 264-65; "hidden centers" 302; "imaginary centers" 302; and the Hereros, 319; "centripedal movement" 440; Holy-Center- Approaching (Zonal pastime), 508; 509; fleeing the, 519; "in the center, here, Hauptstufe" 563; "holy center" 590; Returning to the Center, 757; See also Cycle of Return; mandala
Central Electricity Board
133;
CG
455: center of gravity
Chapter 81 work
626;
Charles
19; "the homosexual constable"
Charles
448-49; writing down "observations of the passing scene" on the Toiletship
Charlottesville shoat
61; dance in Slothrop's Sodium Amytal session
Chebychev's Theorem
638; In probability theory, Chebyshev's inequality (also known as Tchebysheff's inequality, Chebyshev's theorem, or the Bienaymé-Chebyshev inequality), named after Pafnuty Chebyshev, who first proved it, states that in any data sample or probability distribution, nearly all the values are close to the mean value, and provides a quantitative description of "nearly all" and "close to". For example, no more than 1/4 of the values are more than 2 standard deviations away from the mean, no more than 1/9 are more than 3 standard deviations away, no more than 1/25 are more than 5 standard deviations away, and so on; Wikipedia entry
Chemical Foundation
581; Alien Property Custodian, through C.F., "sold Bland a few of Laszlo Jamf's early patents"
Chemnyco of New York
According to Sasuly, Chemnyco was a special organization set up in New York by the IG "to siphon out technical data of military importance. [...] Officially, Chemnyco was known as a 'technical service' agency. Its sole client was IG Farben. [...] When U.S. government agents came to seize the files of Chemnyco, shortly after Pearl Harbor, they found Rudolph Ilgner in the process of destroying what he evidently considered his most important papers." (pp.101-03); Wimpe was reassigned there "shortly after Hitler became Chancellor" 349; 630
Cherrycoke, Ronald
125; psychometrist in Psi Section; 146; "undertakes. . .trips into Nora Dodson-Truck's void, " 150; "in a Jesus Christ getup" 639
"the profile of a chess knight" 12; "The raggedy pawns, the disgraced bish-op and cowardly knight" 173; "Dodson-Truck is a chess fanatic" 211; "do you good to get outta that chess rut" 212; on Waxwing's card, 248; "parkbench chessplayer's gaze" 254; Wimpe's analogy: "'Think of chess [...] an extravagant game of chess.[...] The queen, "the Great Catherine of the periodic table," down to the little hydrogens numerous and single-moving as pawns'" 344; chessboard of the Zone, 376; Knight, 401; 405; Weissmann & Ilse playing, 408; "present a pawn, withdraw the queen" 417; "that board and pieces and patterns. . .did come clear for him" 421; "the flesh of pieces moved in darkness and winter across the marshes and mountain chains of the board" 422; moving rookwise, 472; the Castle, 486; "knowing that Queen, Bishop and King are only splendid cripples, and pawns, even those that reach the final row, are condemned to creep in two dimensions, and no Tower will either rise or descent" 494; "knight for a bishop" 563; "the bishopwise seat behind Pirate" 575; Slothrop & Pökler playing, 576; "Slothrop flashes his white plastic knight" 602; Mravenko: "the most maniacal, systemless chess player in Central Asia" 611; "there'd always be the bit of mystery to her. Because of what he is, because of directions he can't move in" 620; (metaphorically) "The Row is enlightenment" 621; "He's a digital companion all right, everything gets either a yes or a no, and two-tone checkerboards of odd shape and texture indeed bloom in the rainy night" 663; "chess knights. . .invisible in the air" 655; Läufer (chess bishop), 666, 683; "Your objective is not the King--there is no King--but momentary targets such as the Radiant Hour" 674; Marcel: "a mechanical chess-player dating back to the Second Empire" 675; "where inside Marcel is the midget Grandmaster, the little Johann Allgeier?" 675; Marcel's "request for omnidirectional top-speed clearance" 678; See also Allgeier, Johann; Allgeyer soldiers; Grid; [Check out: Borges' - "The Game of Chess" in Dreamtigers (1964)]
Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975)
Chinese general who, by 1928, had unified China by military means. He resisted the infiltration of communism, but his government collapsed in 1948 when the communists took over. He retreated to Taiwan where he set up a government in exile which was recognized by the West over Mao's People's Republic of China; caricature of on Toiletship, 450
Chicago Bar
367; Berlin bar where Säure Bummer hangs out; 373; 435; 517; Springer and Narrish ambushed, 527; 739
558-62; "about as fat as Marvy and wears hornrimmed glasses, and the top of his head's as shiny as his face"; American industrialist with T-Force scouting German engineering (esp. secret weaponry); owns a toy factory in Nutley, NJ; he's running a fur operation, employing 30 kids whom he eventually wants to take to Hollywood to be movie stars; ["Chicklets" is a candy-coated chewing gum that's been around forever] Chiclitz also appears in Pynchon's [http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?C#chiclitz V..
