M
Mabuse, Dr.
579; In Fritz Lang's "Mabuse der Spieler," Dr Mabuse is the master-criminal who seeks to control the populace through mind-control, fear, and market manipulation; Klein-Rogge as; See also Fritz Lang; Hawasch; Spörri
MacArthur, General
697;
MacDonald, Ramsay (1866-1937)
77; First Labour Party prime minister of Great Britain, in the Labour governments of 1924 and 1929-31 and in the national coalition government of 1931-35.
Mach, Ernst (1838-1916)
Ernst Mach (1838-1916), an Austrian physicist and philosopher who devised the Mach number which, in fluid mechanics, is the ratio of the velocity of a fluid to the velocity of sound in that fluid. In the case of an aircraft in flight, the Mach number is equal to the velocity of the aircraft relative to the fluid (air) divided by the velocity of sound in that fluid. For Mach numbers greater than one (supersonic flow), shock wave patterns develop on the moving body because of compression of the surrounding fluid; 453
Machiavellian
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) was a Florentine statesman who held that terrorism and deceit were justifiable means of achieving a peaceful and prosperous Italy. In Il Principe (1515) he wrote that only a strong and ruthless prince could free Italy from devastation by foreigners. "Machiavellian" has come to denote political deceit and intrigue and unscrupulous methods; "Machiavellian and youthful, not quite ripe yet for paranoia" 448; the lion, 557; "no one is (Jessica) exempt from his (Jessica?) Machiavellian--" 631; See also V..
Mackenzie, Compton (1883-1972)
British novelist, both acclaimed and neglected, who wrote more than 100 novels, plays, and biographies. His varied novels include Poor Relations (1919), Rich Relatives (1921), Vestal Fire (1927), and Extraordinary Women (1928); novels on Mrs. Quoad's shelf, 115
Magda
365; "the sultry Bavarian" and Säure's sidekick; "picked up on first-degree mopery" 742
Magna Carta
The charter of English liberties granted by King John in 1215 under threat of civil war and reissued with alterations in 1216, 1217, and 1225; "Teach the German beast about the" 125
Magyars
Transylvanian, 11; 549; aka Hungarians
Maherero, Samuel
323; The Herero chief who led his people across the Kalahari into exile in Bechuanaland, where he died in 1923; "great trek across the Kalahari"; MORE
Malcolm
63; "very tall, skinny, extravagantly conked redhead Negro shoeshine boy" in Roseland Ballroom; aka "Red" and Malcolm X; 65; "Now don't you remember Red Malcolm up there, That kid with the Red Devil Lye in his hair" 67; 688
Maledetto, Dr.
347; Italian: "cursed, damned"; "a young Maledetto whom the ladies love" on an enormous closed sleigh which took tourists to Central Asia
Malenkov
391; Tchitcherine reports to his "special committee under the Council of People's Commissars"
Male Transvestites' Toilet
680; in "dingy yellow amphitheatre" where Floundering Four do their bit; "An Incident in the Transvestites' Toilet" 688-90
Maltzan, von
166; worked with Rathenau on the Rapallo Treaty
mandala
the ancient sun-wheel from which. . .the swastika was broken" 100; "full mandalas came to bloom" 152; Herero villages built like mandalas, 321; mandala-like Schwarzkommando insignia, illustrated, 361; KEZVH, 446; Schwarzkommando, 560; four fins of the Rocket, 563; "other fourfold expressions" 624; "fatal mandala" 691; discussed at Gross Suckling Conference, 706-07; "the cross the man has made on his own circle of earth" 719; Raketen-Stadt: "built in mandalic form like a Herero village" 725
From Brewer's: "Followers of Mani, who taught that the universe is controlled by two antagonistic powers, light or goodness (identified with God), and darkness, chaos, or evil. [...] One of Mani's claims was that, though Christ had been sent into the world to restore it to light and banish darkness, His apostles had perverted his doctrine, and he, Mani, was sent as the Paraclete to restore it" (p.681); "who see two rockets, good and evil, who speak together in the sacred idiolalia of the Primal Twins" 727
mano morto
132; Italian: dead hand (should be mano morta)
Manuela
605-06; call girl at Putzi's with Maj. Marvy
