1.

Beyond the Zero

Page 3
3.01 A screaming comes across the sky
These opening words are forever linked with the V-2 (German A4) rocket. They may bring
associations with bombs whistling as they fall, or with the high whine of postwar jet engines.
But they are not a description of the sound actually made in target zones by the V-2 rocket,
which was typically -- depending on the auditor's location -- the sharp "cracking" explosion of
the 750-kg warhead followed by a deeper, more or less extended sonic boom.

Within this opening nightmare, the "screaming" connects more strongly to the wailing of air-
raid sirens and/or, more poetically, to the panic of the city dwellers seeking escape. For what
it's worth, the audiobook of Gravity's Rainbow -- presumably approved by Pynchon or his
wife and agent, Melanie Jackson -- begins with an audio montage of air-raid sirens and
snatches of WWII radio broadcasts.

3.03 The Evacuation

First instance in Gravity's Rainbow of a lifetime stylistic trait of Pynchon's: unpredictable use
of Capitalization.

 In Mason & Dixon, Pynchon employs capitalization of nouns widely in semi-

accordance with the style of 18th-century written English.
 All nouns are capitalized in German. Worth noting because the country, language and
history loom so large in Gravity's Rainbow as well as Pynchon's first two novels, so
much so that Pynchon scholar David Cowart refers these novels as Pynchon's
"German period."

3.03 theatre
Besides the normal meanings, including "theater of war", 'theatre' is the name that fireworks'
organizers call a sky display.

3.05 iron queen

a queensize bed made of iron. Hardly made after 1900. Queen Victoria had a famous brass
(and iron) one in the Crystal Palace! "Beds made of hollow tubes of steel, iron, and brass
came to be manufactured in the mid 19th century. These were to be used both by soldiers and
civilians. Their main advantage at that time was that unlike wooden beds, these could not be
infested with bedbugs. Queen Victoria's brass bed at the Crystal Palace has been the most
famous antique brass bed.
By the late 19th century, metal beds were nearly out of fashion." Antique beds [[1]]

Also, In The Odyssey, when Odysseus goes to the Underworld, he refers to Persephone as the
Iron Queen. Of the four gods of Empedocles' elements it is the name of Persephone alone
that is taboo, for the Greeks knew another face of Persephone as well. She was also the
terrible Queen of the dead, whose name was not safe to speak aloud, who was named simply
"The Maiden". Wikipedia [[2]]

3.07 crystal palace

See Alpha entry, especially this re cultural meaning:
The Crystal Palace made a strong impression on visitors coming from all over Europe,
including a number of writers. It soon became a symbol of modernity and civilization, hailed
by some and decried by others.

In What Is to Be Done?, Russian author and philosopher Nikolai Chernyshevsky pledges to

transform the society into a Crystal Palace thanks to a socialist revolution.
Fyodor Dostoevsky implicitly replied to Chernyshevsky in Notes from Underground. The
narrator thinks that human nature will prefer destruction and chaos to the harmony
symbolized by the Crystal Palace.

When the first major international exhibition of arts and industries was held in London in
1851, the London Crystal Palace epitomized the achievements of the entire world at a time
when progress was racing forward at a speed never before known to mankind. The Great
Exhibition marked the beginning of a tradition of world's fairs, which would be held in major
cities all across the globe. Following the success of the London fair, it was inevitable that
other nations would soon try their hand at organizing their own exhibitions. In fact, the next
international fair was held only two years later, in 1853, in New York City. This fair would
have its own Crystal Palace to symbolize not only the achievements of the world, but also the
nationalistic pride of a relatively young nation and all that she stood for. Walt Whitman, the
great American poet, wrote in "The Song of the Exposition":
http://www.ric.edu/rpotter/cryspal.html

That the Crystal Palace Exhibition "marked the beginning of a tradition of world's fairs" can
remind that Against the Day starts at the Columbian Exhibition of 1893 in Chicago. More
international optimism.

3.14 second sheep

Compare the narrator’s discussion of William Slothrop’s heretical tract "On Preterition,"
which argued for the holiness of the preterite, and Weisenburger’s note at 555.29-31.

A wide symbology relates to sheep in ancient art, traditions and culture. Judaism uses many
sheep references including the Passover lamb. Christianity uses sheep-related images, such as:
Christ as the good shepherd, or as the sacrificed Lamb of God (Agnus Dei); the bishop's
Pastoral; the lion lying down with the lamb (a reference to all of creation being at peace,
without suffering, predation or otherwise). Greek Easter celebrations traditionally feature a
meal of Paschal lamb. Sheep also have considerable importance in Arab culture; Eid ul-Adha
is a major annual festival in Islam in which a sheep is sacrificed.
Herding sheep plays an important historico-symbolic part in the Jewish and Christian faiths,
since Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and King David all worked as shepherds. wikipedia [3]

Sheep are often associated with obedience due to the widespread perception that they lack
intelligence and their undoubted herd mentality, hence the pejorative connotation of the
adjective 'ovine'. In George Orwell's satirical novel Animal Farm, sheep are used to represent
the ignorant and uneducated masses of revolutionary Russia. The sheep are unable to be
taught the subtleties of revolutionary ideology and can only be taught repetitive slogans such
as "Four legs good, two legs bad" which they bleat in unison at rallies. The rock group Pink
Floyd wrote a song using sheep as a symbol for ordinary people, that is, everyone who isn't a
pig or dog. People who accept overbearing governments have been pejoratively referred to as
"sheeple". wikipedia [4]
3.19 half-silvered
adj. (of a mirror) having an incomplete reflective coating, so that half the incident light is
reflected and half transmitted: used in optical instruments and two-way mirrors. Collins
Dictionary
See the splitting of light all through Against the Day, Pynchon's 2006 novel.

3.19 view finder

as two words, this seems to refer to handheld devices in which slides were slid and viewed in
3-dimensions. Here is a version still being made view finder.
"half-silvered" above seems most correct with this kind of device.

3.22 They pass in line

A Pynchonian leitmotif. The linearity of lining up has resonances throughout his work,
articulated most straightforwardly in Against the Day, which starts with "Single up all
Lines!", and perhaps dealt with most profoundly in Mason & Dixon, a novel about creating
the "Mason & Dixon line".

3.25 Rain comes down

Pynchon's first published story is called The Small Rain. See his remarks on rain in fiction in
Slow Learner.

3.30 naptha winters

Naptha is the flammable liquid obtained from the distillation of coal and used to fire gaslights
and heaters. ...

3.32 rolling-stock absence

Rolling stock is the collective term that describes all the vehicles which move on a railway.

3.35 Absolute Zero

Theoretical state when no molecules move. Zero. State of entropy, a key concept of Thomas
Pynchon's. See the early story "Entropy" in Slow Learner.

3.36 places whose names he has never heard

'secret cities of poor', deep under these fallen girders. Places that have never been spoken of,
yet exist. Lower than Low-lands.
Later in Pynchon's world,in other books, Mason & Dixon and Against the Day, we will travel
deeper underground, to places with no names we know, it seems. See a "progressive knotting
into", 3.26 in GR.

3.37 the walls break down

See "wall of death" later in Gravity's Rainbow. A-and in Against the Day.

Page 4
4.01 getting narrower...cornering tighter and tighter
Cf. the rationalization of choice and similar phrasing in Against the Day, pynchon wiki p. 10

4.03 It is a judgment from which there is no appeal

What began as an evacuation from a city under attack is becoming, obliquely but
unmistakably, the way to the death camps of the Third Reich.
4.05 caravan
1) a procession, in single file, of merchants or pilgrims 2) a procession of mules, camels or
certain other animals. Sources: Online dictionary and wikipedia.
Pilgrim has Pynchonian resonances, especially in Against the Day.
A-And, once again, notice the singleing up of lines.

4.07 cockade
1) n. An ornament, such as a rosette or knot of ribbon, usually worn on the hat as a badge.
[Alteration of obsolete cockard , from French.]

2) Operational code name for Allied deception operations intended to draw attention away
from Normandy prior to D-Day [5]

Cf. pun: cock aid, esp. as Slothrop's 'condition' within Gravity's Rainbow is revealed.

4.07 the color of lead

cockades are usually brightly colored. Lead is not.

Lead is a malleable toxic metallic element, bluish-white in color that tarnishes to a dull gray.
Lead

Lead is what bullets are made of.

4.12 corridors straight and functional

More forced linearity.

4.31 But it is already light...light has come percolating in

See also the opening lines of Pynchon's next book, 'Vineland', which begins with someone
waking from a (possibly prophetic) dream, with light streaming in.

4.37 the different levels of the enormous room

The transition from dream to waking is so subtle, and beautifully done, right down to little
details, such as how the dreamer's real and dreamt surroundings cross over: the multi-levelled
carriage of the dream becomes, on awaking, the room with many levels; the carriage's
evacuees ('second sheep') become the room's 'drunken wastrels', etc.

Page 5
5.03 His name is Capt. Geoffrey ("Pirate") Prentice.
Pirate’s name derives from Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta The Pirates of Penzance, in which
the hero’s nurse has made a fateful error in carrying out her employer’s instructions: Instead
of having the boy apprenticed to a (ship’s) pilot, he was apprenticed to a pirate, hence a
"pirate ‘prentice." The name, though, is not simply a fortuitous pun: In her error, the nurse
has lost a message, like the hare of Herero myth, and thus guaranteed her young charge’s
preterition. (There are also connections here to the theme of "communications entropy,"
which is central to The Crying of Lot 49 and the short story "Entropy.")

5.03 He is wrapped in a thick blanket, a tartan of orange, rust, and scarlet. His skull
feels made of metal.
The rust in the tartan goes well with the metal-feeling skull. And there's a lot of metal in the
preceding pages - lead, girders, the iron queen, the metal train tracks, etc. So it's appropriate
that Prentice wakes feeling metallic.

5.22-24 a maisonette erected last century, not far from Chelsea Embankment, by
Corydon Throsp, an acquaintance of the Rossettis' who wore hair smocks and liked to
cultivate pharmaceutical plants up on the roof

There appears to be no single maisonette near the Chelsea Embankment fitting the description
of Pirate's: mullioned windows (p4), French windows, spiral ladder to the roof, parapets and a
view of the Thames (p6), mediaeval windows (p93), roof ledges (p111), and of course a roof
large and flat enough to hold a bananery, or some pigs. Rossetti, who we're told Throsp is on
nodding terms with, and Swinburne lived at No. 16 Cheyne Walk; Rossetti kept a small zoo in
the house, including peacocks (die Pfaue). Thomas Carlyle's house is nearby in Cheyne Row.
There is a bust of Rossetti in the strip of park separating Cheyne Walk, where Keith Richards,
not unfamiliar with Osbie Feel's kind of mushrooms, once lived, from the embankment.

Rossetti's wife died of a drug overdose, and he took to keeping wombats as pets; one of these
wombats used to attend the dinner table, and was said to have provided the inspiration for the
Dormouse character in Alice in Wonderland.

That Dormouse's advice - "feed your head" - was used at the end of Jefferson Airplane's
mushroom flavoured, Alice-inspired song 'White Rabbit'. Way later on in the book, Slothrop
has a dream in which a statue of the White Rabbit in Llandudno is giving him sage advice, but
he loses it as he wakes. Oddly enough, the drug that killed Rossetti's wife was laudanum,
which isn't very different from 'Llandudno'. Of course that's almost certainly just a
coincidence, but all of the foregoing is the sort of stuff you find yourself digging up by
chasing after the countless references Pynchon sews into the fabric of the book.

5.32 all got scumbled together, eventually, by the knives of the seasons, to an impasto,
feet thick, of unbelievable black topsoil

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=scumbled "To blur the outlines of: a writer who

scumbled the line that divides history and fiction."

A-and the wonderful phrase, "knives of the seasons" embodies another lifelong deep theme in
Pynchon's work: that the 'wheeling' of time [see later in Gravity's Rainbow and Against the
Day], the cycle of nature, is an ineluctable good thing, even as it knifes us, ravages, us. It
thickens us, impasto-like, gives us topsoil in our characters, so to speak.

Recapitulated later in "...corrode in the busy knives of weather pushing relentlessly into all the
rooms." (533.22)

5.41 the politics of bacteria... rings and chains in nets

Along with "fragments of peculiar alkaloids" a few lines earlier, this begins a recurring use of
chemical and biochemical language and perspectives. Sometimes it points toward synthetic
industrial chemistry and the geopolitics of coal, oil and steel, sometimes toward the endless
variety and vitality of life. Thomas R. Pynchon III (1823-1904), the author's great-great-uncle,
was an eminent chemist and educator at Trinity College in Hartford, CT.

Page 6

6.09 a spiral ladder

Suggests the double-helix structure of the DNA molecule that preserves the "living genetic
chains" evoked at 10.14.
Double-helix structure like a mandala, pervasive in GR:
"Mandala" is an ancient Sanskrit word meaning "sacred circle that protects the soul." It also
refers to the sacred cosmograms that serve as core symbols of all cultures. Westerners have
been fascinated for centuries about the mandalas of the Hindu-Buddhist cultures of Asia, most
often painted geometric diagrams of great beauty and sophistication, that draw the viewer into
a realm of balance, harmony, and calm. But such diagrams are actually architectural
blueprints of the purified realm of bliss that we can only realize through enlightenment. They
represent three-dimensional spaces of personal and communal exaltation, palaces for the regal
confidence of love, compassion, and universal satisfaction of self and other. Understanding
their role in anchoring the world-picture of a culture or a person provides a new insight into
the "mandalas" of our own culture – the national space anchored by the Washington
monument and its environs, or the personal cosmological space anchored by the models of the
solar system, the DNA double-helix molecule, and the atom. Mandala

A recent scientific magazine also had an essay [citation needed] on the similarity of the
double-helix sructure and the structure of the mandala. A-and, GR, containing mandalas, has
been argued to be structured like a mandala. SPOILER of upcoming GR tropes: "Slothrop
finds mandalas, sees mandalas in the sky and all around him, and becomes a mandala
himself". "mandalas are part of a spiritual or mythic panoply"... From Thomas Pynchon, The
Art of Illusion by David Cowart, p. 126.

Cf. p. 209, Mason & Dixon: " oblique angles with all meridians and that is a spiral coiling
round the poles but never reaching them."...

Cf. V. where the isle of Malta is also likened to a sort of mandala.

6.12 The great power station and the gasworks beyond

Pirate is looking at the Battersea Power Station. Built in 1937, the Station is well known for
appearing below a giant inflatable pig on the cover of Pink Floyd's 1977 album Animals. It
has been defunct since 1983. At the time GR is set the plant had two smokestacks; today it has
four. According to the London Encyclopedia (ed. C. Hibbert and B. Weinreb) a plaque
commemorating Michael Faraday hangs on one wall, but it's not possible to confirm this as
the entire site is fenced off. "The gasworks beyond" is the still operational British Gas plant
just southeast of the power station. Viewed from Pirate's stretch of the Embankment it seems
to lie more to the right of the power station than "beyond" it.
Page 7
7.09 Pick bananas
Pirate's decision after a paragraph on the inevitablity of the rocket's flight can remind one of a
famous Buddhist sutra on picking a strawberry:

The Sweetest Strawberry

Buddha told a parable in a sutra:

A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him.
Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself
down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked
down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine
sustained him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away
the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one
hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!

-Paul Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones

from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith [[6]]

seven squares
The use of the squares to separate chapters was suggested by the production department or
editors of GR, not by Pynchon himself. See Edward Mendelson, "Gravity's Encyclopedia," fn.
4.

Gerald Howard, Bookforum: "It is generally thought that the line of seven squares that serves
as a graphic device to separate the unnumbered chapters in the novel is meant to suggest the
sprocket holes in film reels, indicating that the book is to be "read" cinematically as a kind of
film in prose. Wrong. In one of his letters Kennebeck refers pointedly to the "oblong holes" in
censored correspondence from World War II soldiers, then termed V-mail (there's that letter
again), and in a letter to Donald Barthelme accompanying a finished copy of the book,
Kennebeck makes jocular mention of the sprocket-hole theory, first floated in the Poirier
review, and comments, "I little knew what I was contributing to the history of literature."
Sometimes a rectangle is just a rectangle—or maybe a censor's mark."

A further angle on the squares is this: they are vignettes. Regard the etymology and definition
of the word (from Wiktionary http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vignette)

Etymology: First attested in 1751. From French vignette, diminutive of vigne (“vine”) < Latin
vīnea < vīnum (“wine”).

Definition:

(architecture) A running ornament consisting of leaves and tendrils, used in Gothic

architecture.

(printing) A decorative design, originally representing vine branches or tendrils, at the head of
a chapter, of a manuscript or printed book, or in a similar position.
(by extension) Any small borderless picture in a book, especially an engraving, photograph,
or the like, which vanishes gradually at the edge.

(by extension) A short story that presents a scene or tableau, or paints a picture.

The small picture on a postage stamp.

Lends new meaning to the line "Tonight they will shoot wine."

Page 9
9.03 Miss Grable
Betty Grable actually became a pin-up favorite in 1943 (not 1944), when she had a photo
series released. Although she had been featured in various films since the late 1920s, she first
became a major box office attraction with the 1940 film Down Argentine Way. The poster is
also an example of the motif of the turning head that recurs throughout Gravity’s Rainbow.
Correspondent Hazen Bob Dixon notes that Grable was actually pregnant when the picture
was taken, which is why her back was turned in the first place. The story is plausible, since
Grable did give birth to a daughter (by her husband, band leader Harry James) in March 1944;
however, there are other versions of how the image came to be taken.

9.05 Civvie Street

In other words, Peacetime, when military personnel will again wear civilian clothes
("civvies"). George Formby had a postwar film titled George in Civvy Street (1946). See note
at 18.25.

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

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

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

9.14-15 Maurice "Saxophone" Reed

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

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

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

9.28 Joaquin Stick

Say it out loud--another classic Pynchon name.

Page 10
10.28 C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre
It's magnificent, but it's not war. The "French observer" was Marshal Pierre Bosque.

10.41 like a rude metal double-fart

Telephones in the UK use a double-ring, sounding like bzzt-bzzt.

Page 11
11.25 his batman, a Corporal Wayne

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

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

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

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

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

12.15 P.M.S. Blackett, "You can't run a war on gusts of emotion."

P.M.S. Blackett was an English experimental physicist who contributed to a variety of
scientific fields, including paleomagnetism and particle physics. As the quote above reflects,
he is most widely recognized for his work with military strategy and operational research
during World War II.

Here one sees yet another lovely example of Pynchon playing with names, as well as a quick
look into one of the book's central dichotomies. Although it's conceivable that others might
print Patrick Blackett's name as "P.M.S. Blackett" with no thought of premenstrual syndrome,
given that the quote attributed to him involves staying calm and unemotional, we know better
than to expect Pynchon to ignore this delicious morsel of irony.

The quote, as well as its author, provides an early glimpse into the book's central theme of
war as both a sterile, bureaucratic process and a nightmarish, human ordeal. Blackett's main
goal as an adviser to the British military was to make strategic decisions based solely on
numbers, rather than emotions or gut feelings. Math itself is a leitmotif of Gravity's Rainbow,
where the ordered and pristine world it inhabits is in stark contrast to the hell of war, clearly
illustrated in the novel's title. "... A million bureaucrats are diligently plotting death and some
of them even know it..." (p. 17)

Page 13
13.05 he knew
We know from V. that TRP knows some of Wittgenstein's key ideas. This italicized emphasis
on knowing without analysis might be a nod to the Witttenstein of On Certainty who argued
that universal epistemological doubt was, simply, wrong. "The key, then, is not to claim
certain knowledge of propositions like “here is a hand” but rather to recognize that these sorts
of propositions lie beyond questions of knowledge or doubt."
Universal epistemolgical doubt is said to start, historically, with Descartes, a philosopher TRP
seems to dislike for his 'rationality'. see Against the Day.
13.14 Genital Brain.
Both androgen and estrogen receptors have been identified in brains. Several sex-specific
genes not dependent on sex steroids are expressed differently in male and female human
brains. From wikipedia.

13.20 During his Kipling period, beastly Fuzzy-Wuzzies

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

13.34 No Cary Grant . . . medicine in the punchbowls

The reference here is not to the anachronistic Howard Hawks film Monkey Business but to George
Stevens’ Gunga Din, the 1939 film loosely inspired by Kipling’s famous poem. It refers specifically to a
scene where Cary Grant (and only Cary Grant) is indeed "larking in and out" of the tables of a
regimental ball "slipping elephant medicine in the punchbowls." He even has to warn one of his
compatriots (Victor McLaglen and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) to not drink the punch as he is larking in
and out. See Weisenburger's note at V684.31-35.

Page 14
14.07 H.A. Loaf
As in "Half a loaf is better than none"? and "There is at least one Loaf in every outfit".

14.22 committed to the Long Run as They are

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

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

14.30-31 It was a giant Adenoid!

Correspondent Erik Johnson adds the following in relation to the references to the Adenoid
here and at 754.38: "An adenoid is an enlarged mass of lymphoid tissue at the back of the
pharynx characteristically obstructing breathing--usually used in plural. I believe it's likely
that Pynchon is also making reference to 'Adenoid Hynkel,' the character of the dictator (and
mockery of Hitler) played by Charlie Chaplin in the film The Great Dictator.
Large protoplasmic monsters featured in a number of 1950s and 1960s SF movies, among
them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blob
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Master_X-7
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quatermass_II

14.34 Lord Blatherard Osmo

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

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

14.04 Redcaps

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

Redcaps are also murderous goblins in English folklore that stain their hats red from the blood
of their victims, and must keep killing so the blood on their hats doesn't dry out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redcap

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

Page 17
17.11 which Mother had Garrard's make up for him
Garrard & Co. Ltd., the Crown Jewellers since 1843, are at 112 Regent Street W1, where they
moved in 1952. Mrs. Bloat however would have visited them at their former location in
Albemarle Street, near the Royal Institution. This elite scientists' club is where Michael
Faraday did most of his experimenting and today it houses the Faraday Museum.

Page 18
18.22-23 "Johnny Doughboy Found a Rose in Ireland"
Song by Al Goodhart and Kay Twomey, composed for the 1942 film Johnny Doughboy,
starring Jane Withers and Henry Wilcoxon. Apparently a popular tune, it lasted 16 weeks on
the 1942 Hit Parade and was recorded by Kay Kyser and Guy Lombardo, among others.

18.25 George Formby

See note above at 9.05. Formby was extraordinarily popular in recordings and films in Britain
in the 1940s. Weisenburger claims that Formby’s voice was a "high screech," but it was
actually a not-unpleasant baritone. Weisenburger may be confusing Formby with the ukulele-
strumming 1960s singing phenomenon Tiny Tim. On the other hand, his singing voice did
have a rather whiny Lancastrian accent, similar to his speaking voice. You might like to judge
for yourself from his own song "She's Got Two of Everything" on YouTube, taken from his
1945 film I Didn't Do It!.

18.26-28 lost pieces...jigsaw puzzles...left eye...Weimaraner

TRP mentions the left eye quite a bit. Vera Meroving, in V., p.237, has an artificial left eye
inscribed with a clock and the glyphs of the zodiac; and in AtD Blinky Morgan has a damaged
left eye that allows him to be a walking interferometer, able to see light polarization unaided.

The left eye here belongs to a Weimaraner, a dog which European royalty used to hunt big
game like boar and bear. Weimaraner dogs are known for their loyalty to family, sensitivity,
high intelligence and problem solving ability and have thus been called the dog with a human
brain. Famous owners of the breed include founder of modern Turkey, Attaturk, President
Eisenhower, French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Brad Pitt and Trent Reznor.

Amber left eye of a dog echoes The Beatles' I am the Walrus': "yellow matter custard dripping
from a dead dog's eye."

18.30 the skin of a Flying Fortress

Correspondent Stephen Remato adds the following comment: "While detailing the debris on
Slothrop's desk, Mr. W. suggests that the bomb which explodes over Hiroshima was dropped
from a Flying Fortress. While also made by the Boeing company, it was the B29 Super
Fortress, not the B17 Flying Fortress, which was the atomic bomber of WW2. The well-
known B29 'Enola Gay' dropped the Hiroshima bomb, while the lesser-known B29 'Bock's
Car' dropped the Nagasaki bomb. To those unaware, the superficial similarity in name
between these types of aircraft is the main similarity only; they are not variations of the same
aircraft but quite distinct."

18.31 G-2
Military or ground intelligence. As opposed to N-2, Naval intelligence; A-2 air intelligence,
etc.
18.38 a News of the World
The NOTW was not a daily paper but a highly sensationalistic British weekly tabloid
published every Sunday from 1843 to 2011, with virtually no serious news. That "Slothrop is
a faithful reader" says much about his intellectual pursuits. The paper's farewell web page.
NOTW is mentioned in The Beatles song Polythene Pam : "She's the kind of a girl to make
the News of the World, yes you could say she was attractively built..." and The Smiths This
Night Has Opened My Eyes, "Wrap her [a dead baby] up in the News of the World / Dump
her on a doorstep" Likely many other songs as well.

Page 19

19.30 the pantechnicon

Weisenburger gives this as "a bazaar in Victorian London," but a more fitting setting for
Tantivy’s story of "Lorraine and Judy, Charles the homosexual constable and the piano"
would be a warehouse or furniture van. See 537.16-17.

Page 20
20.21 What it is is a graphite cylinder
The contents wiull be revealed on pp. 71-72.

20.34 A-and
Does anyone know how TRP pronounces this? Is it just a stutter? (It will recur in all his
subsequent books.)

20.36 TDY
Not "tour of duty," as in Weisenburger, but "temporary duty."

20.37 East End This is the East End of London, particularly heavily bombed by the Germans
in the war as London's docks were situated there. It was, and still is, the area where the
poorest people of London live. Famously, Queen Elizabeth's mother made a royal visit there
during the war where she was enthusiastically received.

Page 21
21.03 more of that Minnesota Multiphasic shit
The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is a standardized test of adult
personality and psychopathology. It was first published by the University of Minnesota Press
in 1943, and quickly adopted by US armed forces.[1]

21.07 A lot of stuff prior to 1944 is getting blurry now.

Even this early in the novel, Slothrop has problems with his "temporal bandwidth." His
memories of the Blitz (21.08) put him in London no later than May 1941, and possibly as
early as September 1940. Note also "I'm four years overdue" (25.17). The US did have
military liaison missions in the UK long before entering the war, but we will get no details of
Slothrop's role before the V-weapon campaign.

21.32 these three years

This puts Slothrop and Tantivy together (presumably at ACHTUNG) since Dec. 1941. What
technical intelligence from northern Germany had been targeted that far back? According to
the history books, the Allies became aware of the V-weapons programs only in mid-1943.

21.35 Tantivy's guest at the Junior Athenaeum

According to the London Encyclopedia the Junior Athenaeum purchased Hope House at 116
Piccadilly in 1868, owning it until the building was demolished in 1936. The JA appears to
have closed its doors in 1931, making this a possible anachronism. The Athenaeum Club
proper is the most intellectually elite of the gentlemen's clubs; Darwin, Dickens and Trollope
were members and Michael Faraday was secretary of the first committee.

21.36 86’d
While sources do agree with Weisenburger that the term "86" might originate in rhyming
slang (for "nix"), they also agree that it was first used in the restaurant business to indicate
menu items that were no longer available. The wider usage here may not have originated until
the 1950s.

Page 22
22.03 a build out of the chorus line at the Windmill; also p39 "It's not backstage at the
Windmill"
The Windmill opened in 1932 in a building which had been the Palais de Luxe Cinema and
then a theatre. It featured comedy and burlesque revues. The only London theatre to remain
open throughout the war, the Windmill continued until 1964 when it became a cinema,
reverted to a strip club in 1973, became a theatre/restaurant in 1982 and finally re-opened as a
strip club in 1986. From a recent advertisement: "The Windmill International - London's
Premier Tableside Dancing Club with 75 Beautiful Dancing Girls who will perform tableside
for you - full Nudity - fantastic stage and light show - Dress Smart".

22.04 Frick Frack Club

The term "frick and frack" is often used to designate two people or almost any two items
closely associated with each other. The term originates from the stage names of a pair of
Swiss skaters who starred in ice shows in the 1930s. Pynchon probably chose the name more
for its senseless alliteration (like "Kit-Kat Club") than any specific meaning.

22.25 Thomas Hooker... wilde Thyme

Thomas Hooker (July 5, 1586 – July 7, 1647) was a prominent Puritan religious and colonial
leader, who founded the Colony of Connecticut after dissenting with Puritan leaders in
Massachusetts. He was known as an outstanding speaker and a leader of universal Christian
suffrage. [2]

"wilde Thyme" also brings to mind "Wild Tyme", song by Jefferson Airplane on their 1967
LP After Bathing At Baxter's [3]
Page 23
23.10 Bovril
A beef extract--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. The method for making the extract was
perfected by Justus von Liebig, who co-founded the eponymous London based company.

23.19 Wrens
Women's Royal Naval Service - British civilian support group of war effort

23.25 Ike jacket

Ike jacket

Eisenhower jacket-- officially the M-44; a waist-cropped style jacket designed in 1943 and meant to
be worn beneath the standard US field jacket, the M-43, as an added layer of insulation; supposedly
made at Eisenhower's request.

Page 24
24.14 Humber
Humber is a British automobile marque which could date its beginnings to Thomas Humber's
bicycle company founded in 1868. Following their involvement in Humber through Hillman
in 1928 the Rootes brothers[1] acquired a controlling interest and joined the Humber board in
1932 making Humber part of their Rootes Group. The range focused on luxury models, such
as the Humber Super Snipe. [4]

24.30 Morrison shelter

The Morrison shelter, officially termed Table (Morrison) Indoor Shelter, had a cage-like
construction beneath it. It was designed by John Baker and named after Herbert Morrison, the
Minister of Home Security at the time. It was the result of the realisation that due to the lack
of house cellars it was necessary to develop an effective type of indoor shelter. The shelters
came in assembly kits, to be bolted together inside the home. They were approximately 6 ft 6
in (2 m) long, 4 ft (1.2 m) wide and 2 ft 6 in (0.75 m) high, had a solid 1/8 in (3 mm) steel
plate “table” top, welded wire mesh sides, and a metal lath “mattress”- type floor. Altogether
it had 359 parts and had 3 tools supplied with the pack. [5]

Page 25
25.06-07 Slothrop’s Progress . . . a parable
"Slothrop’s Progress" echoes John Bunyan’s Puritan allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress. The
word "parable," interestingly, comes from the same root as "parabola."
Slothrop's Progress may be Time itself. Sir Arthur Eddington coined the term "time's arrow"
to describe entropy's progress and time's irreversibility-- i.e. "as the universe gets older, it
becomes more disordered, following the second law of thermodynamics." Entropy's progress
defines time. Cf. Scientific American, Jan 2008, p.26 for more.

25. 29 Bond Street Underground station This is a station in the wealthier West End of
London - also a site on the British version of 'Monopoly'

Page 26
26.30 back home in Mingeborough, Massachusetts
The Berkshire town was first created by Pynchon in the short story "The Secret Integration,"
set in the mid-1960s. This story also introduced the Slothrop family, in the person of Hogan
Slothrop, who is apparently the son of Tyrone’s brother. Minges (or "midges") are small,
biting insects. However, "minge" was originally also a British slang term for a woman's pubic
hair, now generalised to the female genitals.

26.33 British Double Summer Time

Correspondent Igor Zabel explains this term: " . . . in Britain they had, during the war, the
clocks an hour ahead in the winter time and two hours in the summer time."

26.37-38 Death is a debt to nature due . . . so must you.

Weisenburger claims that this epitaph, with its debt to "nature" rather than God, would be
heretical to Puritans. That might be so, but the inscription was fairly common on tombstones
in the northeast from the mid-1700s until the early 1800s, a range that includes Constant’s
1760 death.

Page 27
27.04 Variable Slothrop
The son of "Constant": The two names play a mathematical pun and suggest the family’s
decline as well. Both names seem to be a pun as well on the name of Puritan minister and
Harvard president, the Rev. Increase Mather of Massachusetts Bay Colony and his son,
Cotton Mather. Increase attempted to decrease the heat surrounding the Salem Witch Trials
through a series of sermons seeking moderation in the use of spectral evidence, even though
he defended the trials and the judges. Parallels: Second law of thermodynamics - heated trials
cooling. Increase-Cotton-Constant-Variable --

27.31-33 They began as fur traders, cordwainers, salters and smokers of bacon, went on
into glassmaking, became selectmen, builders of tanneries, quarriers of marble.
One source listed in Weisenburger but that he did not have time to consult closely is The Berkshire
Hills [1], a guidebook prepared for this western Massachusetts region by the Federal Writers Project
during the Depression. (See Pynchon’s comments in his introduction to Slow Learner.) Although not
the sole source, the book provides important background for "The Secret Integration" and the
Berkshire segments of Gravity’s Rainbow. Most of the offices and trades listed here (except for
"smokers and salters of bacon") are noted at one place or another in the guidebook. Also see my
article "From the Berkshires to the Brocken: Transformations of a Source in "The Secret Integration"
and Gravity’s Rainbow," Pynchon Notes 22-23 (Spring-Fall 1988): 87-98.[6]

Page 28
28.02 converted acres at a clip into paper
A paper clip? A likely reference to Operation Paper Clip, the OSS program to recruit Nazi
scientists to work for the US and deny them to the Russians. Von Braun was brought to the
US under this program.

28.02-03 paper—toilet paper, banknote stock, newsprint

The Berkshire Hills describes several paper mills in the region and notes the importance of the
industry. One producer, Crane and Company, first used the term "bond" for high-quality
paper and provided special paper for U.S. currency from 1879 on [2]. Another company, in the
town of Lee, gave the "first practical demonstration in America of the process of
manufacturing paper from wood pulp instead of rags" [3].

28.05 Somerset Club

The Somerset Club is a private social club in Boston, Massachusetts, founded perhaps as early
as 1826. The original club was informal, without a clubhouse. By the 1830s this had evolved
into a group called the Temple. In 1851 the group purchased the home of Benjamin W.
Crowninshield, located at the corner of Beacon and Somerset Streets. Originally called the
Beacon Club, it was renamed the Somerset Club in 1852. In 1871 the Somerset Club
purchased the David Sears townhouse at 42 Beacon Street on Beacon Hill. Originally
designed by Alexander Parris and built in 1819, Sears had added to the house in 1832 and had
built the adjacent Crowninshield-Amory house at 43 Beacon Street for his daughter. The land
on which the house stood was originally part of an 18-acre (73,000 m2) parcel owned by John
Singleton Copley, who called it "his farm on Beacon Street." Eventually the Club bought 43
Beacon Street and joined the two houses into one large clubhouse. [7]

28.29-30 dying... but never quite to the zero

The third in a series of zeros:
Pirate's "idiot chase out to zero longitude" (20.8)
Slothrop's fear of death by V-2: "the next second, right, just suddenly... shit... just zero, just
nothing..."(25.18)
And now the Slothrop family wealth diminishing towards zero
The primary referent for the section title "Beyond the Zero" is a concept from Pavlov's theory
of reflex conditioning -- but these three may also link it to the East (where the rockets come
from), to what lies beyond death, and to negative wealth -- "a debt to nature due" (26.39), or a
guilt accumulated by the Slothrops' spoiling of the New World.

