Gravity’s Rainbow Week Nine

Illustration by Zak Smith – borrowed from the Internet Archive

Reflections

We begin this week’s reading zeroed in on the Argentinian anarchist revolutionaries (Squalidozzi, their leader, was previously seen in Part II with Slothrop, recruiting our hero for a covert message delivery). The Argetntine Anarchists have commandeered a U-boat and are plotting their own revolution in post WW2 Europe. The overarching themes of ideological chaos in the post-war landscape are peppered throughout Part III of the novel, and I noticed at this point that some parallels between the Argentine Anarchists and the Hereros. Both parties are disenfranchised, mobile, zig-zagging across the map, and using the Allied/Axis power characters to advance their own political and cultural agenda.

The Argentine Anarchists are an eclectic, passionate bunch including El Nato who cosplays as a 19th-century Gaucho. I discovered in my research that Gauchos are a symbol of national resistance across South America, a revolutionary cowboy of sorts.

Squalidozzi relays to his team his experience in Bavaria, where he encountered a film being screened in a run-down harmonica factory. The audience is clad in zoot suits (they are back!) and Caligari gloves (a reference to the Mickey Mouse style gloves worn by Dr. Caligari in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and apparently in vogue in the Zone. I love this reference and Caligari would make for excellent Halloween watching for any movie fans in the group!). Squalidozzi is introduced to….Gerhardt von Goll! The filmmaker who made the Schwarzcommando/Hereros films! Von Goll goes by the pseudonym “Der Springer” (a reference to the Knight chess piece?) and immediately hits it off with Squazodolli. Von Goll agrees to adapt the Gaucho revolutionary poem Martin Fierro for the Anarchists. We then get a taste of the film, with descriptions reminiscent of our favourite spaghetti westerns.

One of my favourite prose moments in the book so far is Von Goll espousing his filmmaking mission to Squalidozzi:

“It is my mission,” he announces to Squalidozzi, with the profound humility that only a German movie director can summon, “to sow in the Zone the seeds of reality. The historical moment demands this, and I can only be its servant. My images, somehow, have been chose for incarnation. What I can do for the Schwarzkommando I can do for your dream of pampas and sky….I can take down your fences and your labyrinth walls, I can lead back to the Garden you hardly remember….”

Despite Von Goll being a maniac, the idea that films can be vehicles for transmuting realities (in ways that even novels cannot) resonates. The Argentine Anarchists feel the same way with Squalidozzi taking this back to the group, with the normally gruff Belaustegui stating “What if we’ve really come back, back to the way it was before the continents drifted apart?” Can film be a vehicle for inter-continental revolution? This reader says yes.

The Argentine Anarchists are then intercepted by another returning character, the U.S.S. John E. Badass whose crew has been drugged by spiked coffee grounds (with Lazlo Jamf’s intoxicant, another returning character). This causes the John E. Badass to fire their torpedo wildly, missing the U-boat and hitting a floating corpse instead.

Pynchon does something particularly interesting at the end of this chapter, switching to second person perspective (“Now what sea is this you have crossed… pg. 396). From my memory, this is one of the rare instances in the novel that the author/narrator/Greek chorus addresses characters in the novel.

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In this brief episode, Tchitcherine returns with his driver and sidekick Dzabajev. They have captured Slothrop with a tip from Geli and are contemplating what to do with our hero. Tchitcherine muses that he and Slothrop would have been friends in another life with their shared love of costuming and women. The quick flashback to Tchitcherine’s childhood, putting on a wolf mask for a school play (“I am the Wolf… pg.397) was bang-on to the feeling of being a child and putting on a costume for Halloween or a school event and feeling like a superhero, a witch, another person…

Tchitcherine refers to the folks scavenging the Zone (Slothrop, Enzian, etc) as the “Faithful” “Pilgrims along the roads of miracle”. This deification of the Rockets (which fully arises in the final episode of our reading) is a constant throughout the novel as we have much discussed and I believe Slothrop, Enzian, and Tchitcherine are at the heart of that. Tchitcherine and his sidekick return to smoking hash under a tree, cackling insanely.