Chiclitz, Mrs.
558; mother of Clayton
Chilkes, Maudie
78; works at PISCES; 141; seduces Pointsman, 168-69
Chinesische Blätter für Wissenschaft und Kunst
454; German: Chinese Journal for Science and Art; book Fahringer left behind when taken from Peenemünde by SS
Chipuda
Chipude is a village on La Gomera in the Canary Islands off the west coast of North Africa. The inhabitants of the valleys used to communicate with each other in a whistling language, comparable to the "yodeling" in the Central European Alps; "Ur-Spanish, whistled not voiced, from the mountains around Chipuda" 453
Chiquita Banana
678; "sez we shouldn't" put bananas in the refrigerator; [Chiquita Website]
chi-square calculations
40; A chi-squared distribution is, according to the Cambridge Dictionary of Science and Technology, "the distribution of many quadratic forms in statistics, often encountered as the distribution of the sample variance and of a statistic measuring the agreement of a set of empirically observed frequences with theoretically derived frequences. The central chi-squared distribution is indexed by one parameter, the degrees of freedom" (p. 155)
Chlordine
463; substance Erdmann abuses
Choate boys
194; "red-dogging [...] each with the instincts and mass of a killer rhino"
Christian
318; Herero comrade of Enzian's and brother of Maria; 518; dream of Maria, 673; 728; 730
See Judeo-Christian
Chu Piang
339; "comical Chinese swamper" and "Chinese factotum in the red dzurt" 346; addicted to "the tears of the poppy" 347
Churchill, Sir Winston L.S.(1874-1965)
251; British statesman who rose through the ranks of British politics, assuming leadership with a Coalition government in May 1940 when Neville Chamberlain stepped down under criticism for his military failures. He was defeated in the July 1945 elections and became a vocal leader of the opposition; 373; 382; caricature of on Toiletship, 450; Beaver's pipe "a reproduction in brier of Winston Churchill's head for a bowl, no detail is spared, even a cigar in its mouth" 708;
333; at Nordhausen; See also "Basher" St. Blaise; Wikipedia entry
CIA
163; Chemical Instrumentality for the Abnormal; Committee on Idiopathic Archetypes, 625; Committee on Incandescent Anomalies, 650; Commissariat for Intelligence Activities, 700
Ciba
250; Swiss chemical company which joined Geigy and Sandoz in a cartel in the early '20s
CIC
560; All-Soviet Trade Union Council
CIOS
391; Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee, of which SPOG was a subsidiary
Circassians
549; Circassians are a Caucasian people who speak a northwest Caucasian language, Kabardian language. Comprising roughly the northwestern region of the Caucasus, Caucasia has since ancient times had the exotic reputation common to lands occupying a crucial area between rival empires.