28.33-34 Harrimans and Whitneys gone

The Harrimans are mentioned in passing several times in The Berkshire Hills as being among
the wealthy families who spent their summers in the region. William C. Whitney, President
Cleveland’s Secretary of the Navy, is specifically mentioned as the founder of a vacation
colony in Lenox in 1886 [4]. These decaying vacation homes also appear in "The Secret
Integration": "...a miniaturized or toy Venice for the New York candy magnate Ellsworth
Baffy, who had caused this place to be built originally. Like many who put castles up among
these inland hills, he was a contemporary of Jay Gould and his partner, the jolly Berkshire
peddler Jubilee Jim Fisk."

28.40 the Great Aspinwall Hotel Fire

More historical fact, also possibly from The Berkshire Hills. [8]

Page 29
29.04 Hogan
Tyrone Slothrop’s brother, presumably the father of the Hogan Slothrop of "The Secret
Integration," set in the Berkshires a generation later.

Page 29
29.34 laminar
Laminar flow, sometimes known as streamline flow, occurs when a fluid flows in parallel
layers, with no disruption between the layers. [1]

Page 30
30.1 Camerons officers
Sir Alexander Maurice Cameron: He served in World War II initially as a British General
Staff Officer with Anti-Aircraft Command and then as Commander of the Anti-Aircraft
Brigade from 1942. He was on the staff of Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force
from 1944 to 1945. At this time he started constructing an Allied version of the V2 rocket. [2]

Or: officers of the Cameron Highlanders. [3]

30.37 Ouspenskian nonsense

Peter D. Ouspensky (March 4, 1878–October 2, 1947), (Pyotr Demianovich Ouspenskii, also
Uspenskii or Uspensky, Пётр Демья́нович Успе́нский), a Russian esoteric philosopher
known for his expositions of the early work of the Greek-Armenian teacher of esoteric
doctrine George Gurdjieff, whom he met in Moscow in 1915. [4]

30.39 Jessica Swanlake

Jessica’s last name, like other musical references in the novel, is suggestive. Like the heroine
of the Tchaikovsky ballet, she finds true love and is transformed, but then is abducted back to
her former state by an evil magician (in this case, Pointsman).

Page 31
31.17 tripos at Cambridge
Formal exams at Cambridge University to demonstrate understanding and determine class
honors. Wikipedia

31.28 Carroll Eventyr

As Weisenburger notes, "eventyr" is Danish for "adventure" but in the sense of a tale or story
("The Adventures of . . . "). It can signify "folk tales" or "fairy tales," as in Hans Christian
Andersen’s stories. The first name evokes Lewis Carroll but it also suggests the astrologer
Carroll Righter, whose face appeared on the cover of Time magazine for a story about
growing interest in the occult on March 21, 1969. Righter, nicknamed "The Gregarious
Aquarius," later would read charts for Ronald Reagan, among other celebrities. Also see the
note at 742.29.

Page 32
32.5 Zipf's Principle of Least Effort
Zipf's law ( /ˈzɪf/), an empirical law formulated using mathematical statistics, refers to the fact
that many types of data studied in the physical and social sciences can be approximated with a
Zipfian distribution, one of a family of related discrete power law probability distributions.
The law is named after the linguist George Kingsley Zipf who first proposed it (Zipf 1935,
1949), though J.B. Estoup appears to have noticed the regularity before Zipf. [5]

32.20 frail as organdy

Organdy or organdie is the sheerest and crispest cotton cloth made. Combed yarns contribute
to its appearance. - from Wikipedia

32.23 The usual Mysterious Microfilm Drill

The first of several uses of this idiom ("Disgusting English Candy Drill," "them Tamara/Italo
drills," "the 'Nature of Freedom' drill," etc.). They break the fourth wall with the suggestion
that we and the narrator know this is familiar, stylized "going through the motions."

32.25 crown-and-anchor game

Crown and Anchor is a simple dice game, traditionally played for gambling purposes by
sailors in the British Royal Navy, and also in the British merchant and fishing fleets. The
game originated in the 18th century. It is still popular in the Channel Islands and Bermuda,
but is strictly controlled and may be played legally only on certain occasions, such as the
Channel Islands' three annual agricultural shows, or Bermuda's annual Cup Match cricket
game. Three special dice are used in Crown and Anchor. The dice are equal in size and shape
to standard dice, but instead of one through six pips, they are marked with six symbols:
crown, anchor, diamond, spade, club and heart. [6]
32.28 Time for closeting, gas logs, shawls against the cold night, snug... as here at
Snoxall's
Wondering if Snoxall's is some amalgamation or riffing of Snowballs... Snow being Earth's
"White Visitation", etc.

32.35 grin your Dennis Morgan chap goes about

Dennis Morgan (December 20, 1908 – September 7, 1994) was an American actor-singer.
Born as Earl Stanley Morner, he used the acting pseudonym Richard Stanley before adopting
his professional name. In 1945, he played "Jefferson Jones" in Christmas in Connecticut
opposite Barbara Stanwyck and Sydney Greenstreet. He starred in God Is My Co-Pilot, Kitty
Foyle, Perfect Strangers and The Desert Song. Morgan was a leading man with Warner Bros.
in the 1940s, starring with best friend Jack Carson in many movies, several of which were
"two guys" buddy pictures. His peak years were 1943 to 1949. [7]

Page 33
33.17 rattling sitreps
Situation reports. "A command center (often called a war room) is any place that is used to
provide centralized command for some purpose." [8]

33.19 good-whisky-and-cured-Latakia scent of Their rough love

Latakia tobacco is a specially prepared tobacco originally produced in Syria and named after
the port city of Latakia. Now the tobacco is mainly produced in Cyprus. It is initially sun-
cured like other Turkish tobaccos and then further cured over a pine or oak wood fire, which
gives it an intense smokey-peppery taste and smell. Too strong for most people's tastes to
smoke straight, it is used as a "condiment" or "blender" (a basic tobacco mixed with other
tobaccos to create a blend), especially in English, Balkan, and some American Classic blends.
[9]

33.26 Witchcraft Act

Correspondent Igor Zabel offers this interesting elaboration on the reference: "A few years
ago, I came upon a short article in our daily newspaper Delo, which could be interesting here.
It says: 'The British spiritualists started a campaign to acquit Helen Duncan, sentenced as a
witch during the World War II. She was sentenced as a consequence of a séance in 1942. She
told she had seen in her trance a dead soldier wearing a cap with the inscription HMS
Barham, who had told her: My ship was sunken. The news about this fact (the ship was
supposedly sunken on 25 November 1942) was kept secret by the British government for two
years, as Winston Churchill wrote in his diary. In 1944, Duncan was arrested since they were
afraid that she would reveal also the date of the D-day. Her trial was based on the Witchcraft
Act from 1735, and she was sentenced to nine months of prison. Argument: Helen Duncan
pretends that she conjures the spirits of the dead.' It seems that Mexico refers to this case; the
year and quotation from the Act correspond to the conviction of Helen Duncan." A web
search using Helen Duncan's name will reveal several websites devoted to the "medium
martyr."

33.31-32 the Scrubs

Wormwood Scrubs Prison, in London, was built by convicts in 1874

Page 34
34.21 "The White Visitation"... devoted to psychological warfare
I have always figured this was a major influence on the White Lodge of Twin Peaks. [10]

34.28 Vichy traitors

Following the armistice signed on June 22, 1940, the zone which was not occupied by the
Germans took the name of the French State (État Français) (as opposed to the traditional
name, République française or French Republic) and set up its capital in Vichy on July 1,
because of the town's relative proximity to Paris (4.5 hours by train) and because it was the
city with the second largest hotel capacity at the time. Moreover, the existence of a modern
telephone exchange made it possible to reach the whole world via phone. More: [11]

34.28-29 Lublin Communists drawing beads on Varsovian shadow-ministers

On 24 July 1944, Lublin was taken by the Soviet Army and became the temporary capital of a
Soviet-controlled communist Polish Committee of National Liberation established in the city,
which was to serve as basis for a puppet government. The capital was moved to Warsaw in
January 1945. [12]

34.29-30 ELAS Greeks stalking royalists

The Greek People's Liberation Army or ELAS (Greek: Ελληνικός Λαϊκός Απελευθερωτικός
Στρατός, translit. Ellinikós Laïkós Apeleftherotikós Stratós, ΕΛΑΣ), was the military arm of
the left-wing National Liberation Front (EAM) during the period of the Greek Resistance until
February 1945. [13]

34.39 that stateless lascar...

Lascar: The name lascar was also used to refer to Indian servants, typically engaged by
British military officers. [14]

Lascars often appear as sinister henchmen in Sax Rohmer's "Fu Manchu" thrillers, which are
referenced repeatedly in GR. Perhaps this implies, that though not immediately placeable,
Pirate has a bit of an Indian look, outside of the other connotations?

34.41 They have euchred Mexico

Euchre is a trick-taking card game most commonly played with four people in two
partnerships with a deck of 24 standard playing cards. It is the game responsible for
introducing the joker into modern packs; this was invented around 1860 to act as a top trump
or best bower (from the German word Bauer, "farmer", denoting also the jack). It is believed
to be closely related to the French game Écarté that was popularized in the United States by
the Cornish and Pennsylvania Dutch, and to the seventeenth-century game of bad repute Loo.
It may be sometimes referred to as Knock Euchre to distinguish it from Bid Euchre. [15]

Page 35
35.3 Behaviorist
Behaviorism, also called the learning perspective (where any physical action is a behavior), is
a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things that organisms do—
including acting, thinking and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors, and that
psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior patterns or modifying the
environment. The behaviorist school of thought maintains that behaviors as such can be
described scientifically without recourse either to internal physiological events or to
hypothetical constructs such as the mind. Behaviorism comprises the position that all theories
should have observational correlates but that there are no philosophical differences between
publicly observable processes (such as actions) and privately observable processes (such as
thinking and feeling). [16]

35.3 Pavlovian
Classical conditioning (also Pavlovian or respondent conditioning, Pavlovian reinforcement)
is a form of conditioning that was first demonstrated by Ivan Pavlov (1927). The typical
procedure for inducing classical conditioning involves presentations of a neutral stimulus
along with a stimulus of some significance, the "unconditional stimulus." The neutral stimulus
could be any event that does not result in an overt behavioral response from the organism
under investigation. Conversely, presentation of the significant stimulus necessarily evokes an
innate, often reflexive, response. Pavlov called these the unconditional stimulus (US) and
unconditional response (UR), respectively. If the neutral stimulus is presented along with the
unconditional stimulus, it would become a conditional stimulus (CS). Pavlov used the term
conditional because he wanted to emphasize that learning required a dependent or conditional
relationship between CS and US. If the CS and US always occur together and never alone,
this perfect dependent relationship or pairing, causes the two stimuli to become associated and
the organism produces a behavioral response to the CS. Pavlov called this the conditional
response (CR). [17]

35.21 NAAFI
The Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes (NAAFI) is an organization created by the British
government in 1921 to run recreational establishments needed by the British Armed Forces,
and to sell goods to servicemen and their families. Combining some of the functions of the
American USO and PX (post exchange), it runs clubs, bars, shops, supermarkets, launderettes,
restaurants, cafés and other facilities on most British military bases and also canteens on
board Royal Navy ships. Commissioned officers are not usually supposed to use the NAAFI
clubs and bars, since their messes provide these facilities and their entry, except on official
business, is considered to be an intrusion into junior ranks' private lives. [18]

35.26 "a T.S. Eliot April"

Reference to "The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot: APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs
out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain.

Page 36
36.3 ICI
Standing for Imperial Chemical Industries. One of the foremost British public companies,
known as the bellwether of the British economy before its reconfiguration and relative
demise. [19]

36.11-12 what the lyrics to "Dancing in the Dark" are really about...
Howard Dietz' lyrics to the famous tune, outside of their obvious romantic meaning, can also
be read more deeply to empathize with the human condition. [20]
Dancing in the dark 'til the tune ends/ We're dancing in the dark and it soon ends/ We're
waltzing in the wonder of why we're here/ Time hurries by, we're here and we're gone

Looking for the light of a new love/ To brighten up the night, I have you love/ And we can face
the music together/ Dancing in the dark
What though love is old/ What though the song is old/ Through them we can be young/ Hear
this heart of mine/ Wiling all the time/ Dear one, tell me that we're one

Looking for the light of a new love/ To brighten up the night, I have you love/ And we can face
the music together/ Dancing in the dark, dancing in the dark/ Dancing in the dark

36.27-28 the Other Chap in this case being known as Beaver

"Beaver" is the nickname for Jessica’s other and more staid lover, Jeremy. The nickname
derives from the ‘40s slang for the beard he sports. (For example, in the "home front" film
Since You Went Away [1944], the bearded character played by Monty Woolley is referred to
as "Beaver.") The word also is vulgar slang for a woman’s pubic hair or genitals.

Page 37
37.4 the cutters are coming
A cutter is a light, fast official vessel used by coast guards, customs officials, etc. -- here
carrying on the nautical associations of Pirate & Scorpia's talk.

37.10-11 Fred Roper’s Company of Wonder Midgets

This is apparently a real group, although I have no information on them except that a postcard exists
captioned "Fred Roper and His Wonderful Midgets" with a tall man in a busby and military greatcoat
and a troop of midgets in uniform under the heading "The Toy Soldier Parade." The website for The
Princess Theatre Hunstanton (England) notes that the building opened as the Capitol Theatre in
1932. One of the first acts to play there was "Fred Roper and His 20 Wonder Midgets"!

A scan of a vintage program from the Fred Roper troop is available online, and video of the
troop can be found on YouTube. [21] [22]

37.27-28 rendezvous with a certain high-class vivisectionist

A possible play of "cutters" (above) and "vivisectionist" (one who cuts into live animals),
hinting at a parallel between Pirate/Scorpia and Roger/Jessica: both relationships are furtive
and would be disapproved by Them.

37.39-40 whippy as sheets of glass improperly annealed

Annealing is a process of slowly cooling glass to relieve internal stresses after it was formed.
The process may be carried out in a temperature-controlled kiln known as a Lehr. Glass which
has not been annealed is liable to crack or shatter when subjected to a relatively small
temperature change or mechanical shock. Annealing glass is critical to its durability. If glass
is not annealed, it will retain many of the thermal stresses caused by quenching and
significantly decrease the overall strength of the glass. [23]
Page 38
38.04-05 you’ve been able to shoot back now and then at the odd flying buzz bomb
The pulse-jet-powered V-1 "buzz-bomb," flying at 400 mph, could sometimes be intercepted
by anti-aircraft guns and propeller-driven fighters. The V-2 rocket, at 3500 mph outside the
atmosphere and half that speed on impact, could not.

38.06 "dear old Nutria-"... "Beaver."

The nutria (Myocastor coypus), also known as the river rat, is a large, herbivorous,
semiaquatic rodent and the only member of the family Myocastoridae. Originally native to
subtropical and temperate South America, it has since been introduced to North America,
Europe, Asia, and Africa, primarily by fur ranchers. Although it is still valued for its fur in
some regions, its destructive feeding and burrowing behaviors make this invasive species a
pest throughout most of its range. Its fur was a less expensive substitute for beaver. [1]

38.19 watching that awful Going My Way

Going My Way is 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. 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. [2]

38.21 each saccade of her... eyes

Saccades are quick, simultaneous movements of both eyes in the same direction. [3]

38.36 It was what Hollywood likes to call a "cute meet"

On p.561, Pynchon has Slothrop singing "LOOK-IN’ FAWR A NEEDLE IN A HAAAAY-
STACK!" which is a song from the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers film The Gay Divorce (1934).
In that number, Astaire sings about finding the woman of his dreams whose name he never
learned after they had had a "cute meet."

Pynchon uses 'cute meet' again in Inherent Vice p. 37

38.37 Tunbridge Wells

Royal Tunbridge Wells (usually shortened to Tunbridge Wells) is a town in west Kent,
England, about 40 miles (64 km) south-east of central London by road, 34.5 miles (55.5 km)
by rail. The town is close to the border of the county of East Sussex. Due to its position in
South East England, during the First World War Tunbridge Wells was made a headquarters
for the army, and its hospitals were used to treat soldiers who had been sent home with a
"blighty wound"; the town also received 150 Belgian refugees. The Second World War
affected Tunbridge Wells in a different way – it became so swollen with refugees from
London that accommodation was severely strained. Over 3,800 buildings were damaged by
bombing, but only 15 people lost their lives. [4]

38.39 ATS skirt

British ATS: British Auxiliary Territorial Service

Page 39
39.11 "I'm going the other way. Nearly to Battle." Battle, East Sussex: site of the Battle of
Hastings in 1066[5], the last successful invasion of Britain. Probably not coincidental for a
young woman working in an anti-aircraft gun crew, in a time of bombardment that can't be
stopped.

39.39 mica-dazzle
Possible reference to Wallace Stevens' poem, "Variations on a Summer Day": Words add to
the senses. The words for the dazzle / Of mica, the dithering of grass, / The Arachne
integument of dead trees, / Are the eye grown larger, more intense.

The mica group of sheet silicate (phyllosilicate) minerals includes several closely related
materials having highly perfect basal cleavage. All are monoclinic, with a tendency towards
pseudohexagonal crystals, and are similar in chemical composition. The highly perfect
cleavage, which is the most prominent characteristic of mica, is explained by the hexagonal
sheet-like arrangement of its atoms. [6]

Page 40
40.13 Psi Section
The Greek letter psi was first used in 1942 to signify "the unknown factor in extrasensory
perception and psychokinesis experiences that is not explained by known physical or
biological mechanisms." [7]

all the definitely 3-sigma lot

A statistician's shorthand for "very unusual people." It means three or more standard
deviations from a mean or typical value, the extreme outlying values (both high and low) of
the familiar "bell curve." Only about 2% of a random population sample would be expected to
score "3-sigma" on various psychological scales. [8]

40.18 the chi-square calculations, in between the flips of the Zener cards...
The chi-square test is one of the most common statistical procedures, used to determine if a
data set differs from what would be expected if nothing abnormal were affecting it (i.e., to
separate "signal" --if any -- from random "noise").[9] Zener cards are cards used to conduct
experiments for extra-sensory perception (ESP), most often clairvoyance. Perceptual
psychologist Karl Zener designed the cards in the early 1930s for experiments conducted with
his colleague, parapsychologist J. B. Rhine. [10]

40.21 fire control The use of statistical models to direct anti-aircraft fire. For most of WWII,
gun crews used timed fuses to detonate shells within a certain range of altitude, hoping to fill
the "box" through which bombers were flying with shell fragments and shock waves. Later,
proximity fuses with miniaturized radar electronics would detonate when the shell was closest
to an aircraft, making AA fire much more effective.

40.34 Battle of Britain

The Battle of Britain was the most intense period of air combat between the German air force
(Luftwaffe) and the UK's Royal Air Force (RAF) during the summer and autumn of 1940. The
objective of the German campaign was to gain air superiority over RAF Fighter Command,
while bombing British targets ("the Blitz") to force surrender or prepare for an invasion. The
name derives from a famous speech delivered by Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the
House of Commons: "...the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about
to begin."

This was the first major campaign to be fought entirely by air forces. From July 1940 coastal
shipping convoys and shipping centres, such as Portsmouth, were the German bombers' main
targets; one month later the Luftwaffe shifted its attacks to RAF airfields and infrastructure.
As the battle progressed it also targeted aircraft factories and ground infrastructure.
Eventually it shifted to targets of political significance and urban areas, with less frequent
raids extending into May 1941. The failure of Germany to achieve its objectives is considered
its first major defeat and one of the crucial turning points in the war. [11]

40.36 Packard
Same make of car as in the beginning of V. A high-quality luxury vehicle.

Page 41
41.28-29 barrage balloons south of London
Barrage balloons were blimps tethered with steel cables, creating an aerial "obstacle course"
to make it more difficult for attacking bombers to line up their approach and keep formation.
[12]

The town, evacuated in '40, is still "regulated"

During the war, about 3.75 million British residents were officially evacuated at some time,
from target cities and from smaller towns like this on the southern and eastern approaches to
London, where German aircraft often dumped their bombs if harried by RAF fighters. Most
had returned to their homes in 1941.

"Still, the V-1 flying bomb attacks from June 1944 provoked a significant exodus from
London. Up to 1.5 million people left by September — only 20% were "official" evacuees.
From September 1944, the evacuation process was officially halted and reversed for most
areas except for London and the East coast. Returning to London was not officially approved
until June 1945." [13]

See also the description at 53.37.

Page 42
42.07 whose name will be Vladimir (or Ilya, Sergei, Nikolai...)
These recall the Russian names assigned to laboratory dogs in Pavlov's experiments. This
wild or abandoned dog, "never having been near a laboratory in his life," will be given such a
name: the first assertion of the control that Pointsman craves above all.

42.19 F.R.C.S.
Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons (FRCS) is a professional qualification to
practise as a surgeon in the UK. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRCS Jpicco 09:53, 16 May
2009 (PDT)

42.35 Balaclava helmet

...a form of headgear covering the whole head, exposing only the face or upper part of it, and
sometimes only the eyes and mouth. More typically known today, in various forms, as a ski
mask.

The name "balaclava" comes from the town of Balaklava, near Sevastopol in Crimea (now
Ukraine).[1] During the Crimean War, knitted balaclavas were sent over to the British troops
to help protect them from the bitter cold weather. They are traditionally knitted from wool,
and can be rolled up into a hat to cover just the crown of the head.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balaclava_(clothing) Jpicco 09:53, 16 May 2009 (PDT)

Page 43
43.28 instead I'm with this gillie or something
Ghillie or gillie is a Scots term that refers to a man or a boy who acts as an attendant on a
fishing, fly fishing, hunting, or deer stalking expedition, primarily in the Highlands or on a
river such as the River Spey. Jessica is mocking Roger's role tonight as Pointsman's assistant.
A ghillie may also serve as a gamekeeper employed by a landowner to prevent poaching on
his lands, control unwelcome natural predators such as fox or otter, and monitor the health of
the wildlife. [1]

Page 44
44.09 "this isn't Kenya or something"
I.e., not big-game hunting (Kenya was then a British colony) with Roger as beater, driving
animals into the open for Pointsman to shoot. See also "'Moment-- of truth!'" on line 38
below, borrowed from the matador's kill in bullfighting. The two manly, exotic comparisons
frame another, with a famous pet collie -- and all three are comically inappropriate with this
chase after a potential lab animal.

44.17-18 "Why it's Mrs. Nussbaum!"...Fred Allen..."You vere ekshpecting maybe

Lessie?"
Pansy Nussbaum was a Jewish housewife character on Fred Allen's radio show. [2]

See more about the actress, Minerva Pious, who played Mrs Nussbaum here. On the Fred
Allen Show, she often said the lines "You were expecting maybe..." in a thick Yiddish accent.

"Lessie" refers to Lassie, the famous fictional dog of American TV and movies. [3] --Jpicco
10:04, 16 May 2009 (PDT)

This section of the novel is so cartoonish, I can't help thinking of Merrie Melodies in general
and a specific Bugs Bunny episode called French Rarebit in which a French cook with a thick
accent says "You were expecting maybe Humphrey Bogart." The video is up on dailymotion.

44.22 "Pointsman just wants to count the old drops of saliva..."

This was the setup for Pavlov's classic early experiments: dogs were conditioned to associate
feeding (and their natural salivation) with a bell. Once the new response was established, they
would salivate at the sound of the bell alone. A surgically implanted drain from the salivary
ducts allowed measurement of the strength of the response.
Page 45
45.16 "Do you have any cigarettes?" asks Jessica.
Her nonchalance amid collapsing prams, flailing nets and "a system of lever arms that can
plunge them into deadly collapse at any moment" tells us that she knows slapstick when she
sees it. Pynchon alternately encourages and undermines our readiness to cast Jessica as the
more tender/emotional of the couple.

45.40 “We’re for it”

Or "in for it," in US idiom.

Page 46
46.32 not toward any apical God God at the apex: the top of a cathedral spire or church
steeple. (Or of the Chain of Being, p. 77.)

46.41 St. Veronica

Saint Veronica, according to the "Acta Sanctorum" published by the Bollandists (under
February 4), was a pious woman of Jerusalem who, moved with pity as Jesus carried his cross
to Golgotha, gave him her veil that he might wipe his forehead. Jesus accepted the offering
and after using it handed it back to her, the image of his face miraculously impressed upon it...
The closest reference in the canonical scriptures is the miracle of the woman who was healed
by touching the hem of Jesus’ garment (Luke 8:43–48); her name is later identified as
Veronica by the apocryphal "Acts of Pilate". The story was later elaborated in the 11th
century by adding that Christ gave her a portrait of himself on a cloth, with which she later
cured the Emperor Tiberius. [4]

Page 47
47.03 The Book
Weisenburger identifies this as volume 2 of Pavlov's Lectures on Conditioned Reflexes, "his
effort to branch out of physiological studies and into psychology." It was published in Russian
in 1940, translated into English 1941.

Page 47
47.26 autoclave
An autoclave sterilizes equipment and supplies by subjecting them to high pressure saturated
steam at 121 °C for around 15–20 minutes depending on the size of the load and the contents.
It was invented by Charles Chamberland in 1879, although a precursor known as the steam
digester was created by Denis Papin in 1679. The name comes from Greek auto-, ultimately
meaning self, and Latin clavis meaning key — a self-locking device. [1]

The "fine clutter of steel bones" inside the autoclave should sensitize us to other hot
enclosures to come -- domestic, folkloric, and genocidal. This is reinforced at once by
patients' cries of pain "as from cold metal."
47.34-35 run three times around the building without thinking of a fox and you can cure
anything
Pynchon's source may be folkloric, shared with Douglas Hofstadter -- who in Godel, Escher,
Bach (1979) would illustrate paradox by citing "this surefire cure for hiccups: 'Run around the
house three times without thinking of the word "wolf."'"

Note that an injunction not to think of something is a perfect example of anthropologist

Gregory Bateson's "double bind." Pointsman's own thinking may have absorbed a bit too
much of the "paradoxical state" and "idea of the opposite" he studies.

Page 48
48.13-14 sybilline cries arriving out of the darkness
Copy editor napping: "Sybil" is a woman's given name. Sibyls were female oracles in
classical times. The Sibyl, with frenzied mouth uttering things not to be laughed at, unadorned
and unperfumed, yet reaches to a thousand years with her voice by aid of the god. - Homer
[2]

Abreactions of the Lord of the Night

Abreaction is a psychoanalytical term for reliving an experience in order to purge it of its
emotional excesses; a type of catharsis. Sometimes it is a method of becoming conscious of
repressed traumatic events. [3]

48.25 " . . . one of Lazslo Jamf’s subjects . . . "

The name "Jamf" apparently derives from an acronym used by Charlie Parker: "Jive-Ass
Mother-Fucker"!

48.38 Transmarginal and Paradoxical phases

see here

Page 49
49.26-29 pain-voices of the... Lord of the Night's children... sooner or later an abreaction
The quick repetition of these ideas within two pages, here, seems to dig at the idea that
Pynchon is inferring that the aural psychical effects of the bombing victims come after the
fact of death just as the bombs sound come after their delivery. In other words, because of the
instantaneous nature of their death there is much psychic energy that is let off which affects
the environment afterward, ie. all over the frost & harrowed city.

49.30 ...as once again the floor is a giant lift.. the walls blown outward This paragraph
takes us into the drugged, traumatized dreams and memories of the "rocketbombed" patients,
narrated in a second person that unites us with the victims: "your sudden paralysis...the sight
of your blood spurting..."
We might later recall that voice and several of the fragmentary images --"The cinema kiss
never completed... crying from the rows either side... the sudden light" -- if we find ourselves
in another movie theater, if we remember, if there is time.

Page 50
50.10 mummery
Strictly speaking, a mummer is an actor in a traditional seasonal folk play. The term is also
humorously (or derogatorily) applied to any actor. [4]

50.16 palimpsests
A palimpsest is a manuscript, usually parchment or vellum, from which the text has been
scraped off and which can be used again. Over time the earlier writing can re-emerge, creating
multiple superimposed layers -- symbolic of the mind as well as history. [5]

50.22 Realpolitik
Realpolitik refers to politics or diplomacy based primarily on power and on practical and
material factors and considerations, rather than ideological notions or moralistic or ethical
premises... Realpolitik is a theory of politics that focuses on considerations of power, not
ideals, morals, or principles. [6]

Page 51
51.04 you are the Traveler's Aid
The Travelers Aid organization began with an 1851 bequest from St. Louis mayor Bryan
Mullanphy. Its efforts were directed first to settlers traveling West, and later became
worldwide (including a role in the USO -- United Service Organizations -- supporting Allied
troops in WWII.)[7]

One of Travelers Aid's early concerns was to protect stranded female travelers from the over-
hyped "white slave trade." That gives ironic poignance to Pointsman's tenderness -- "for the
moment," that is.

51.06 AWOL bag AWOL = "away without [official] leave." An AWOL bag is a small
unframed man's bag with handles, usually leather or canvas. It was named for its convenience
as "grab and go" luggage into which a weekend's clothes could be hastily tossed.

Cobb & Beach at Lyme Regis

51.31-32 the Ick Regis jetty

The name is Pynchon’s but evokes "The Cobb," the famous jetty at the city of Lyme Regis on
the southern coast of England.
Regis is the Latin genitive of Rex, "the King" thus, "of the king." As William Safire notes,
"The colloquial noun and interjection ick, as well as its adjectival form, icky, are terms of
disgust, distaste and revulsion." Oedipa Maas uses the term in CoL49 in response to a grisly
play.

Combining Ick and Regis, could therefore render the anarchic sentiment "sick of the king."

Ick Regis, when spoken aloud, sounds like 'egregious'--perhaps a comment on the programs
being run at the White Visitation?

Interestingly, for PISCES and White Visitation to be headquartered in a place named Ick
Regis, brings associations with the fish sickness "ick" also known as the white spot disease,
which is a severe dermatitis of freshwater fish caused by a protozoan of the genus
Ichthyophthirius and is especially destructive in aquariums and hatcheries called also
ichthyophthiriasis, ichthyophthirius. Hence, the "white visitation" could, again, be a sickness.

51.37 blastulablob
Apparently a TRP neologism. More about blastulas here. --Jpicco

Page 52
52.23 it's the damned Rundstedt offensive
Pointsman ascribes his tight budget to high-level concerns over the German counteroffensive
in Belgium, France, and Luxembourg (not Holland, per Weisenburger) that would be
remembered as the Battle of the Bulge. Freedictionary and Wiki. --Jpicco

52.39 Deptford
Deptford is a district of south London, England, located on the south bank of the River
Thames. It is named after a ford of the River Ravensbourne, and from the mid 16th century to
the late 19th was home to Deptford Dockyard, the first of the Royal Dockyards... Deptford
experienced economic decline in the 20th century with the closing of the docks, and the
damage caused by the bombing during the Second World War: one V-2 rocket alone
destroyed a Woolworth's store outside Deptford Town Hall, killing 160 people. [8]

Page 53
53.03 "'One, little, Fox!'"
Compare with Spectro's use of "fox" for patients (47.34), now recast as Pointsman's prey --
the ultimate lab animal. "Fox" recurs nearly twenty times in the novel, often with eerie
connotations (e.g. 138.23).

Page 53

53.29-30 out into the snow tracked over by foxes, rabbits, long lost dogs
With Pointsman's "One, little, Fox!" on line 3 above, another overlapping of hunters and prey.

53.30-31 Empty canals of snow thread away into trees and town whose name they still
don’t know.
Echoing "places whose names he has never heard" on p. 3, or the "slopes and serifs of an un-
readable legend on the lintel" at St. Veronica's on p. 47, this is a recurring Pynchonian
flourish of What Is Not Said.

53.34 Late lorry motors

Lorry is the British word for a truck.

53.39-40 she does wish there were others about

See 41.28

Page 54
54.25 Poisson Distribution/Equation
"In probability theory and statistics, the Poisson distribution is a discrete probability
distribution that expresses the probability of a number of events occurring in a fixed period of
time if these events occur with a known average rate and independently of the time since the
last event. The Poisson distribution can also be used for the number of events in other
specified intervals such as distance, area or volume."[1]

For instance, if on average London received one rocket strike per square kilometer per day,
the Poisson equation could be used to predict the probability of a random 1 km2 area of
London receiving 0, 1, 10 or any other number of rocket strikes. Of relevance to the novel, an
necessary assumption of the Poisson distribution is that events are independent: even if a
given square kilometer of London has already received 100 rocket strikes today, it is still just
as likely to be hit again as any other square kilometer of London.

This concept recurs on pp. 55, 56, 85, 140, 171, 270.

Poisson, though the name of an actual person, is also French for fish. Could this be an echo of
PISCES?

1. ↑ Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 16:45, November 23, 2009

Page 55
55.01 His little bureau
A jump cut here -- not confirmed until the next paragraph -- to Roger's London workplace,
and interpolated scenes of his exchanges with Pointsman

55.11 Whittaker and Watson

The co-authors (and informal name) of a book formally titled A Course of Modern Analysis.
Weisenburger notwithstanding, it is a calculus text with only incidental appearance of a few
statistical functions.(Read the whole thing if you want at Google Books!) Notice the very
cinematic, scene-setting "slow pan," with the book and snapshot as Hollywood-heavy
symbols of Roger's divided loyalty.
55.13-15 dogs wait with cheeks laid open... to fill the wax cup or graduated tube
See 44.22

Page 56
56.08 Monte Carlo Fallacy
The belief that if events have deviated from our expectations of "chance" in one direction,
they are bound to deviate in the opposite direction soon, as if to compensate. The name is
drawn from a famous event at the Monte Carlo Casino in 1913, when a roulette ball settled on
black 26 times in a row -- and the casino grew richer as more and more patrons bet on red,
anticipating a "rebound."[1]

As Roger patiently explains, no rocket is influenced by what previous rockets have done, any
more than the roulette ball was influenced by what it had done on a previous spin -- or 25
previous spins -- of the wheel. The Poisson distribution depends on the assumption that events
in a data set are genuinely random and independent -- i.e. that in this case, there is no
systematic "skew" in how the V-2s are aimed and launched, or in the many manufacturing
and environmental variables that affect their trajectory and scatter their impacts around the
target point.

Page 57
57.08 ...she gives him her Fay Wray look...
Fay Wray played the heroine, Ann Darrow, in the 1933 film King Kong. So the look Jess
gives Roger must've been something like this.

Lot of photos at Getty Images.

57.31 Beveridge Proposal

The Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Social Insurance and Allied Services,
known commonly as the Beveridge Report was an influential document in the founding of the
Welfare State in the United Kingdom. It was chaired by William Beveridge, an economist,
who identified five "Giant Evils" in society: squalor, ignorance, want, idleness and disease,
and went on to propose widespread reform to the system of social welfare to address these.
Highly popular with the public, the report formed the basis for the post-war reforms known as
the Welfare State, which include the expansion of National Insurance and the creation of the
National Health Service. [2]

Page 58
58.02 the good dog alerted by the eternal scent, the explosion... always just about to
come
This begins to smell familiar, especially with "a skulk of foxes, a cowardice of curs...
whispering in the yards and lanes" farther down the page.

Page 59
59.01-02 Frank Bridge Variations
The "Frank Bridge Variations" is a composition ("Variations on a Theme by Frank Bridge,"
Opus 10, 1937) by Benjamin Britten, named after one of his teachers. It was one of Britten's
first works to win international notice. Wikipedia entry...

59.03 Montrachet
Montrachet is an Appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC) and Grand Cru vineyard for white
wine from Chardonnay in the Côte de Beaune subregion of Burgundy. It is situated across the
border between the two communes of Chassagne-Montrachet and Puligny-Montrachet and
produces what many consider to be the greatest dry white wine in the world. It is surrounded
by four other Grand Cru vineyards all having "Montrachet" as part of their names. Montrachet
itself is generally considered superior to its four Grand Cru neighbours.