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Slothrop awakes on a cot still dressed as Rocketman. The heisted hash is gone (thanks Tchitcherine) and he appears to be in a movie studio. Slothrop encounters Margherita Erdmann, a former B-movie star, in search of her daughter Bianca across post-war Europe. She is wandering through the movie studio, reminiscing of her time in the films of Von Goll (Der Springer from the above. The threads are connecting…). Von Goll’s films were transgressive art films in line with his ethos outlined in the above episode. It is revealed that one of Margherita’s co-stars is “Max Schlepzig”, an apparently common pseudonym as this is the exact name that Slothrop received for his falsified identity papers! Slothrop clocks this immediately, with Margherita even revealing the signature on the falsified ID is indeed Max’s.

Slothrop and Margherita fall into a re-enactment of a Schelpzig/Erdmann film Alpdrucken , with Margherita going so far as calling Slothrop “Max”. Margherita speculates that her daughter, Bianca, was conceived in the Alpdrucken scene. Once again, as with Geli, Slothrop becomes another man, in costume and performance. Shifting identities bleed into each other into the next episode…. (fade out cinematically)

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(fade in cinematically) The episode fades into the original Alpdrucken Schelpzig/Erdmann scene being played out on a film screen, excitedly witnessed by Franz Pokler. Pokler conceives his child, Ilse, with his estranged wife Leni the night of viewing Alpdrucken. Leni was introduced as the paramour of Peter Sascha in the novel.

This episode is complex, shedding insight into Pokler’s relationship with his child Ilse and its connection to the German rocket program led by Weissman( Blicero). Pokler meets his daughter every year at the same location, Zwolfkinder, a resort/theme park of sorts. This episode’s POV shifts into Pokler’s history within the rocket program and Leni’s pacifist objections to the program (“They’re using it to kill people,” Pokler: “We’ll all use it, someday, to leave the earth. To Transcend”). The occult, spiritual, and scientific collide in the development of the German Rocket. The team members’ descriptions range from the occult, to the Zen, to Mondaugen described as the bodhisattva (a Buddha to be). Enzian re-appears as the protege of Weissman, described as “Weissmann’s Monster” “less out of racism than at the picture the two of the made” (pg. 410).

Weissman permits a once-a-year visit with his “daughter”, who he is told is being housed at re-education camps (concentration camps) ran by the SS. The “daughter” is presented as a different child each time to Pokler’s memory (or is it the effects of the concentration camp and memory…), with the clothes and looks of Leni. One heartbreaking passage (pg.416), Pokler and “Leni” are permitted to view a rocket launch together: “It was a message to him, but he didn’t understand till later what it meant. It meant that there was no violation of security: there was no she could tell who mattered”. Pokler knows that he cannot question what’s in front of him and his anger turns to the shame of acceptance, and loathing for Weissman/Blicero.

A chemist, Kekule, is introduced to the rocket program on pg. 418 and delivers what feels like a substantial passage (almost thesis statement) on his dream of the Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth surrounding the World. The cyclical descriptions of the World and the System, in which the System takes from the World stripping it of resources and demanding that productivity and earnings keep on increasing with time, very much resonated with me in the spirit of 1960s/1970s counter culture writing. The Great Serpent dream is aligned with the discovery of six carbon atoms of benzene that are formed in a closed ring. The Rocket Program leadership view this a premonition (“but who, who sent, the Dream?” pg.420) and Kekule is exalted, further compounding the mysticism of the Rocket Program.

Pokler appears to be descending into madness, dreaming of sabotaging the Rocket Program and fleeing to England. He is certain now that “Ilse” is an imposter and is permitted an out of town vacation to Zwolfkinder, a resort town run by children, with “Ilse”. This begins a yearly affair in Zwolfkinder with the false “Ilse”, a new person each time, a disturbing arrangement orchestrated by Wiessman as a means of control. Pokler returns every year in shame, waiting for a rocket to destroy him.