Marcel
See Floundering Four
Mare Nocturnum
578; Latin: Nocturnal Sea; Pökler's "deeper excursions into the"
Maria
519; Christian's sister and Pavel's husband; in Christian's dream, 673 See also Christian; Pavel
Marie-Celeste
303; "the legendary ship"
Marjorie
22; a Wren Slothrop is dating; 25; 744; See also Slothrop's girls/stars
281; with US Army Ordnance and leader of Marvy's Mothers, "the meanest-ass technical intelligence team in this whole fuckin' Zone"; pushed off train by Enzian while "headed for Mittelwerke" 288; 307; 331; 363; 502; Atomic Chili, 557, 559; 564-66; purchases cocaine from Bodine at Putzi's, 604; castrated, 609; Etymological Musings
Marx, Karl (1818-83)
German social, political and economic theorist and the inspiration for modern communism. He emigrated to Paris in 1863 where he became a communist and first expressed his belief that the proletariat must effect revolutionary change. In Paris, he and Engels wrote Communist Manifesto (1848) ("The workers have nothing to lose but their chains"), the masterpiece of political propaganda. He moved to London in 1849 and it was there that he wrote Das Kapital (1867) (theory of surplus value, class conflict, exploitation of the Working Class, "withering away" of the state); 163; 317; 348; "Marxist dialectics? That's not an opiate, eh?" 701; "'Real to a Marxist.'" 702; "if you don't think there are Marxist-Leninist magicians around, well you better think again!" 748
Masons
emblems, 27; masonry, 66; "out the eye at the tower's summit" 470; "Eye at the top of the pyramid" 484, 585; freemasons, 572; and Lyle Bland, 580; "Mobs 'n' Masons" 586; American Founding Fathers, 587-88; magic rituals/Masonic Mysteries, 588; Masonic plots, 587; Ben Franklin, 663-64; "going to dinner becomes a priestly procession, full of secret gestures and understandings" 713;
Master of the Woods
742; "sprigs of woodruff [...] carried by the early Teutonic warriors"
masturbation
"masturbating under these conditions is exquisite torture" 35; "jerking off into an Army flannel" 36; and message de- crypting, 71-72; "he'll masturbate himself to sleep" 141; "The self-induced orgasm." 155; "there passes the phrase male supremacy ... why do they cherish their masturbating so? 155; "masturbatorily scared-elated" 209; "I can't even masturbate" 216; Pudding, for Domina Nocturna, 236; "These Otukungurua are prophets of masturbating" 318; "Remember the time she caught you masturbating into her glove?" 505; "a Text, to be [...] masturbated till it's all squeezed limp of its last drop" 520; "lost in masturbatory fantasies of nailing this cute but older Latin lady" 678; "the heat, who go surly, fangflashing back to masturbating into Crime Does Not Pay Comics" 709; "16 ragged staring oldtimers who shuffle aimlessly about the stage, jerking off in unison, waggling penises in mock quarter-staffing, brandishing in two and threes their green-leaved poles, exposing amazing chancres and lesions, going off in fountains of sperm strung with blood that splash over glazed trouser-pleats" 743; "purposes of self-arousal" 758; "or reach between your own cold legs" 760; See also Kryptosam; entropy/closed systems/irreversibility
mathematical equations
Chapter 1: Poisson dispensation, 140; Chapter 2: yaw control, 239; Chapter 3: hilarious graffiti of visiting mathematicians, 450; Chapter 4: Otyiyumbu Indetermincy Relation, 700; "Little sigma, times P of s-over-little-sigma, equals one over the square root of two times pi, times e to the minus s squared over two little sigma squared." 709 (thanks to Douglas Lannark for this index entry)
Mausmacher
653; German: "mouse-maker"; Lutheran who steals Byron from the priest and who attends a Naza torchlight rally in drag
757; Max und Moritz were a duo created by German cartoonist Wilhelm Busch; "boy at the steering panel" and man "at the rocket motor panel," respectively, at launching of S-Gerät 00000; Wikipedia entry
Maximilian
See Floundering Four
Maxwell, Clerk
411; "younger contemporary" of Liebig
May Day Eve
329; aka Walpurgisnacht
McGonigle, Pvt. Paddy "Electro"
641; hand-pedals the twin-generator cranks for light bulb during THE HAIRCUT