59.09 "Don't be ridic, I'm serious, Roger..."

Brings to mind the Carmen Sternwood character, played by Martha Vickers, in the 1946 film
production of The Big Sleep. If I remember correctly, Carmen used this "don't be ridic" phrase
quite often, generally in conversation w/ Philip Marlowe/Humphrey Bogart. [3]

59.16 Edward VIII abdicated

Only months into his reign, he caused a constitutional crisis by proposing marriage to the
American socialite Wallis Simpson, who had divorced her first husband and was seeking a
divorce from her second. The prime ministers of the United Kingdom and the Dominions
opposed the marriage, arguing that the people would never accept a divorced woman with two
living ex-husbands as queen. Additionally, such a marriage would have conflicted with
Edward's status as head of the Church of England, which opposed the remarriage of divorced
people if their former spouses were still alive. Edward knew that the government led by
British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin would resign if the marriage went ahead, which could
have dragged the King into a general election and ruined irreparably his status as a politically
neutral constitutional monarch. Rather than end his relationship with Mrs. Simpson, Edward
abdicated. He was succeeded by his younger brother Albert, who chose the regnal name
George VI. With a reign of 326 days, Edward was one of the shortest-reigning monarchs in
British and Commonwealth history. He was never crowned. [4]

59.20 pinafores
Pinafores may be worn by girls as a decorative garment and by both girls and women as a
protective apron. A related term is pinafore dress, which is British English for what in
American English is known as a jumper dress, i.e. a sleeveless dress intended to be worn over
a top or blouse. A key difference between a pinafore and a jumper dress is that the pinafore is
open in the back. In informal British usage however, a pinafore dress is sometimes referred to
as simply a pinafore, which can lead to confusion. [5]

Page 61
61.19 Sodium Amytal
Also known as "truth serum", Amobarbital is a drug that is a barbiturate derivative. It has
sedative-hypnotic and analgesic properties. It is a white crystalline powder with no odor and a
slightly bitter taste. It was first synthesized in Germany in 1923. If amobarbital is taken for
extended periods of time, physical and psychological dependence can develop.[1]
61.25 Got a hardon in my fist...
This song goes right along with the tune of "Bye Bye Blackbird," starting with the "Pack up
all my cares and woe..." refrain that, in this YouTube, begins at about 0:52.

Ruptured duck

61.30 "ruptured duck"

The sarcastic nickname for a lapel pin issued at honorable discharge from the US armed
forces in WWII, depicting a screaming eagle inside a wreath. "Ruptured" = herniated.

Page 62
62.05 Roxbury
The town of Roxbury was founded in 1630 by the author's ancestor William Pynchon, and is
now a neighborhood of Boston, MA. It had been an immigrant neighborhood for generations
before African-Americans began to migrate from the South after WWI. While writing GR,
Pynchon would certainly have been aware of rioting there at the time of Martin Luther King
Jr.'s assassination in 1968. [2]

Page 63
63.03 Roseland Ballroom
Not the better-known Roseland Ballroom in New York City, but the one on Massachusetts
Avenue in Roxbury. "The stretch of Mass. Ave. between Huntington and Columbus was, by
the late ’40s, Boston’s answer to 52nd Street in Manhattan -— with not only the Roseland,
but the Savoy Café, the Hi-Hat, Wally’s, and a handful of smaller clubs."[3]

63.05 Moxie
One of the first mass-produced carbonated soft drinks in the United States. In its advertising,
it used “Make Mine Moxie!” advertising jingles, the slogan “Just Make It Moxie for Mine”,
and a "Moxie Man" logo. Uncapitalized, "moxie" became slang for energy and daring. The
brand suffered a significant decline in sales during the 1930s.

63.22 Red, the Negro shoeshine boy

Stating the obvious, Red is Malcolm X, whose nickname "Red" referred to his hair color -- a
dark cinnamon brown. In February 1941 Malcolm moved to Boston to live with his older
half-sister, worked a variety of jobs including shoeshine and became involved in Boston's
"underworld fringe," pimping among other things. [4]
63.32-37 "Yardbird" Parker is finding out [ . . . ]
Refers to jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker. Correspondent Igor Zabel offers the following
addition to Weisenburger's note on this passage: "On one of Parker's CDs (Swedish Schnapps
+), I found the passage which was quoted by Weisenburger after Max Harrison, but slightly
different, and it is interesting because Parker directly mentions Cherokee: 'Well, that night, I
was working over 'Cherokee' and, as I did, I found that by using the higher intervals of a
chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes, I could play the
thing I'd been hearing. I came alive.' The quotation is taken from 'Hear Me Talkin' To Ya'."

Page 64
64.19 "'Slip the talcum to me, Malcolm!'"
This homoerotic scene seems based on some facts. It is known that Malcolm X prostituted
himself for money and according to Bruce Perry's biography, Malcolm: The Life of a Man
Who Changed Black America (Station Hill, New York, 1991) he had various homosexual
liaisons throughout his life. Interestingly, Malcolm worked as a butler to a wealthy Boston
bachelor, William Paul Lennon. According to Malcolm's sidekick Malcolm Jarvis, he
[Malcolm] was paid to sprinkle Lennon with talcum powder and bring him to orgasm.

64.24 "any of those Sheiks in the drawer?"

Sheik was a popular brand of condom. "Other brands evoked an exotic, Far Eastern world of
harems and belly-dancers that automatically triggered sex in many adult minds... Giant [firm]s
like Julius Schmid, who made Ramses and Sheiks..." [5]

Hotel bellboys and washroom attendants could often sell these accessories as well as
arranging contacts with amiable women ("another luck-changin' phone number there,
Red..?").

64.30 Red Malcolm the Unthinkable Nihilist

At this depth in the American dream, fears of ideology, race, and class are indistinguishable:
after all, a Harvard man in an Arrow shirt is about to be anally gang-raped by Negroes while
jazzmen above set fire to a song about love for a Cherokee maiden...

Page 65
65.09 Burma-Shave signs
Burma-Shave was an American brand of brushless shaving cream, famous for its advertising
gimmick of posting humorous rhyming poems on small, sequential highway billboard signs.
[6]

65.15 "Gobbler" Biddle

The Biddles are one of the leading families of Philadelphia, who sometimes vacationed in the
Berkshires. Specifically, the "Gobbler" could be Nicholas Biddle (Harvard, 1944).
Interestingly Francis B. Biddle (Harvard College 1909, Harvard Law 1911) was US Attorney
General (1941-1945) at this time. FBB was responsible for directing the FBI to arrest "enemy
aliens" leading to Japanese-American internment camps; served as the primary judge during
the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal; and authored of The Fear of Freedom and other works.

65.16 Fu’s Folly in Cambridge

Although, as Weisenburger notes, the character is named for Fu Manchu (who is an important
reference for Pointsman later in the novel), it should be recalled that there was also a "Fu"
who was a member of the Whole Sick Crew in V.

Resembles the old Young & Yee Restaurant (now closed) at 27 Church Street, Harvard
Square, Cambridge, MA, which for over 40 years slopped greasy chop suey. An anachronism
to the novel's time period, yes, but perhaps an inspiration to the author.

65.33 Jack Kennedy

JFK (whose father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., was US Ambassador to the UK in 1938-1940) is
said to be in Slothrop's Harvard class. Estimating, Slothrop was born ca 1917-18 and entered
Harvard in 1936, the year of Harvard's tricentennial.So both were in their mid-20s, Kennedy a
PT boat commander in the Pacific, during the action in GR. The poignant "might Jack have
kept it [the harmonica] from falling, violated gravity somehow?... yes it seems Jack might
have" can be read as a retrodiction from the Vietnam War and urban-riot years of GR's
composition: some believed that American life would not have taken its darker turn had
Kennedy not been assassinated in November 1963.

Contrary to Weisenburger, Kennedy’s first book was titled Why England Slept (not "When")
[Corrected in 2nd edition]

Page 66
66.39 Capehart
The Capehart automatic phonograph with a turn-over mechanism was the epitome of luxury
phonographs, technical excellence and supreme electronics in the 1930s and 40s.

Page 67
67.32 Red Devil Lye in his hair
Lye (sodium hydroxide) was an ingredient in home-made congolene or "conk" hair-
straightening mixtures.

67.34-35 Not "archetypal" westwardman, but the only

An explicit nod to psychologist Carl Jung, and beyond him to the Platonic strain in
philosophy: that behind all the multiplicity, variety and changing detail of daylit life, there are
(in our minds and/or metaphysical reality) singular, unchanging forms: in this case, the primal
explorer-mountain man-cowboy-gunfighter hero.

Pynchon also works this trope in the other direction whenever he assimilates a character to
archetypes in pop culture (often film), as when Jessica gave Roger "her Fay Wray look"(57)
and Roger played the drooling Dirty Old Man (59).

Page 68
68.01 Half an Ark’s better than none.
For Crutchfield, there is only one of everything, as opposed to two of every animal on Noah’s
(whole) Ark. (And how much use is half an Ark in a flood, anyway?)

68.13 Red River Valley

Original lyrics:
From this valley they say you are going
We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile
For they say you are taking the sunshine
That has brightened our pathways awhile

Come and sit by my side, if you love me

Do not hasten to bid me adieu
Just remember the Red River Valley
And the cowboy who loved you so true

Page 69
69.02 terre mauvais
French "terre mauvaise" - the "badlands". A rare case of TRP misspelling a foreign word.

69.14 a bandana of the regulation magenta and green

The coal-tar derived colors of organic chemistry that resonate throughout the novel.
The visual clash between these colours appears elsewhere - 'A bit of lime green in with your
rose' 12 Pynchon seems to associate positive things with these colors - see Against the Day
particularly - as he does with bandanas. A-and bananas. For more on colors....

69.16 Rancho Peligroso

"Dangerous Ranch": evokes the Siege Perilous of the Arthurian Grail legend as well as
Rancho Notorious, a 1952 Western directed by Fritz Lang and starring Marlene Dietrich. See
note at V321.06-07

69.27 callipygian rondure

callipygian -- having shapely buttocks, originally used in conjunction with the noted statue of
Aphrodite (which is itself a play on "Afro" and "Venus"), the "Venus Kallipygos". This
language parodies the typology of "scientific" racism from the late 19th and ealy 20th century.

rondure -- a circular or gracefully rounded object.

69.32 Toro Rojo

Red Bull

Page 70
70.15 One mestiza. One criolla
Mestiza: woman of mixed race, especially mixed of European and Native American ancestry.
Criolla: woman of "pure" Spanish ancestry, but born in the New World.
70.29 the Ardennes
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the
Givetian (Devonian) Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but
stretching into France... The strategic position of the Ardennes has made it a battleground for
European powers for centuries... in both World War I and World War II, Germany
successfully gambled on making a rapid passage through the Ardennes to attack a relatively
lightly defended part of France. The Ardennes was the site of three major battles during the
world wars – the Battle of the Ardennes in World War I, and the Battle of France and Battle
of the Bulge in World War II. Many of the towns of the region were badly damaged during
the two world wars. [7]

70.32 Newton Upper Falls

Newton Upper Falls is a village situated on the east bank of the Charles River in the city of
Newton, Massachusetts, in the United States. [8]

70.37 Ar'tics
A regional name, dropping the first "c" in "Arctic," for metal-buckled rubber galoshes.[9]

Page 71
71.02 Beacon Street
Beacon Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and several of its western
suburbs. Beacon Street in Boston, Brookline, Brighton, and Newton is not to be confused with
the Beacon Street in nearby Somerville, or others elsewhere. [10]

Page 71

Tyrosine Molecule

71.15 Kryptosam

Correspondent Matthias Bauer notes that "sam" derives from the German "samen," for "seed."
"Krypto," of course, derives from the same word as "cryptography," the study of codes.
Weisenburger claims that the "tyrosine" from which kryptosam is supposed to derive is
"undoubtedly fictional," but it is in fact an amino acid, which can convert to melanin, just as
Jamf's note indicates (although it is unclear whether semen will in fact act as the catalytic
agent).

Tyrosine is found in casein, and the name derives from the Greek, tyros meaning cheese.

Significant properties of note for Tyrosine:

- Tyrosine functions as a phenol, which Nazi doctors used in injections for rapid executions.
Phenols were used extensively at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
- Tyrosine occurs in proteins that are part of the signal transduction process -- a biological
processes that converts one kind of signal or stimulus into another -- cell signalling.

The SBB (SIS/MI6 forerunner) allegedly discovered that semen, if not a catalyst, did at least
make a good invisible ink. Semen in espionage, Mansfield Smith Cuming, and Spymaster

71.32 GEHEIME KOMMANDOSACHE

Secret Air Command

71.33 ... von Bayros or Beardsley.

Marquis Franz von Bayros and Aubrey Beardsley were renowned for their erotic sketches in
the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Learn more about Beardsley and von Bayros

71.36 ... a De Mille set really...

This is open to skepticism, but I believe he's referring to Cecil B. DeMille, who was famous
for his construction of grandiose sets, particularly "The City of the Pharaoh," the largest set in
film history.

Cecil B. Demille at Wikipedia.

71.39 corselette
Type of underwear that combines a bra and a girdle. Wiki

Page 72
72.17 nacreous
Nacre or "mother of pearl" coats the inner surface of many seashells. It appears iridescent
because the thickness of its microscopic aragonite platelets is close to the wavelength of
visible light. This results in constructive and destructive interference of different wavelengths
of light, resulting in different colors of light being reflected at different viewing angles. [1]

72.27 ...Wuotan and his mad army

Wuotan is the Old High German spelling of Odin; the 'mad army' is mentioned again at 75.13
in German as Wütende Heer. It is interesting that Pynchon chose to translate wütende as 'mad'
rather than, say, 'angry' or 'furious', thus allowing the reader to take 'mad' to mean 'insane'. On
the other hand, the disease rabies is called "Tollwut" in German, so "Wut" may not ring as a
totally sane kind of rage. Historians and Nordic legends attributed a behavior called
"bärsärkar-gång" (Swedish, same root of the English expression "going beserk") to Odin-
worshiping proto-Lombard fighters. Rage, variously tied to willful adrenalin overload,
traumatic stress, fly-agaric, or godly intervention, gave them superhuman strength but clouded
their judgment and made them dangerous to friend and foe alike.

Page 72
72.32 Was tust du für die Front, für den Sieg? Was has du heute für Deutschland getan?
What are you doing for the front, for the victory? What have you done for Germany today?
Also see ThomasPynchon.com for lots of GR translations.

Compare this with Roger and Jessica's not-quite-secession from the Home Front (41.20-27).

Page 73
73.04 ancient Abbey... its roof long ago taken at the manic whim of Henry VIII
The Dissolution of the Monasteries, sometimes referred to as the Suppression of the
Monasteries, was the set of administrative and legal processes between 1536 and 1541 by
which Henry VIII disbanded monasteries, priories, convents and friaries in England, Wales
and Ireland; appropriated their income, disposed of their assets, and provided for their former
members. He was given the authority to do this in England and Wales by the Act of
Supremacy, passed by Parliament in 1534, which made him Supreme Head of the Church in
England, thus separating England from Papal authority; and by the First Suppression Act
(1536) and the Second Suppression Act (1539). Although some monastic foundations dated
back to Anglo-Saxon England, the overwhelming majority of the 825 religious communities
dissolved by Henry VIII owed their existence to the wave of monastic enthusiasm that had
swept England and Wales in the 11th and 12th centuries; in consequence of which religious
houses in the 16th century controlled appointment to about a third of all parish benefices, and
disposed of about half of all ecclesiastical income. The dissolution still represents the largest
legally enforced transfer of property in English history since the Norman Conquest. [1]

73.08 Palladian house

Palladian architecture is a European style derived from the designs of the Venetian architect
Andrea Palladio (1508–1580). His work was strongly based on the symmetry, perspective and
values of the formal classical temple architecture of the Ancient Greeks and Romans.

Page 74
74.15 rust bouclé
Bouclé is a yarn with a length of loops of similar size which can range from tiny circlets to
large curls. To make bouclé, at least two strands are combined, with the tension on one strand
being much looser than the other as it is being plied, with the loose strand forming the loops
and the other strand as the anchor. [2] Radio speaker grille cloths at the time were often
bouclé weaves.

74.21 Dawes-era flashes

The Dawes Plan (as proposed by the Dawes Committee, chaired by Charles G. Dawes) was an
attempt in 1924, following World War I for the Triple Entente to collect war reparations debt
from Germany. When after five years the plan proved to be unsuccessful, the Young Plan was
adopted in 1929 to replace it. [3]

74.26 SHAEF
Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force was the headquarters of the Commander of
Allied forces in north west Europe, from late 1943 until the end of World War II. U.S.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower was in command of SHAEF throughout its existence. The
position itself shares a common lineage with Supreme Allied Commander Europe and
Atlantic, but they are different titles. [4]

74.30 "strategy of truth"

Due to the public skepticism of propaganda due to the heavy handed efforts of the Committee
on Public Information in the US during World War I, and the fascist regimes propaganda
machinery, the US had adopted a "strategy of truth" whereby they would disseminate
information but not try to influence the public directly through propaganda. However, seeing
the value and need of propaganda, ways were found to circumvent official policy. [5]

74.33 Hereros, ex-colonials from South-West Africa

During the late 19th century, the first Europeans began entering to permanently settle the
land. Primarily in Damaraland, German settlers acquired land from the Herero in order to
establish farms. In 1883, the merchant Franz Adolf Eduard Lüderitz entered into a contract
with the native elders. The exchange later became the basis of German colonial rule. The
territory became a German colony under the name of German South-West Africa. Soon after,
conflicts between the German colonists and the Herero herdsmen began. Controversies
frequently arose because of disputes about access to land and water, but also the legal
discrimination against the native population by the white immigrants. [6]

Page 75
75.09 to root out the truffles of truth created, as ancients surmised, during storm, in the
instant of lightning blast
The first mention of truffles appears in the inscriptions of the neo-Sumerians regarding their
Amorite enemy's eating habits (Third Dynasty of Ur, 20th century) and later in writings of
Theophrastus in the fourth century BC. In classical times, their origins were a mystery that
challenged many; Plutarch and others thought them to be the result of lightning, warmth and
water in the soil, while Juvenal thought thunder and rain to be instrumental in their origin.
Cicero deemed them children of the earth, while Dioscorides thought they were tuberous
roots. [7]

75.10 American PWD

The Psychological Warfare Division of SHAEF (PWD/SHAEF) was a joint Anglo-American
organisation set-up in World War II tasked with conducting principally 'white' tactical
psychological warfare against German troops in North-west Europe during and after D-Day. It
was headed by US Brigadier-General Robert A. McClure who had previously commanded the
Psychological Warfare Branch (PWB/AFHQ) of U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower's staff
for Operation Torch. [8]

75.12 "Schwarzkommando"
German: literally 'black command'; in this case meaning both 'unit composed of blacks' and
'secret unit'; an alternate meaning of schwartz is 'secret' or 'illicit' as in 'Secret Service' or
'black market'

75.13 "Wütende Heer"

German: 'furious' or 'raging' army; see note at 72.27
75.30 Dr. Porkyevitch
Another suggestion of one of Pynchon’s favorite motifs, the little cartoon hero Porky Pig. See
note at 545.04-05

75.31 before the purge trials

The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the
Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938. It involved a large-scale purge
of the Communist Party and government officials, repression of peasants, Red Army
leadership, and the persecution of unaffiliated persons, characterized by widespread police
surveillance, widespread suspicion of "saboteurs", imprisonment, and arbitrary executions. In
Russian historiography the period of the most intense purge, 1937–1938, is called
Yezhovshchina (Russian: ежовщина; literally, the Yezhov regime), after Nikolai Yezhov, the
head of the Soviet secret police, NKVD. [9]

75.40 P.W.E.
During World War II, the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) was a British clandestine body
created to produce and disseminate both white and black propaganda, with the aim of
damaging enemy morale and sustaining the morale of the Occupied countries. [10]

Page 76
76.06 dégagé
Detached, disengaged, unconcerned

76.13 Polygon Wood

The Battle of Polygon Wood took place during the 'second phase' of the Battle of
Passchendaele/Third Battle of Ypres in World War I. The battle was fought near Ypres,
Belgium, in an area named the Polygon Wood after the layout of the area. However, much of
the woodland had been under intense shelling during the Battle of Passchendaele, and the area
changed hands several times before this battle. [11]

76.32 F.O. Political Intelligence Department at Fitzmaurice House

The Political Intelligence Department was a department of the British Foreign Office during
World War II. Established in 1939, its main function was the production of weekly
intelligence summaries. It was headed by Foreign Office diplomatist Rex Leeper. In April
1943, the department was merged with the Royal Institute of International Affairs' Foreign
Research and Press Service in Oxford, creating the new Foreign Office Research Department.
The 'Political Intelligence Department' name continued to exist until 1946 as a cover for the
Political Warfare Executive. [12]

76.34 OSS
The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was a United States intelligence agency formed during
World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA). The OSS was formed in order to coordinate espionage activities
behind enemy lines for the branches of the United States Armed Forces. [13]

OWI
The United States Office of War Information (OWI) was a U.S. government agency created
during World War II to consolidate government information services. It operated from June
1942 until September 1945. It coordinated the release of war news for domestic use, and,
using posters and radio broadcasts, worked to promote patriotism, warned about foreign spies
and attempted to recruit women into war work. The office also established an overseas branch
which launched a large scale information and propaganda campaign abroad. [14]

Page 77
77.08 Chain of Being
The great chain of being (Latin: scala naturae, literally "ladder or stair-way of nature"), is a
Christian concept detailing a strict, religious hierarchical structure of all matter and life,
believed to have been decreed by the Christian God. [15]

Chain of Being is a major motif in Mason & Dixon.

77.10 ... Ypres salient...wastage of only 70% of his unit.

The Ypres Salient is the area around Ypres in Belgium which was the scene of some of the
most protracted and grueling trench warfare during World War I. Success was measured in
feet and yards as tiny bits of land were captured, lost and recaptured throughout the war. Unit
casualty rates were often extremely high. 70% wastage for 40 yards is, at most, only a slight
exaggeration. [16]

77.20 Flanders
Flanders Fields is the generic name of the World War I battlefields in the medieval County of
Flanders. At the time of World War I, the county no longer existed but corresponded
approximately to the Belgian provinces East Flanders and West Flanders and the French
Nord-Pas-de-Calais region. The name is particularly associated with the battles of Ypres,
Passchendaele, and the Somme. [17]

77.21 entitled Things That Can Happen In European Politics

Here, surprisingly, Pynchon makes a common usage error. Should be titled. A book is titled
something; someone is entitled to their opinion.

77.22 Bereshith, as it were...

Bereishit is a Hebrew word, which is the first word of the Torah (the first five books of the
Tanach, or Hebrew Bible). It may be translated as the phrase "In the beginning of". [18]

77.23 Ramsay MacDonald

James Ramsay MacDonald, PC, FRS (12 October 1866 – 9 November 1937) was a British
Labour politician who rose from humble origins to serve two separate terms as the first ever
British Labour Prime Minister. [19]

77.35-36 Couéists
Émile Coué de la Châtaigneraie (February 26, 1857 – July 2, 1926) was a French psychologist
and pharmacist who introduced a method of psychotherapy and self-improvement based on
optimistic autosuggestion. [20]

Ouspenskians
See page 30.

Skinnerites
Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 – August 18, 1990) was an American behaviorist,
author, inventor, social philosopher and poet. He was the Edgar Pierce Professor of
Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974. [21]

Dale Carnegie zealots

Dale Breckenridge Carnegie (November 24, 1888 – November 1, 1955) was an American
writer, lecturer, and the developer of famous courses in self-improvement, salesmanship,
corporate training, public speaking, and interpersonal skills. Born in poverty on a farm in
Missouri, he was the author of How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), a massive
bestseller that remains popular today. He also wrote How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
(1948), Lincoln the Unknown (1932), and several other books. [22]

Page 78
78.05 Subalterns
A subaltern is a chiefly British military term for a junior officer. Literally meaning
"subordinate," subaltern is used to describe commissioned officers below the rank of captain
and generally comprises the various grades of lieutenant. In the British Army the senior
subaltern rank was captain-lieutenant, obsolete since the 18th century. [23]

78.11 pearlies
British slang for "teeth", a shortened form of "pearly whites". The Oxford English Dictionary
cites this very passage as one of its examples of the word.

Lady Asquith by Beaton

78.12 Cecil Beaton’s photograph of Margot Asquith

Another example of the Turning Head motif.

78.25 bedlamites
The Bethlem Royal Hospital is a psychiatric hospital located in London, United Kingdom and
part of the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. Although no longer based at
its original location, it is recognised as the world's first and oldest institution to specialise in
mental illnesses. It has been variously known as St. Mary Bethlehem, Bethlem Hospital,
Bethlehem Hospital and Bedlam... The word bedlam, meaning uproar and confusion, is
derived from its name. Although the hospital is now at the forefront of humane psychiatric
treatment, for much of its history it was notorious for cruelty and inhumane treatment – the
epitome of what the term "madhouse" or "insane asylum" might connote to the modern
reader. [24]
78.39 "equivalent" phase, the first of the transmarginal phases...
In psychology, Transmarginal inhibition, or TMI, is an organism's response to overwhelming
stimuli. Ivan Pavlov enumerated details of TMI on his work of conditioning animals to pain.
He found that organisms had different levels of tolerance. He commented "that the most basic
inherited difference among people was how soon they reached this shutdown point and that
the quick-to-shut-down have a fundamentally different type of nervous system." Patients who
have reached this shutdown point often become socially dysfunctional or develop one of
several personality disorders. Often patients who dissociate during and after the experience,
will more easily dissociate or shut down during stressful or painful experiences, and may
experience post traumatic stress disorder for the remainder of their lives.

There are three stages passed through for state of TMI to be reached.

1.equivalent phase: when the response matches the stimuli, which is considered the normal
baseline behavior.
2.paradoxical phase: associated with quantity reversal, occurs when small stimuli receive
major response and a major stimuli elicit small responses.
3.ultra-paradoxical: the final stage, associated with quality reversal in which negative
stimulation results in positive responses and vice versa. [25]

Page 79
79.13 Webley Silvernail
Webley is the name of the British gun manufacturer. The Berkshire Hills cites Silvernail
House in West Stockbridge as one of the oldest houses in that town (TBH 99).

79.18 Geza Rozsavolgyi

The family name means neither "evil valley" as it stands in Weisenburger's Companion, nor
"of the pink valley" as it is in the Alphabetical Index but "of the Valley of Roses". In fact, this
is a Jewish name, the literal Magyarization of the German name Rosenthal. Geza’s first name
also suggests the Hungarian-American psychologist Geza Roheim, who was one of the first to
employ psychoanalytic critiques of culture. Rozsavolgyi is the name of a famous Budapest
music store founded in 1850, which also published works by Liszt, Bartok and Kodaly,
among others.

79.25 "The Weekly Briefings"

In this section, Brigadier Pudding sorta brings to mind Reverend Gail Hightower from
Faulkner's Light In August.

79.31-32 Haig
Field Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig, KT, GCB, OM, GCVO, KCIE, ADC, (19 June
1861 – 29 January 1928) was a British senior officer during World War I. He commanded the
British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from 1915 to the end of the War. He was commander
during the Battle of the Somme (which brought some of the highest casualties in British
military history), the Third Battle of Ypres and the Hundred Days Offensive which led to the
armistice in 1918. [26]

Haig was vehemently denounced -- perhaps too facilely -- in the generation after WWI. Even
among his defenders, though, "the richness of his wit" was rarely mentioned.
Lieutenant Sassoon's refusal to fight
Sir Philip Albert Gustave David Sassoon, 3rd Baronet, GBE, CMG (4 December 1888 – 3
June 1939), was a British politician, art collector and social host, entertaining many celebrity
guests at his homes, Port Lympne, Kent, and Trent Park, Hertfordshire, England... A second
lieutenant in the East Kent Yeomanry, Sassoon served as private secretary to Field Marshal
Haig during the First World War. [27]

More likely Pynchon was referring to Lt. Siegfried Sassoon CBE MC (8 September 1886 – 1
September 1967), a decorated war hero who famously refused to return to combat in 1917 and
became one of Britain's best known pacifists and poets. This Sassoon was ordered to undergo
mental health treatment by British military authorities who could not understand his change in
attitude towards the war. [28]

79.41 Passchendaele horror

The Battle of Passchendaele was one of the major battles of the First World War, taking place
between July and November 1917. In a series of operations, Entente troops under British
command attacked the Imperial German Army. The battle was fought for control of the
village of Passchendaele (modern Passendale) near the town of Ypres in West Flanders,
Belgium. The objectives of the offensive were 'wearing out the enemy' and 'securing the
Belgian coast and connecting with the Dutch frontier'. Haig expected three phases, capturing
Passchendaele Ridge, moving on Roulers and an amphibious landing combined with an attack
along the coast from Nieuport. The offensive also served to distract the German army from
the French in the Aisne, who were suffering from widespread mutiny. [29]

Page 80
80.02 cucurbitaceous improbabilities
The plant family Cucurbitaceae consists of squashes, melons, and gourds, including crops
such as cucumber, various squashes (including pumpkins), luffas, and melons (including
watermelons). The family is predominantly distributed around the tropics, where those with
edible fruits were amongst the earliest cultivated plants in both the Old and New Worlds. [30]

80.11 Toad-in-the-Hole
Toad in the hole is a traditional English dish consisting of sausages in Yorkshire pudding
batter, usually served with vegetables and onion gravy. The origin of the name "Toad-in-the-
Hole" is often disputed. Many suggestions are that the dish's resemblance to a toad sticking its
head out of a hole provides the dish with its somewhat unusual name. [31]

80.12 rissolé
A rissolé is a small croquette, enclosed in pastry or rolled in breadcrumbs, usually baked or
deep fried. It is filled with sweet or savory ingredients, most often minced meat or fish, and is
served as an entrée, main course, dessert or side dish. [32]

80.13 samphire
Originally "sampiere", a corruption of the French "Saint Pierre" (Saint Peter), Samphire was
named for the patron saint of fishermen because all of the original plants with its name grow
in rocky salt-sprayed regions along the sea coast of northern Europe or in its coastal marsh
areas. It is sometimes called sea asparagus or sea pickle. [33]
80.21-22 "Would You Rather Be a Colonel with an Eagle on Your Shoulder, or a Private
with a Chicken on Your Knee?"
The World War I song was composed by the team of Sidney Mitchell and Archie Gottlieb in
1918. (Note: This is a correction of my earlier error in attributing the song to the team of
Harold Arlen and "Yip" Harburg, who also composed the songs for The Wizard of Oz.) Video

80.24 Electra House

The Electra House, at Moorgate, London, opened in 1902 & was the accommodation for the
Eastern and Associated Telegraph Companies.

80.37 V-E Day

Victory in Europe Day commemorates 8 May 1945 (in Commonwealth countries; 7 May
1945), the date when the World War II Allies formally accepted the unconditional surrender
of the armed forces of Nazi Germany and the end of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. The formal
surrender of the occupying German forces in the Channel Islands was not until 9 May 1945.
On 30 April Hitler committed suicide during the Battle of Berlin, and so the surrender of
Germany was authorized by his replacement, President of Germany Karl Dönitz. The
administration headed by Dönitz was known as the Flensburg government. The act of military
surrender was signed on 7 May in Reims, France, and ratified on 8 May in Berlin, Germany.
[34]

80.40 into a phalanx

Brings to mind the image of God's finger pointing out of a cloud from earlier in the novel.

Page 81
81.08 terrible disease like charisma
The term charisma, derived from Ancient Greek was introduced in scholarly [and popular
MKOHUT] usage by German sociologist Max Weber, in a book first published in 1922. He
defined charismatic authority to be one of three forms of authority, the other two being
traditional (feudal) authority and legal or rational authority. According to Weber, charisma is
defined thus:
"a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which s/he is "set apart" from
ordinary people and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically
exceptional powers or qualities. These as such are not accessible to the ordinary person, but
are regarded as divine in origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual
concerned is treated as a leader." adapted from Wikipedia

81.08 rationalization
Rationalization is a key sociological concept [from online Dictionary of Social
Science]:RATIONALIZATION This term has two specific meanings in sociology. (1) The
concept was developed by German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) who used it in two
ways. First, it was the process through which magical, supernatural and religious ideas lose
cultural importance in a society and ideas based on science and practical calculation become
dominant. For example, in modern societies science has rationalized our understanding of
weather patterns. Science explains weather patterns as a result of interaction between physical
elements like wind-speed and direction, air and water temperatures, humidity, etc. In some
other cultures, weather is thought to express the pleasure or displeasure of gods, or spirits of
ancestors. One explanation is rationalized and scientific, the other mysterious and magical.
Rationalization also involves the development of forms of social organization devoted to the
achievement of precise goals by efficient means. It is this type of rationalization that we see in
the development of modern business corporations and of bureaucracy. These are
organizations dedicated to the pursuit of defined goals by calculated, systematically
administered means. (2) Within symbolic interactionism, rationalization is used more in the
everyday sense of the word to refer to providing justifications or excuses for one's actions.
See use in Against the Day, page 10 Against the Day

81.17 The Reverend Paul de la Nuit

A double pun: "Pall [dark and gloomy covering] of the night"; also "Pall de l’ennui [of
boredom]."

81.22 MMPI
See 21.03

Page 82
82.01 his most famous compatriot
Rozsavolgyi’s fellow countryman would be, of course, Bela Lugosi in his role as Dracula,
whose speech patterns are suggested by Pynchon’s punctuation of Rozsavolgyi’s dialogue.

82.11 Dr. Aaron Throwster

Aaron was the brother of and spokesperson for Moses. A throwster is one who makes threads
out of silk. The name is fairly common in Britain.

82.26 It is a classic "folly"

In architecture, a folly is a building constructed primarily for decoration, but either suggesting
by its appearance some other purpose, or merely so extravagant that it transcends the normal
range of garden ornaments or other class of building to which it belongs. In the original use of
the word, these buildings had no other use, but from the 19th to 20th centuries the term was
also applied to highly decorative buildings which had secondary practical functions such as
housing, sheltering or business use. [35]

Cf. Mason & Dixon pg. 722

82.27 The buttery

A buttery was a domestic room in a large medieval house. Along with the pantry, it was
generally part of the offices pertaining to the kitchen. Reached from the screens passage at the
low end of the Great Hall the buttery was traditionally the place from which the yeoman of
the buttery served beer from the wooden butts standing by to those lower members of the
household not entitled to drink wine. Candles were also dispensed from the buttery. Even
today in Oxford and Cambridge colleges drinks are served from the buttery bar. The buttery
generally had a staircase to the beer cellar below. The wine cellars, however, belonged to a
different department, that of the yeoman of the cellar and in keeping with the higher value of
their contents were often more richly decorated to reflect the higher status of their contents.
From the mid-17th century, as it became the custom for servants and their offices to be less
conspicuous and sited far from the principal reception rooms, the Great Hall and its
neighbouring buttery and pantry lost their original uses. [36]

82.31 Gloucestershire Old Spots

The Gloucestershire Old Spots is an English breed of pig which is predominantly white with
black spots. It is named after the county of Gloucestershire. The Gloucestershire Old Spots
pig is known for its docility, intelligence, and prolificacy. [37]

82.32 buckram books

Buckram is a stiff cloth, made of cotton, and still occasionally linen, which is used to cover
and protect books. [38]

82.36 ...Clive and his elephants stomping the French at Plassy...