The episode ends with the war nearing its end and Pokler being transferred to an underground factory at Nordhausen. The Schwarzcommando have grown away from the SS and have abandoned Weissman. Pokler leaves Nordhausen after the war and sees the devastation of the Dora concentration camp where the real Ilse was likely being held. This is the close-up of the Holocaust that Pynchon has thus far skirted and it is zoomed in on in terrible fashion. The realities of the Holocaust hit Pokler, as well as the reader as we trapezed through WW2 with Slothrop in a mad-cap manner, and Pokler is given a final letter and permit to go back to Zwolfkinder to see “Ilse”. We leave Pokler in the devastation of Dora. He sees a woman lying in the liberated camp and gives her his wedding ring, in the hopes that if she lives that it will buy her food, a ride, or shelter.

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That’s a wrap for pages 389-440! I am looking forward to discussing with the group as this was a particularly heady portion of the novel with lots of background, exposition, humour (I found the Gaucho descriptions fun) and darkness (Pokler’s story), connections to sections and characters past. I, for one, am feeling the bigger picture is coming together in true Pynchonian fashion. I particularly connected with the film theory parts of the reading and the book mirroring cinematic devices throughout. See you all soon!

Gravity’s Rainbow Week Eight

It looks like page 334-389 of the Penguin Classic Delux Edition correspond
to his summaries “Chapter 4” through the end of “Chapter 7” of the LibGuy’s reading site

The 2020 publication jumped at me. What a beautiful lockdown gift, so many years after the fact.

– Nikki

Illustration by Zak Smith – borrowed from the Internet Archive

Reflections

I also ended up on a Pynchon reddit deep dive and the opinions on Gravity’s Rainbow are quite divisive. However, there’s a general trend that people seem to find it more enjoyable on the reread. I kept thinking that this guy’s style goes head to head with all the research I’ve read on working memory. I wonder if that first read gives a mental pathway through it, making the reread itself more enjoyable than the meandering madhouse wander through the first time. Even reading the above summary before the book itself this week led to a significant increase in my enjoyment of this section. Also, a hankering for pie. I may just end up assuaging that with a Big Ass Tart tomorrow (no targets other than my stomach, I promise!). Anyone else?

For anyone else who’s been struggling with this book, I’m curious what strategies you’re using to keep at it. For those who aren’t. I’m curious how, and if you have something in common. Looking forward to hearing from
you all tomorrow!

Gravity’s Rainbow Week Seven

This week’s reading broke from our typical cadence of reading from either around the hundreds to the fifties or from around the fifties to the next hundreds, so, if you are anything like me, you may be a bit mixed up as to where we’re meant to be. In any case, this week’s reading was an enlightening adventure.

– Ben

Illustration by Zak Smith – borrowed from the Internet Archive

Recap & Reflections

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We begin this week on a new chapter (book?) (3. In the Zone), with a familiar quotation “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more….” Fair, enough, we’re not in Kansas anymore, but it’s hard to say that the Zone is any stranger (or less strange) than the previous settings of Gravity’s Rainbow. We are in Nordhausen, which is more or less in the geometric centre of Germany (or Mitteldeutschland). In the early 1900s, Nordhausen became the centre for the engineering and arms industries, and, relevant to our reading, hosted (nearby at least) the Mittlebau-Dora concentration camp, where 60,000 people were forced to work in the arms industry. Conditions in this camp were, predictably, awful for the people who were forced to work there, and ultimately the rockets produced at Mittlewerk suffered from production flaws that yielded launchpad and mid-flight explosions. The familiar Wernher Von Braun visited the Mittlewerk amidst these production issues. Quoting Wikipedia “More people famously died constructing these weapons [V-2s and V-1s] under horrific conditions than were killed by their actual detonations.” As an aside, the excellent Michael Chabon book Moonglow features scenes of the main character (Chabon’s grandpa)’s exploration of the horrors of the Mittlewerk tunnels and manhunt for Von Braun.