Meat Cartel
654; long-standing arrangement with Phoebus "to restrict the amount of tallow in circulation by keeping more fat in meat to be sold regardless of cardiac problems"
Mefo bills
German: Metallurgische Forschung = "metals research"; A way for Germany to pay arms manufacturers for rearmament (German rearmament was banned by the terms of the Versailles Treaty). Mefo bills were accepted by all German banks but no reference to them was allowed in published accounts. Twelve billion marks in Mefo bills were issued before the outbreak of WWII, and much of German trade was financed in this manner; 285
118; "like being belted in the head with a Swiss alp"; [at left] "Contain: Menthol, Peppermint, Chloroform, Benzoin, Liquorice pastille basis"
Meillerwagen
113; transported the V-2 to the launching site, raised it to a vertical firing position, and served as a firing platform; 560;
Menshevik
Russian: men'she = "less, fewer"; The Mensheviks were the moderate wing of the Russian Social Democratic Party, who split with the Bolsheviks after the party congress of 1903. They were for "bourgeois reform" rather than the total societal overhaul advocated by the Bolsheviks; 338
meta-solutions
102; "Perhaps the black girl is a genius of meta-solutions--knocking over the chessboard, shooting the referee" 102
231; in Kabbalistic lore, the highest angel who sits next to Yahweh's throne; 734; See also Kabbalah
Metropolis/Metropolis[Greek: "Mother City"] "ARF remains a colony to the metropolitan war" 76; "His erection hums from a certain distance, like an instrument installed, wired by Them into his body as a colonial outpost here in our raw and clamorous world, another office representing Their white Metropolis far away" 285; "Early Rhenish missionaries began to bring them back to the Metropolis, that great dull zoo" 315; "Out and down in the colonies, life can be indulged, life and sensuality in all its forms, with no harm done to the Metropolis" 317; "they can pick us off out there one by one, first a campaign of attrition, then a coordinated raid...leaving then only this metropolis, under siege, to strangle" 326; "inside the metropolitan organ entirely, all other colonial tissue forgotten and left to fend for itself" 470; Rudolph Klein-Rogge, 578; Brigitte Helm, 578; "American Death has come to occupy Europe. It has learned empire from its old metropolis" 722; See also cities; Fritz Lang;
- From Fritz Lang's Metropolis
- "I have created a machine in the image of man, that never tires or makes a mistake."
- "Isn't it worth the loss of a hand to have created the workers of the future — the machine men?"
- "Give me another 24 hours and I'll bring you a machine which no one will be able to tell from a human being."
- - Rotwang, the Inventor
Mexico, Roger
31; 30 years old (89); works with Pirate Prentice in Psi Section; Mysterious Microfilm Drill, 32; "provisional wartime friend of Pirate's" 35; meets Jessica, 38-39; the "Antipointsman" 55; paranoia, 124; "He'd seen himself a point on a moving wavefront, propagating through sterile history--a known past, a projectable future. But Jessica was the breaking of the wave." 126; "as this seventh Christmas of the War came wheeling in another charge at his skinny, shivering flank [...]" 126; his map of bomb hits, 138; takes Jessica to see Hansel and Gretel, 174; by the sea on White Sunday, 273; driving throught the Lüneburg Heath, missing Jessica, 626; Gloaming tells him about the Slothrop/IG Farben/Pointsman plot, 630-31; realizes Jessica is working for Pointsman, 631; pissing on Mossmoon's table, 636; "a 30-year-old innocent" 706; foam rubber phallus, 708; at Krupp party, 711
M.I. 6
592; British Military Intelligence, overseas operations; MORE
Michele
243-45; friend of Slothrop's who seduces Hillary Bounce so Slothrop can use his teletype machine
Michiko
480; wife of Ensign Morituri
Microcosmists
738; those who believe Slothrop to be a "point-for-point microcosm"
Middle Dutch
108; ic heb u liever dan ên everswîn, al waert van finen goude ghewracht (English: I love you more than a wild boar / even if it were made of fine gold)
midgets &c.