The Battle of Plassey (Plassy in text), 23 June 1757, was a decisive victory for the British East
India Company, lead by Baron Robert Clive, over the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies.
Elephants were used to help move infantry pieces. [39]

82.37 Salome with the head of John

Salome, the Daughter of Herodias (c AD 14 - between 62 and 71), is known from the New
Testament (Mark 6:17-29 and Matt 14:3-11, where, however, her name is not given). Another
source from Antiquity, Flavius Josephus's Jewish Antiquities, gives her name and some detail
about her family relations... Christian traditions depict her as an icon of dangerous female
seductiveness, for instance depicting as erotic her dance mentioned in the New Testament (in
some later transformations further iconised to the dance of the seven veils), or concentrate on
her lighthearted and cold foolishness that, according to the gospels, led to John the Baptist's
death. [40]

82.39 tessellated
A tessellation or tiling of the plane is a pattern of plane figures that fills the plane with no
overlaps and no gaps. [41]

Page 83
Topiary trees line the drive
Topiary is the horticultural practice of training live perennial plants, by clipping the foliage
and twigs of trees, shrubs and subshrubs to develop and maintain clearly defined shapes,
perhaps geometric or fanciful; and the term also refers to plants which have been shaped in
this way. It can be an art and is a form of living sculpture. The word derives from the Latin
word for an ornamental landscape gardener, topiarius, creator of topia or "places", a Greek
word that Romans applied also to fictive indoor landscapes executed in fresco. No doubt the
use of a Greek word betokens the art's origins in the Hellenistic world that was influenced by
Persia, for neither Classical Greece nor Republican Rome developed any sophisticated
tradition of artful pleasure grounds. [1]

Cf. Mason & Dixon pg. 722

83.34-37 meddling with another man's mind...Harvard University

During WWII Dr Henry A. Murray, then assistant director of the Harvard Psychological
Clinic, joined the OSS in Europe and assisted James Miller in developing psychological
profiles of prospective special agents -- so called stress tests. He also analyzed Hitler for the
Allies, predicting that if Germany lost the war, Hitler would commit suicide; that Hitler was
impotent as far as heterosexual relations were concerned; and that Hitler had possibly
participated in a homosexual relationship -- all suggestive of Blicero.
After 1947 and the Cold War it seemed every self-respecting psychologist was doing side jobs
for the CIA in "persuasion technologies" including LSD, various other drugs, sleep
deprivation, isolation tanks, hypnosis, etc. even, allegedly, unto the death of the "patient".
Perhaps best well known was MK Ultraunder the direction of Dr. Sidney Gottlieb.

Murray himself returned to Harvard where he continued his meddling with the minds of
others. One of the minds he meddled with from 1958 to 1962 belonged to Theodore
Kaczynski. Alston Chase's book Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American
Terrorist tells of the psychological experiments which Kaczynski is reported to have
undergone at Harvard, under the direction of Murray. Chase connects these experiences in a
controversial thesis to Kaczynski's later career as the Unabomber. As is generally well known
in Pynchon circles, TRP himself was suspected of being the Unabomber.

And then of course there was the Leary-Alpert led Harvard Psilocybin Project between 1960
and 1962 ...

Page 84
Watson and Rayner... "Infant Albert"
The Little Albert experiment was a case study showing empirical evidence of classical
conditioning in humans. This study was also an example of stimulus generalization. It was
conducted in 1920 by John B. Watson along with his assistant Rosalie Rayner. The study was
done at Johns Hopkins University. John B. Watson, after observing children in the field, was
interested in finding support for his notion that the reaction of children, whenever they heard
loud noises, was prompted by fear. Furthermore, he reasoned that this fear was innate or due
to an unconditioned response. He felt that following the principles of classical conditioning,
he could condition a child to fear another distinctive stimulus which normally would not be
feared by a child. [2]

Darmstadt
Darmstadt is a city in the Bundesland (federal state) of Hesse in Germany, located in the
southern part of the Rhine Main Area. [3]

Kekulé's own famous switch into chemistry from architecture

Friedrich August Kekule von Stradonitz a.k.a. August Kekulé (7 September 1829–13 July
1896) was a German organic chemist. From the 1850s until his death, Kekule was one of the
most prominent chemists in Europe, especially in theoretical chemistry. He was the principal
founder of the theory of chemical structure. [4]

Larson-Keeler three-variable "lie detector"

A device recording both blood pressure and galvanic skin response was invented in 1921 by
Dr. John A. Larson of the University of California and first applied in law enforcement work
by the Berkeley Police Department under its nationally renowned police chief August
Vollmer. Further work on this device was done by Leonarde Keeler. [5]

Page 85
"...a silent extinction beyond the zero."
A quote from Pavlov. Read the essay on conditioned reflexes that contains it here.
Passage in question from Pavlov:
Hitherto, when referring to the degree of extinction, we have only spoken of the extinction as
being partial or as being complete, but we shall now have to extend our conception. Not only
must we speak of partial or of complete extinction of a conditioned reflex, but we must also
realize that extinction can proceed beyond the point of reducing a reflex to zero. We cannot
therefore judge the degree of extinction only by the magnitude of the reflex or its absence,
since there can still be a silent extinction beyond the zero. This statement rests upon the fact
that a continued repetition of an extinguished stimulus' beyond the zero of the positive reflex
deepens the extinction still further. Such an extension of our conception serves fully to
elucidate the experiment just described, and it explains why the seemingly inactive thermal
component when subjected to experimental extinction led to such a profound secondary
extinction of the stronger tactile component. The importance of considering the degree of
extinction in all experiments thus becomes evident. The methods of determining the degree of
extinction when it goes beyond zero will be explained in connection with the question which
will next be discussed.

85.25 Edwin Treacle

Although derived from a word meaning an antidote to poison, "treacle" is the British term for
molasses and is often used to describe something excessively sweet and sticky.

85.37 Poisson Distribution/Equation

See entry on page 54

Page 86
86.40 Flanders
Northern region of Belgium bordering the North Sea. At least 60 miles from the English
coast.

Page 87
ultraparadoxical phase
See page 78.

B-17s
The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is a four-engine heavy bomber aircraft developed in the
1930s for the then-United States Army Air Corps (USAAC). Competing against Douglas and
Martin for a contract to build 200 bombers, the Boeing entry outperformed both competitors
and more than met the Air Corps' expectations. Although Boeing lost the contract because the
prototype crashed, the Air Corps was so impressed with Boeing's design that they ordered 13
more B-17s for further evaluation. From its introduction in 1938, the B-17 Flying Fortress
evolved through numerous design advances. [6]

nacelle
The nacelle is a cover housing (separate from the fuselage) that holds engines, fuel, or
equipment on an aircraft. In some cases—the most notable one being the World War II-era P-
38 Lightning airplane—an aircraft's cockpit may also be housed in a nacelle. The covering is
typically aerodynamically shaped. [7]
perspex nose
Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) is a transparent thermoplastic, often used as a light or
shatter-resistant alternative to glass. It is sometimes called acrylic glass. Chemically, it is the
synthetic polymer of methyl methacrylate. The material was developed in 1928 in various
laboratories, and was first brought to market in 1933 by Rohm and Haas Company, under the
trademark Plexiglas. It has since been sold under many different names including Lucite and
Perspex. [8]

Battle of Britain
See page 40.

Page 88
Dr. Horsley Gantt
A former student and colleague of Pavlov.

88.10 the submontane Venus

That is, the goddess of the Tannhauser legend and opera.

Venus is also the goddess of love, of course.

Harley Street
Harley Street is a street in the City of Westminster in London, England which has been noted
since the 19th century for its large number of private specialists in medicine and surgery. [9]

Ariadne
Ariadne, in Greek mythology, was the daughter of King Minos of Crete, and his queen
Pasiphaë, daughter of Helios, the Sun-titan. She aided Theseus in overcoming the Minotaur
and was the bride of the god Dionysus. [10]

their eyes, which glisten with frost or flakes of mica

Cf. page 38.

Pierre Janet
Pierre Marie Félix Janet (30 May 1859 - 24 February 1947) was a pioneering French
psychologist, philosopher and psychotherapist in the field of dissociation and traumatic
memory. He was one of the first people to draw a connection between events in the subject's
past life and his or her present day trauma, and coined the words ‘dissociation’ and
‘subconscious’. [11]

88.34 yang-yin rubbish

Note that Pointsman here rejects the concept only to become entranced by it later.

Page 89
P.R.S.
The Philosophical Research Society (P.R.S.) is an American nonprofit organization founded
in 1934, by the prolific author and scholar Manly Palmer Hall, which provides learning and
development of a philosophy of life which embraces conciliation of religion and science and
higher understandings of life itself. [12]

Page 90
MMPI
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. Cf. page 81.

F Scale
The F-scale is a 1947 personality test, designed by Theodor W. Adorno and others to measure
the authoritarian personality. The "F" stands for "fascist." The F-scale measures responses on
several different components of authoritarianism, including conventionalism, authoritarian
submission, authoritarian aggression, anti-intraception, superstition and stereotype, power and
"toughness," destructiveness and cynicism, projectivity, and sex. The F-scale is meant to
identify how racism develops in people. Scores on the F Scale can be used to generate
inferences about other extratest characteristics and behaviors. [13]

the three phases

See page 78.

Page 91
moiré
In physics, a moiré pattern is an interference pattern created, for example, when two grids are
overlaid at an angle, or when they have slightly different mesh sizes. [14]

91.27 Dr. Bleagh

An expression of disgust. (Try saying it!)

King Tigers
Tiger II is the common name of a German heavy tank of the Second World War. The final
official German designation was Panzerkampfwagen Tiger Ausf. B, often shortened to Tiger
B. The ordnance inventory designation was Sd.Kfz. 182. It is also known under the informal
name Königstiger (the German name for the "Bengal tiger"), often translated as King Tiger or
Royal Tiger by Allied soldiers. [15]

Zouave
Zouave was the title given to certain light infantry regiments in the French Army, normally
serving in French North Africa between 1831 and 1962. The name was also adopted during
the 19th century by units in other armies, especially volunteer regiments raised for service in
the American Civil War. The chief distinguishing characteristics of such units were the
zouave uniform, which included short open-fronted jackets, baggy trousers and often sashes
and oriental headgear. [16]

Page 93
Amanita muscaria
Amanita muscaria, commonly known as the fly agaric, is a poisonous and psychoactive
basidiomycete fungus, one of many in the genus Amanita. Native throughout the temperate
and boreal regions of the Northern Hemisphere, Amanita muscaria has been unintentionally
introduced to many countries in the Southern Hemisphere, generally as a symbiont with pine
plantations, and is now a true cosmopolitan species. It associates with various deciduous and
coniferous trees. The quintessential toadstool, it is a large white-gilled, white-spotted, usually
deep red mushroom, one of the most recognizable and widely encountered in popular culture.
[1]

Destroying Angel
The name destroying angel applies to several similar, closely related species of deadly all-
white mushrooms in the genus Amanita. They are Amanita bisporigera and A. ocreata in
eastern and western North America, and A. virosa in Europe... Closely related to the death cap
(A. phalloides), they are among the most toxic known mushrooms, containing amatoxins as
death caps do. [2]

Dispossessed elves run around up on the roof, gibbering

Appears Osbie is already tripping quite a bit here.

Huntley & Palmers biscuit tin

Huntley & Palmers was a British firm of biscuit makers originally based in Reading,
Berkshire. The company created one of the world's first global brands and ran what was once
the world’s largest biscuit factory. Over the years, the company was also known as J. Huntley
& Son and Huntley & Palmer. [3]

Rizla
French brand of rolling papers.

Page 94
Harvey Nicholls
Harvey Nichols, founded in 1813, is an upmarket department store chain. Its original store is
in London. Founded in 1813 as a linen shop, it sells many international brands of clothing for
women and men, fashion accessories, beauty products, wine and food. Harvey Nichols
attracts more younger shoppers than its rival Harrods. [4]

soignée
Of a woman: elegant, well-groomed, sophisticated. [5]

Der Kinderofen
The child-oven

"the Rome-Berlin Axis"

The "Rome-Berlin Axis" became a full military alliance in 1939 under the Pact of Steel, and
the Tripartite Pact of 1940 fully integrated the military aims of Germany, Italy, and Japan. [6]

old Märchen
old fable, fairy tale

Page 95
NSB
The National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (Dutch: Nationaal-Socialistische
Beweging in Nederland, NSB) was a Dutch fascist and later national socialist political party.
As a parliamentary party participating in legislative elections, the NSB had some success
during the 1930s. It remained the only legal party in the Netherlands during most of the
Second World War. [7]

95.17 Wassenaar
Wassenaar is in the Netherlands.

"Hexeszüchtigung"
German: "Witch chastisement". Pynchon has either invented or misremembered this word.
The correct form would be "Hexenzüchtigung", but it is in any case extremely rare, not part of
the normal vocabulary of witch trials.

Page 96
this Northern and ancient form... the strayed children, the wood-wife in the edible
house, the captivity, the fattening, the Oven...
"Hansel and Gretel" (German: Hänsel und Gretel, "Little John and Little Margaret") is a well-
known fairy tale of German origin, recorded by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812.
Hansel and Gretel are a young brother and sister threatened by a cannibalistic witch living
deep in the forest in a house constructed of cake and confectionery. The two children save
their lives by outwitting her. The tale has been adapted to various media, most notably the
opera Hänsel und Gretel (1893) by Engelbert Humperdinck and a stop-motion animated
feature film made in the 1950s based on the opera. Under the Aarne-Thompson classification
system, "Hansel and Gretel" is classified under Class 327, "The Children and the Ogre". [8]

Dutch underground
Dutch resistance to the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands during World War II can be
mainly characterized by its prominent non-violence, summitting in over 300,000 people in
hiding in the fall of 1944, tended to by some 60,000 to 200.000 illegal landlords and
caretakers and tolerated knowingly by some 1 million people, including German occupiers
and military. [9]

Page 97
the Spitfires
The Supermarine Spitfire is a British single-seat fighter aircraft which was used by the Royal
Air Force and many other Allied countries throughout the Second World War. The Spitfire
continued to be used as a front line fighter and in secondary roles into the 1950s. It was
produced in greater numbers than any other British aircraft, and was the only British fighter in
production throughout the war. [10]

Mussert's people
Anton Adriaan Mussert (May 11, 1894, Werkendam, North Brabant – May 7, 1946) was one
of the founders of the National Socialist Movement (NSB) in the Netherlands and its de jure
leader. As such, he was the most prominent national socialist in the Netherlands before and
during the Second World War. During the war, he was able to keep this position, due to the
support he received from the Germans. After the war, he was convicted and executed for high
treason. [11]

Scheveningen
Scheveningen is one of the eight districts of The Hague, as well as a subdistrict (wijk) of that
city. Scheveningen is a modern seaside resort with a long sandy beach, an esplanade, a pier,
and a lighthouse. The beach is popular for water sports such as windsurfing and kiteboarding.
A nudist section is 1 km to the north. The harbor is used for both fishing and tourism. [12]

Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), better
known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian–Austrian poet. He is considered one of the
most significant poets in the German language. His haunting images focus on the difficulty of
communion with the ineffable in an age of disbelief, solitude, and profound anxiety: themes
that tend to position him as a transitional figure between the traditional and the modernist
poets. [13]

Page 98
98.16 Young Rauhandel
A former friend of Blicero, probably a lover willing to indulge his sado-masochistic tastes.
The name literally means "Rough Trade."

98.24 the Ufa-Theatre

Weisenburger’s information on UFA is essentially correct, but he misgives Georg Wilhelm
Pabst’s first name as "Rudolf." One curiosity in Pynchon's German film references is the lack
of any mention of F.W. Murnau, perhaps the greatest director of that era. His films Nosferatu
(the first film version of Dracula) and Faust would seem to be natural allusions for Pynchon
to use.

Universum Film AG, better known as UFA or Ufa, is a film company that was the principal
film studio in Germany, home of the German film industry during the Weimar Republic and
through World War II, and a major force in world cinema from 1917 to 1945. After World
War II, UFA continued producing movies and television programmes to the present day,
making it the longest standing film company in Germany. [14]

Friedrichstrasse
The Friedrichstraße (lit. Frederick Street) is a major culture and shopping street in central
Berlin, forming the core of the Friedrichstadt neighborhood. It runs from the northern part of
the old Mitte district (north of which it is called Chausseestraße) to the Hallesches Tor in the
district of Kreuzberg. Due to its north-southerly direction, it forms important junctions with
the east-western axes, most notably with Leipziger Straße and Unter den Linden. [15]

Page 99
99.2 Wandervogel
German youth movement promoting a love of nature and the outdoors; see note here

A wanderer.
Duino Elegies
The Duino Elegies (German Duineser Elegien) are a set of ten elegies written in German by
the poet Rainer Maria Rilke from 1912 to 1922. Rilke had been visiting Princess Marie von
Thurn und Taxis in the Duino castle near Trieste in January 1912 and, according to his own
recounting, had taken a stroll near the castle, atop the steep cliffs that dropped down to the
beach. Rilke said later he had heard a voice calling to him as he walked near the cliffs, and he
had used its words as the opening... [16]

the great Herero Rising

The Herero and Namaqua Genocide is considered to have been the first genocide of the 20th
century. It took place between 1904 and 1907 in German South-West Africa (modern day
Namibia), during the scramble for Africa. On January 12, 1904, the Herero people, led by
Samuel Maharero, rebelled against German colonial rule. In August, German general Lothar
von Trotha defeated the Herero in the Battle of Waterberg and drove them into the desert of
Omaheke, where most of them died of thirst. In October, the Nama people also rebelled
against the Germans only to suffer a similar fate. [17]

Page 100
Ndjambi Karunga
A deity to the Herero peoples, the supreme being. Thought to have created the world, put a
tree on it from which humans emerged. Ndjambi returned to heaven. Is all-knowing & giver
of blessings & kindness.

Rhenish Missionary Society

The Rhenish Missionary Society (Rhenish - of the river Rhine) was one of the largest
missionary societies in Germany. Formed from smaller missions founded as far back as 1799,
the Society was amalgamated on 23 September 1828, and its first missionaries were ordained
and sent off to South Africa by the end of the year. [18]

talion
Retaliation.

clonic
Pertaining to clonus; having irregular, convulsive spasms. [19]

Harz
The Harz is the highest mountain range in northern Germany and its rugged terrain extends
across parts of Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. The name Harz derives from
the Middle High German word Hardt or Hart (mountain forest). The legendary Brocken is the
highest summit in the Harz with a height of 1,141.1 metres (3,744 ft) above sea level. The
Wurmberg (971 metres (3,186 ft)) is the highest peak located entirely within Lower Saxony.
[20]

mandala
Maṇḍala is a Sanskrit word that means "circle". In the Hindu and Buddhist religious traditions
their sacred art often takes a mandala form. The basic form of most Hindu and Buddhist
mandalas is a square with four gates containing a circle with a center point; each gate is in the
shape of a T. [21]
Page 101
swastika
The word swastika came from the Sanskrit word svastika, meaning any lucky or auspicious
object, and in particular a mark made on persons and things to denote good luck. It is
composed of su- meaning "good, well" and asti "to be" svasti thus means "well-being." The
suffix -ka either forms a diminutive or intensifies the verbal meaning, and svastika might thus
be translated literally as "that which is associated with well-being," corresponding to "lucky
charm" or "thing that is auspicious." [22]

101.1-2 In Hoc Signo Vinces

Latin, "in this sign you will conquer.". According to legend Constantine the Great adopted
this Greek phrase, "εν τούτω νίκα", after his vision of a chi and rho on the sky just before the
Battle of the Milvian Bridge (312 CE). He had his men paint the chi rho on their sheilds and
led them all to victory. Thus did he become the Emperor of Rome and subsequently moved
the capital of the empire to Constantinople (formerly Byzas, now Istanbul) and most
important for the history of the west -- proclaimed Christianity the official religion of the
empire.

In context in GR there are various possible meanings: - The swastika, the broken cross at the
mandala's center on the launch pad, the symbol of the Reich, shall win the war and proclaim a
new empire -- the Third Reich which was to last a 1000 years -- which, come to think of it,
was about as long as Constantinople was the center of the Roman, then Eastern Roman, then
Byzantine (but always Christian) Empire (Constantinople falling to the Ottoman Turks in
1459). Common to both Nazi and Constantine rendering is the interplay of the Cross/Swastika
over the face of the sun.

- Subsequently, the phrase became the motto of the Sobieski line -- Jan III Sobieski having
defeated the Ottomans in 1683 at the Battle of Vienna just outside the city's gates. The phrase
has also been used by Irish nobility, the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George,
the Portuguese, the Knights Templars, Freemasons, and the Sigma Chi fraternity.

Which leads to the most amusing reading of the passage: whoever carved the words into the
tree did so as a fraternity prank.

the Underground
See page 96.

Erwartung
Anticipation

Page 106

White Zombie
106.34-37 White Zombie ... perhaps Dumbo
Despite the connections with other forms of death-in-life that are referred to throughout Gravity’s
Rainbow, White Zombie is the only direct reference to

Dumbo

zombies. That may be because the zombie myth is of black and African origin. Pynchon has carefully
chosen the title to reflect his use of whiteness as the color of death. Although the depiction of the
crows in Dumbo is clearly racist, they give the little elephant the "magic" feather that he thinks he
needs (but really doesn’t) in order to fly. The Disney film will continue to be an important touchstone
later in the novel when Slothrop meets Pig Bodine. Compare Pynchon's bitterly ironic use of the
Dumbo reference at V135.02-07. Although it is not clear that Pynchon was aware of it, the B-17
bomber was nicknamed the "Dumbo" by American troops in the Pacific during World War II.

This contributor would bet a first edition hardcover of Gravity's Rainbow that Pynchon was
aware of the "Dumbo". Even I knew it and I know next to nothing about WW II
factually.MKOHUT 13:40, 8 July 2007 (PDT)

Page 108
108 ic heb u liever dan ên everswîn
These lines (English: "I love you more than a wild boar / even if it were made of fine gold")
are from the 15th century Middle Dutch verse drama Lanseloet van Denemerken ("Lancelot
of Denmark"). Precisely these two lines are quoted and discussed in Chapter 10 of Jacob
Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie, Vol. 1, p. 213 in the English translation Teutonic Mythology,
which must be Pynchon's source.

Page 109
109.9-11 freak saffrons, streaming indigos
The isolated Dutchman going slowly mad under the southern sun, whose "very perceptions"
are changed (and who writes numerous letters to his brother) seems to be a reference to
Vincent Van Gogh; the kind of tacit anachronism that Pynchon likes to use in Mason &
Dixon.

Page 110
110.6 This furious host...
Evokes 'Wuotan and his mad army'; see notes 72.27 and 75.13

Page 111
111.07-09 For as much as they are creatures of God and have the gift of rational
discourse, acknowledging that only in his Word is eternal life to be found...
Weisenburger suggests that this is a prayer for new colonial subjects, but the context — Frans
van der Groov’s hopes for a Conversion of the Dodos — suggests that it comes from a
discourse on the possibility of salvation or conversion for Jews or others. Given Katje’s
problematic relationship to the Holocaust, the passage becomes even more suggestively
sinister. The sentence does suggest the views of James (or Jacob) Arminius, the Dutch
theologian who broke with the Dutch Reformed Church over issues of predestination and
election. Arminius argued that Christ’s salvation was available to all in contrast to the official
church's staunch belief in predestination. Frans would extend that grace to dodos as well. Also
see note at 555.29.

Page 114
114.5 Section 8
A category of discharge from the United States military for reason of being mentally unfit for
service

Page 115
115.3 greensickness
Chlorosis (also known as "green sickness") is a form of anemia named for the greenish tinge
of the skin of a patient. Its symptoms include lack of energy, shortness of breath, dyspepsia,
headaches, a capricious or scanty appetite and amenorrhoea. Today this disease is diagnosed
as hypochromic anemia.

115.3 tetter
A broad term for numerous types of skin diseases.

115.3 kibes
An inflamed area on the skin, especially the heel; a chillblain

115.3 purples
Bright splotches on the skin.

115.3 imposthumes
A accumulation of pus; an abcess

115.4 almonds in the ears

Swollen lymph glands, per Weisenburger

115.4 scurvy
A disease resulting from a deficiency of vitamin C. It leads to the formation of spots on the
skin, spongy gums, and bleeding from the mucous membranes.

115.19 Primo Scala's Accordion Band

An English group, well-known by the mid-1930s, that consisted of four accordions, two
pianos, bass, drums and guitar, under the direction of Harry Bidgood.

115.32-33 Compton Mackenzie novels

British novelist, (1883-1972), both acclaimed and neglected, who wrote more than 100
novels, plays, and biographies
115.35 Sèvres vase
Sèvres is a French porcelain manufacturer dating to 1740. It was originally a royal, then an
imperial, factory, and is now run by the Ministry of Culture.

115.37 Wardour Street

A street in Soho, London.

Page 116
116.21 Lafitte Rothschild
Château Lafite Rothschild (Pynchon adds an extra 't' in 'Lafite') is a wine estate in France,
owned by members of the Rothschild banking family of France since the 19th century. The
name Lafite comes from the Gascon term "la hite" meaning "small hill".

116.23 Bernkastler Doktor

German vineyard along the Mosel

116.35 Gilbert & Sullivan

Composer Sir Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) and librettist W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911)
collaboratively developed a distinctive English form of the operetta.

Page 117
117.15 ...exactly the sort of thing Hop Harrigan used to pull to get Tank Tinker to quit
playing his ocarina...
Both Hop and Tank are aviation heroes from DC comics. Hop is a pilot; Tank is his mechanic.
More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hop_Harrigan --Jpicco 09:20, 27 May 2009 (PDT)

Page 118
118.12 Cubeb? He used to smoke that stuff.
Not an uncommon practice, apparently. "Edgar Rice Burroughs, being fond of smoking cubeb
cigarettes, humorously stated that if he had not smoked so many cubebs, there might never
have been Tarzan." More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubeb#Cigarettes_and_spirits --
Jpicco 09:24, 27 May 2009 (PDT)

Page 121
121.13-14 ...watching Maria Montez and Jon Hall...
The duo made a series of six Technicolor adventure films: Arabian Nights (1942), White
Savage (1943), Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1944), Cobra Woman (1944), Gypsy Wildcat
(1944), and Sudan (1945).

Page 126
126.19 this seventh Christmas of the War
Although Weisenburger declares this a mistake ("a miscount"), upon closer inspection it's
actually quite intentional, a sly device to underscore Roger's and Jessica's confusion. They're
at sixes and sevens, you see...

Page 127
127.16 Tannoy
Tannoy Ltd is an English manufacturer of loudspeakers and public-address (PA) systems. It
became a household name as a result of supplying PA systems to the armed forces during
World War II, and to Butlins and Pontins holiday camps after the war.

Page 128
128.14 join the waits
Leicester's ancient tradition of Town Waits — official musicians who supported the Lord
Mayor at civic events, entertained townspeople and feted visitors. The waits were originally
guards or watchmen who walked round the town at night looking out for fires or other trouble.
They rang bells to tell people the time, or called out '2 o'clock and all's well'. They also played
music for the Lord Mayor's guests on big occasions, and entertained the general public. This
became their main job. By 1900 the waits' instruments were a cornet, a euphonium, a tenor
horn and a trombone. From then, the waits mostly played popular requests for a small fee,
which was given to charity. By the 1940s, a request would cost about half a crown (12p). The
Leicester Waits were disbanded around 1947. [1]; Picture

Page 129
129.9 Tallis, Thomas (c. 1505–1585)
An English composer. Tallis flourished as a church musician in 16th century Tudor England.

129.9 Purcell, Henry (c. 1659-1695)

An English organist and Baroque composer of secular and sacred music.

129.9 Suso, Heinrich (1295-1336)

German mystic and preacher (Heinrich Seuse in German). His composition In Dulci Jubilo is
a German/Latin macaronic carol (Pynchon (mis)dates it as "fifteenth century"); the first verse
(of four), can be translated as follows:

Original text English translation

In dulci jubilo, In sweet rejoicing

Nun singet und seid froh! now sing and be glad!

Alle unsre Wonne All our joy

Liegt in praesepio; lies in the manger;

Sie leuchtet wie die Sonne It shines like the sun

Matris in gremio. in the mother's lap.

Alpha es et O! You are the alpha and omega!

Page 130
130.10-27 ...thousands of old used toothpaste tubes...emptied and returned to the War...
War with a minty smile? Menthol to cover the stench of the dead? Toothpaste tubes were
made of pewter, a valuable material worth recycling.

Page 131

Ein Volk poster

131.1 ...ein Volk ein Führer...

German: 'one people, one leader'

131.11 Rundstedt offensive

1944's Ardennes offensive, or Battle of the Bulge, was directed by the German field marshal
Gerd von Rundstedt (1875-1953).

Page 132
132.11 Mr. Morrison
Herbert Stanley Morrison (1888-1965), British Labour statesman who played a leading role in
London local government for 25 years. At this point he was Home Secretary in Churchill's
coalition government.

132.16 Alasils
An English brand of pain relievers suggested for 'symptomatic pain generally, rheumatism,
fibrositis, lumbago, headache, dysmenorrhoea, dental pain'.

132.20 Eyeties
slang: Italians

132.20 Giovinezza
The anthem of the Italian National Fascist Party; Italian for 'youth'
132.21 Rigoletto
An opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria
Piave based on the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. It was first performed at La Fenice in
Venice on March 11, 1851. It is considered by many to be the first of the operatic
masterpieces of Verdi's middle-to-late career.

132.21 La bohème
An opera in four acts by Giacomo Puccini. The world premiere performance of La bohème
was in Turin on February 1, 1896 at the Teatro Regio and was conducted by the young Arturo
Toscanini.

132.29 cioè
Italian: 'that is', 'i.e.'

132.31 mano morto

Italian: dead hand (should be mano morta)

132.32 CBI
China-Burma-India theatre of WWII

Page 134
134.38-39 ...your mother hoping to hang that Gold Star...
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.

134.40 Home Service programme

The domestic arm of the BBC, as opposed to Overseas Service and European Service.

Page 135
135.5 Miraculous Medal
aka the Medal of the Immaculate Conception; created after a vision of the Virgin Mary; often
worn by Catholics (and even non-Catholics) as protection through Mary's intercession

135.33 ...when the 88 fell...

135.7 a German 88 mm shell

135.33 SPQR
Latin: senatus populusque Romanus = the senate and the people of Rome; refers to the
government of the ancient Roman Republic

135.39 ...tippin' those Toledos...

Scales from the company Toledo Scale, founded in Columbus, OH in 1901; now known as
Mettler Toledo

Page 136
136.6-7 O Jesu parvule
First two lines of second verse of In Dulci Jubilo (see 129.9 Suso above)

Original text English translation

O Jesu parvule O little Jesus

Nach dir ist mir so weh... For thee I long alway...

136.27 ...Mosquitoes and Lancasters...

Two types of British bomber during WWII.

Page 139
139.09 Dromond
The word is defined by Webster’s New World English Dictionary as a "large, medieval, swift-
sailing water ship."

139.14 the mummy’s curse

An allusion to the supposed fate of the Carter-Carnarvon expedition that opened the tomb of
Tut-ankh-Amen.

Page 141
141.21 Grand Hotel
Weisenburger is likely incorrect in his identification of the Grand Hotel of Saltsjöbaden. The
Grand Hôtel with its Nobel suite, is located in the center of Stockholm on the water opposite
the Royal Palace and the Old City (Gamla Stan).

Page 142
142.32 Reichssieger von Thantatz Alpdrucken
The name of the dog that Pointsman seeks translates loosely as "Realm of Victory over the
Nightmare of Death." Dale Jack offers the following explanation and correction:

"Reichssieger could be translated simply as "champion" or "victor"; "Reichs" is the possessive

prefix tacked on just about everything during Hitler's rule, and refers specifically the Third
Reich. "Thantatz" should be spelled "Thanatz", as it is in GR (taken from the Greek word for
death). "Von" in this case means "of" or "from" and implies that he induces, rather than
vanquishes fear. "Von" in this context could also be a dig at the aristocracy. Your translation
of "alpdrucken" is basically correct; it is actually the impression (drucken) of dread or fear
one has during any bad dream, as opposed to an actual nightmare (alptraum). This gives
another rough translation: The Reich's Deadly Night-terror Champion. The structure of the
name mimics standard pedigree dogs' titles-breeder's kennel, given name, then owner's
kennel. For example, Daisy Hill's Fluffy of Shady Lane."
Is this the same Weimaraner whose amber eye is pictured in the jigsaw puzzle fragment on
Slothrop's desk? (cf. p.26) Is Slothrop somehow catching echoes ala PSI of Pointsman's
dreams?

Page 147
Page 147.34 - Where are the five-digit groups coming from... no one up in London quite
knows how to decrypt?

The number groups appear to be an encrypted message that uses a one-time pad. One-time
pad encryption uses identical sets of randomly generated numbers shared between sender and
receiver to securely encrypt one way messages over an insecure medium like telegraph or
radio. They are commonly used in espionage because a properly used one-time pad message
is mathematically impossible to crack, even with today's supercomputers, hence London's
inability to crack the messages.

Ciphers encrypted with one-time pads often use five digit groups, though letters or four-digit
groups are used as well. They are normally used for covert, one way communication with
field agents, as the pad is easily concealed and requires little training and no special
equipment to use. [1]

Page 152
152.8 Neukölln
neighborhood in the southeastern part of Berlin; has one of the highest percentage of
immigrants in the city

152.11-12 More than any mere "Kreis" [ . . . ] full mandalas

Correspondent Igor Zabel offers the following gloss on Weisenberger's note, which makes
sense in the context of the passage:

"Kreis is not 'cross' but 'circle', here also in the sense of a social circle. We should, therefore,
understand the passage in the sense that the social structure of the visitors was so complex
that they formed not only a circle but also whole mandalas while sitting around the table
during the séances."

152.16 Walter Asch

The last name derives from "asche": cinders, ashes. He is the first character whose zodical
sign is mentioned: Taurus.

152.19 Wimpe, the IG-man

Popeye & Wimpy

The name does suggest the word "wimpy," as Weisenburger suggests, but it also evokes Popeye’s
hamburger-mooching pal J. Wellington Wimpy. However, correspondent Alex Johnston notes that
the actual German pronunciation ("Vimpe") would not have such connotations at all.

152.21 Lieutenant Weissmann

Weissmann ("white man"), who turns out to be Capt. Blicero, is the decadent character
associated with one of the manifestations of the Lady V. in Pynchon’s first novel in the
section "Mondaugen's Story." See note at 161.22.

Page 154
154.23 "Die Faust Hoch"
Literally, "the fist high" or "the high fist." As in "hebt die Faust hoch" -- "raise the fist high."
Clearly a Labor-Communist-revolutionary workers magazine. Now a rap group.

Page 154
154.12 Studentenheim
German: student residence or dorm

Page 156
156.18 the Judenschnautze
As Weisenburger notes, Pynchon probably means "Judenschnauze" here, but the term is more
likely to mean "Jewish snout" (or nose) than "Jewish jaw." The term reflects Leni’s
antisemitic stereotyping. See note at 159.38. Schnauze is a word for a canine face, so it might
mean "Jewish mug" as well. It also denotes a manner of speech, as in "Er hat eine berliner
Schnauze" ("He speaks the Berlin dialect").