Slothrop has been relieved of his shoes “by some DP with fingers lighter than dreams” on his way from Switzerland across Bavaria. In return, they’ve left a tulip between his toes, a perceived sign of Katje. Major Duane Marvy has departed (not much discussed here, but important later). Slothrop’s rambling through the Zone, trading a doll’s lapis lazuli eyes for a ride and half a boiled potato and being confronted with signs of Katje. He (improbably) feeds a horrible-smelling fire with the human (Russian Jewess) hair from the doll’s head as toys roll towards the fire. Slothrop chats with the (ghost of?) the doll’s owner.

He now has the chance to dig a bit deeper into the files bootlegged for him by Mario Schweitar back in Zürich. Imipolex G was ordered by one Franz Pökler and was to be delivered to Nordhausen and the Mittlewerke, where the rockets were supposed to be produced en masse, but which has since (back in Feb/March) been evacuated. So Slothrop, as ace reporter Ian Scuffling, decides to do some boots-on-the-ground journalism at the Mittlewerke. Slothrop gets on a train (I think) to the Mittelwerke with “thirty other cold and tattered souls [mostly kids], eyes all pupil, lips cratered with sores” who are singing a Displaced Persons song.

We learn more about what is in the dossier on Laszlo Jamf. Jamf is one of those characters who seems to be connected in some way with nearly all other characters, organizations, and events in the novel. An incomplete list: Grössli Chemical Corp – ultimately IG Farben, (Uncle) Lyle Bland (of Boston, Mass), Stinnes, Walter Rathenau, Krupp and Thyssen (took me a bit to realize why these names are familiar: ThyssenKrupp manufactured the elevator that I ride up to my office every day), Weimar Republic, and, invariably, the Slothrop Paper Company. Notable line from this segment “Those were the days when you carried marks around in wheelbarrows to your daily shopping and used them for toilet paper, assuming you had anything to shit.” Jamf was, evidently, an all-too-familiar from our modern times, shyster who profits off of sketchy dealings in which fake (crypto?) currency is, invented, bought, and sold to help profit from the purchase of the instruments of war. Slothrop gets inexplicably aroused and is enveloped by a soft and chemical, threatening, haunting smell from before his conscious memory begins – the breath of the Forbidden Wing. In fact, the smell if Imipolex G. Jamf paid $5000 for Slothrop’s education at Harvard, and Slothrop realizes he’s been sold to IG Farben like a side of beef. Slothrop realizes that he may have been under observation by the IG since he was born.

Slothrop’s freaking out, so decides to climb a ladder up to the top of the freight car that he is riding in (towards Nordhuasen and the Mittelwerke), where he meets Major Marvy, who is, surprisingly, “really fat” and whose pants are “bloused” (great verb) into his shiny combat boots and whose eyes are “like safety valves that pop out at you whenever the pressure gets too high.” In addition to being confused by this version of Marvy, Slothrop’s feet are cold, because he is still not wearing any shoes. Racist conversation with Marvy ensues, and we are then introduced to Oberst Enzian, “a tall African with a full imperial beard” and member of the Schwarzkommando, as he throws the Major from the roof. Enzian doesn’t believe Slothrop’s war correspondent ploy, but they do finally get to Nordhausen.

We meet the “thin, awkward, very young” Geli Tripping, singing a song and playing a balalaika, which belongs to the Soviet intelligence officer Tchitcherine. They hook up, she (irritatingly to Slothrop) fantasizing about her boyfriend Tchitcherine. Later, her owl, Wehrner stops by for a Baby Ruth candy bar. She also calls out Slothrop’s war correspondent bluff, to which he offers his War Correspondent badge and his Hemingway-esque ‘stache.

Geli offers up some info about the Imipolex G device, the S-Gerat, and Rocket Number 00000, which she has gleaned from reading Vaslav (Tchitcherine’s?) mail. They hook up again, and the owl reappears.