"midget spy-camera" 17; "Fred Roper's Company of Wonder Midgets off to an imperial fair in Johannesburg, South Africa. Midgets in their dark winter clothes, exquisite little frocks and nip-waisted overcoats, were running all over the station, gobbling their bonvoyage chocolates and lining up for news photos." 37; "say it very (demisemiquaver) fast in a Munchkin voice if you can dig that" 63; "what appear to be horrid...midgets, in strange operetta uniforms actually, some sort of Central European government-in-exile," 123; "Siggi in his speeded-up midget's voice" 157; "a tiny hand comes out and gives Slothrop the tiny finger" 199; "the arms of young passersby not in the sleeves of their coats but inside somewhere, as if sheltering midgets" 250; "Like a buncha happy midgets on a holiday!" 259; "They went off practically skipping obsessive as Munchkins, out into the erotic Poisson." 270; "Local midgetry scuttle and cringe alongside the tracks" 310; "Were you frightened when the dwarf tried to hug you" 398; "a splendid retinue of dwarves and sprites " 419; the midget sheriff in Osbie Feel's movie, 534-35; "as armies of eternally shrinking midgets galloped upstairs and down again" 567; midgets on the pinball machines, 586; "lammergeiers cruising there in the lurid red altitudes around [...] piloted by bareback dwarves with little plastic masks around their eyes" 664; "Is he interested in all those other worlds who send their dwarf reps out on the backs of eagles?" 664; "where inside Marcel is the midget Grandmaster" 675
Midnight
342; "the famous bucking bronco" on the U.S. rodeo circuits
Mieczislav
See Omuzire, Mieczislav
mindless pleasures
270; working title for Gravity's Rainbow; 681; "idle and mindless hours of the day" 177
Mingeborough, Massachussetts
26; Slothrop's hometown [introduced in Pynchon's short story, "The Secret Integration", where Dr. Slothrop and his son Hogan live]; Etymology
Ministry of Munitions
416; Branch of the SS, headed by Albert Speer
Ministry of Supply
251; British, located at Shell Mex House, "the heart of the Rocket's own branch office in London." Duncan Sandys was the Under-secretary there during WWII.
Minsky's
In the 1920s and 30s, Billy Minsky's Republic Theatre on Broadway in New York (later known as just Minsky's) featured rowdy burlesque entertainment. Gypsy Rose Lee performed there in the 1930s, as well as comedians W.C. Fields, Al Jolson, Fannie Brice, Bert Lahr, and Phil Silvers; "more tits than they got at"
135; "O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you."
MIRRORS
See also Interface; inside/outside
Miss Rheingold 1946
380;
Mittelwerke
German: "Central Works"; Given to the Soviets per the Yalta Agreement, 273; primary A-4 factory after RAF raid on Peenemünde in August 1943, located in abandoned gypsum mine near Nordhausen and next to Dora prison camp; evacuated in February and March 1945; 283; designed like a ladder with Stollen (rung-tunnels), 299; control systems work was done outside mountain in castles, farms etc, 313; tactical sites elsewhere, 427; abandoned in '45, 432 [MAP]; [Image] Click here to view a photo from Der Spiegel of laborers working in the tunnels. An Interesting Site; Check out this map of Mittelwerke (thanks to Jeff Meikle).
MMPI
21; Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory--a psychological test developed in 1943, 81; Slothrop's, F-Scale: a measure to indicate whether the subject is trying to mask or underreport psychological symptoms, 90
M.O.