Page 157
157.35 Gymnasium
A type of school in the German secondary education system, typically running grades 6-13.
There is a heavy focus on academic study. Graduates take the Abitur exam and many go on to
university.

Page 159
159.19 Niebelungen
Weisenburger takes his description of the film from Siegfried Kracauer’s From Caligari to
Hitler, but overlooks a key point. It is no wonder that Pokler "missed Attila the Hun roaring in
from the East to wipe out the Burgundians"; Attila never did roar in from the East! As
Kracauer correctly describes the film’s ending, Attila does massacre the Burgundians, but
only after inviting them to dinner and setting a hall on fire (prompted by the urgings of his
wife, the wronged Kriemhild). Is the textual error Pokler’s, Leni’s, or Pynchon’s? Given that
all the explicit German film references are to films by Fritz Lang and that few of those films
were widely available (with the notable exception of Metropolis), we could suspect that
Pynchon was working from secondary sources or his own memory of a Lang festival at which
he, like Pokler, fell asleep. (Lang did appear at such a festival at the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art in 1969, when Pynchon may have been living in the area.) Lang is a useful
touchstone for Pynchon in this novel since almost all of his films (including such American
movies as You Only Live Once and Scarlet Street) deal with characters trapped by an
inexorable destiny. See note at 578.31. nibeldin.jpg (74051 bytes)

159.33 Die Frau im Mond

German: 'woman in the moon'; A science fiction silent film that premiered October 15, 1929.
It is often considered to be one of the first "serious" science fiction films.It was written and
directed by Fritz Lang, based on the novel Die Frau im Mond (1928, translated as The Rocket
to the Moon during 1930) by his then-wife and collaborator Thea von Harbou. It was released
in the USA as By Rocket to the Moon, and in the UK as Woman in the Moon.

159.38 the Jewish wolf Pflaumbaum

At this stage, for all her professed radicalism, Leni allows herself to be deluded by ethnic
stereotyping. Notice her attraction to Rebecca because of her Otherness. Soon, though, Leni
will be "Judaized" (219.41), even more so when she is sent to the Dora concentration camp.
Of Pflaumbaum’s fate, see note at 582.05. Also see note at 474.39.

Page 160
160.11 T.H.
German: Technische Hochschule literally 'technical highschool', but actually at university
level.

160.18 It may have been a quota film.

With the great influx of films from the United States to Europe between the wars, several
film-producing countries, including Germany, enacted decrees that a certain number of films
shown had to be of national origin. These "quota" films were often quick and shoddy
productions made only to satisfy government demands so that the more profitable American
films could still be shown.

Page 161

Justus Liebig

161.22 Kurt Mondaugen

Mondaugen was introduced as a character in the South-West Africa episodes of V., especially
as the focal point of the chapter "Mondaugen’s Story." See note at 152.21.
161.34-35 true succession, Liebig to [ . . . ] Jamf
Picture of Justus Liebig (right)

Page 162
162.12 Wandervogel
German youth movement promoting a love of nature and the outdoors; see note here

162.15 kleinbürger
German: the lower middle class, translated from the French term petit bourgeoise, literally
'little citizen', noted for their small-minded conservative values.

162.18 Dom
German--cathedral

162.20 Biedermeier
Refers to the historical period between the years 1815 and 1848, particularly in Germany and
Central Europe. It is often used to denote the artistic styles that flourished then and that
marked a contrast with the Romantic era which preceded it; mainly in the fields of literature,
music, the visual arts and interior design. However, it can also be used, as it is here, to imply a
petit-bourgeois conformity.

162.28 Bürgerlichkeit
German: the quality of being bourgeois

Page 163
163.20-21 Leni sang with the other children the charming anti-semitic street refrain of
the time
The source of Leni’s initially racist attitudes lies here, in her youth.

Page 165
165.21 Herrenklub
German: gentlemen's club

Page 166
166.1-9 All right. Mauve [ . . . ]
For more on the history of this breakthrough in dye-making and organic chemistry, see Simon
Garfield's Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World (New York:
Norton, 2001).

Page 167
167.29-30 Heinz Rippenstoss
The name of the would-be Nazi wag is literally "poke in the ribs."
Seemingly a riff on "von Ribbentrop", Hitler's foreign minister, found guilty at Nuremberg
and hung.

Page 167
167.36 "And the crowds they swarm in Knightsbridge, and the wireless carols drone,
and the Underground's a mob-scene, but Pointsman's all alone" Sung to the tune of the
Kinks' "A Well-Respected Man" ... "And he gets up in the morning, and he goes to work at 9,
etc etc"]

Comment: interesting observation -- but is there more to corroborate this or is it just a

coincidence (if coincidences exist, that is)? Where does the parallels end in this passage?

Page 168
168.22-23 "What did the Cockney exclaim to the cowboy from San Antonio?" I think
Weisenburger tries way too hard on this one. If you ask me, the punchline to this terrible joke
is simply "Cor, Tex!" with the "cor" from the Cockney slang exclamation "Cor blimey!" and
the "Tex" from the American cowboy diminutive, indicating a person from Texas. --Jpicco
12:47, 31 May 2009 (PDT)

Page 169
169.7-8 ...some piece by Ernesto Lecuona, Siboney perhaps...
Ernesto Lecuona y Casado (1895-1963) was a Cuban composer and pianist. Siboney (Canto
Siboney) was from 1929. Siboney is also a town in Cuba. 1929 version on Youtube.

169.30 bass part to Diadem

One of several tunes used for the hymn All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name; James Ellor wrote
the tune.

169.31 Flying Fortress

The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, a four-engine heavy bomber aircraft developed in the 1930s
for the United States Army Air Corps.

169.39 Welshman in Henry V

Refers to Fluellen, a comically stereotyped Welsh soldier in Shakespeare's historical play,
believed to have been written around 1599.
Act 5, scene 1, of Henry V is the famous leek eating scene, which can be hilarious onstage.

page 170
170.4 Ashkenazic Jews
also known as Ashkenazi Jews or Ashkenazim; Jews descended from the medieval Jewish
communities along the Rhine in Germany from Alsace in the south to the Rhineland in the
north. Ashkenaz is the medieval Hebrew name for this region and thus for Germany. Thus,
Ashkenazim or Ashkenazi Jews are literally "German Jews." Later, Jews from Western and
Central Europe came to be called "Ashkenaz" because the main centers of Jewish learning
were located in Germany.

170.10 BMRs
Basal metabolic rate: the amount of energy expended while at rest in a neutrally temperate
environment.

170.13 Vincentesque invaders

According to Weisenburger, this refers to germs which cause trench-mouth, a disease
diagnosed by the French doctor Jean Vincent.

170.29 Cymri
The Welsh (also Cymry); Cymru is the name of the country in Welsh

page 171
171.7 Aberystwyth
A tune composed by Joseph Parry in 1876, often used in hymns; Aberystwyth is a city in
Wales.

171.11 bubble-and-squeak
A traditional English dish made with the shallow-fried leftover vegetables, usually potato and
cabbage, from a roast dinner.

171.12 slap-and-tickle
British-English slang: playful kissing, tickling, caressing; foreplay

page 172
172.29 the white riders
Death. American [Arizonian; some sources say] Folktale. The White Rider[[1]]

Page 173

173.21 Vat 69
A brand of blended whisky. Wiki.
173.26-27 babies born...also following a Poisson Distribution
births parallel the rockets of death.

173.39 Christmas bugs

Waterbugs... that are "agents of unification". Pynchon likes Christmas and creatures in the
'Low-lands'. These bugs were in History's most famous 'manger'....a tranquil world.

Page 174
174.19 golliwog
The Golliwog or Golliwogg is a blackfaced African American caricature created in the late
1800s. It is relatively unknown in the United States, but was historically very popular in
Europe. Since the 1960s, the doll has become the subject of a great deal of controversy, with
Europeans attempting to decide whether it is a valuable cultural artifact or a racist
insult.online dictionary

Golliwog was also World War II British naval slang for a Gauloise cigarette, which had
tobacco which was nearly black in colour.

The American rock group Creedence Clearwater Revival was known as "The Golliwogs" and
under this name they released a number of singles before the 1970s.

In unofficial military parlance of some countries which has become less common nowadays,
the term was used to indicate a piece of equipment that has been tuned, upgraded, and
possibly customised to the point where it is no longer similar to the stock item it started as.
The term stems from the fact that although the Golliwog itself was black – its standard form
was featureless in a sense – it was always represented as decorated smartly with, for example,
ribbons and bows. It could be said to be found always dressed up in finery; no Golliwog was
ever seen dressed conservatively.
Golliwog [[1]]

Page 175
175.13-14 ...the Tommy...the Jerries...
Tommy is a slang reference to British soldiers; Jerries is British slang for German soldiers or
Germans in general; the two nouns in the song allude to the famous cartoon series Tom &
Jerry. [[2]]

175.16

polythene

polythene, adj., also known as "polyethelyne" or "polyethene", a common thermoplastic.

175.21

staccato

staccato, n. musical term meaning detached or not connected, with the musical notation being
small dots above or below the notes. Staccato is the opposite of slurred. The sound of the
crowd's staccato singing possibly mimics the sound of a machine gun, referenced in the lines
directly above.

175.35 she [Penelope] can see the crocheted shawl

The most famous Penelope, of course, is in The Odyssey, Odysseus' faithful wife who spent
his time away weaving a shroud..and unweaving it at night.

Page 176
176.1 refraction
time-forward allusion to a major element of Against the Day?

176.38-39 Quisling molecules

'traitorous molecules'; Quisling refers to Vidkun Quisling (1887–1945), a Norwegian fascist
leader who collaborated with the Nazis and is regarded as Norway's most notorious traitor.

Page 177
177.27-28 Hark the herald angels sing: Mrs. Simpson's pinched our King...
A schoolyard reworking of the Christmas carol. The second line refers to Bessie Wallis
Warfield, later Spencer, then Simpson (1896-1986), an American who married Prince
Edward, Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII. Edward abdicated the throne in order
to marry this twice-divorced commoner.

2. Un Perm' au Casino Herman Goering

Page 181
181.25 Hispano-Suiza
A luxury automobile made by the Spanish firm of the same name; best known for their cars,
engines (including world famous aviation engines) and weapons designs in the pre-World
War II period.

Page 182

182.04 I’m some kind of a Van Johnson

Johnson’s film was titled Thirty Seconds over Tokyo (not "Minutes"), but there are more
likely references at work, given the context of Bloat and Tantivy comparing British love life
to Slothrop's. In at least two 1944 films, Between Two Women and Two Girls and a Sailor,
Johnson had to cope with multiple romances.

182.6 Cravens
A brand of cigarette named after the 3rd Earl of Craven, 1860; although named after a person,
this is a refreshing instance of truth in advertising, especially for the cigarette industry

182.35 Clausewitz
Carl Philipp Gottlieb von Clausewitz (1780–1831) was a Prussian soldier, military historian
and expert military theorist. He is most notable for his treatise Vom Kriege, translated into
English as On War.

Page 183
183.10 J'ai deux amis, aussi
French: I have two friends, too

183.17 déjeuner
French: lunch

183.24 sur la plage

French: on the beach

183.29 Fauve
Les Fauves (French: Wild Beasts) were a short-lived and loose grouping of early 20th century
Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong color over the
representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism.

Page 184
184.14 Norfolk jacket
A loose, belted, single-breasted jacket with box pleats on the back (and sometimes front), now
with a belt or half-belt. The style was long popular for boys' jackets and suits, and is still used
in some (primarily military and police) uniforms.

184.33 Cesar Flebótomo

An excellent name for a casino manager: a caesar is a ruler, phlebotomy is the act of drawing
blood, therefore 'King Bloodsucker'!

184.39 Messerschmitt
Fighter plane from the German concern Messerschmitt AG

Page 185
185.22 Wehrmacht
The word literally means defense force and denotes the whole warfighting establishment,
including the Heer (land army) Kriegsmarine (navy) and Luftwaffe (air force), and even
(although never formally) the Waffen SS.

185.22 chines
A chine is a sharp angle in the hull of a boat, as compared to the rounded bottoms of most
traditional hulls.

185.22 prewar Comets and Hamptons

Two types of sailboat. The Hampton sailboat had nothing to do with New Hampshire, as
Weisenburger suggests; it was created for the Hampton Yacht Club in Hampton, Virginia.
The Hampton is also known as the HOD ("Hampton One-Design") and was created by
Vincent "Pappy" Serio in 1934. This may be the origin of the name of Pynchon's character
"Pappy Hod," the sailor who first appeared in V. and is referred to later in Gravity's Rainbow
(p. 715 and p. 748), although Pynchon uses the name for other connotations.

185.25 pédalo
Paddle boat

Page 186
186.3 bombazine
a fabric originally made of silk or silk and wool, and now also made of cotton and wool or of
wool alone

Page 187
187.39 He can see her face now, soft nose of a doe, eyes behind blond lashes full of acid
green.
"Acid green" also makes an appearance in V and Vineland.

187.37 nessay-pah
American vocalization of the French phrase n'est-ce pas which translates as 'is it not'

Page 189
189.20 Grischa
Diminutive of Grigori

189.30-31 another episode in some huge pathological dream of Stalin's

Whether intended or not, this brought to mind the Dream of the Red King in Alice in
Wonderland. People in Soviet Russia were real, like Alice, only in that they exist in the Red
King's (Stalin) dreams. And as Alice learned, crying can only make matters worse: her tears
cannot make her any more real and crying risks waking the king -- in which case, of course,
no more Alice.

Page 190
190.8 pirozhok
An individual-sized baked or fried bun stuffed with a variety of fillings; a pirog (plural pirogi)
is a full-sized pie

190.23 RHIP
"Rank has its privileges."

190.32 Wormwood Scrubs School Tie

Wormwood Scrubs Prison, in London, was built by convicts in 1874; that Slothrop would
wear a prison school tie says a lot about his (and Pynchon's) sense of humor. Hand-painted
ties also feature in Inherent Vice.

Page 192

Mark Sheridan

192.15-16 humming "You Can Do a Lot of Things at the Seaside That You Can’t Do in Town"

This pre-World War I British music hall tune was composed by Mark Sheridan. It appears as
the "B" side of his recording of the early WWI song "Belgium Put the Kibosh on the Kaiser."

Page 194
194.6 Himmler-Spielsaal
German: Himmler-Gameroom; named after Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS and a Nazi
leader

194.6-7 chemin-de-fer
French: 'railroad'; but in this case a version of Baccarat, as it was originally introduced in
France

194.18 Choate
A prep school in Wallingford, Connecticut; now known as Choate Rosemary Hall after a
merger in 1971 of two eminent single-sex establishments.

Page 198
198.19-21 My little chickadee...gets in bed w-with that goat?
My Little Chickadee (1940) is a Universal comedy/western motion picture starring Mae West
and W. C. Fields. Fields (of course) ends up in bed with a goat.
Clip.

Page 200
200.5-6 They are playing croquet.

The surreal quality of a treed Slothrop landing in the midst of senior officers and plump ladies
playing croquet brings to mind Alice playing croquet with the plump Queen of Hearts, the
King of Hearts and their court in Alice in Wonderland.

Page 201
201.5 Lawrence of Arabia
Lawrence did not command regular troops in the Mediterranean Theatre, as described by
Weisenburger, but led Arab partisan operations against the Turks during the war. The
subaltern’s snide remarks to Slothrop echo the scene in David Lean's 1962 Lawrence of
Arabia when Lawrence (Peter O'Toole) first appears at British headquarters in Cairo wearing
Arab clothing.

Page 203

Charles Coburn

203.34 Bwa-deboolong

It is no wonder that Weisenburger cannot find a Bois de Boulogne in Monaco: The reference
is actually to a turn-of-the-century music hall tune, "The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte
Carlo," by Fred Gilbert. The persona of the song is a man who has recently returned to Paris
after a streak of luck at the tables. The chorus:

As I walk along the Bois de Boulogne

With an independent air,

You can hear the girls declare,

"There goes a millionaire!"

You can hear them sigh and wish to die,

You can see them wink the other eye

 At the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo.

The song crops up in several films, notably in Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons
(1942). The song’s meter is also echoed in the "Vulgar Song" at p.213.20-30 and the song at
p244.13-16. The song was made very popular by performer Charles Coborn, who was still
making appearances at music halls until his death in 1945. Audio clips of Coborn performing
are available here.

Page 206
206.20; P.I.D.
Political Intelligence Division

206 a circle with a dot in the centre

Dodson-Truck is right about the Old Norse and Old High German runes, but the Gothic letter
which he describes is the letter called hwair, transliterated as "hw", whose name means
"cauldron, kettle". The Gothic alphabet is not runic and its letter "S" is identical in form to
that of the Latin alphabet.

Plastic Man

206.37 A Plasticman comic

Plastic Man’s history is a bit different than that given by Weisenburger. The hero first
appeared in Police Comics in August 1941. He had his own title starting in 1943 under the
Quality Comics label, which ended in 1956. The character was picked up and revived by
National Periodicals ("DC" Comics) in 1966, but the new magazine lasted only for ten issues.
Since then, some of the original Plastic Man stories have been reprinted from time to time,
and the character has appeared in other DC publications. Plastic Man’s costume was mainly
red, but also contained yellow and black. His name should be two words, not one as in GR.

Page 207
207.8 Telefunken radio control. That 'Hawaii I'
Telefunken is a German radio and television company, founded in 1903, in Berlin, as a joint
venture of two large companies, Siemens & Halske (S & H) and the Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-
Gesellschaft (General Electricity Company). By 1941, AEG was the sole owner. During the
Second World War Telefunken was a supplier of vacuum tubes, transmitters and radio relay
systems, and developed radar facilities and directional finders, aiding the war efforts of the
Third Reich. 'Hawaii I' was the surface station for a missile guidance system Telefunken
developed.
Page 208
208.21 Palmolive and Camay
Two American brands of soap.

Page 209
209.21 's Gravenhage
aka The Hague

Page 210
210.18 Johnson Smith
A mail-order company officially established in 1914 that sells novelty and gag gift items such
as x-ray goggles, whoopee cushions, fake vomit, and joy buzzers. They often advertised in
comic books.

210.18-19 Mustache Kit, 20 different shapes

Fu Manchu: a full, straight mustache that grows downward past the lips and on either side of
the chin and extends down toward the toes; Groucho Marx: a thick greasepaint mustache.

210.28 Wyatt Earp

Earp had an extremely long and droopy mustache; see picture here

210.35 John Wilkes Booth's

Booth also had a droopy mustache, but not as long as Earp

210.30 Stuart Lake era

Lake wrote Frontier Marshal, a 1931 biography of Wyatt Earp which the author purported
upon publication to be based on actual interviews but later admitted to be highly fictionalized.
It served as the basis for several movies (including John Ford's My Darling Clementine) as
well as the 1955 to 1961 Tube series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp.

Page 211
211.39; ...a drinking game, it's called Prince...
A real drinking game, usually called 'Whales Tales'.

Page 212
212.27; jeroboam of Veuve Clicquot Brut
A 3 liter bottle of a slightly sweet, premium French champagne

212.33; trews
Men's clothing for the legs and lower abdomen, a traditional form of Irish and Scottish
apparel; plaid trousers rather than a kilt.
212.33; degorgement
French: process in which sediment is removed from wine

Page 213
213.21 The Queen of Transylvan-ia
Transylvania is, of course, the mountainous region of Romania that is legendary home to
Dracula.

As well as the real-life birthplace of Hermann Oberth, the pioneer of German rocket science,
inventor of liquid-fuel propulsion, consultant on [Die Frau im Mond]; the man who turned
von Braun on.

213.26 Chateaubriand
A recipe for a thick cut of steak from the tenderloin, created for Vicomte François-René de
Chateaubriand, (1768–1848)

213.27 panatelas
Long, thin cigars

213.36 Épernay grapes

Grapes grown in the Épernay region of France; officially designated as Champagne grapes

213.36 cuvées
Refers to the best grape juice from gentle pressing of the grapes--the first 2,050 liters of grape
juice from 4,000 kg of grapes

Page 214
214.02 Taittinger
A French sweet sparkling wine, manufactured outside the Champagne region and so unable to
use the controlled name - an indication that the real thing has started to run out.

214.04-05 Lady of Spain

The song, composed in 1931 by Tolchard Evans, Stanley Demerell and Bob Hargreaves, has
become a cliché of accordion music.

Page 215
215.29 News of the World
A British tabloid known as a purveyor of titillation, shock and criminal news, first published
in 1843 and at one time the best-selling newspaper in the UK; closely associated with
Conservative political views, it was (pace Weisenberger) a weekly Sunday paper, not a daily.
It folded in 2011, after a scandal involving mobile phone hacking of celebrities and a murder
victim.

Page 218
218.10 Zaxa
Anglicized pronunciation of 'Sachsa'

Page 219
219 debris of their time sweeping in behind
Reminiscent of Walter Benjamin's Angelus Novus from 1940: "a storm is blowing from
Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close
them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the
pile of debris before him grows skyward."

The following paragraph also contains a reference to one Walter (maybe Walter Asch or
Walter Rathenau, the only two Walters in GR, but possibly yet another one): "Will Walter be
bringing wine tonight?"

Page 220
220.31 Schutzmann Joche
The constable’s last name, with an umlaut, would approximate another expression of disgust
("yuck-ey").

Page 222
222.02 Cagney of the French Riviera
James Cagney, American actor who played tough guys. Called "the professional gangster". In
one famous movie scene, he shoves a grapefruit into a woman's face over the breakfast table.

222.37 the bridge music

A cinematic reference; the kind of musical accompaniment in which familiar tunes echoed the
theme of particular scenes (especially during montage sequences spanning periods of time)
was a common feature of classic Hollywood films (for example, the scores of Max Steiner).
In this context, the music is background to a montage of scenes of Slothrop and Katje working
together.

Page 223
223.11 IG and radio methods
IG = INERTIAL guidance, i.e. guidance derived from inertia (Newton's first law)... measuring
the forces on a gyroscope, which attempts to maintain the spin and orientation it had before
the rocket's flight started. Put those forces (and the time during which they are sensed)
through some arithmetic, and you get the current position and velocity of the rocket... leading
to the right moment to shut down the engine (Brennschluss).
Alternately, the guidance system can receive signals from two or more radio sources (a la
GPS, today's Global Positioning System) and use trigonometry to calculate its position. This
was planned for the V2 and tested, but never became operational AFAIK. Used extensively
by bombers.
Either way, the transition from *powered* and *controlled* flight to *ballistic* trajectory --
governed only by gravity, all its future implicit in this moment, fated and irreversible -- is a
central metaphor, arguably *the* central metaphor, of the book.

223.19 Der Pfau

German: the peacock; interestingly, this word sounds very similar to the pronunciation of the
letter 'V', just with a soft plosive 'P' in front, so that Pfau Zwei could easily be mistaken for
'V-2'

223.36 scrim
A gauze used as a screen or backdrop.

Page 225
225.32 a single clarinet
The instrument, with its evocation of "clowns and circuses," suggests Kurt Weill's score for
Brecht's Three-Penny Opera but also Nino Rota’s scores for several Fellini films, notably 8½
(1963 — No wonder Slothrop "lacks the European reflexes" to it!)

Page 228
228.9 Miss Borgesius is still active on the program, and Mr. Duncan Sandys is having all
his questions answered.
Putting them in the same sentence is a fine example of Pynchonesque intuition; in 2000
Duncan Sandys was revealed as the "headless man" involved in a decades-old sex scandal. In
1963 photos emerged of the Duchess of Argyll performing fellatio on him, while a third
person, identified as Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., was masturbating and making Polaroid snaps.
And yes, there is a von Braun connection.

228.33 und so weiter

German: and so forth

228 Mossmoon, actually, is working out of Malet Street

Weisenburger guesses (!) that Malet Street is fictional but it's real enough. Of the buildings in
Malet Street, which include the old Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts building, the School of
Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Birkbeck College (site of Joad's Gambit and holy to
Lifemen), Mossmoon was most likely working out of the Senate House of the University of
London. This would correspond with his earlier role on p35 as a Verbindungsmann between
academia and industry.

Page 229
229.23 From overhead, from a German camera-angle
The German, or Dutch, or Batman angle is actually a tilted camera-angle. "From overhead"
implies a German bomber's (or rocket's) view.

Page 230
230.21-22 Volksgrenadier: setz V-2 ein!
German: Volksgrenadier deploy a V-2!

Page 231
231.14 Daily Herald
British newspaper, published in London from 1912 to 1964; typically associated with
worker's issues and the Labour Party

Page 232
232.06 Savarin..."Severin"
Savarin: the cofee.
Severin: two possible referents:
a. Severin von Kusiemski: a character in Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch.
b. Mark Severin(1906-1987): engraver of postage stamps and over 500 Ex-Libris bookplates
many of which were erotic.

232.15 Krafft-Ebing
Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902), a German psychiatrist, wrote Psychopathia Sexualis
(1886), describing a variety of sexual proclivities

232.16-17 Malacca cane

Although Weisenburger cites Fu Manchu stories as a source for this item, it is more clearly
being used simply to inflict pain in the ritual between Katje and the Brigadier. Malacca canes
are thick, with a knob at one end. They are sometimes used in sado-masochistic settings such
as the one here.

232.20 tattered tommy up on White Sheet Ridge

A key land formation at the the Battle of Messines, a prelude to the Third Battle of
Passchendaele a month later. In April-May 1917, the Germans held the White Sheet and
Pilkem Ridges squeezing Ypres in the middle. On June 7th 1917 at 3:10am the British attack
began as 19 landmines simultaneously exploded; the British opened fire and two hours later
the Germans were driven from the formation.

232.21 Maxim
The Maxim gun was first self-powered machine gun.

232.21-22 Cléo de Mérode (1875-1966)

A French dancer, renowned for her glamour even more than for her dancing skills.
232.28 H-Hour
The specific time when a military operation is to begin.

232.33 Adam chair

A chair designed by brothers James and Robert Adam, 18th century architects, whose work
was based on classic Greek and Roman styles

232.41 recco photos

Reconnaissance photographs

Page 233
233.21 The Archies were chugging...
WWI slang for anti-aircraft guns

Page 234
234.4 the Salient
The Ypres Salient

234.7 Badajoz
The capital of the Spanish province of Badajoz in the autonomous community of
Extremadura, situated close to the Portuguese border. During the Spanish Civil War, Between
1,000 and 4,000 civilian and military supporters of the Second Spanish Republic, were killed
by the National Army following the seizure of the town on August 14, 1936.

234.28 where's that Gourd Surprise now?

see Ernest Pudding's Gourd Surprise

234.33 fourragère
A military award, distinguishing military units as a whole

Page 237
237.1 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.

237 16-20 Carl Orff's lively...ardeo...

From Tempus es iocundum (This is the joyful time), a song from Orff's famous cantata
Carmina Burana

Latin text English translation

O, O, O, Oh, Oh, Oh,

To-tus flore-o! I am bursting out all over!

Iam amore virginali with first love

Totus ardeo... I am burning all over...

Page 239
239.18-19 demons—yes, including Maxwell’s
Pynchon introduced Maxwell’s Demon in The Crying of Lot 49, where John Nefastis shows a
supposedly working version of this theoretical entity to Oedipa. See the discussion of the
Demon and the problem of entropy at the Pomona College Pynchon site.

Page 240
240.20-21 the sour stuff
a literal translation of the German word for oxygen: Sauerstoff

240.24 Esso
An American gas and oil company formed in 1911 upon the breakup of Standard Oil. It takes
its name from the phonetic pronunciation of 'S.O.' In 1973, the name was replaced in the U.S.
with Exxon.

240.27 Terraplane
A car brand and model built by the Hudson Motor Car Company of Detroit, Michigan
between 1932 and 1939.

240.41 like Cary Grant

Though he was a naturalized American, Grant’s accent was hardly "quasi-British," as
Weisenburger describes it. He was born Archibald Leach in Bristol, England in 1904. His
accent, which avoided any strongly British or American colouration, sounded more British to
Americans and more American to the British, with no trace of the thick burr and 'Ghost L'
found in the local dialect of his birthplace.

Page 241
241.3 Josef Israelplein
An esplanade in The Hague, actually Josef Israelsplein.

Page 243
243.3 LOX
Liquid Oxygen

243.17 Alkit uniforms

Alkit was a clothing manufacturer which supplied uniforms, "especially R.A.F. outifts"
according to their ads, to the British military.
243.28 formée cross
A cross having four arms which are narrow at the center and expand toward the ends;
Germany's Iron Cross is one example

243.39 George ("Poudre") de la Perlimpinpin

poudre is French for 'powder', but poudre de la perlimpinpin is slang for 'patent medicine' or
'snake oil'

Page 244
244.18 trente et quarante
French: thirty and forty also called rouge et noir (red and black), is a 17th century gambling
card game of French origin played with cards and a special table. It is rarely found in US
casinos, but still very popular in Continental Europe casinos, and one of the two games played
in the gambling rooms at Monte Carlo, roulette being the other. Wikipedia entry

244.23 Apache
The term, used to describe Parisian thugs, was coined in 1902 by journalist Victor Morris.
The word is also used in reference to the famous "Apache dance," where an Apache flings his
woman about the floor.

Page 245
245.36 Tom Mix shirt
A cowboy shirt; Mix was an American film actor and the star of many early Western movies.
He made a reported 336 films between 1910 and 1935, all but nine of which were silent
features. He was Hollywood’s first Western megastar and is noted as having helped define the
genre for all cowboy actors who followed.

245.36 Percheron horse

Breed of draft horses that originated in the Perche valley in northern France; usually gray or
black in color.

Page 246
246.1 Bokhara rug
A handmade carpet featuring the octagonal 'elephant's foot' print, often with a red or tan
background

Waxwing
246.35 Blodgett Waxwing

Waxwing’s last name may come from Pale Fire by Pynchon’s Cornell teacher Vladimir
Nabokov. The novel takes the form of a long poem with annotations by a mad scholar. The
poem begins, "I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/ By the false azure in the windowpane."
Blodgett is the "real" last name of the heroine in all three versions of the film A Star Is Born.
The waxwing is also of interest because of its striking appearance: Its black "mask" is
appropriate for someone in Blodgett's line of work.

The waxwing also eats the aril, the bright red, seed-containing berry of the yew tree, thus
dispersing the yew seed undamaged. The yew, mentioned in the text, is the tree of death. All
parts of the tree, including the seed but not the aril, are poisonous and if eaten can literally kill
a horse (also pigs, cattle and other livestock).

Like the bird, this man Waxwing is able to safely carry and distribute lethal cargo,
undamaged, without harm to himself.

246.37 Soldbücher
plural of Soldbuch; A German soldier's id papers and paybook

Page 247

Steele & JPK

247.06 Bob Steele

Steele’s westerns were produced by Nalline Slothrop’s pal, Joseph Kennedy, Sr.

247.14 Theophile
From the Greek for "Lover of God."

247.30 like Tenniel's Alice

Sir John Tenniel drew Alice for the original editions of Alice in Wonderland and Through the
Looking Glass

Page 248
248.40-41 a business card, embossed with a chess knight
On the television show Have Gun Will Travel, which debuted in 1957, the gunslinger-for-hire
Paladin (Richard Boone) gave out business cards embossed with a chess knight.

Page 249
249.5 & 6 Anglo vigilantes from Whittier
Whittier High School and Whittier College is where President Richard M. Nixon, President
when GR was published, hailed from. [[1]]

This literary device tying Nixon to race riots and social repression works on literary license
only, and in reviewing the historic situation it appears that the riots were not so much white
vigilantes from Whittier attacking Zoot Suiters, as much as drunken Navy men gone wild and
finding an easy target in Mexican American youth.

This seems doubly galling on Pynchon's part:

First, Whittier, CA, was and largely remains a Quaker community, named after the Quaker
Abolitionist poet John Greenleaf Whittier. Quakers are among the most pacifistic people. In
addition they embody many of the values Pynchon seems to support: egalitarianism,
hierarchy-less assembly, the notion of a God available to all people unmediated by a
priesthood or the elect, etc. Violence is not part of their program.

Second, Pynchon is throwing the blame for the riots on Whittier (this contributor has never
been to Whittier) instead of what appears to be the true cause of the riots -- nasty, drunken
sailors -- those guys TRP hung out with for a while -- and then other service branches joining
in the race baiting. See the PBS American Experience website and program for more
information: The Zoot Suit Riots.

Richard Nixon, however, remains at the center of this Navy-Violence-Whittier-Quaker venn

diagram. A Quaker from Whittier who in WWII served in the Navy. I, for one, could never
figure how a Quaker president could bomb Cambodia or deal in such political slime.

Page 250
250.25-26 Sandoz (where, as every schoolchild knows, the legendary Dr. Hofmann made
his important discovery)

That is, Albert Hofmann discovered the psychedelic effects of LSD-25 in 1943.

Page 251
251.12 Shell Mex House
Shell Mex House, built 1930-31 is situated at number 80, Strand, London. It was for many
years the London headquarters of Shell-Mex and BP Ltd for whom it was originally built.
During WWII the building became home to the Ministry of Supply which co-ordinated supply
of equipment to the national armed forces. It was also the home of the "Petroleum Board"
which handled the distribution and rationing of petroleum products during the war.

Page 252
252.19-20 penis-in-the-popcorn-box routine
Old urban 'legend', known as *Penis Surprise*. Urban Dictionary.
Page 253
253.03-4 this smile [Slothrop's own] asks from him more grace..
'Grace' is the last word of Against the Day and a key thematic concept therein.

253.10 Corniche
One of Nice's most famous roads, offering spectacular views

253.14 Citroën
A French automobile manufacturer, founded in 1919 by André Citroën. It was the one of the
world's first mass-production car companies outside of the USA.

253.20-21 heads for a bistro on the old-Nice side of La Porte Fausse

La Porte Fausse is a passage connecting the glamorous, touristy "modern"(19th century)
centre of Nice with the crammed old town, which used to be a working-class district. It is
called "The False Gate" because it looks as if it were just a gateway to a house. Passing to the
other side seems to be an objective correlative for entering the preterite world.

Page 254
254.38 Borsalini
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.

Page 255
255.26 it's Murray Smile
It would seem that this name is derived from Murray Wilson, Beach Boy Brian Wilson's
abusive father, and the LP Smile, the legendary 1967 Beach Boys album that was never
completed due to Brian's mental collapse and loss of will; Pynchon hung out with Brian
during the legendary "Smile" Period — Pynchon and Brian Wilson

Page 257
257.31-32 The War has been reconfiguring time and space into its own image. The track
runs in different networks now.
Cf. the railway network as a metaphor for parallel worlds or alternative histories in [COL 49].

Page 259
259 the mental cases of Switzerland
Zurich's best known psychiatric clinic is Burghölzli where, among others, Eugen Bleuler, Carl
Gustav Jung, and Ludwig Binswanger used to work. One of the 'mental cases of Switzerland'
at the time, although not at the Burghölzli, was the writer Robert Walser. Other famous
mental cases of Switzerland Pynchon could be referring to include Friedrich Glauser and
Friedrich Nietzsche.
Page 260
260.3 perpetual motion or as we like to call it Entropy Management
The whole passage reads somewhat like an ultra-condensed version of [COL49], Chapter
Five.

260.9-10 ornithopters and robobopsters ... got a little goatee made out of steel wool.
Seems to be a bit anachronistic. After all, bebop was first promoted as "bebop" as late as 1944
(although it was "invented" in 1939, as Pynchon refers to earlier in GR), and its popularity
began to grow beyond Harlem in the summer of 1945. "Ornithopters" likely refers to Charlie
Parker's ("Bird") composition "Ornithology" of 1946. The much-imitated goatee belonged to
Dizzy Gillespie.