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Slothrop departs against the “Sunday-funnies dawn”, wearing Thicherine’s giant shoes with bits of an old chemise stuffed in them to fit his feet. We’re presented with rambling speculation about the Mittlewerke and neighboring Dora prison camp. Enzian evidently had an Illumination, in the course of a wet dream where he coupled with a slender white rocket and you can still view (a replica of) the result. There is discussion of “The Promise of Space Travel” (remember Von Braun was crucial to the development of the Saturn V rocket, which propelled the Apollo missions to their success). The 1.5 pg long paragraph ends with a return to the polymerized indoles of Imipolex G.
Slothrop gets to the Mittlewerke tunnel entrance, which is shaped like a parabola, where he is shrugged through after presenting his SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) pass, signed by Ike himself. The shape of the Mittlewerke is an elongated SS, with cross-tunnels linking the main ones. These were dug by the forced labor of the prisoners. The SS is a double integral sign, ∬, (which I personally will never be able to see without thinking of the ancient meme tacked up on the wall of the break area of my grad school institution where some renaissance-looking gents are saying “We put integrals into our integrals so we can derive while we derive”). Pynchon gives us another lay-explanation of calculus (meters per second integrates to meters; if we’re talking double integrals, we would integrate acceleration over time – meters per second per second (e.g. gravitational acceleration = 9.8 m/s2) to get velocity (meters per second), on the way to getting to distance (meters). In other words, rockets need to accelerate to overcome gravity (i.e. pulling gs) and go the distance. We are berated with various, further discussion of integrals and rockets (with reference to Pointsman and Katje), before ending with ∬ as a motif for spooning lovers, and Katje, of course, comes to mind.

We then gain a visual description of the Mittelwerke and its tunnels and cross-tunnels, with the apt quote “It is hard down here in the Mittelwerke to live in the present for very long. The nostalgia you feel is not your own, but it’s potent.” In Stollen 20 and up, where the traffic grows heavier, we are exposed to rocket parts, and, eventually Americans and Russians gathered around a massive barrel of beer. The Americans are singing Rocket Limericks. Slothrop is hungry and thirsty so takes a harrowing cable ride down to Stollen 41 to get some lunch. Lots of singing and drinking, Russian and American alike, Slothrop is granted a foaming, ice cold shell-case (of beer, what else?). Slothrop, holding another beer, finds that it is the going-away party of Major Marvy’s ,who appears presently with bruises to show he did indeed rapidly descend from the top of a freight car in the recent past. A sergeant dozing with a gun in his hands wakes up and blows apart the beer barrel. So much for that.

Slothrop decides to get while the gettin’s good and finds an old man, Glimpf, Professor of Mathematics at the TH Darmstadt and Science Adviser to the Allied Military Government, to whisk him away. They duck into a metal storage area, Slothrop hops into some coveralls, combs his pompadour forward, and cuts his stache at both sides and ends up looking a bit like Hitler. Slothrop is scared shitless, partially because Glimpf is turning out to be a raving maniac. He shouts provocatives back at the drunk soldiers and they begin pursuit. Slothrop and Glimpf fire up a tractor/train and start on their way. Slothrop uncouples cars to pick up speed. They encounter Major Marvy himself, invariably wearing a giant white John B. Stetson, armed with a .45 automatic for each hand, who opens fire as Slothrop ducks behind a – you guessed it – giant warhead. He shoves it onto the rails, and Glimpf and Slothrop make haste back to the parabolic entrance.

They hijack a Mercedes and head to Glimpf’s colleague Zwitter’s lab and we conclude with a wartime jingle.

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We start with an excerpt from Tales of the Schwarzkommando about the battle between theoretical predictions of the most desirable working pressure and empirical measurements of the same. Enzian told them to stick with the empirical constraints.

We learn a bit more about the Schwarzkommando, which is no longer a military title but rather a class of people, Zone-Hereros, in exile from SW Africa for two generations. Erdschwein (ardvaark) presents some sort of joke, harkening back to Africa and their current life in the tunnels. Back in Africa, Erdwchwieinhöhle was a powerful symbol of fertility and life, but it’s not so clear now in the Zone.

Enzian is known behind his back as Otyikondo, the Halfbreed, because his dad was a European. As the Rocket grows toward its working shape and fullness, so does Enzian evolve into a new configuration. Enzian and colleagues discuss the Final Zero, which embraces all the
Deviations (think pedophilia, homosexuality, and so on) in one single act.