"The city he visits now is Death's antechamber: where all the paperwork's done" 40; "this frost and harrowed city" 49; "that Mother City mapped wherever the enterprise is systematic death" 76; "outward from the sheltering city" 89; "the royal city" 95; "dangers he can't bring himself to name even in cities" 100; "up in the city the arc-lights crackle" 134; City Paranoiac, 172-73; "what if the Ci-ty were a growing neo-plasm, across the centuries, always chang-ing, to meet exactly the chang ing shape of its very worst, se-cret fears?" 173; Metropolis, 285, 315, 317 ("no harm done to the Metropolis, nothing to soil those cathedrals, white marble statues, noble thoughts"); "urban fantods" 303; "Trolls and dryads [...] blasted [...] out of bridges, out of trees into liberation, and are now long citified" 367; "City Sacramental, the city as outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual illness or health" 372; Ant City, 399; "Nordhausen, a city of elves producing toy moon-rockets" 431; "Leaving Slothrop in his city-reflexes and Harvard crew sox" 472; "it was Europe, it was the smoky, citied fear of death" 477; "mechanical cities [...] with crackling-tower and obsidian helix" 482; "the sacrificial city" 484; "the ruin of a great city" 485; "Metropolis [...] a corporate City state where technology was the source of power, the engineer worked closely with the administrator, the masses labored unseen far underground, and ultimate power lay with a single leader at the top" 578; "Metropolitan inventor Rothwang" 579; "that's a heap better than the city, son, there you just move from crisis to crisis" 644; "a giant factory-state here, a City of the Future" 674; "Golden clouds [...] I think they're pieces of the Heavenly City falling down" 682; "Nordhausen felt like a city in a myth, under the threat of some special destruction" 718; "[Europe] has learned empire from its old metropolis." 722; Hexes-Stadt [...] has turned into just another capital" 718; Carbon City, Illinois, 735; See also City Dactylic; Metropolis; Raketen Stadt
City Dactylic566; (dactylic: pertaining to a finger); "the city of the future where every soul is known, and there is noplace to hide"; See also cities; octopus
Claude
253; "the assistant chef " who stands in for Slothrop to facilitate his "escape" to Nice
Clausewitz, Carl von(1780-1831)
182; Prussian general whose writings, especially On War, advocated the concept of total war, in which all the enemy's territory, property, and citizens are attacked; Clausewitz & Pynchon
Club Oogabooga
675; "where Beacon Street aristocracy rubs elbows ev'ry night with Roxbury winos 'n' dopefiends"
Codreanu
Threatened on the west by Germany and on the east by Russia, Romania was in a perpetual state of instability. In the early 1930s, it was hit by the Great Depression which profoundly affected the country. Workers' strikes were fiercely suppressed, giving rise to a strong Rumanian Communist Party and, concurrently, an extreme rightist movement. Corneliu Zelea Codreanu's anti-semitic, ultra-nationalistic League of the Archangel Michael (formed in 1927), known to the foreign press as "The Iron Guard" and based in Iasi, gained increasing popularity. Patterning the League after the Nazis, Codreanu declared himself the mortal enemy of democracy and the Jews. The Iron Guard practiced a political gangsterism, terrorizing the populace. They murdered Prime Minister Jon Duca, head of the Liberal Party, as well as the historian Nicolas Jorga. Their political wing, Totul Pentru Tara ("Everything for the Fatherland") had success in the 1937 elections and enacted anti-Jewish legislation. Caught in the middle of the Soviet-leaning Communists and the Nazi-leaning League/Iron Guard, King Carol II finally established a de facto dictatorship and ordered the assassination of Codreanu; during the night of November 29-30, 1938, Codreanu and thirteen Legionnaires were strangled to death. Many other Legionnaires were arrested and imprisoned; "No, they are making believe to be narodnik, but I know, they are of Iasi, of Codreanu, his men, men of the League, they ... kill for him — they have oath!"11
color
Color coding plays a significant role in Gravity's Rainbow. Check out this excerpt from an essay by N. Katherine Hayles and Mary B. Eiser in Pynchon Notes, entitled "Coloring Gravity's Rainbow."
Columbus, Chritopher (1451-1506)
453; Genoese explorer who was the first European to discover, in 1492, the country now called America; "Gomera was the last piece of land Columbus touched before America"