260.30 "You interested in some L.S.D."

As a man from Sandoz, Mario Schweitar is aware of the hallucinogenic effect of LSD,
discovered by Albert Hofmann in 1943. Slothrop, of course, has never head about it.
Schweitar's "mournful" remark about the "wrong country" seems to be a complaint about
Schwitzerland's neutrality and small market; the CIA and the U.S. Army used LSD in tests
before it became a counter-culture fad.

Page 261
261.29 Gemüse-Brücke
German: vegetable bridge; Gemüsebrücke, or Gmüesbrugg, is the traditional name for the
Rathausbrücke (a vegetable market used to be here).

Page 262
262.5-6 Wilhelm Tell Overture
From the Rossini opera by the same name. Slothrop would know this as the theme music for
the Lone Ranger radio show which ran from 1933-1954 (also a Tube series from 1949-1957)-
-another 'western' reference. The Rossini thread is picked up here after Rue Rossini in Nice.
Another escape from Their gaze.

262.6-7 hope nobody was looking through that one-way glass

A recurrence of the "half-silvered images", introduced on the very first page; representing
political power, which sees but cannnot be clearly seen. Sounds quite Foucauldian.

262.9 King Tiger tank

Königstiger (officially Panzerkampfwagen VI) was the most impressive German heavy tank
in World War II, although it had several construction faults. Just like a Rolls, it was a kind of
rarity; Porsche produced only 489 such tanks from late 1943 to March 1945. The comparison
emphasizes the concept of WW II as a cluster of ambilateral business transactions.

Comparing the noise of the Rolls and the Königstiger, perhaps Pynchon also had the
following episode of advertising history in mind: In 1959, David Ogilvy wrote an ad for Rolls
Royce. Its headline ran: "At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls Royce comes
from the electric clock." Howard Gossage responded with an ad for Land-Rover, stating: "At
60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Land-Rover comes from the roar of the
engine." (And it goes on with a quote from novelist John Steinbeck.)

Page 263
263.20-21 The paper is fifteen years old.
Another echo of COL 49, Ch 5, where another Hispanic anarchist, Jesús Arrabal has an issue
of Regeneración from 1904 on his table at a greasy spoon.

Page 264
264.40-41 In ordinary times ... the center always wins. Its power grows with time, and
that can't be reversed
This is a combination of Max Weber's notion of center and periphery with the Second Law of
thermodynamics. So "decentralizing" in "extraordinary times" (p. 265.1-2) is an act of
"entropy management".

Page 265
265.24-25 connections of many years' standing with the Republican underground
Meaning the Spanish Republic (1931-39), in which anarchists played a major role.

Page 266
266.3 corktips
Cigarettes with a cork filter.

266.7 Spencer Tracy

An American theatrical and film actor, who appeared in 74 films from 1930 to 1967. This
reference is to his role as the African explorer Henry Stanley in the 1939 film Stanley and
Livingston.

266.11 Richard Halliburton

An American traveler, adventurer, and author. Best known today for having swum the length
of the Panama Canal, he was headline news for most of his brief career. His final and fatal
adventure, an attempt to sail a Chinese junk, the Sea Dragon, across the Pacific Ocean from
Hong Kong to the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco, made him
legendary.

266.23 Lowell Thomas

An American writer, broadcaster, and traveller best known as the man who made Lawrence of
Arabia famous. So varied were Thomas's activities that when it came time for the Library of
Congress to catalog his memoirs they were forced to put them in "CT" ("biographies of
subjects who do not fit into any other category") in their classification.

266.23-24 Rover and Motor Boys

The Rover Boys and Motor Boys were two different series of popular adventure books for
boys at the turn of the 20th century.
266.31 Cointrin
Geneva's airport

266.37 City of Peace

Geneva, so called for the number of peace treaties signed there due to Switzerland's status as
'neutral country'.

Page 267
267.35-36 Reformation country, Zwingli's town
Yes but this only highlights a strange omission: even the narrator fails to notice that Slothrop
has just visited the real birthplace of Puritanism, that is, Geneva.

Page 268
268.5-6 as a mantra... they have been taught to speak inwardly oss
Buddhist mantras start with the syllable om, representing the Universe as inward vibration.
Oss, with the voiceless (non-vibrating) sibilant is apparently an anti-mantra meaning bones,
representing Nothing, just the escape of air.

268.34-35 step by step he, It, the Repressed, approaches

"It, the Repressed" is clearly Freudian terminology. Here, Jamf's "German-scientist mind,
battered down by Death to only the most brute reflexes," seems to fade into Infant Tyrone's
mind conditioned to the most brute reflexes by the German scientist; and that is the
ambiguous "he" Slothrop is afraid of.

Page 269
269.35 White Lotos Day pilgrimage 19 Avenue Road, St. John's Wood
The address was the one-time home of Annie Besant which became headquarters for
Blavatsky (HPB) and the TS(!) -- Theosophical Society-- once Besant joined the group. HPB
died on May 8th, 1891, and May 8th became White Lotos Day, commemorating the
anniversary of HPB shedding her mortal coil. May 8th, 1945 was V-E Day, of course. May
8th interestingly enough was also the death day (different years) of Oswald Spengler and
Gustave Flaubert. Oh, and as every school boy knows, May 8th is Pynchon's birthday!

Page 270
270.14 Tennysonian comfort
From the second verse of Tennyson's 1854 poem Charge of the Light Brigade:

'Forward, the Light Brigade!’

Was there a man dismay’d?

Not tho’ the soldier knew

Someone had blunder’d:

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die:

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

270.16 Floyd Perdoo

From the French "perdue": "lost."

270.27 Third Term

Franklin Delano Roosevelt's third term as President of the U.S. 1940-44

Page 272
272.19 young Sigmund Freud
Refers to Freud’s rejection of the "seduction theory." Freud originally believed that many of
his women patients suffered from neurotic behavior due to sexual abuse as children. He came
to reject that belief as improbable and began to hypothesize the workings of the unconscious
as a result. See Edwin Treacle’s musings at 277.03-05.

Page 273
273.34 The pinball machines writhe... thudding flippers
An anachronism : Flippers were first featured on the Gottlieb pinball table, "Humpty
Dumpty," released in 1947, two years after this scene takes place.

273.37-41 La Gazza Ladra...is mellow

La gazza ladra (The Thieving Magpie) is an opera in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. It is best
known for its overture, which is notable for its use of snare drums.

Page 275
275.1 Wheel of Fortune
Tarot card X; in its multiple meanings random change is the core element (cf. the references
to Gödel's theorem and Murphy's law in lines 275.25-26).

Page 276
Page 276. 20-21- Un-pleasantries such as "It's beginning to sound like the Tavistock
Institute around here"
The Tavistock Institute was founded in September 1947, over two years after this scene takes
place. Perhaps Pynchon was referring to the Tavistock Clinic, a psychiatric clinic in London
which was founded in 1920 and known for work with shell-shocked military personnel? The
Tavistock Institute is known for studies in group, organizational, family, and marital behavior,
while the Tavistock Clinic's clientele would more closely match the tense, paranoid
atmosphere of The White Visitation after the war. [1]

276.31 Krishna
A deity worshipped across many traditions in Hinduism; often depicted with blue skin

Page 277
277.03-05 as the dead father who never slept with you, Penelope, returns night after
night to your bed, trying to snuggle in behind you..."

This Penelope is Jessica's niece (?), first introduced in the Boxing Day scene (Part 1, Episode
21). The dead father appears in her vision, but she refuses to accept "it" as it is only a demonic
shell, one of the Qlippoth. In that scene the narrator refers to "the main sequence of Western
magic" (176.14). Here, it is "the last weary stages of [Europe's] perversion of magic" (277.1).
While in the first case the dead can return as Qlippoth, in the perverted stage death
(interconnected with the repressed "dynamic unconscious" in the Freudian sense) is
incarnated in real living beings.

From an interview with Freud biographer Peter D. Kramer [1]:

Over time, Freud offered differing views on infantile sexuality, all of them problematic. The
most dramatic mistake became associated with the phrase “seduction theory.” As he was
turning forty, in a desperate attempt to achieve fame Freud gave a speech to his Viennese
colleagues on the origins of hysteria. In it, he claimed to have analyzed a series of 18 patients
suffering from hysteria or a combination of hysteria and obsessionality. In every case, he had
uncovered evidence of an early sexual event. All the hysterics had experienced “coitus-like
acts” between the ages of two and four—at the hands of parents, siblings, other relatives, or
nannies — and these events were the original cause of their disorder. The tale of Freud’s
entry into and exit from this stance is complex, but his original presentation suggests not so
much that Freud was misled by patients but that he misdirected them through making his
expectations clear.

Famously, Freud soon reversed the direction of infantile sexuality and claimed that what was
pathogenic was children’s repressed desire for the parent of the opposite sex.

277.7 scream inside the Fist of the ape

Faye Wray screaming after being picked up by King Kong

277.34-35 Sir Denis Nayland Smith to young Alan Sterling

Characters from the Fu Manchu series

3. In the Zone
Page 281
281.01-02 die kalte Sophie
"cold wisdom"? Correspondent Morten Peters gives a better explanation!: "-the allusion may
be intended by Pynchon, but originally this is just the German traditional agricolan term for
the last day of the "eisheiligen", which are normally the last days in the year that can be really
cold." Igor Zabel also offers the following:

"The days of the three "ice-men" (May 12, 13 and 14) are followed by the day of Sophia, 15
May, called "the cold Sophia" because it is considered to be the conclusion of the cold days in
May. The "ice-saints" are believed to be the end of the winter period; they represent a
period when, in high spring, it can get quite cold and sometimes snow may fall. It is a
dangerous time for peasants since the cold period can endanger or even destroy the harvest.
In 1945, these days have passed without damaging the wine grapes. We have the same
tradition in Slovenia, the popular name for the "kalte Sophie" is "polulana Zofka" which
means the "wet" or "peed Sophy" (since it usually rains on that day)."

281.9 the revolutionaries of May

Considering the unusual point of view as represented in the very first sentence("We are"), this
may be a topical reference to May 1968 and the following Big Chill. The seemingly
redundant interjection "this year" in the next sentence then signifies a shift back to narrative
time. In Germany the only great vintage between the period of revolts and the publication of
Gravity's Rainbow belongs to the year 1971.

281.20 DP
Displaced Person

281.35 WASPs
A common wartime acronym is Women Airforce Service Pilots, but the context suggests a
more fitting acronym of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The text here compares Herero
beliefs to the beliefs of Slothrop's Protestant ancestors with their "buckled black" shoes, and
views of God as present in natural phenomena.

Page 285
285.37 Jim Fisk style
Before his involvement with gold markets and railroads, Fisk was a Yankee peddler working
the Berkshires. There are several references to him in The Berkshire Hills (though his name is
misspelled "Fiske").

Page 287
287.11-12 double row of shiny bright teeth hangs in the air
Reminiscent of Alice and the Cheshire Cat:

Well! I’ve often seen a cat without a grin,” thought Alice; “but a grin without a cat! It’s the
most curious thing I ever saw in all my life!” Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 6, "Pig and Pepper"

287.23 P-47
P-47 Thunderbolt, also known as the "Jug," was one of the main United States Army Air
Forces fighters of World War II, and served with other Allied air forces as well.
287.25-26 Project Hermes
US Army missile program started in 1944 to develop guided missile systems; included study
of captured German V-2s; General Electric (GE) ran the contract

287.30 Kraut
Derogatory term for German soldiers or Germans in general; derives from sauerkraut, a
popular German food

287.32 Limey
Derogatory term for the British, originally referring to British sailors. It is believed to derive
from lime juice, referring to the Royal Navy and Merchant Navy practice of supplying lime
juice to British sailors to prevent scurvy.

287.37-38 Old Blood 'n' Guts handed Rommel's ass to him

Refers to American General George Patton's defeat of German forces led by Field Marshal
Erwin Rommel in the North Africa campaign of WWII.

287.38-39 Ach du lieber! Mein Arsch!

German: 'Oh my goodness! My ass!'

Page 289
289.29-30 Lotta those fags still around, with baskets and 175 badges
Fags of course being slang for homosexual men; 175 badges refer to the pink triangle badges
worn by suspected or known homosexuals (usually men) under the Nazi regime. They are
called 175 badges because paragraph 175 of the German criminal code, as revised by the
Nazis in 1935, made a wide range of activities between men illegal.

Page 290
290.8 Under my linden tree
Allusion to Middle High German lyric poet Walter von der Vogelweide's (c. 1170 - c. 1230)
most famous love song "Under der linden", where the singer implied is another young girl.

290.15 Geli Tripping

Another name taken from Gilbert and Sullivan, this time from HMS Pinafore (1878). When
the Female Relations of Sir Joseph Porter, the First Lord of the Admiralty, board the ship,
they sing, "Gaily tripping,/ Lightly skipping,/ Flock the maidens to the shipping." (Have a
listen...) The name is not without psychedelic overtones reminiscent of the Merry Pranksters.
Read the lyrics...

290.16 A Soviet intelligence officer named Tchitcherine

Explaining the sources for the name, Weisenburger cites Theodore von Kármán (The Wind
and Beyond. Boston: Little, 1967), and David Seed ("Pynchon's Two Tchitcherines", Pynchon
Notes 5:11-12). Kármán writes the following:

"Frank Tchitcherine was of Russian origin, and in fact had been related to the first minister of
education in the Kerensky government. This Tchitcherine helped convince the Germans to disclose
their hiding place for literally tons on research documents pertaining to the rocket and supersonic
flight."

It seems Von Kármán was wrong about both the date and the function. There was only one
Chicherin on the Russian political scene at that time. Kerensky's minister of education was A.
A. Manuilov, who was in no position to convince the Germans about anything as the two
nations were at war while the Kerensky government was in office. (In fact, German rocket
research began in earnest only after 1929, when Hermann Oberth published Die Rakete zu den
Planetenräumen.) On the other hand, Georgy Chicherin, an aristocrat by birth and a lover of
German culture, was an ideal diplomatic partner for German foreign ministers Von
Brockdorff-Rantzau, Rathenau, and Stresemann.

"Vaslav" is obviously taken from Nijinsky's first name. There is no such Russian name as
Vaslav. Originally it was Vatslav but the affricate [ts] was smoothed to [s], perhaps because it
was easier for the French to pronounce.

It's likely that the following Frank W. Tchitcherine — the subject of the above biographical
sketch — is the source of the character's surname. The Tchitcherines were active in Westport
CT social circles. It's quite possible that Pynchon was aware of him. The following is from
http://www.achilles.org/ftp/annual/2005.pdf

Frank Wirtheim Tchitcherine was born in Paris in 1907. His father, F.H. Wirtheim, had been a lion
tamer, and it is tempting to conjecture that he was not entirely successful in his profession, for
Frank’s mother, Clementine de Vere, a ‘performer’ subsequently remarried Prince Vladimir
Titcherine. Having been duly adopted by his royal stepfather, Frank was educated at Brighton
College, before studying at Corpus, Cambridge, from 1927 to 1929. As well as winning the 440y in the
Varsity Match of 1929, he had also competed in the same event in 1928. He competed for Achilles in
several major athletics meetings in the UK and Europe in 1929, and was part of the combined Oxford
and Cambridge team which travelled to America that summer for matches against Harvard & Yale (he
placed 2nd in the 440y on 13.7.1929) Princeton & Cornell, and Canadian universities. His best
performance ever was 49.4 (or perhaps 49 4/5) seconds for 440y, winning for Achilles v Berliner and
Deutsche Sports Clubs at Stamford Bridge on 20 May 1929 (see photo – Roger Leigh Wood was 2nd).
Achilles lost track of Frank Tchitcherine, but we learn that he was based in Paris till about 1937,
married an Englishwoman from Wimbledon, Sheila Ballingal, served with the US Army during the 2nd
World War, described himself as a ‘self-employed consultant’ and died in Connecticut in 1984. [1]

In October 2013, a book formerly owned both by Frank W. Tchitcherine and Hermann Goering —
Combustion Flames & Explosions of Gases by Lewis & von Elbe — was offered for sale on eBay.
290.21 Schattensaft
German: shadow juice

Page 293
293.15 I was voted the Sweetheart of 3/Art. Abt. (mot) 485
Contrary to what Weisenburger claims in his Companion, there was such a unit. In fact, their
job was launching V2s. Under the supervision on SS-Gruppenführer Kammler, Division z. V.
(zur Vergeltung) was set up for launching A4 rockets [2]. Within the Division, Artillerie-
Abteilung (motorisiert) 485 was part of Gruppe Nord, together with SS-Werfer-Batterie 500.
The Abteilung (batalion) was transformed into a regiment in August 1944. While launching
units 1 and 2 were in the Hague area, 3/Art. Abt. (mot) 485 was stationed in Western
Germany, with targets in France and Belgium.

293.17 Have you been up to the Broken yet?

When asked if she were a witch, Geli makes reference to the Brocken, a mountain in northern
Germany which Goethe describes in Faust as the center of revelry for witches on
Walpurgisnacht. This may again be a reference to Pynchon’s Cornell teacher Vladimir
Nabokov and his book Pale Fire. In that book Nabokov indirectly (and humorously)
references the Broken when Kinbote talks of "an anthology of poets and a brocken of their
wives" as a way of comparing Sybil Shade to a witch. Interestingly, Blodgett Waxwing is
mentioned again less than a page later. (See 246.35 for discussion of Nabokov and
"waxwing".)

Page 294
294.11 Ge-li, Ge-li, Ge-li
Although often evoked by mimics, Cary Grant never actually said "Ju-dy, Ju-dy, Ju-dy." In
the 1939 film Only Angels Have Wings he did say "Oh, Judy" and "Yes, Judy" to Rita
Hayworth's character, and in 1938's Bringing Up Baby he says "Susan, Susan, Susan".

294.20-21 Thanx for the info, and a tip of the Scuffling hat to ya
Slothrop copies the signoff to Jimmy Hatlo’s comic strip "They’ll Do It Every Time," which
was based on ideas from readers. These contributors were typically acknowledged with the
words, "Thanx, and a tip of the Hatlo hat to..."

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

Page 298
298.24 Etzel Ölsch
Etzel, or Attila the Hun, is first featured as the agent of destruction in the Nibelungen movie
during which Franz Pökler falls asleep (159.19). According to the Duden dictionary of family
names, Oelsch is a variant of Oelschner, which refers to various east German placenames of
Slavic origin.

Page 299
298.10 how long, how long you sfacim-a dis country
The question "how long" addressed to a "You" echoes Psalm 13 ("How long, O Lord? Will
you forget me forever?"). While sfacimento (related to disfacimento, ultimately from disfare,
'undo') means decay in literary Italian, in Neapolitan slang sfacim stands for semen (or a mean
person). See the exchange in V., 140/146 .

299.38 Picture the letters SS stretched lengthwise

In the 2007 biography Von Braun:Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War, Michael Neufeld
writes that after the August 1943 attack on Peenemunde, the rocket works were moved to an
abandoned underground storage facility. The tunnels were, in historical fact, just as described
here: like the letter "s" stretched lengthwise connected by cross tunnels. Each "s" was large
enough to accommodate a long train. The prison labor from Dora -- mostly Poles, Russians,
French and German leftist/communists and few if any Jews -- lived and died in wretched
conditions in the cross-tunnels.

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."

Not sure where the idea of the DNA double helix comes from, but it is not supported by the
text. If the tunnels resembled a helix, a better metaphor would be a spiral staircase, not a
ladder with a slight s-curve. Also, the tunnels are designed with Rocket imagery in mind (DNA
is not rocket imagery). No, as the book says, the tunnels are suggestive of the double
integral, translating rocket acceleration into a point -- the Brennschluss point. And as noted
above, humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes, not 22.

Page 300
300.03 Hupla
Or "hoopla," a big fuss. Hoppla is also a German expression meaning 'oops'

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 302
302.20-21 a constellation...a 13th sign of the Zodiac named for it
Though probably not intended as such by TRP, there is in fact a 13th Zodiacal constellation
named Ophiuchus, formerly Serpentarius, both meaning "the serpent holder," found between
Scorpio and Sagittarius. "Of the 13 zodiacal constellations (constellations that contain the Sun
during the course of the year), Ophiuchus is the only one not counted as an astrological sign."
It is passed over.

Going way off on a limb, Ophiuchus may map to Tchitcherine in that they both handle Snakes
and see the lightning of God...

" but they [Ophiuchus and Tchitcherine?] lie so close to Earth that from many places they
can't be seen at all, and from different places inside the zone where they can be seen, they
fall into completely different patterns..."

Also ties in with the later discussion of the Serpent and Kekule's dream.

302.32-33 the gentlemanly reflex that made him edit, switch names, insert fantasies into
the yarns
The habit of switching names and inserting fantasies might explain why the project SEZ
WHO (270-271, Speed and Perdoo trying to locate Slothrop's girls) fails completely.

Page 303
303.20 Marie-Celeste
The Mary Celeste (incorrectly referred to as Marie Celeste) was a brigantine merchant ship
discovered in December 1872 in the Atlantic Ocean unmanned and apparently abandoned,
despite the fact that the weather was fine and her crew had been experienced and able seamen;

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.

This rope actually existed in historical fact. The Mittelwerke tunnels had a large crane with
rope to lift the rocket to an upright position for testing.

The soldier was a practical joker, but just up to a few weeks earlier Dora-Mittelwerk cranes
were used for real slow-hanging executions of prisoners.

Page 308
308.8-10 "There he is," in a great roar..."go git him boys!"
Major Marvy at this point and forward resembles the Queen of Hearts in the Alice stories as
he chases after Slothrop boisterously yelling, in essence, "Off with his head!"

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)."

310.17-24 Ev'ry little Nazi's shootin' pool...Mittel-werk Ex-press!

Reminiscent of the popular 1969 Crosby, Stills and Nash tune, "Marrakesh Express." [1]

Page 311
311.32 "Icy Noctiluca"
The original name for white Phosphorus, given by its discoverer, Hennig Brand in 1669.
('New Experiments and Observations made upon the Icy Noctiluca' — title of booklet by
Robert Boyle, 1681)."

Page 312
312.17 white Stetson

Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove

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 or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and
Love the Bomb (1964).

Page 314
314.28-315.26 In the days when ... design to some compromise value.
This passage is written in the style of a zen koan, an anecdote about teachers and students of
zen Buddhism meant to be contemplated by followers and used to test the progress of
students.

314.32 Atu
In addition to being a unit of measurement for atmospheric pressure, "Atu" is a term for the
22 major arcana cards in the Tarot.

Page 315
315.08 Steve Edelman
"Edelman" may be from the German for "nobleman," but the name sounds real, as though it
might be a reference to a person whom Pynchon actually knew. Coincidentally, there is a
Minneapolis talk-show host (who makes a brief cameo appearance in the film Fargo) and TV
producer named Steve Edelman as well as a studio musician based in Los Angeles (bass, not
harmonica, unfortunately).

Page 320
320.08 Der Bingle
Nickname for Bing Crosby, originally German, but later used by English-speaking fans as
well

320.09 bu-bu-bu-boo
An empty song phrase often used by mimics of Bing Crosby’s crooning style.

320.14 the Cards or Browns

Two baseball teams from St. Louis, the Cardinals and the Browns. The Browns moved to
Baltimore in 1954 and became the Orioles.

Page 321

321.06-07 Siege Perilous

Not Castle Perilous, as Weisenburger has it, but the Perilous Seat at King Arthur’s Round
Table (which is why the jokers are sneaking Whoopee Cushions on it. The Whoopee Cushion
itself emits an embarrassing farting sound when sat on). Only the pure could sit there without
being destroyed (hence the "peril"), and in most versions Galahad alone qualified for the
place.

Page 322
322.10 Samuel Maherero's
Maharero seems to be a more common spelling. See English and German entries in Wikipedia
Page 324
324.18-19 damn him to the knob of that nervous imperial staff
Apart from being an example of sexual/political double entendre, the exact phrase "Christ's
imperial staff" occurs in a poem by George MacDonald (himself an unorthodox Calvinist),
dedicated to General Gordon of Khartoum fame.

Page 329
329.26-27 Crazy Sue Dunham
This character is apparently real. Pynchon found out about her from The Berkshire Hills. The
description of her in "The Secret Integration" is a close paraphrase of several paragraphs in
the book. [1]

329.28 Snodd’s Mountain

Although Pynchon undoubtedly wants the reference to be to the Snodd family, the mountain
would not be named for the young Grover of "The Secret Integration," as Weisenburger
suggests, since Grover himself would not be born until the 1950s.

329.32 headed for Rhode Island

In addition to fleeing to the relative tolerance found in that colony, Amy Sprue’s journey has
another significance. The Berkshire Hills mentions several times that much of the region was
settled by people from Rhode Island. Her journey then is another example of (in this case,
literally) arrested hysteron proteron, the device of the reversal of a process mentioned several
times by Weisenburger.

Page 330
330.07 depicted as hags
The description of witches fits not just the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. In
another passage in The Berkshire Hills, Crazy Sue Dunham, whom some believed to be a
witch, is referred to as "the Berkshire wandering hag." [2]

330.14 women von Bayros drew

see note p. 71

330.27 Clausthal-Zelterfeld
Misspelling for Clausthal-Zellerfeld.

330.29 it’s the Specter

Another reference gleaned from The Berkshire Hills , where Pynchon very likely first discovered the
Brockengespenst:
 "Of the stories and legends about Old Greylock, the one about the 'Specter' is most popular.
[...] The phenomenon of a gigantic shadow of an object reflected in a cloud is so well known
as to have a German name, Brockengespenst (Specter of the Brocken) from Brocken, the
highest peak of the Hartz [sic] Mountains. As Greylockgespenst would be a bit unwieldy for
Berkshire, here it is simply called the Specter." [3]

Mount Greylock is the highest point in Massachusetts.

Page 332
332.06-07 surely an interlock somewhere with Lyle Bland
Though generally used to mean "an interconnection," the term "interlock" is also used in
cinema, especially in reference to a device that keeps sound and visual tracks in synch.

332.17 Schnorp
Another comic-book sound, suggesting a noisy sucking in, as of spaghetti through the mouth
or mucous through the nose.

332.23 nobody bothers a balloon

Dorothy attempts, but fails, to escape from Oz in a balloon. A balloon is also used by W.C.
Fields and the dummy Charlie McCarthy in You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (1939).

Page 337
337:17 stvyehs and znyis
These are suffixes but both of the examples which Weisenburger quotes from Terrill Shepard
Soules miss the point. There is no such word as sdravstuyeh; the Russian word for 'hello' is
zdravstvuy or zdravstvuyte, second person imperative forms of the verb zdravstvovat', literally
'to be healthy". There is no such word as nebreznieh either; nebrezhnyi (masculine, singular)
means 'careless, neglectful'. The suffix -stviye produces nouns, as in udovol'stviye, 'pleasure'.
The suffix -nyi (where y is for the central close vowel "yery", and i is for the half-vowel y) is
an adjective ending (masculine, singular, nominative); when it is attached to a noun stem with
z, it becomes -znyi, as in groznyi, 'terrible".

Page 338
338:21 Seven Rivers Country
In Russian, Semirechye; the relatively fertile easternmost region of Kazakhstan, near the
present-day Chinese border. The western and norther parts of Kazakhstan (then an
Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic within the Russian Federation) was the target of
intensive Russification at that time but Slavic resettlement did not affect the Semirechye.

the local Likbez center

Likbez was a campaign of eradication of illiteracy in Soviet Russia in the 1920s and 1930s. It
was started on December 26, 1919, when Lenin signed the decree "On eradication of illiteracy
among the population of RSFSR." According to this decree, all people from 8 to 50 years old
were required to become literate in their native language.
Page 339
339.11 dessiatina
A unit of land measurement used in tsarist Russia, equal to 2400 square sazhens,
approximately equal to 2.702 English acres or 10,925 square meters.

339.17-18 naked Leningrad encounters with the certainty of his death

The 872-day Siege of Leningrad by German forces in World War II was one of the longest
battles in the history of warfare and one of the costliest in human lives.

Page 341
341.18-19 O, wie spurlos zerträte ein Engel (ihnen) den Trostmarkt
'Oh, how an angel would trample--and leave no trace--their marketplace of solace'. As
Weisenberger points out, Pynchon misses out the bracketed word from the Rilke quote, but he
gets the word wrong; 'inhem' is not a German preposition.

Page 345
345.19 passementerie
The art of making elaborate trimmings or edgings (in French, passements) of applied braid,
gold or silver cord, embroidery, colored silk, or beads for clothing or furnishings.

Page 346
346.3 Parabellum rounds A cartridge made by German arms maker Deutsche Waffen und
Munitionsfabriken; derived from the Latin saying si vis pacem, para bellum, meaning 'If you
wish for peace, prepare for war'.

Page 347
347.2-5 an enormous closed sleigh, big as a ferryboat, bedizened all over with Victorian
gingerbread - inside are decks and levels for each class of passenger, velvet saloons, well-
stocked galleys...

Echoes here of the opening passage of the book, with its 'carriage, which is built on several
levels', the 'velveteen darkness', and the class theme - 'ruinous secret cities of the poor'. Then
there are the girders 'old as an iron queen', perhaps a reference to Queen Victoria and/or
Victoria Station, echoed here by the Victorian gingerbread. That passage has a lot of metal(s)
in it, and it turns out to be a dream from which wakes Captain Prentice, feeling metallic. Here,
we have 'Captain' Tchitcherine, a man who is 'more metal than anything else'.

Certainly the multi-leveled carriages are deliberate mirrorings. Is there a connection between
Prentice and Tchitcherine?

Page 351
351.06 Jablochkov candles
Paul Jablochkov (or Pavel Yablochkov, 1847-1894) was a Russian engineer. His "candles"
were the first practical electric carbon-arc lamps, hence the connection here with
Tchitcherine’s vision of the carbonized faces of the war dead.

Page 354
354:33-36 Dutch Shell... the Nobels
Both Royal Dutch Shell and the Nobel brothers had interests in the Baku oil industry until it
was taken over by the bolshevik régime. As the foreign engineers "went all home", the
nationalized industry was rebuilt using American know-how in the 1920s.

Page 355
355:38-39 Samarkand and Pishpek, Verney and Tashkent
Samarkand and Tashkent are cities in Uzbekistan; Pishpek (now Bishkek) in Kyrgyzstan, and
Vernyi (correct transcription of the original Russian name; now Almaty) in Kazakhstan. [link
title]

Page 360
360.21-22 cadence being counted by a Negro voice—yo lep, yo lep, yo lep O right O lep
Syncopated cadence for the march of the American workers: "your left . . . " The work detail
is presumably black, since the Armed Services were not integrated until after the war.

Page 361

361.5 insigne

Weisenburger explains "insigne" as being the latin spelling for a sign or mark. In fact, insigne
is the singular form of the more familiar 'insignia', which is the plural form. That said, the
photos to the right are of the A4 V3 (version 3) before launch from Test Stand VII on August
16 1942. The photo shows the V3 insigne, a (less than) pretty witch astride a rocket, carrying
her obsolete broom. The color illustration is an artist's impression of the insigne. The
inscription means Bon Voyage. Both images are from V Weapons of the 3rd Reich by Dieter
Holsken (Monogram 1994)

Page 362
362.2-6 Well, I think we're here, but only in a statistical way
Enzian's Zone-Hereros have a quantum mechanical existence similar to the thought
experiment of Schrödinger's cat. Again we find here the same mathematical-logical
condundrums and absurdities as found throughout the works of Lewis Caroll -- not to mention
a cat who's sometimes there and sometimes not and sometimes just a grin.

Compare this brand of contingent being with that of being existant only within Stalin's
pathological dream or like Alice in the dream of the Red King. Statistical contingency seems
digital compared to the analog counterpart of dream contingency.

Page 365
365.13 Grosser Stern
This reference is not to a street but to a crossing in the Tiergarten.

Page 366
366.12 Tonto
Native American character on The Lone Ranger radio and Tube series.

366.14 Raketemensch!

The comic book hero Rocketman originated (along with Rocketgirl) in Scoop Comics #1,
published by Harry "A" Chesler, in 1941. In 1943, the heroes were featured in Harvey
Comics’ Hello, Pal Comics, beginning with issue #1. The cover of the 1952 Ajax Rocketman
Comics (mentioned by Weisenburger) is reproduced in the 1989 edition of the Comic Buyers
Price Guide: the hero depicted on the cover wears a rig that looks more like a diving helmet
than a nosecone. See note below at p. 382.

366.24-25 a four-color dispensation

In other words, a comic-book scene, printed in color. The four-color printing process
(including magenta, cyan, yellow, and black), which allows a full range of colors to be
represented, was perfected in the early 1930s. See note for p. 69

Page 370
370.01 Seaman Bodine
"Pig" Bodine, Pynchon’s most enduring character, originating in the short story "Lowlands"
and continuing in V. An ancestor of Bodine’s appears in Mason & Dixon, as well as in
Against the Day.

370.37 The Green Hershey Bar

That is, the hashish.

Page 372
Berliner Luft
German: "air of Berlin." It is an often-used phrase, in the sense of the special Berlin
atmosphere.

Page 375
375.21 something in that rocket needed potassium permanganate
The turbopump used calcium permanganate. Whatever caused the shortage of the purple stuff,
it wasn't the rocket.

Page 376
376.31-33 the knight who leaps perpetually -- across the chessboard of the zone
In Through the Looking Glass, Alice attempts to get to the other end of the chessboard to
become a queen herself. Along the way she is helped, without much success by the White
Knight.
The conversation and reactions here between Saure and Slothrop are almost a pastiche of the
Alice stories. By 1973, when GR appeared, "acid" and Alice were of course linked forever in
the popular consciousness -- largely thanks to Jefferson Airplane.

376.36 Zorro? The Green Hornet?

Zorro and the Green Hornet are two masked superheroes Slothrop would know from comics
and movies. Douglas Fairbanks starred in The Mark of Zorro in 1920, not 1932, as in
Weisenburger's first Companion edition, corrected in the second ed.. Tyrone (!) Power starred
in a sound remake in 1940. Britt Reid, the secret identity of The Green Hornet, was the son of
Dan Reid, the nephew of the Lone Ranger.

Page 377
377.1-2 The wrong word was Schwarzgerat.
Yes, the mythical White Woman is scared away by mention of the "black tool." Clever
innuendo/double entendre here. Also possiblly underscoring that the White Woman relates to
Virgo(?).

377.31-35 photo...long, stiff sausage of very large diameter being stuffed into his
mouth...though the hand or agency...is not visible
Reminiscent of the photos of Margaret, Duchess of Argyll fellating a naked man where only
the man's face and torso, not his head, is shown.

Page 378
Jubilee Jim
Slothrop’s song evokes the pre-industrial peddler Jim Fisk mentioned in The Berkshire Hills.

Page 379
A stork flies over, going home...
Could this be an allusion to Goethe's Faust, line 746: "Der Kranich nach der Heimat strebt."
(The crane endeavors to reach the homeland.)?

Page 380
Hauptstufe!
Compare the radio Superman’s words as he is about to fly: "Up, up, and away!"

Page 382
382.3 Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree
A 1942 hit song for the Andrews Sisters.