We proceed to learn, in a rambling way, about Enzian and the Hereros and their traditions. Weissmann (literally, white man) comes into the discussion as well. We end with them receiving a radio transmission, and, finally learn that Enzian and Tchitcherine are half-brothers (although Enzian’s never seen the man). Enzian evidently wants a chance at Tchictcherine.

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Lots to unpack here, and I look forward to doing so with you all!

Gravity’s Rainbow Week Six

This section was full o’ hijinks and I enjoyed taking a closer look. As always, there’s layers-upon-layers of symbolism and meaning in Pynchon’s writing but I’ve tried to stick to the surface details that my li’l brain can handle. Enjoy!

– Kris

Illustration by Zak Smith – borrowed from the Internet Archive

Recap & Reflections

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“It is necessary to thread one’s way among bodies to get to where anything’s happening. What’s happening is not clear.”

We open at Raoul’s party where things are firmly in disarray. The punch (Hollandaise) has been spiked (hashed?) and seems to have given people the munchies for broccoli of all things. The place is full of characters. “An emaciated crooner with wavy hair and very red eyes” sings one of my favourite, dumbest rhymes so far “Jool-yaaahh, no one else could love you tru-lier.” Raoul de la Perlimpinpin wanders about dressed like a no-foolin’ cowpoke complete with giant Percheron horse shitting on the floor and on some of the guests. The “mean customer” is, we soon learn, Blodgett Waxwing, military prison escapee, Western film aficionado, and forger extraordinaire. He must have some real special stationery to forge papers with fingers the size of corncobs. And of course that rascal of a white slaver, Jean-Claude Gongue, is busy white-slaving in the eucalyptus grove. Slothrop holds on to some important mystery documents from Waxwing and later manages to score not only a version of Waxwing’s zoot suit with reet pleats (fun rhyming again) but a sweet keychain as well.

The ensuing chaos stemming from a convolutedly looping series of borrowings and dealings between Tamara, Italo, Waxwing, Theophile and Raoul is wonderfully ridiculous. I especially like that the summary of said dealings ends with the sentence “Something like that.” which sums up my sense of it perfectly. Tamara bursts onto the scene in the very tank Theophile had put up as collateral and attempts to blast the whole gang of debtors and creditors to kingdom come. I especially loved the visual of Raoul trying to flee by horse only to miss and fall into a tub of Jell-o. (“Aw, no…”) The tank shell turns out to be a dud which only manages to put holes in a few walls and wreck a painting of Virtue and Vice, the symbolism of which could’ve been milked to oblivion in my grade 12 English class. Slothrop gets to play the hero once more (for real this time) and manages to have a physical altercation with a female without getting a boner. After Tamara is taken away Slothrop returns the envelope to Waxwing and is given not only the coveted suit and keychain but also a special business card and instructions to head to Nice.

The scene at the end of this section recounting how Ricky Gutiérrez’s suit ended up in Europe was touching and sad. The Anglo vigilantes beating him up while police look on (and give advice to the chuds) before intervening and arresting the non-white victim is all too familiar. I’ll leave it to you to read more about the Zoot Suit Riots if you’re in the mood for learning about another depressing chapter in history. Ricky hocking his suit is something that will resurface later when Slothrop is forced to pawn it for a bit of baloney money.

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“We are obsessed with building labyrinths… To draw ever more complex patterns on the blank sheet.”

I found this doozy of a section simultaneously long and breezy. We get a lot more detail on the origins and chemical composition of Imipolex G, the substance developed by Laszlo Jamf and used to manipulate baby Tyrone’s brain and body. Someone with the right knowledge could likely speak to the coherence or incoherence of the chemistry-speak being used here. Either way, I enjoyed the passage. Some standouts for me were the bit about nylon being “an announcement of Plasticity’s central canon: that chemists were no longer to be at the mercy of Nature” and “Plasticity’s virtuous triad of Strength, Stability and Whiteness” being often “taken for Nazi graffiti”. Albert Hoffman, father of LSD (as every schoolchild knows), also gets a nod.