"his batman, a Corporal Wayne" [Batman's "real-world" identity was Bruce Wayne], 11; comicbook fangs, 21; Sir Denis Nayland Smith, 83, 277-78, 592, 631, 751; Hop Harrigan, Tank Tinker, 117; "old-fashioned comical room" 122; Dumbo, 135; Donald Duck, 146; Hansel and Gretel, 174; "comic-book colors" 186; "paint FUCK YOU in a balloon coming out the mouth of one of those little pink shepherdesses" 203; Plasticman, 206, 314, 331, 752; "he passes into a bickering of canary-yellow Borsalini, corksoled comicbook shoes with enormous round toes" 254; "this cartoon here" 263; "a Sunday-funnies dawn" 295; Rocketman, 366, 376, 379, 436, 512, 596; Captain Midnight Show, 375; Green Hornet, 376; "the only beings who can violate their space are safely caught and paralyzed in comic books" 379; Mickey Mouse, 392; Sundial, 472; Wilhelm Busch (cartoonist), 501; Porky Pig, 545; "comic technocracy" 579; "comic-book cats dogs and mice" 586; Bugs Bunny, 592; "comicbook-orange chunks of island" 634; Porky Pig tattoo, 638 (on Osbie Feel's stomach), 711 (on André Omnopon's stomach); Robin Hood, 664; Mary Marvel, Wonder Woman, 676; comic-book Kamikazes, 680; "down comes a comic-book guillotine on one black & white politician" 687; Crime Does Not Pay, 709; Superman, 751; The Lone Ranger & Tonto, 752; Philip Marlowe, 752; Submariner, 752; Jimmy Olson, 752; See also Byron the Bulb; Floundering Four; Komical Kamikazes; Plasticman; film/cinema references
compline
134; seventh and last of the canonical hours
connectedness
See paranoia/connectedness
Control
30; illusion of, 30; "We, are in control. He, cannot help, himself" 82; Pointsman "must never lose control" 144; "all in his life of what has looked free or random, is discovered to've been under some Control, all the time, the same as a fixed roulette wheel" 209; Cybernetic tradition, 238; 277; 387; of Ilse, of love, 414; 415; "innocence and its many uses" in a corporate State, 419; "'She's supposed to be dead." [...] "'W-well you're supposed to be a movie director.'" " "'Same thing.' [...] 'Same problems of control.'" 494;"Once the technical means of control have reached a certain size, a certain degree of being connected one to another, the chances for freedom are over for good." 539; 581; Central Control (in Raketen-Stadt), 678; See also cause and effect; Routinization/Rationalization of Charisma; They
Coolidge, Calvin (1872-1933)
389; 30th president of the United States and two-termer Republican whose terms were marked by economic prosperity
Correa, María Antonia
612; "According to Argentine legend from the last century [she] followed her lover into [La Rioja], carrying their newborn child."
corso
476; In Italy, a wide avenue with landscaped edges
Cosmic Bomb
167; aka Atomic Bomb; 539; 544; "Miss Enola Gay's atomic clit" 588; Hiroshima, 693-94; [Video of the Bombing (no sound)]
Côte d'Azur
226; French: the "azure coast"; the Mediterranean coastline of France between Menton and Cannes, so named by the poet Stephen Liégeard
Couéists
77; Couéism is a form of psychotherapy dependent upon auto-suggestion developed and promoted by Émile Coué (1857-1926), a French pharmacist. The central tenent of his system was "Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better"
Council of People's Commissars
391; Malenkov's special committee to which Tchitcherine reports;
COUNTERFORCE
See also Earth; Opposite, Ideas of the; polymorphous perversity; Reformation
Coward, Noel (1899-1973)
709; English dramatist, actor and composer
Cranz
452; author of Lehrbuch der Ballistik
Creepham
151; "the bright blue gremlins scattering like spiders off of his Typhoon's wings"
Croix Mystique
16; In palmistry, this cross is found beneath the middle finger between the head and heart lines and shows a distinct interest in occult matters.
croquet
See lawn sports
Cross of Lorraine
112; Region encompassing the northeastern French départements of Vosges, Meuse, Meurthe-et-Moselle, and Moselle and roughly coextensive with the historical region of Lorraine. The capital is Metz.
Crutchfield (Crouchfield)
67; character in Kenosha Kid episode; "the only westward man"; 114
3; "the fall of a"; The huge glass and iron structure at the top of Sydenham Hill was originally erected in Hyde Park in London to house The Great Exhibition, embodying the products of many countries throughout the world. The Great Exhibition, also known as the Crystal Palace Exhibition, was an international exhibition held in Hyde Park, London, from 1 May to 15 October 1851 and the first in a series of World's Fair exhibitions of culture and industry that were to be a popular 19th century feature. Wikipedia entry
cucurbitaceous
80; relating to the gourd family
Custodian of the Night
434; smooth-faced, neutral, coiled & pale; See also serpent
Cuvilliés, François de (1695-1768)
619 Court architect to Duke Maximilian II Emanuel of Bavaria (appointed 1725), specializing in the Bavarian Rococo style. Among his works in Munich and its environs is the Amalienburg hunting lodge, Nymphenburg (1734-39).
Cuxhaven
A small German town on the North Sea (in the British sector of the Zone) [MAP]; Operation Backfire based there, 272; test range, 277; Destroyer Badass docked there, 370; 372; Putzi's located there, 526-27; Slothrop traveling to, 567; Der Grob Säugling ["The Gross Suckling"], a servicemen's pub, 706-08; [www.cuxhaven.de]
Cymri
170
Cypridinae
690; "crustaceans with three eyes, shaped like a potato with catwhiskers at one end. Dried and powdered Cypridinae are also a great source of light [...] weird multishaded blue"
Cyrillicists
354; faction in VTsK NTA
Czarist
344;