382.15 Mickey Rooney

Rooney was in Germany, attached to an Army entertainment unit, at the time of the Potsdam
Conference but was unable to go to Potsdam and meet Truman himself. However, there is a
more likely, if more obscure, reason for the movie star’s presence here: Rocketman’s second
magazine, Hello, Pal Comics, only lasted for three issues. The Comic Buyer’s Guide notes,
though, that the comic was unusual because it featured a photograph of a movie star on the
cover of each issue. The cover of issue #1 was devoted to Mickey Rooney! Also see my
article: "Rooney and the Rocketman" Pynchon Notes n 24-25 (1989): 113-115. See note at
366.

382.15-16 Judge Hardy's freckled madcap son

Rooney's most famous role was Andy Hardy in a series of 16 films.

382.21-22 more tits than they got at Minsky's

The four Minsky brothers, Abe, Billy, Herbert and Morton, staged burlesque shows at a
number of theaters in New York City. Although the shows were declared obscene and
outlawed, they were rather tame by modern standards.
Page 383
Entre Rios
Entre Ríos is a province of Argentina, located in the Mesopotamia region, in the northeast of
the country. It borders the provinces of Buenos Aires (south), Corrientes (north) and Santa Fe
(west), and Uruguay in the east.

Page 385
a brick labyrinth that had been a harmonica factory
Jorge Louis Borges, who has been mentioned in this section, has one book entitled
Labyrinths, 1962 in English.[1]
A harmonica player is a musician. Musicians are favorite artists in Pynchon's vision and
harmonicas turn up prominently again in Against the Day (and briefly in Vineland).

Weisenburger concludes this must be the Hohner factory in Trossingen. While

Weisenburger's link is the most likely one, Trossingen lies in Baden-Württemberg and not in
Bavaria where Squalidozzi comes across the harmonica factory. The other major harmonica
(and accordion) manufacturing was in Klingenthal (Saxony), much closer to the Bavarian
border than Trossingen. Slothrop's mouth harp is a Hohner, while the company is also a major
producer of accordions (accordions/concertinas/bandoneons etc. share the sound-producing
principle with harmonicas), the key instrument in Argentinian music. In fact, when tango
became the rage all over Europe, accordions were marketed as Tangoharmonika
(Mundharmonika is German for mouth harp).
For a detailed account of the harmonica in Pynchon's work, see Hänggi's article "'Harmonica,
kazoo--a friend.' Pynchon's lessons in organology" in America and the Musical Unconscious
(eds. Julius Greve & Sascha Pöhlmann).

the smell of freshly brewed mate

Yerba mate is the national drink of Argentina. It is also popular in Paraguay, Uruguay and
southern Brazil. It reportedly creates a mental state of wakefulness, focus and alertness
reminiscent of most stimulants, but lacks the negative effects typically created by other such
compounds, such as anxiety, diarrhea, "jitteriness", and heart palpitations. According to the
classical Argentine way, the act of drinking yerba mate is a highly stylized, ritualistic process:

The gourd is filled two-thirds of the way with moistened mate herb. Hot water is then poured
into the gourd. The person sucks the mate water out of the gourd with the bombilla, with the
strainer holding out the actual mate leaves. When the water is gone, the gourd is refilled by
the server with hot water and passed to the next person in the group. When that person
finishes, the gourd is handed back to the server for another refill. [2]

From Wikipedia article

Page 386
No destinations. No fixed itinerary.
Like Bennie Profane's yo-yoing that starts V.
Gaucho Marx
The pun is obvious enough, but it just might derive from John Frankenheimer’s The
Manchurian Candidate (1961). The main character, the humorless Raymond Shaw (Lawrence
Harvey), calls attention to the pun as the first joke he’s deliberately made.

Martin Fierro
Martín Fierro is an epic poem by the Argentine writer José Hernández. The poem was
originally published in two parts, El Gaucho Martín Fierro (1872) and La Vuelta de Martín
Fierro (1879). The poem is, in part, a protest against the Europeanizing and modernizing
tendencies of Argentine president Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. Wikipedia

Page 390
390:1.2 It took the Dreyfus affair to get the Zionists out and doing
Theodor Herzl, a secular and highly assimilated Austro-Hungarian Jew covered the Dreyfus
trial for a Viennese newspaper, and was witness to the anti-Semitic demonstrations in Paris
following the judgment. It was this experience which convinced him of the futility of
assimilation and combating anti-Semitism is the diaspora, and resulted in the concept of a
separate Jewish state. The analogy is followed up with "settlement" in "the Heath".

Page 390
390:32-33 When he was a little boy, back in Leningrad
A strange anachronism. Tchitcherine was born in 1905 (p. 351), and Petrograd (St.
Petersburg) was renamed Leningrad in 1924, when he was 19.

Page 391
SPOG, CIOS BAFO, TI
SPOG = Special Projectiles Operations Group; CIOS = Combined Intelligence Objectives
Subcommittee (of which SPOG was a subsidiary); BAFO = British Air Force of Occupation,
formed in 1945 from the 2nd TAF (Territorial Air Force); TI = Technical Intelligence wing of
English army

Page 393

tenement courtyards . . . Highlights are painted on to the sets

The tenement courtyards can be seen in many German films of the 1920s, especially the
"street" films such as Pabst’s The Joyless Street as well as in Fritz Lang’s M (1931).
Highlights painted on the sets are a feature of some early German Expressionist films, notably
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Wikipedia entry

vamp a la Brigitte Helm

Brigitte Helm in Metropolis

Brigitte Helm (1908-1996) was a German actress. Her first and most famous role was a double one:
the saintly Maria and the evil robot who tries to seduce the workers to their own destruction in
Lang’s ''Metropolis'' (1927). After Metropolis In 1935, angered by Nazi control of the German film
industry, she moved to Switzerland where she later had 4 children with her second husband Dr. Hugo
Kunheim, an industrialist. After her retirement from films in 1936 (she made over 30, including
talkies), she refused to grant any interviews concerning her film career.

Page 394

Original Poster for The Blue Angel

394.3 the anti-Dietrich

Greta’s reference is somewhat anachronistic. If she achieved stardom in the 1920s, Greta
would not have been compared to Dietrich until late in her career. Although featured in
several German silent films, Dietrich only became famous when she starred in the first
German talking film, The Blue Angel, in 1930. The director, Josef von Sternberg, brought her
to Hollywood where he made her one of the great stars, playing a "destroyer of men" in such
American films as Morocco (1930), Blonde Venus (1932), and The Devil Is a Woman (1935).
Note that Pynchon also referred anachronistically to Dietrich’s eyebrows in the chapter
"Mondaugen’s Story" in V. Greta's appearance as a faded but deadly silent film star is also
(anachronistically) similar to Gloria Swanson's role as Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder's
Sunset Boulevard (1950).

Herrenchiemsee: Exterior & Interior

394.22 Herrenchiemsee
The last and largest of the castles built by the mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, modeled after
Versailles. Also see note at p.750.

394.23 Ludwig II

Helmut Berger

Something was "in the air" about Ludwig in the early 1970s. The mad king was the subject of a film
by Italian director Luchino Visconti in 1973. The date is too close to the publication of Gravity’s
Rainbow to be a likely direct influence, but could there have been an indirect connection? The film’s
star, Helmut Berger, also had the lead in Visconti’s The Damned (1969), playing the transvestite scion
of a German industrialist family. He imitates Marlene Dietrich and is eventually involved in a child’s
murder. All of this is suggestive in relation to Greta and Blicero.

Poster for Fridericus Rex

394.24 The rage then was all for Frederick

A reference to the popular series of German films about Frederick the Great that began with
Fridericus Rex (1922) and lasted into the Hitler era, all starring Otto Gebuhr. Kracauer notes
how these films tended to routinize rebellion by placing it as part of a process leading to
submission (From Caligari to Hitler 118).

394.31 even on orthochromatic stock

Orthochromatic film stock was standard in the movie industry through most of the silent era.
It produced the warm tones alluded to here, but was sensitive only to certain portions of the
light spectrum and would not register reds or yellows (one reason for the heavy makeup worn
in some silent films). It was replaced in the late 1920s by Panchromatic stock, which is
sensitive to all colors in the spectrum.

394.33 Das Wütend Reich

Literally, 'The Raging Empire', although gramatically it should be Das Wütende Reich; evokes
Wuotan and his Wütende Heer, see notes 72.27 and 75.13

394.34 Endless negotiating, natty little men with Nazi lapel pins
One nearly legendary story, retold by Kracauer and others, is how Fritz Lang was called to a
bureaucrat’s office after making his film M, the story of a child murderer played by Peter
Lorre. The official, sporting a pin like the ones mentioned here, wanted to know what the film
was about, assuming that the working title, Murderer among Us, referred to Hitler. He was
reassured to find out the real subject, and the film’s name was changed. Von Göll may have
met the same bureaucrat.

394.33 Königreich
Igor Zabel notes that the word simply means "Kingdom."

Louise Brooks as Lulu

394.35 delighted Goebbels

But probably only in private. The perverse personal tastes of the Nazi leadership are
legendary (in more than one sense), but German films under Hitler’s regime and Goebbels’
supervision always endorsed bourgeois morality and would never have displayed anything
close to the decadence of von Göll’s Good Society. (Hitler is supposed to have claimed that
Gone with the Wind was his favorite movie!) The film does echo scenes of decadent parties in
earlier German films, such as Dr. Mabuse, Lubitsch’s Madame DuBarry and The Merry
Widow, and Pabst’s Diary of a Lost Girl (starring Louise Brooks, right) and The Love of
Jeanne Ney.

Page 398
Hansel and Gretel
dog with the saucer eyes . . . beard of the goat on the bridge . . . the troll below . . . plastic
witch . . . Hansel . . . Gretel

Features at Zwolfkinder, all evoking children’s fairy tales: "The Tinder Box," the Billy Goats
Gruff, Hansel and Gretel.

398:29 Zwölfkinder
"Twelve Children" - the name evokes Jacob's twelve sons (and the daughter who is not one of
the official twelve). This pattern is self-consciously repeated in the Grimms' tale "The Twelve
Brothers", where the boys are to die if their mother gives birth to a girl.

The camp, which is also a quasi-town, may be modelled after Theresienstadt, the Jewish
town/Lager set up by the Nazis in what is now the Czech Republic. This is suggested by
themes like transit, phoney children's paradise, as well as the large orchestra, or the number
60,000 (the number of those who "passed through" Zwölfkinder as well the population of
Theresienstadt at its peak). It also recalls another totalitarian institution, that of the communist
"children's towns" (large, town-like, somewhat militarized holiday camps for Young
Pioneers), whose prototype was Artek in the Soviet Union. (Deutsches Jungvolk also had its
summer camps.)

Further, consider Argentina's Republic of Children, a city proportioned for children, which
was created under Juan Peron's regime and opened in 1951.

Page 402
The Spree
A river, not a canal, that runs through Berlin.

who would eat an apple in the street

A phrase of German/Yiddish origin, suggesting a poor person of no breeding.

Page 403
Zen Target
Zen bow and roll of pressed straw

Archery is a sport often associated with Zen discipline in Japan, where it is known as kyūdō.
Many archers practice kyūdō as a sport, with marksmanship being paramount. However, the
goal most devotees of kyūdō seek is seisha seichu, "correct shooting is correct hitting". The
archer seeks not to hit a target but (according to some sources) to become one with the arrow
as it flies, as Fahringer advocates becoming "one with the Rocket." One of the earliest
introductions of kyūdō in the west was by a German, Eugen Herrigel, who studied Zen and
archery in Japan in the 1930s. His Zen in the Art of Archery (1953) remains a classic in its
field. Wikipedia entry

bodhisattva
In Mahayana Buddhism, a bodhisattva is a "Buddhist saint," one who has nearly attained
nirvana but delays it in order to aid others. Wikipedia entry

Page 404
In the name of the cathode, the anode, and the holy grid?
Weisenberger (2006) incorrectly identifies these as components of an electrolytic cell
connected to a power grid. Instead they refer to the 3 parts of the triode vacuum tube
mentioned a few lines earlier. Electrons flowing from the cathode to the anode have to pass
through a charged screen or grid. A slight amount of charge on the grid can have a big effect
on the current flowing between the cathode and the anode. Thus the triode is a simple
amplification device, since a small signal charging the grid controls a large flow of current. It
is, btw, an analogue and not a digital device.

Page 405
good company at Herr Halliger’s Inn
Note the echo of the title of von Goll’s perverse film.

Page 411
411.16 Atlantes
An Atlas or Atlant (named after the Greek mythological figure which it it represents) is a
column, pillar, or pilaster in the shape of a man, who bears the weight on his head or
shoulders. It was a popular element in continental Beaux-Arts architecture (that is, in Kekulé's
time.)

Page 412
"I lost my heart in Heidelberg"
Although Weisenburger asserts that the song derives from Tony Bennet’s recording "I Left
My Heart in San Francisco," there are more likely origins. The title suggests the lyrics to "I
Left My Heart at the Stage Door Canteen" (see note at V134.27) or "Avalon" ("I found my
love in Avalon") by Al Jolson and Vincent Rose. In addition, the lyric suggests Sigmund
Romberg’s venerable operetta The Student Prince, about the heir to a throne who falls in love
with a barmaid in the university town. The show also features the song "Gaudeamus Igitur"
(V432.13).

Igor Zabel offers a more a concrete reference: "I lost my heart in Heidelberg": a
popular German song from the twenties: "Ich hab' mein Herz in Heidelberg verloren".
The song was written for a musical of the same name by German composer Fred
Raymond. Read the lyrics...

Page 413
"once, only once"
What Rilke poem is this?

 Rilke sometimes (often?) addresses the reader with "you" ("Weren’t you always
distracted by expectation, as if every event announced a beloved? - Duino Elegies),
which Pynchon does often in these surrounding pages.

Page 421
Juch-heiereasas-sa! O-tempo-tempora!
From the song "Ein lustger Musikante marschierte am Nil" by Emmanuel Geibel (1815-
1884). German words and midi music

Page 422
love something like the persistence of vision
"The notion of 'persistence of vision' seems to have been appropriated from psychology".
From Herbert's essay below.
The term "persistence of vision" is still in popular use, and fits Pynchon’s (and Pokler’s)
needs well in this context.

The phrase "persistence of vision:" has long been misapplied to explanations of how the
spectator perceives motion from the sequential flashing of still images on film. The term —
which usually refers to the positive afterimage retained by the retina of the eye — has been
rejected by psychologists and students of perception as imprecise and misleading. The illusion
of motion is actually a much more complicated process, involving several elements of
cognition. A very good synopsis of the problems with the term by Stephen Herbert is
available here.

Page 425
425.24ff you go and sit exactly on the target...one is safest at the center of the target area
Major-General Dr. Walter Dornberger, head of Peenemünde rocket development and von
Braun's superior, actually made this suggestion when the airburst problem resisted solution:
"the bull's eye is the safest spot on the map." Instead of sending a sacrificial underling such as
Pokler to do the sitting, Dornberger and von Braun, to their credit, sat their own personal
asses down on the target. They did this every day for about a week. On the very last rocket
observed from the target, von Braun

"was standing in an open field [and]... beheld the rocket coming out of the blue sky."
To his horror, he realized it was pointed straight at them [Dornberger, v.B] -- it would
be a direct hit. "I threw myself down to the ground, but a moment later a terrific
explosion hurled me high into the air. I landed in a ditch and noted with some
amazement that I...had not suffered as much as a scratch." quoted in Neufeld, Von
Braun, p.181.

425.32-33 Ground Zero

Another, apparently ironic, anachronism (or anatopism). The term Ground Zero, originally the
hypocenter of an atomic bomb explosion, was coined by participants of the Manhattan
Project, after the test stand at Trinity Site. It had, of course, no equivalent in pre-1945 German
military slang. But the starting point in time for the Pökler detour is preceded by the first
nuclear explosion, as the Trinity device was tested on July 16, 1945, the opening day of the
Potsdam Conference.

Page 429
429.5 searchlights... in Wismar and in Lübeck
That would locate Zwölfkinder in present-day Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, near the Bay of
Lübeck, and also between the bright and dark aspects of the continental tradition. Lübeck,
apart from being vitctimized in the raid which is prominent in "Beyond the Zero", was
Thomas Mann's city, while Wismar is the port where Nosferatu embarks for England.

Page 432
"Gaudeumus igitur"
Igor Zabel elaborates further on Weisenburger's note:

"The song is a symbol of the university (as such) and its anthem (e.g., it is sometimes
performed at ceremonial occasions). The mentioning here refers to the "feeling of
graduation". Gaudeamus igitur is traditionally sung by the students of the final class of
Gymnasium (i.e., university students to-be) as they celebrate their graduation."

Obersturmbannfuehrer
A rank in the SS, which corresponds to the Lieutenant Colonel.

Page 433
433.32 "Der Feind hoert zu"
Not 'The listening enemy' but 'The enemy is listening', a warning not to speak carelessly.
Page 435
435.8 George Raft suits
An American film actor identified with portrayals of gangsters in crime melodramas of the
1930s and 1940s. He was also noted for his elegant fashion sense.

Elisha Cook as Wilmer

435.10 gunsels

Both of the meanings supplied by Weisenburger (a male homosexual and/or a gunslinger) also
apply to a likely source for the Pynchon’s use of the word: the character Wilmer in Dashiell
Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon and John Huston’s 1940 film adaptation, with Elisha Cook,
Jr. in the role.

435.16 veronica
In bullfighting, a matador’s move with his cape similar to the one that Slothrop employs here.

435.20 Fickt nicht mit dem Raketemensch

German: 'Don't fuck with the Rocketman'; although this is more of a direct translation of an
English phrase than something a German would say.

435.21 hiyo Silver

'Hi-yo, Silver, away!'--the tag line from the radio and Tube show The Lone Ranger delivered
at the end of each episode as he rode off into the sunset.

435.29 Saturday Evening Post

American news magazine especially know for its covers portraying folksy, down-to-earth,
mainstream Americans and their lifestyle.

Page 439
439.26 a nasal hardon here
Trudi’s invasion of Slothrop’s nose is a reversal of male pornographic fantasies of crawling
into women’s vaginas, etc. The connections between the nose and penis have a long cultural
history, including the novel Tristram Shandy and early works by Freud.

Cf. also, The chapter "In Which Esther Gets a Nose Job" in V..

Also shades of the 1971 porn film, The Erotic Adventures of Pinocchio.

Page 442
Mutt & Jeff

442.09 They are a Mutt and Jeff routine.

Mutt and Jeff were the tall and short friends featured in the earliest daily comic strip, begun in
1907 by Bud Fisher.

442.39-40 Irving Berlin medley

Irving Berlin

Weisenburger has Berlin dying in 1975 [Corrected in 2nd edition], but the composer did not die until
September 1989 at the age of 101! The medley includes the two songs cited on page V443: "God
Bless America" and "This Is the Army, Mr. Jones." The latter song gave its name to a 1943 film
starring future California Senator George Murphy and future California Governor and U.S. President
Ronald Reagan. Berlin composed "God Bless America" for a musical in 1917 but dropped it, then
revised it for Kate Smith in 1938, who made the song the "unofficial American anthem." It is sung by
Smith in This is the Army; in which Berlin himself also sings, "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the
Morning." The film also features the song "I Left My Heart at the Stage Door Canteen." See note at p.
134.27.

Page 445

Carole Lombard

445.22 I’m a Lombard

Although Greta evokes the geographical region, she may also be referring to film star Carole
Lombard, the comic actress whose airplane crashed while she was on a war bonds tour during
the war. Lombard had glamour as a star, although she is best known for roles in "screwball"
comedies like Nothing Sacred (1937) and My Man Godfrey (1936) that undercut that image.

445.23 Close enough, sweetheart

Slothrop’s hard-boiled reply to Greta echoes the cynicism of film characters like those played
by Humphrey Bogart.

Page 446
446.18 Wannsee
A popular beach, but also the location of the infamous conference on January 20th, 1942,
where the strategy of the 'final solution' of the Jewish question was determined.

446 Hauptstufe

Hauptstufe is the second stage, the main (haupt)stage (stuffe)of a multistage rocket. In the
vanBraun-designed Saturn V rocket, the second stage S-II consists of liquid hydrogen and
liquid oxygen. This stage accelerated the rocket through the upper atmosphere. So,
Rocketman's cry of "Hauptstufe!" might be the Rocketman ("Racketenmenschsprache"?)
equivalent of Superman's "Up, Up, and Away!"

Being a native speaker of German, I can add that in general, although Pynchon`s German is
ususally remarkably keen, at instances he comes up with quite odd translations - so odd, in
fact, that I would suppose him to have done it on purpose, to test out and play with his
readers' good faith in telling them the truth. Thats what he seems to be doing most of the time
anyway.

In A-4 parlance, "Hauptstufe" refers to the fifth and final step in the firing progress for the
single-stage rocket. It is preceded by "Vorstufe", in which the steam turbopumps run, LOX
and alcohol are ignited but throttled, and the rocket sits on the pad for a few seconds. The
burn is observed, visually and instrumentally, to detect anomalies. Up to that point the
sequence can be aborted, the motor shut off, the rocket should survive and be largely
serviceable. Hauptstufe is final. Throttles are fully opened, the rocket takes off and hopefully
clears the launchpad. If it does not and falls down, a fireball is inevitable and warhead
explosion is also possible.

Page 447
dog show...stud service
In Betty Freidan's best-selling feminist tract of the 1960s, The Feminine Mystique she
mentions some bored, deeply unfufilled suburban wives with no outlet for their full
intelligence and creativity, who did IT with their dogs.

Human-animal sexual encounters also happen in Against the Day.

Notice in this dream of Slothrop's, the key colors are violet and green. Colors heavily
associated with certain 'emancipated' suffragettes in Against the Day.

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

448.23-24 like American cowboy actor Henry Fonda

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

448.26 Kriegsmarine
German: Navy

448.29 Geschwader
German: squadron

Page 449

Buffalo Bayou

449.15 Buf-falo Bayou

Buffalo Bayou is in Houston, Texas. Part of it was dredged and cleared over the years to
create the Houston Ship Channel.

Page 451
451.25 A good ship...

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

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

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

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

Page 455
455.35 "Sporri" and "Hawasch"
Doctor Mabuse’s two assistants in Fritz Lang’s 1922 film, Dr. Mabuse der Spieler.

Page 457
457.30 Bad Karma
Bad is German for spa or sanitarium and is often used in the names of towns with hot springs;
obviously, this one is fictional and a pun

Page 465
465.27-28 so enfeebled by Gesellschaft and our obligation to its celebrated 'Contract',
which never did exist
An allusion to Rousseau's theory of 'contrat social'.

Page 466
Shirley Temple

466.06 young Shirley Temple

Compare the following excerpt from a review of Temple's film Wee Willie Winkie written by
the novelist Graham Greene, who was then reviewing films for the British magazine Night &
Day:

"Miss Shirley Temple's case, though, has peculiar interest: infancy is her disguise, her appeal
is more secret and more adult. Already two years ago she was a fancy little piece (real
childhood, I think, went out with 'The Littlest Rebel'). In 'Captain January' she wore trousers
with the mature suggestiveness of a Dietrich: her neat and well-developed rump twisted in
the tap-dance: her eyes had a sidelong searching coquetry. Now in 'Wee Willie Winkie',
wearing short kilts, she is completely totsy. Watch her swaggering stride across the Indian
barrack-square: hear the gasp of excited expectation from her antique audience when the
sergeant's palm is raised: watch the way she measures a man with agile studio eyes, with
dimpled depravity. Adult emotions of love and grief glissade across the mask of childhood, a
childhood skin-deep. It is clever, but it cannot last. Her admirers — middle-aged men and
clergymen — respond to her dubious coquetry, to the sight of her well-shaped and desirable
little body, packed with enormous vitality, only because the safety curtain of story and
dialogue drops between their intelligence and their desire."

Greene and the magazine were consequently sued by Twentieth-Century Fox, bankrupting
Night & Day and forcing Greene to hide out in Mexico where he drew the inspiration for his
novel The Power and the Glory. (Ironically, both Wee Willie Winkie and The Fugitive, an
adaptation of The Power and The Glory starring Henry Fonda, were directed by John Ford.)

Page 468

White Rabbit Statue, Llandudno

468.19 Llandudno

The Welsh resort town is supposed to be where Carroll first told young Alice Liddell the
stories that would become Alice in Wonderland (although most scholars doubt that Carroll
ever was in the town). A statue of the White Rabbit was dedicated by David Lloyd George in
1933.

Page 470
470.18 "[ . . . ] out the eye at tower's summit [ . . . ]"
See correspondent Stephen Remato's commentary. WARNING: contains spoilers!

Page 471
471.24 Moxie
Slothrop does not imagine but recalls billboards he had seen in the Berkshires, of a favorite
American soft drink.

471.30 drowned Becket

Not the Martyr of Canterbury but a town in Massachusetts nearly destroyed by a flood in
1927. This is another reference from The Berkshire Hills.

Page 473
473.05 why is Slothrop drawling this way?
A good question, but the drawl does imitate American actor John Wayne’s speech patterns.

Page 474
474.39 She got the idea somewhere that she was Jewish
Like Leni (the other end of the movie triangle with Pokler at its apex), Greta is fascinated by
the Otherness of the Jews. Leni come to assimilate that Otherness as victim, in Dora; Greta,
on the other hand, makes herself embody the antisemitic "blood libels" of child sacrifice. See
note at 159.38.

Page 480
480.23 the face of a Jonah
According to the Book of Jonah in the Bible, 4:1-17, Jonah attempted to flee from his duty to
God, causing a storm to nearly capsize the ship that he was on. Hence, his name has become a
slang term for someone who is a jinx, especially on a ship.

Page 482

Metropolis
482.25-28 with crackling-tower and obsidian helix, with drive belts and rollers, with strange airship
passages that thread underneath arches . . . city mist

Evokes the opening shots of the great city of the future in Lang’s Metropolis. Also see 674.10.

Page 489
489.19-20 Brazilian oilcases . . . Ft. Lamy
A reminder of the air route by which Pirate got his bananas at 5.35-36. The "flotsam"
described here suggests that the ships or planes carrying Pirate's organic, life-affirming cargo
have been destroyed.

489.31 the Anubian ladies vamped them off long enough to single up all lines...

Pynchon was in the Navy for a spell and "single up all lines" is a common nautical term.
Ships are docked with lines doubled — that is, with two sets of ropes or chains holding the
vessel to the dock. To "single up all lines" is to remove the redundant second lines in
preparation to make way.

"single up all lines" also appears in V., p.11; The Crying of Lot 49, p.31; Mason & Dixon,
pp.258 and 260; and Against the Day, p.3.

Page 494
494.12 I have this kind of trick ear, you’ll have to
Evokes (anachronistically) Jimmy Stewart as the half-deaf George Bailey in Frank Capra’s
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). Slothrop’s habitual "a-and" also seems to echo Stewart’s
characteristic stutter.

Page 508
508.26 Now Narrisch here's a guidance man

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

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

Page 516
516.3-17 John Dillinger...easier into death
On July 22, 1934, the police and FBI, lead by agent Melvin Purvis, closed in on the Biograph
Theater in Chicago where Dillinger had gone to see a movie, Manhattan Melodrama, starring
Clark Gable as gangster "Blackie" Gallagher and William Powell as politician Jim Wade.
Dillinger was shot three times as he attempted to flee the theater.
516.22 Der Müde Tod
A 1921 Fritz Lang film. There is an interesting sidelight to this film. In order to win her lover
back from Death, the heroine must try to save his life in three different times and places.
(Death wins each time, natch.) The second episode of the film is set in Renaissance Italy,
where a courier is attacked by a group of men dressed in black. Could this episode have
inspired "The Courier’s Tragedy" and the Tristero of The Crying of Lot 49?

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

Page 518
318.31-32 coming on like Smith, Klein, 'n' French
Smith Kline & French (now GlaxoSmithKline), is the second largest pharmaceutical company
in the world (after Pfizer), began in the late 19th century and through various mergers became
Smith Kline & French in the early 20th century, focusing on research. In 1952, SK & F
purchased the rights to Chlorpromazine, the first antipsychotic drug. Used as chlorpromazine
hydrochloride and sold under the tradenames Largactil® and Thorazine® (which Kabbalist
spokesman Steve Edelman keeps in a "family-size jar" (p.753)), it has sedative, hypotensive
and antiemetic properties as well as anticholinergic and antidopaminergic effects. In 1954,
chlorpromazine was approved in the US for psychiatric treatment. The effect of this drug in
emptying psychiatric hospitals has been compared to that of penicillin and infectious diseases.

Page 527
527.34-37 You’d better enjoy it while you can ... then ... then ...
Note von Goll’s shift from a symbolic, expressionist aesthetic of film to a realist one. His
position here echoes the shift in post-war film theory away from valuing the manipulation of
the medium through editing and other devices (as in the writings of Rudolf Arnheim and
Sergei Eisenstein) and toward a conception of the cinema as a record of reality (as espoused
by Andre Bazin and in Siegfried Kracauer’s own Theory of Film, and as practiced in postwar
Italian "neorealist" cinema). Pynchon undercuts such arguments, though, by exemplifying von
Goll’s musings with a banal travel documentary.

Page 534

Cuddles Sakall

534.20 S.Z. ("Cuddles") Sakall

The actor who played the headwaiter at Rick's café in Casablanca.

Cleopatra in Freaks

534.11 Freaks

In the film’s unnerving conclusion, the freaks do not merely beat up Cleopatra, as described
by Weisenburger, but chant "One of us!" as they transform her into a human chicken! The
final image is one that is still omitted from some prints even after the film was re-released
following decades of censorship.

Page 535
535.17 the element of Greed must be worked into the plot
Possibly a reference to Greed, the mutilated film masterpiece directed by Eric von Stroheim in
1924. An adaptation of Frank Norris’ McTeague, von Stroheim's film originally ran for 10
hours. At the insistence of MGM producer Irving Thalberg, von Stroheim cut it back to four
hours but that too was finally cut by the studio again. The remaining footage was destroyed.

535.26 It is a message, in code

Related to how all of Pynchon's novels can be interpreted as (big) coded messages from the
author.

This "reading into" or seeing hidden messages in complex or confusing narratives strikes me,
at least, as a major influence of drugs on this period of Pynchon's writing. The tripper tends
to interpret whatever he sees around him as deeply important, bursting with meaning...
coded or hidden messages... Bleakhaus 21:56, 12 June 2007 (PDT)

Page 536
536.16 a cork board... An introduction to Modern Herero, corporate histories
Probably the strongest clue in identifying Osbie Feel as some kind of representation of
Pynchon himself. The author must have written Gravity's Rainbow with the aid of such books,
notes and clutter.

Quite likely. Check out this thread from a mid-90s Pynchon List discussion on this topic...

Pynchon's editor for GR was Corlies "Cork" Smith. (This is not correct - he edited "V" and
"Lot49", and "acquired" GR for Viking according to his obituary [[1]]).

Page 537
537.16-17 big as pantechnicons
That is, big as furniture vans. See 19.30.

537.33-34 Route One where it passes through the heart of Providence

Per Google Maps, the current routing of U. S. 1 in downtown Providence, Rhode Island
follows Broad Street, Franklin Street and Broadway (northbound) and Empire Street
(southbound), Fountain (northbound) and Sabin Streets (southbound), Francis Street, Gaspee
Street, Smith Street, and North Main Street. There's a crossover in La Salle Square where, for
a few yards, the north- and southbound routes go in the same direction. (Not surprisingly,
Mapquest and Bing Maps have slightly different routings).

Page 540

Louis de Saint-Just

540.34 St.-Just Grossout

"Grossout" is 60s slang for "disgusting," "repulsive." Louis Antoine Leon de Saint-Just was
the French radical leader known as the "Conscience of the Revolution" for his egalitarian
principles but he was also one of the harshest advocates of the Reign of Terror. Also see note
at 713.10

540.23 Rock-Scissors-and-Paper
가위, 바위, 보 (pronounced Gah Wee Bah Wee Boh) is somewhat similar to Evens & Odds in
terms of using hand signals to resolve an impasse but quite different in terms of application.
Whereas Evens & Odds is used to expedite the choosing of sides, 가위, 바위, 보 is used to
beguile the time when time is at a stagnant stand still as it often is when a stranger appears
amongst our midst.

Page 541
541.21-22 a discredit to his people
A play on the racistly condescending phrase "a credit to his people," usually indicating
someone who meets official standards of behavior. In this case, a Welshman who can't sing.

Page 542
542.40 Lucifer Amp
An electrical sort of person. "Lucifer" was the original name of the bright angel who rebelled
and was expelled from Heaven to become Satan, but it has also been a name for a kind of
match and a brand name for lightbulbs. "Amps" (after French physicist Andre Marie Ampere)
are the units that measure the rate of flow of the charge in an electrical circuit. AMP, though,
can also stand for adenosine monophosphate, a substance found in all animal cells and that
controls the cell’s electrical activity.

This may also reference the Syd Barrett tune "Lucifer Sam", which was on the British group
Pink Floyd's first, Barrett-led, album, The Piper At The Gates of Dawn (1967).

Page 544
Gongylakis
Might be a variant on the name of Gyöngy Laky, a textile sculptor and arts professor, who
was active in San Francisco when Gravity's Rainbow was written.

sufficient unto the day

From The Gospel According to Saint Matthew: 6:34. "Take therefore no thought for the
morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is
the evil thereof." (The New Testament of the King James Bible) In Against the Day, Webb
Traverse quotes it. Here, "They" update daily a list of those who will soon get 'hit' — the evil
thereof [the day].

Page 545

545.04-05 young Porky Pig holding out the anarchist’s bomb

Weisenburger’s cartoon history is more than a bit off in his note here. Porky Pig and Bugs
Bunny would not have been featured in Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories because they were
Warner Brothers characters. (Woody Woodpecker came from Walter Lantz’s studio.) Porky
and Bugs were featured in Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Comics, starting with the first
issue in 1941. Porky had been one of Warner Brothers’ most popular cartoon characters since
his first appearance in "I Haven’t Got a Hat" in 1935 (made in 2-strip Technicolor; 3-color
Technicolor cartoons with the pig did not appear until the early 1940s). The cartoon alluded to
here is quite specific: "The Blow-Out" (1936), directed by Fred "Tex" Avery and animated by
Sid Sutherland and Charles "Chuck" Jones. Porky’s voice is by Joe Dougherty, who dubbed
the pig until he was replaced by the familiar voice of Mel Blanc in the late 1930s. In the
cartoon, young Porky is earning money for ice-cream sodas by doing favors for people.
Thinking that the shadowy "Mad Bomber" has lost his bomb, Porky keeps returning it until
the inevitable explosion. This cartoon, a favorite of Pynchon’s, was originally mentioned to
Oedipa by Mr. Thoth in The Crying of Lot 49 and reoccurs as an image in the "Incident in the
Transvestites Toilet" later in Gravity’s Rainbow. See note at 586.38-39.

Page 553
553.25 Let that Ludwig find his lemming
Ludwig's own name has several possible connotations: Beethoven, the mad King of Bavaria,
and the brand of banjo played by George Formby, among others.
553.34 One lemming, kid?
The context here is different from those of Crutchfield and Rilke, alluded to by Weisenburger.
Slothrop wonders at the improbability of finding just one specific lemming among the many
who are rushing to their own destruction. Ursula (who is found later) is representative of the
Saving Remnant that Pynchon evokes from time to time. See note at 561.26

Page 555
555.29-31 He wrote a long tract . . . burned in Boston.
In addition to Weisenburger’s note here, it is worth noting that William Pynchon’s tract took a
position similar to the Arminian "heresy" that also seems to inform Frans van der Groov’s
tortured encounters with the dodos. See note at 111.07-09.