591; Medical Officer
Möllner
610; German whom Slothrop questions about von Göll at Putzi's
Molotov, Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich (1890-1986)
Russian statesman and diplomat who was picked by Stalin to be the Soviet commissar of foreign affairs (1939-49). It was during World War II that Molotov ordered the production of the bottles of inflammable liquid that became known as Molotov cocktails. As foreign minister and the major spokesman for the Soviet Union at the Allied conferences during and after World War II, he earned a reputation for uncompromising hostility to the West; cocktails, 507, 511; "isn't telling Vishinsky" 611
German: "Mondaugen" = "Moon Eye"; 161; electrical engineer who went to Südwest; Pökler working with, 402-04; accepted Hitler on basis of his "Demian- metaphysics" 403; bodhisattva of Peenemünde, 403; was in Südwest, lived with Ovatjimba (aardvark) people, the poorest Hereros, 403; 1922 - in Südwest with Weissmann during siege of Foppl's villa, 408; after Peenemünde bombing, 422; Mondaugen's Law, 509; Verein für Raumschiffahrt, 582; 687; Mondaugen in V.
Monika
603; "Putzi's genial, cigar-smoking, matelasse-suited madame"
Monkey Girl
544; "and the pimps in Rome"; one whom Pirate had to betray "in the course of business for the Firm"
Monte Carlo Fallacy
56; "No matter how many have fallen inside a particular square, the odds remain the same as they always were. Each hit is independent of all the others."
moon
"no moon" 67; "the halfmoon shines" 104; men on the, 132; "is it the moon?" 123; "toy rockets to the moon" 154; "the dead moon" 163; "we can fly to the moon" 175; "blanched scar of moon" 195; "moonlight reflected from the mirror" 195; "moongrained" 196; astrologer's, 220; "chosen for its affinity to moonlight" 265; "voices twittering with moonlight" 268; "as among craters of the pale moon" 270; "the lunacy of her purple eyes" 271; true message to Hereros, 322; "Me trama con la disquietante luna" 383; "under a moon newly calved" 398; "Passing over the bright rays of Kepler, the rugged solitude of the Southern Highlands, the spectacular views at Copernicus and Eratosthenes, she chose a small pretty crater in the Sea of Tranquility called Maskelyne B." 410; and Ilse, 410; cycles, 414; "the moon that ruled her" 415; "Have you given up so easily on the Moon?" 420; "Her round straw hat a frail moon" 421; Lunar motion, 452; "buttocks rise like moons" 466; "enormous slick stretching away moonward, to the threshold of the north wind" 609; "moon minaret" 637; Katje "felt the moon in the soles of her feet" 657; "brightening and darkening as if by itself" 692; "The moon has risen" 720; moonlight, 721; "our new Deathkingdom" 723; 734; [Check out: Borges' "The Moon" in Dreamtigers (1964)]
Moore
452;
mopery
Slang: a trivial, imaginary violation of law (also seen defined as: act of moping; vagrancy, dawdling); "The War must've been lean times for crowd control, murder and mopery was the best you could do" 570; "Magda was picked up on first-degree mopery" 742; "Edelman [...] accused last year of an 11569 (Attempted Mopery with a Subversive Instrument)" 755;
Mopp's Hebdomeriasis
712; "does so-called 'Night Worm' belong among the Pseudo-Goldstrassian Group, or is it properly considered [...] a more insidious form of"; [De Chirico's Hebdomeros]
Moreno, El
387; with whom "the white gaucho" has a singing-duel in Martín Fierro
Morgan
"GE, that's Morgan money, there's Morgan money in Harvard" 332;
Morituri, Ensign
462; [Latin: "We who are about to die" - salutation of the gladiators to the Roman Emperor: "morituri te salutamos" = "we who are about to die salute you"]; "of the Japanese Imperial Navy" "ex-liaison man from Berlin who didn't quite get out by way of Russia"; was in kamikaze training; 467; his story, 474; irony of radium/Hiroshima, 479-80; 672; 706
Moritz
757; operating the rocket motor panel for S-gerät 00000; 758
Morrison, Herbert Stanley (1888-1965)
British Labour statesman who played a leading role in London local government for 25 years. Constantly involved with socialist politics from 1905, he was active in Churchill's coalition government, serving as Minister of Supply, Home Secretary and Minister of Home Security; 132
Morrison shelter
Introduced by Herbert Morrison while home secretary in Churchill's government, they were bomb shelters, 24
Moss Creature
523; hallucination of Pavel's during Leunagasolin high
Mossmoon, Clive
35; works for ICI doing polymer research; husband of Scorpia; 22; 544; 615; 635
Mossmoon, Scorpia
35; wife of Clive, aka "Red Bitch of the High Seas"; had an affair with Pirate in 1936, 35-36; "living in St. John's Wood among sheet-music, new recipes, a small kennel of Weimaraners whose racial purity she will go to extravagant lengths to preserve" 544; 698
MOTHERS
See also fathers; Nipple, Lloyd; Metropolis; [check out Marvy's Mothers, too]
Mouse Alexei
229; lab rat at White Visitation
Mouthorgan, Missouri
583; location of Masonic temple the Tracys visit; "an elegant chaos to bend the ingenuity of Bland's bought expert" 586;
MOVIES See also actors/directors; film/cinema references; King Kong
Mravenko
611; "one of the VIAM people"
"tantivy" is a hunting cry made when the chase is at full speed; 18; shares office with Slothrop at ACHTUNG; with Slothrop at Casino, 181; Ballad of, 191; "There hasn't been a word" 209; disappears - death confirmed, 252; Slothrop's dream of his return, 551; 584; Etymology; See also ACHTUNG
Muffage, Doctor
591; with Dr. Spontoon, out to castrate Slothrop
Muffin-tin Road
646; in Happyville: "note the smiing faces on all the houses"
Mukuru
322; Hereros' "first ancestor, Adam"; breath of, 524; 562
Müller-Hochleben, Miss
632-34; German: "Miller-Highlife" (really!); "short but spunky secretary" at Twelfth House on Gallaho Mews in London whose glasses fall off
Murphy's Law
275; "when everything has been taken care of, when nothing can go wrong, or even surprise us. . .something will"; "where the the salvation could be" 471; See also Gödel's Theorem
MUSIC
See also fox-trot; [[#musicians|musicians/composers]; Rossini; songs/compositions
Sandy MacPherson, 13; George Formby, 18; Falkman and His Apache Band, 32; Charlie ("Yardbird") Parker, 63; Primo Scala's Accordian Band, 115; Hop Harrigan and Tank Tinker, 117; Roland Peachey and His Orchestra, 121; Thomas Tallis, Henry Purcell, Heinrich Suso, 129; Ernesto Lecuona, 169; Carl Orff, 237, 441; Benny Goodman, 225; Juan d'Arienzo, 267; Der Bingle (B. Crosby), 320; Richard Wagner, 324, 450; Andrews Sisters, 382; Frank Sinatra, 390, 700; Hugo Wolf, 419, 450; Ludwig von Beethoven, 440, 685; Anton Webern, 440, 494; Irving Berlin, 442; Horst Wessel, 443; Kurt Weill, 513; Gene Krupa, 513; Guy Lombardo, 529; Gilbert & Sullivan, 538; Jacques Offenbach, 584 ("Offenbach galop": Jacques Offenbach wrote the music to the well-known "Cancan" - "galop" is a dance); Sandy McPherson, 592; Spohr, Rossini, Spontini, 622; Diamond Lil, 657; 175-Stadt Chorale, 668; Stephen Foster, 675; Spike Jones, 678; Brahms, 685; Harry James, 685; J.S. Bach, 685; Tchaikovsky, 702; Josef Haydn, 712; Lübeck Hitler Youth Glee Club, 736; See also Rossini
Mussert's people
97; someone for whom Katje is "smelling out" Jewish families
Mr. Pynchon is probably referring to Anton Adriaan Mussert, fouder and leader of the Dutch National Socialist Movement during World War II
Myrtle Miraculous
See Floundering Four
Mysterious Microfilm Drill
32; wherein "Bloat goes somewhere and microfilms something, then transfers it, via Pirate, to young Mexico. And thence [...] down to 'The White Visitation'"
Mystery Stimulus
84; "Conditioned response = hardon whenever x is present [...] what's x? Why it's the famous 'Mystery Stimulus'
MYTHOLOGY
See also God; Scylla and Charybdis