Page 556
556.40-41 foreshortening too fast — it’s wideangle, smalltown space here
The wideangle (short) lens takes in a greater range of area than a normal (medium) focal–
length lens and contributes to "deep focus" effects (keeping all planes in sharp focus). It does
so, though, at the expense of distorting the space represented, including foreshortening
effects.

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

Page 559

559.03-17 There are about 30 kids...

Perhaps the most laboriously set up pun in Western literature. If you don't get it--

They say the French are naughty,

They say the French are bad...

Forty Million Frenchmen can't be wrong

Page 561
561.26 LOOK-IN’ FAWR A NEEDLE IN A HAAAAY-STACK!
A "cute meet"

Song written by Con Conrad and Herb Magidson, from the Astaire-Rogers musical The Gay Divorcee
(originally titled The Gay Divorce on Broadway), directed by Mark Sandrich in 1934. Guy Holden,
played by Astaire, has met Ginger Rogers but not learned her name and sings about the improbability
of finding her again. Note the similarity to Ludwig's quest for Ursula the lemming at 553.34. Dance
critic Arlene Croce writes that this number "first defined the Astaire character on the screen. . . .
Everything comes easily to him and we believe in him as in no screen hero since Keaton." See next
note below.

561.30-31 Fred Astaire . . . Ginger Rogers again

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

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

Page 564
564.37-38 si mi quieres escribir you already know where I’ll be staying
The first words are from a song of the Spanish Civil War, sung by a Loyalist fighter:

If you want to write to me

You know where you can always find me. (Repeat)

 On the broad front of Gandesa

The front line of every battle. (Repeat)

See the note at 605.37-38.

Page 571
571.31-32 the German Wobbly traditions
"Wobblies" were members of the Industrial Workers of the World, based in the United States.
The IWW was founded in Chicago in June 1905 at a convention of two hundred socialists,
anarchists, and radical trade unionists from all over the United States (mainly the Western
Federation of Miners) who were opposed to the policies of the American Federation of Labor
(AFL).

Page 573
573.21 "You're a May bug"
The girl alludes to a German children's song, which gained special significance towards the
end of World War II.

Cockchafer fly... Your father is at war Your mother is in Pomerania Pomerania is all aflame
Cockchafer fly!

Page 578

Rottwang in Metropolis

578.07-09 Klein-Rogge . . . Metropolis

While Weisenburger’s first edition notes on the film, following Kracauer, are accurate, they
overlook the importance of Rottwang’s role in the movie. Rottwang is the element of the
irrational on which the entire rationalized bureaucratic system of the city is based. The mad
inventor is responsible for the running of the city but lives in a small, organic-looking cottage,
decorated with mystic symbols, and plans to bring down the very structure that he himself
helped to create.
Klein-Rogge as Attila the Hun

578.31-33 Attila the Hun ... come west out of the steppes...

See note at 159.19. Pokler, drifting in and out of sleep at the movies, has trouble linking the
details of Nibelungen together.

Page 582
582.05 the same Pflaumbaum
See 159.37-38. We now learn that the "Jewish wolf" was really a victim, who could never
have collected on fire insurance even if he had wanted to, and who wound up in a
concentration camp. Note the suggestion that Lyle Bland himself was responsible for the fire.

Page 584
584.01-03 beings from the planetoid Katspiel

From Major Trends in Jewish Mysticicm

"The discussions between the traveller and the gate-keepers of the sixth palace, the archons
Domiel and Katspiel, which take up a good deal of space, clearly date back to very early
times." [1]

"Finally, after such preparations, and in a state of ecstasy, the adept begins his journey. The
'Greater Hekhaloth' do not describe the details of his ascent through the seven heavens, but
they do describe his voyage through the seven palaces situated in the highest heaven. The
place of the gnostical rulers (archons) of the seven planetary spheres, who are opposed to
the liberation of the soul from its earthly bondage and whose resistance the soul must
overcome, is taken in this Judaized and monotheistic Gnosticism by the hosts of 'gate-
keepers' posted to the right and left of the entrance to the heavenly hall through which the
soul must pass in its ascent." [2]

Thus Pynchon seems to have morphed the archon Katspiel, one of the gatekeepers of the sixth
planetary sphere of the Highest Heaven, into the planetoid itself.
Michael Faraday

584.40 portrait of Michael Faraday

Although Weisenburger does not find a listing for a portrait of Faraday in the 1967 Tate
catalogue, there are portraits of the scientist at the National Gallery and the National Portrait
Gallery in London. Pictures and daguerreotypes of the older Faraday do seem to convey some
of the menace suggested in the narrator’s description of Tantivy’s reaction on pages 584-585.
Pynchon's (or Tantivy's?) characterization is probably unfair, since Faraday belonged to a
small Christian sect that tried to live by the principles of the Sermon on the Mount.

I am sorry, but what avowed principles Faraday tried to live by mean nothing against
Pynchon's characterization--real and for the metaphoric purposes of GR. Pynchon in GR, and
everywhere, shows up the hypocrisy--to say the least--in avowed principles. MKOHUT
07:09, 15 August 2007 (PDT)

584.13 forest of Arden

Weisenburger does not see much relevance to the reference to Shakespeare’s pastoral retreat
in As You Like It, but the context does fit here, ironically. The scene of bucolic refuge in the
play is now a scene of death after the Battle of the Bulge, where the bodies lie "gangrenous in
the snow."

Page 585
585.07-08 and how's the Katspiel Kid going to get out of this one?
The Katspiel Kid brings to mind The Kenosha Kid (Gravity's Rainbow), as well as Kieselguhr
Kid in Against the Day.

Page 586
586.1-11 All the baggy-pants outfielders . . . Olympic runners
All types of characters seen on pinball scoreboards (as are the can-can dancers at 584.19).
Silver Streak Comics

586.38-39 Silver-Streaking Bert Fibel

The Silver Streak was a comic book superhero of the early 1940s, published by Lev Gleason.
His comic book also featured a racistly depicted Oriental giant with fangs and long nails,
known as The Claw (usually opposed the original Daredevil; The Claw himself was popular
enough to become one of the few super-villains with his own comic book). In 1942, the comic
was renamed Crime Does Not Pay. See note at 709.15. However, David Erickson adds the
following reference:

"I always thought the reference was to Fibel's arriving in a hurry: The Silver Streak was the
nickname of the Pioneer Zephyr, a streamlined train built for the Chicago, Burlington, and
Quincy Railroad and entered into service in 1934. It set the rail land speed record on May 26,
1934, running from Denver to Chicago in just over 13 hours."

Pioneer Zephyr and Silver Streak movie poster

And from [Wikipedia]:

The Silver Streak was a 1934 film loosely based on the record-setting "dawn-to-dusk" run of
the Pioneer Zephyr on May 26, 1934.

. The Chicago Museum of Science and industry has a very good website about the train.

Page 587
587.08 General Electric plant in Pittsfield, Massachusetts
Another reference point initially lifted from The Berkshire Hills, p. 80. The book’s authors
note that the plant was at the time the leading manufacturer of transformers and specifically
mention the "new million-dollar Plastics Department, where finished parts for radios,
refrigerators, and oil heating units are manufactured from raw materials..."

Page 591
591.18 Buddy left to see The Bride of Frankenstein
Contrary to Weisenburger, Buddy probably did see the film. This is the day of Lyle Bland’s
Transcendence; Buddy goes to see Dracula instead of going to the funeral, which is
presumably some days later. See note at 645.12.
Page 592

Looney Tunes Comics

592.32 an American Bugs Bunny comic book

See note on 545.04-05. Bugs Bunny, like Porky Pig, was a Warner Brothers, not Walt Disney,
creation. He was featured in Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Comics beginning with issue
#1 in 1941. He did appear under his own name in issues of Dell's Four Color Comics (which
featured characters from several studios, including Disney) under his own name beginning
with issue #3 in 1943.

Page 594
594.31 Albert Krypton
Krypton is not only a colorless (not white), odorless, and tasteless inert gas but the home
planet of Superman, destroyed in a natural nuclear chain reaction.

Page 597
597.06 Avery Purfle
"Purfle" is an ornamental border or trimming (Webster’s New World Dictionary).

Page 600
600.0506 the same warm and wonderful organization that was charging fifteen cents for
coffee and doughnuts, at the Battle of the fucking Bulge
Supposedly an actual event, although officers (of course) did not have to pay

600.19 "love in bloom"

"Love in Bloom" of a song composed by Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger for the 1934 film She
Loves Me Not, starring Bing Crosby. The song was later better known as Jack Benny’s theme
song.

Page 605
605.21 Va-len-cia-a-a
"Valencia" was originally a French song with words by Lucienne Boyer and Jacques Charles,
written in 1925. The American version was released the following year.

605.37-38 Ya salimos
These and the following words in Spanish are from "Viva la Quince Brigada" ("Long Live the
15th Brigade"), a song of the American volunteer Lincoln Battalion during the Spanish Civil
War. The tune is adapted from an old Spanish folk song and the words refer to the bloody
battle of the Jarama Valley, which was the Loyalist battalion’s first taste of war. The words of
the last two verses follow:

En los frentes de Jarama

Rumbala, rumbala, rum-ba-la (repeat)

No tenemos ni aviones

Ni tanques, ni canones, ay Manuela! (repeat)

Ya salimos de Espana

Rumbala, rumbala, rum-ba-la (repeat)

Par luchar en otros frentes

Ay Manuela, ay Manuela!

English:

At Jarama we are standing

Rumbala, rumbala, rum-ba-la

And we have no planes above us

Not a tank, nor any canons, ay Manuela!

We have left the Spanish trenches

Rumbala, rumbala, rum-ba-la

To fight the Fascists where we find them

Ay Manuela, ay Manuela!

Page 607
607.1 puto and sinvergüenza
Spanish, 'fucking' and 'scoundrel'. Manuela can now afford to call her loathsome client names
(nominally for being impotent).

Page 611
611.33 Molotov isn’t telling Vishinsky
Echoes the capitalist slogan, "Macy's doesn’t tell Gimbel's," referring to the rival New York
department stores.

Page 615
615.06 Sir Marcus Scammony
Scammony refers to the medicinal resins derived from the roots of certain plants, or to the
plant itself. The word also suggests "scam," or "trickery," "con job."

615.12-13 O-or how about mixing in something that will actually dissolve in the rain?
Evokes the 1952 British film The Man in the White Suit in which Alec Guinness plays a
scientist who invents a suit that won’t soil or wear out. It does, however, dissolve in the rain.

Page 617
What? - Richard M. Nixon
The uncorrected galleys of Gravity's Rainbow sent in advance to book critics featured a
different epigraph here. source. (Or here.)

Instead of the Nixon quote, it used the following:

“She has brought them to her senses,

They have laughed inside her laughter,
Now she rallies her defenses,
For she fears someone will ask her
For eternity —
And she’s so busy being free….” — Joni Mitchell.

These lyrics come from the song "Cactus Tree," from Mitchell's 1968 album, "Song To A
Seagull." Full lyrics and sample at (fansite) Jonimitchell.com.

Page 622

The Shadow Waltz

622.30-31 that dreamy Dick Powell song

Is actually titled "The Shadow Waltz," composed by Al Dubin and Harry Warren for The
Gold Diggers of 1933 (not Footlight Parade). The song in the film gives way to a typically
bizarre Busby Berkeley musical production in which women on roller skates play violins
outlined with neon lights.
Page 625
625.10 gnaedige Frau:
The literal meaning of the usual polite form of address of a lady of a high rank ("merciful" or
"benevolent Madam") has got a new value here.

Page 626
626.02 Chapter 81 work
This obscure reference comes (again) from The Berkshire Hills. As the authors note:

" ... the one occupation which survives all depressions in the small Berkshire villages is road
work. Regardless of bad financial conditions, citizens sidetrack other appropriations to
continue voting to raise and appropriate the sum of --- dollars for Chapter 81 highways..." (p.
214).

"Chapter 81 work is for road improvement, during which a scraper removes sod and dirt
from ditches and shoulders, followed by workers who clean out the ditches and replace
culverts and drains" (p. 216).

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

Another concealed poem (others on 167, 451, and 508). See also Inherent Vice p. 134.

Page 627
627.28-29 Commas, brimstones, painted ladies
Three taxa of butterflies. The Comma (Polygonia c-album) is one of the anglewings; sulfur-
yellow brimstones are in the genus Gonepteryx in the family Pieridae; painted ladies are in the
genus Vanessa. The Comma is named for a so-shaped white mark on the underside of its
hindwing; a similarly-marked North American congener is called the Question Mark (P.
interrogationis).

Page 637

Chase scene from Saboteur

637.10 aficionados of the chase scene, those who cannot look at the Taj Mahal, the Uffizi, the
Statue of Liberty...

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

The Statue of Liberty references the final chase scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur (1942).

637.11 Douglas Fairbanks scampering across that moon minaret

Refers to the 1924 film The Thief of Baghdad in which swashbuckling Douglas Fairbanks
plays a thief who falls in love with the Caliph's beautiful daughter.

637.37-38 Dick Whittington

According to popular legend, Whittington (c. 1350-1423) was one of the preterite who made
good, a penniless boy who was about to leave London when he heard the city’s bells calling,
"Turn back, Dick Whittington, Lord Mayor of London!" Wikipedia entry

Page 640
640 A certain lycanthropophobia or fear of Werewolves occupies minds at higher levels
Post-war Nazi partisans called themselves "Werwolf". Wikipedia entry on Werwolf

640.30 Eddie Pensiero

The name is actually an old pun, taken from "La Donna e Mobile," the most famous aria in
Verdi’s Rigoletto. The main verse reads:

La donna e mobile

Quai piuma al vento,

Muta d’accento

E di pensiero. [emphasis added]

English:

Woman is fickle

As a feather in the wind,

She changes her tune

And her thoughts.

Page 642
642.05-06 It’s really a train of imperceptible light and dark.
The glow of the light bulb only appears to be steady, like the flow of light broken by the
shutter in a movie projector.

Page 645
645.12 Buddy at the last minute decided to go see Dracula
See note at 591.18.

Page 651
651.14 cullet
Recycled glass, crushed in preparation to be remelted.

Page 657

Mae West

657.10-11 after the style of Diamond Lil or Texas Guinan

Diamond Lil is a 1928 play by sultry American actress and playwright Mae West (1893-
1980). Prior to Diamond Lil, she had written a number of plays that were closed down due to
either poor ticket sales or indecency issues with local law enforcement authorities of the time.
Diamond Lil, about a racy woman in the 1890s, was her first major Broadway success, and
was the basis for her character Lady Lou in her 1933 film She Done Him Wrong.

Mary Louise Cecilia "Texas" Guinan (1884-1933) was a saloon keeper (she opened a
speakeasy, the 300 Club, in New York City, during Prohibition), actress (her first film was
The Wildcat (1917), and entrepreneur. As an actress, she preferred and popularized roles that
allowed her to portray self-reliant women who were true gunslingers, i.e., loud, brassy dames.
Wikipedia entry

Page 665
665.15 Faffner
In Norse mythology, Fáfnir (Old Norse) or Frænir (Faroese) was a son of the dwarf king
Hreidmar and brother of Regin and Ótr. In the Volsunga saga, Fáfnir was a dwarf gifted with
a powerful arm and fearless soul. He wore the Aegis helmet and guarded his father's house of
glittering gold and flashing gems. He was the strongest and most aggressive of the three
brothers.

As Fafner, he is featured in Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, although he began
life as a giant rather than a dwarf, before once again turning into a dragon to better guard the
gold.

Page 670

Dragon Lady

670.38 a Dragon Lady pageboy with bangs

Refers to the hairstyle of the Oriental arch-villainess of the comic strip Terry and the Pirates,
created by Milton Caniff and continued by George Wunder, although as originally drawn by
Caniff, she did not have bangs.

Page 674
674.10 a City of the Future
Evokes, again, the opening images of Lang’s Metropolis. See 482.25.

Travel here gets complicated -- a system of buildings that move, by right angles, along
the grooves of the Raketen-Stadt's street-grid. You can also raise or lower the building
itself, a dozen floors per second, to desired heights or levels underground, like a
submarine skipper with his periscope...
This imagery was appropriated for the set designs and special effects of the 1998 film Dark
City.http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Pages_674-
700&action=edit&section=1 Editing Pages 674-700 (section) - Thomas Pynchon Wiki |
Gravity's Rainbow

Page 675
Marcel
It's possible that Marcel signifies the great French novelist Marcel Proust in some way:

"Am I positive that Marcel indicates Proust? No. But there's a lot of circumstantial evidence:
he's named "Marcel," he's French, he's a genius. These three facts alone in a vacuum would
point strongly to Marcel Proust. But Pynchon also gives Marcel shiny black hair, links him
with the 19th century, and portrays him as extremely long-winded." - Erik Ketzan, Pynchon
Nods: Proust in Gravity’s Rainbow
Since Marcel gets into a "long discourse on the concept of 'give'" and "Man," it could also be
a nod to sociologist and anthropologist Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) whose most famous work
is entitled The Gift.

Myrtle Miraculous...Maximilian...Marcel

The 3 Ms in this Fantastic 4 could allude to the Minnesota-based, multinational conglomerate

3M. Founded in the early 1900s, the company (formerly known as the Minnesota Mining and
Manufacturing Company) was run by one William L. McKNIGHT from 1929 to 1949 and
expanded worldwide in the 1950s (to the UK, Germany and others). In the late '60s and early
'70s, 3M published a line of board games that were marketed to adults. These games with
simple rules but complex game play were ancestors of the German "Eurogames," and
included Ploy, a space-age strategy game, which is considered to be one of the better chess
variations.

Page 676
675.33 at best they manage to emerge...
The description of decisions emerging from a chaos of competing forces echoes Pynchon's
letter to Jules Siegel in 1965, The World is at Fault, in which Pynchon describes the journey
of our souls through "whatever obsolescenses, bigotries, theories of education workable and
un, parental wisdom or lack of it, happen to get in its more or less (random) pilgrimage..."

Page 682
682.18 Ho-zay
Another of Nalline’s transliterations: "Jose," for Joseph.

Page 684

William Bendix in Lifeboat

684.31-32 William Bendix

An appropriate supporting role for Bendix would be his part in Hitchcock’s Lifeboat (1944),
in which he plays a lindy-hopping sailor whose leg has to be amputated.

Page 685
685.7 his finest sacramental kif
Webster's Third International Dictionary defines kif, which is a variant of kef, a "smoking
material (as hashish) that produces a state of dreamy tranquility."

685.21-22 "My Prelude to a Kiss," "Tenement Symphony"

The former song (actually titled just "Prelude to a Kiss") is a 1945 composition by Duke
Ellington with Irving Gordon and Irving Mills; the latter was composed by Hal Borne, with
words by Sid Kullen and Roy Golden, and sung by Tony Martin in the 1941 Marx Brothers
movie The Big Store.

685.26 sexcrime fantasy

The term "sexcrime" was invented as a Newspeak word by George Orwell in 1984. It refers to
sex used for pleasure instead of simple procreation, an offense in the totalitarian state of the
book.

685.28 MY DOPER’S CADENZA

The New World Dictionary defines "cadenza" as "an elaborate, often improvised musical
passage by played by an unaccompanied instrument in a concerto, usually near the end of the
first movement."

Page 688

Fay Wray

688.36-37 Fay Wray . . . in her screentest scene with Robert Armstrong

Ann Darrow’s (Fay Wray) screentest is only peripherally "erotic mugging." She is instructed
by Carl Denham (played by Armstrong) to look up and react in fear (in anticipation of her
first actual view of King Kong, of whom she knows nothing yet). She is so caught up in her
performance that she actually faints. It is this scene that Jessica mimics with Roger earlier in
the novel.

Page 689
689.26 a round black iron anarchist bomb
Another reference to the Porky Pig cartoon "The Blow-Out." The Mad Bomber puts such a
device, along with a lot of other explosives, into an alarm clock rigged to explode.

Page 691
691.34-35 Paranoid . . . For The Day!
The TV game show Queen for a Day debuted as a radio show in 1945 with host Jack Bailey.
Page 693
MB DRO ROSHI When discussing GR, the writer Alan Moore recalled this sequence as "the
whole point of the novel... It’s just this bit of burnt paper that, if you put it together, talks
about America dropping the atom bomb on Hiroshima. Which is of course, the end of the V
bomb, which has been made obsolete. Gravity’s got a new rainbow." source.

Note also that 'roshi' is Japanese for 'teacher': Rōshi (老師?) (Chinese pinyin: Lǎoshī;
Sanskrit: ṛṣi) is a Japanese honorific title used in Zen Buddhism that literally means "old
teacher" or "elder master" and sometimes denotes a person who gives spiritual guidance to a
Zen sangha or congregation.(Wikipedia)

Page 695
695.25-28 Dungannon, Virginia . . . or Ellis, Kansas.
Weisenburger’s usual attention to geographical detail fails here. He does not find these towns
on the borders of time zones in 1988 because the zones had been changed, shifting to the
west, in the previous decades. All of the towns Pynchon names were on the borders of time
zones in 1945 (and Murdo and Apalachicola still are). Kenosha itself borders Lake Michigan
through which the Eastern-Central Time Zone border runs.

Page 697
American Hotchkisses are the guns that raked through the unarmed Indians at
Wounded Knee. Wounded Knee massacre was the last major armed conflict between the
Dakota Sioux and the United States, subsequently described as a "massacre" by General
Nelson A. Miles in a letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

On December 29, 1890, five hundred troops of the U.S. 7th Cavalry, supported by four
Hotchkiss guns (a lightweight artillery piece capable of rapid fire), surrounded an
encampment of Miniconjou Sioux (Lakota) and Hunkpapa Sioux (Lakota)[2] with orders to
escort them to the railroad for transport to Omaha, Nebraska. The commander of the 7th had
been ordered to disarm the Lakota before proceeding and placed his men in too close
proximity to the Dakota, alarming them. Shooting broke out near the end of the disarmament,
and accounts differ regarding who fired first and why.

By the time it was over, 25 troopers and 300 Dakota Sioux lay dead, including men, women,
and children.

Also, see note for p. 752; Wikipedia entry for Wounded Knee Massacre

Page 701
701.01 Drunkards Three
The title echoes Sergeants 3, a 1962 film starring Frank Sinatra and other Rat Pack members.
It is a remake of Gunga Din set in the west, with Sammy Davis, Jr. in the Sam Jaffe role.
Page 702
702.15 recalling Tchaikovsky
Wimpe’s recollection of the composer is prompted by one of the stories concerning his rather
mysterious death: that Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) had drunk a glass of unboiled water during a
cholera epidemic. While another story had the composer committing suicide because of the
supposedly unfavorable reception of his 6th ("Pathetique") Symphony, it is now generally
believed that he actually was forced to take poison to avoid the exposure of his love affair
with a male member of the imperial family — or maybe it was just kidney failure! Whatever
the actual case, Pynchon's reference might have been prompted by Ken Russell's film The
Music Lovers (1971), with Richard Chamberlain as Tchaikovsky and which makes pointed
reference to the contaminated water story.

Page 703
703.05 Jeaach
The name is another pseudo-German phonetic rendering of an expression of disgust.

Page 705
functions of Moslem angels

The belief in angels is one of the central articles of faith in Islam. Indeed, the Archangel
Gabriel dictated the Qur'an to Muhammad. Angels are ministers of God and agents of
revelation, who are made of smokeless fire or Divine Light. They have no free will as they
follow God's will exclusively. Their functions include recording every human being's actions,
placing a soul in a newborn child, maintaining certain environmental conditions of the planet
(such as nurturing vegetation and distributing the rain), taking the soul at the time of death
and more. They guard the gates of heaven and hell.

Beneath the order of angels is the order of jinn. Jinn have free will.

In 1991, some 17 years after GR appeared, the Russian physicists Igor Novikov and Andrei
Lossev published a paper in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity entitled "The Jinn of
the Time Machine: Non-trivial Self-Consistent Solutions" concerning some theoretical issues
in time travel. They use the jinn in their thought experiment in a particularly Pynchonian way
-- though probably without knowing anything about Pynchon or GR. The jinn essentially
move in a circular timespace which at some point make them appear to move against the
second law of thermodynamics. As they move forward in time they self-organize and instead
of gaining entropy, they lose entropy. (cf. Toomey, David: The New Time Travelers, 2007, pp.
196-202.)

Taking this idea back to GR, it may be that the function of Moslem Angels is to serve as "The
Counterforce" that is, to restore order to a world run down to ruin through entropy. An Anti-
Slothrop of sorts.

Page 707
707.31 Saeugling
German: a human baby, suckling, as it is also clear from the description of the picture.

Page 709
709.15 Crime Does Not Pay Comics
Formerly Silver Streak Comics, published by Lev Gleason, the title changed with issue #22 in
1942. The Comic Book Price Guide remarks that it was the first crime comic book and the
first comic to be aimed at adult readers. Its influence, with lurid covers and violent stories,
contributed to the wave of official disapproval that fell on the comics industry in the early
1950s. See note above at 586.38-39.

709.18 Is this Noel Coward or some shit?

Roger’s antipathy to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noel_Coward Coward’s] comedies of
manners echoes the comments about Blithe Spirit in the Advent passage at 134 and passim.
Pynchon’s own antipathy to the composer, writer and actor goes all the way back to
"Lowlands," one of his first published stories.

709.33 Little sigma, times P of s-over-little-sigma

"Little sigma, times P of s equals one over the square root of two pi, times e to the minus s
squared over two little-sigma squared" would be the probability density function for a
Normally Distributed random variable with mean zero and standard deviation little sigma
(though here the traditional form has been multiplied through by little sigma, probably to
make it easier for Roger to say). But this is "P of s-over-little-sigma" - a reference to things
not being quite Normal?

Page 712

Ingrid Bergman in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

712.04 song from the movie Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Not the 1932 Fredric March version but the 1941 Victor Fleming remake starring Spencer
Tracy. In this version Ingrid Bergman plays a barmaid who sings, "You Should See Me
Dance the Polka." The song itself was composed around 1887 by George Grossmith, star of
Gilbert and Sullivan's operettas at the Savoy Theater. The lyrics to the song include:

You should see me dance the Polka,

You should see me cover the ground,

You should see my coat- tails flying,

 As I jump my partner round;

When the band commences playing,

My feet begin to go,

For a rollicking romping Polka

Is the jolliest fun I know.

In the film, Tracy hums the song just before his first transformation into Mr. Hyde.

Page 713
713.10 Thermidor
Not just a month on the French Revolutionary calendar, the name here signifies the defeat of
the radical elements in the revolutionary leadership. On Thermidor 8, Year II of the
Revolution (July 27, 1794), Robespierre, Saint-Just, and their followers were arrested. These
leaders of the radical faction, which had promoted the Reign of Terror but also advocated
redistribution of wealth and power for the lower classes, were executed the next day, bringing
the Reign of Terror to a close. In one of his newspaper articles later, Pynchon would speak of
the Nixon years as a "Thermidorian reaction" to the 1960s.

Page 718
718.07 Bauernfrühstuck
German: farmer's breakfast. The recipe:

4 potatoes

4 bacon strips, fried and crumbled

3 eggs

3 tablespoons milk

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup ham, cubed

2 medium tomatoes, peeled

1 tablespoon chopped chives

Boil unpeeled potatoes 30 minutes. Rinse under cold water, peel and set aside to cool. Slice
potatoes. In a large frying pan cook bacon until transparent. Add the potato slices and cook
until lightly browned. Meanwhile blend eggs with milk and salt. Stir in the cubed ham. Cut
the tomatoes into thin wedges; add to the egg mixture. Pour the egg mixture over the potatoes
in the frying pan. Cook until the eggs are set. Sprinkle with chopped chives and serve at once.
Serves 4.

Page 732
732.36 Djuro
A Serbian male name. The Herreros bear German, but also Slavic names, like Djuro, Vlasta
(Czech female name, popular also e.g. in Slovenia), Ljubica (a common female name in South
Slavic languages), Mieczislav (Polish male name).

Page 734
734.2 GE_ _RAT_ _
Weisenburger believes that adding the missing letters in this game of hangman would spell
out GENERATOR. This, in fact, appears to be the only German word (or English, for that
matter), to fit the description, and it fits the story too. However, since the letters E and R
already occur in GE_ _RAT_ _, the incomplete mystery word would have been left as
GE_ERAT_R.

734.17 May he be blind now to all but me. . . .

Steven C. Weisenburger, in A Gravity's Rainbow Companion notes that Geli Tripping's
spell on Tchitcherine is derived from A. E. Waite's Book of Black Magic. A. E. Waite is
noted several times in Against the Day.

734.19 by the Angels Melchidael, Yahoel, Anafiel, and the great Metatron...
This incantation is a variant on many in mystical traditions, invoking various spiritual beings
and deities. In Kabbalah, Metatron is the angel that governs the Tree of Life and the teachings
of the Kabbalah. Melchidael is one of the top three of the seven archangels; Yahoel was the
angel that taught Abraham the Torah and was his earthly and heavenly guide. Anafiel,
"Branch of God," keeper of the keys of heaven, and the angel who looks after birds, and who
carried Enoch to heaven.

Page 738

Wuxtry

738.19 Mickey Wuxtry-Wuxtry

The last name is the archetypal newsboy’s cry: "Wuxtry! Wuxtry! [Extra! Extra!] Read all
about it!" The spelling was commonly used in the 1940s: Jack Kirby’s Boy Commandos, or
The Newsboy Legion; a painting by Albert Abramovitz (at the Harn Museum of Art); and
articles in Time and Newsweek, among others.

Page 742
742.29 The Fool
In the March 21, 1969 Time cover story on astrology and the occult (see note at 31.28), the
following reference to this otherwise-obscure group occurs: "A California rock group called
The Fool has recorded several zodiacal songs — not only because they believe only in
astrology, but because they feel generally tuned in to the entire occult world (the Fool is the
card in the fortunetelling Tarot deck that stands for Man)" [sic] (48).

Page 750

Nymphenburg

750.11-13 on his camera dolly, whooping with joy, barrel-assing down the long corridors at
Nymphenburg

The palace, near Munich, was the birthplace of King Ludwig II of Bavaria and also provided
some of the sets for Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad (along with Ludwig's own
Herrenchiemsee), one of several anachronistic references to postwar modernist films in the
book, especially here towards the end. As viewers know, Resnais' film features long tracking
shots down the corridors of these sets. (See also the reference to the "Bengt Ekarot / Maria
Casares Film Festival" at 755.3-4. As Weisenburger notes, both actors played the role of
Death, in Bergman’s The Seventh Seal and Cocteau’s Orpheus, respectively.) See note at
394.22.

Page 752
752.01-03 Philip Marlow [sic] . . . Bradbury Building
Philip Marlowe did have his office in in the Bradbury Building in one film adaptation of
Chandler’s works: Marlowe (1969), based on The Little Sister, starring James Garner. The
Bradbury, long neglected and probably best known as a major setting in Ridley Scott’s Blade
Runner (1982), has been restored and recognized as one of the most remarkable pieces of
architecture in Los Angeles.

Sub-mariner #1

752.04 Submariner and his multi-lingual gang will run into battery trouble
Some corrections to Weisenburger’s notes: Timely Comics, Atlas Comics, and Marvel Comics were all
variant titles for the same company, known only by the last name since the 1950s. Sub-Mariner
(pronounced "Sub-MARE-iner") was first created by Bill Everett for a one-time black-and-white
giveaway comic called Motion Pictures Funnies Weekly. The character made his first full appearance
in issue #1 of Marvel Comics (published under the Timely Comics label). Prince Namor (not
"Namore") was and remains an unusual hero, since he often has battled mankind and
human/humanoid superheroes. As Prince of Atlantis, he was at first pledged to the destruction of
humanity. By the time America entered World War II, he had become part of various teams working
to defeat the Axis powers. He rarely, if ever, wore a cape. Pynchon’s use of the character here is
puzzling for several reasons. First, the super-powered

Blackhawk

Atlantean had no need for a battery-powered vehicle since he could breathe and swim underwater
at high speeds (see picture on linked cover). Second, despite his team-ups with other groups during
the war, he does not seem ever to have been part of a "multi-lingual crew." It may be that Pynchon
never actually read the comic book. (His other superhero references — including Superman, Batman,
and Wonder Woman — are mostly to heroes from Marvel’s publishing arch-rival, the DC publishing
group.) Pynchon may, like many of the comics’ readers, have pronounced the hero’s name "Subma-
REEN-er" and assumed that he actually commanded an underwater vehicle. He may have confused
this character further with Blackhawk, the flying ace who did command a "multi-lingual crew"
(including American, English, Dutch, Swedish, Free French, Polish, and a horrible, racist portrayal of a
Chinese cook)!

752.07 The Lone Ranger will storm in . . .

The Lone Ranger began as a locally-produced program on Detroit radio station WXYZ
(which also produced Sergeant Preston of the Yukon and The Green Hornet). It began its
television life (with Clayton Moore in the title role) in 1949 on the ABC network. The real
name of the Ranger was John Reid. Dan (Jr.) was his nephew, son of John's murdered brother.
Dan was featured in a number of radio and TV episodes (and would eventually be the father
of Britt Reid, the secret identity of the urban vigilante The Green Hornet!). Here, the Ranger
and Tonto are too late to save the nephew.

752.10 Tonto, God willing, will put on his ghost shirt ...
A reference to the Ghost Dance movement among Native Americans in the 1870s. A Paiute
known as Wovoka became a messianic figure as he preached that a dance would eventually
restore American Indians to their rightful place in the world and cause the whites to disappear.
Part of the movement involved the weaving and wearing of "ghost shirts," which it was
believed would give the wearer immunity from soldiers’ bullets. White fear of these beliefs
ultimately contributed to the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890 and the end of both the
Ghost Dance movement and Native American resistance to white "manifest destiny." The
reference to "cold fire" and the role of the shirt in relation to this passage remain unclear. Also
see reference at p. 697.
Presumably Tonto resharpens his knife to renew the Amerindian revenge against the white
man, a fire which has gone cold. More failure for the Lone Ranger. God is mentioned six
times on pages 751-753.

752.14 Yes, Jimmy

Superman is speaking to his good pal, Daily Planet cub reporter Jimmy Olsen.

752.14 here, where everybody else walks around suntanned, and red-eyed from one
irritant or another
In a shift to the present, "here" is sunny, polluted Los Angeles.

Page 755
755.06 an inverted "peace sign"
Nixon co-opted the "V" peace sign from the beginning of his 1968 Presidential campaign all
the way through to his departure by helicopter from the White House after being forced to
resign because of the Watergate scandal.

Popularized most in WW2 by Winston Churchill, it meant Victory and may have been the
source of Nixon's use of it, most visibly when he won the national election in 1968,[1],but
perhaps even earlier. Sourcing needed for earlier use by Nixon.

The "V" hand sign: The first definitive known reference to the V sign is in the works of
François Rabelais, a French satirist of the 1500s. [2]

Most interesting here from the author of V., of course.

Page 756
756.39-40 a mysteriously-canvased trailer rig and a liquid hydrogen tanker
Trucks probably carrying, respectively, a shrouded nuclear missile and its fuel.

Page 758
758 Moving now...present
Very reminiscent of the Zen saying: "Before Enlightenment chop wood carry water, after
Enlightenment, chop wood carry water."

Ties in to the Zen parable (perhaps) behind Pick Bananas, page 7?

Perhaps ties in to the meaning of the last word, "grace", in Against the Day, page 1085? And
therefore some of Pynchon's deepest visions of life?

Page 760
760.10 The screen... The film... old fans who've always been at the movies See the
anticipation at 49.30.