Slothrop’s fantasy raid on Shell Mex House with Waxwing in tow (acting as the Zoot-suit Zanies, lol) is pure, gleeful comic book violence. (Side thought: maybe Slothrop reading a *Plastic* Man comic earlier on was a bit too on-the-nose?). From the parts list, he gets a clue pointing towards that elusive Document SG-1. “S-Gerät, 11/00000”. At the Casino restaurant, last Tuesday’s London Times has been conspicuously left at the table where Slothrop happens to sit. He learns of Tantivy’s purported death, with a obit stinking of feigned glory signed by none other than that false friend, Theodore Bloat. Before heading off to Nice, he has a few last words with Hilary Bounce who’s evidently had a nice night with Michele. I can’t help but wonder if she made off with his IG Farben trinket after all.

And off we go! Down through shifty, duplicitous dealings in backrooms, corridors and cafés in the classic espionage style. Slothrop manages to shake the big-t Them off his tail by disguising his pal Claude in his own “pseudo-Tahitian bathing trunks”. I think the Citroën with the keys left in was intentionally planted for our hero, but I like to believe he has a shady past as a car thief and just had a sixth sense… The image of Tyrone rolling into town in his white zoot suit, sunglasses, and Panama hat (think straw fedora) is goofy as hell and seems to be as far from camouflaged as he can get. When he reaches his hotel I love the line about the drunks lying in the hallways with “eyelids like tiny loaves brushed with a last glaze of setting sun”. It’s really evocative and made me crave a good brioche.

At the hotel, he encounters various comrades-in-arms who respond effusively to the sight of Waxwing’s card. He gets a fake id, some money, and a warning to stay away from the girls who work in the hotel (“Aw…”). He has a miserable sleep, interrupted by bugs (real or imagined?) and drunks with great names like Dumpster Villard and Murray Smile. He either dreams or willfully hallucinates a conversation with Jenny, one of his former conquests. What he really wants is to talk to Katje and Tantivy but he can’t seem to muster their voices. “What he wants lies too deep…”

He’s nearly nabbed by some American Military Police who are acting “as demoralizing as a close-up of John Wayne screaming ‘BANZAI!'” but is saved by a Hopper Ex Machina. He sets off as Ian Scuffling, English war correspondent, thanks to Waxwing’s cohorts.

Onto Zürich where he meets with his next contact, a Russian named Semyavin. Semyavin waxes nostalgic for a simpler time when people just wanted drugs, sex and luxury items. “Is it any wonder the world’s gone insane, with information come to be the only real medium of exchange?” (too real, too real). Slothrop spends his next stretch of time split between the three cafés he found under “Espionage, Industrial” in Semyavin’s list. A great descriptive paragraph follows detailing some of the types of people he encounters while on stakeout. And then we’re thrust into either Slothrop or Pynchon’s fever daydream of a musical, LOONIES ON LEAVE!, in which nuthouse Keepers and Nuts, respectively, are nearly indistinguishable from one another. This bit satirizes capitalist hucksters and the dopes that they fleece. By design, it’s all a bit much and I found myself agreeing with Tyrone “Think I’ll go take my nap now…”

One day, he finally manages to meet a new operative, Mario Schweitar, who offers him some L.S.D. (I’ll admit I thought the “pounds, shillings, pence” (Librae, solidi, denarii) retort was Pynchon’s own witticism and not a separate and potentially centuries-old abbreviation). Slothrop is excited to learn of Mario’s Sandoz connection and begs for any info on Imipolex G and L. Jamf. Schweitar says it’ll cost him and suggests trading in his beloved zoot suit for some quick cash. Slothrop, I mean… Ian Scuffling’s paranoia is running hot and he avoids returning to his hotel or latest haunts and ends up at the Odeon, a café with a supposedly illustrious history of influential patrons. There he makes the acquaintance of “a swarthy, curly-headed alien in a green suit”, Francisco Squalidozzi, an exiled Argentine anarchist living in Switzerland who wants to make it to Germany (the German Zone), a country whose collapse he perceives as an ideal plot from which anarchism can flourish.

Slothrop takes a job as messenger for Francisco in exchange for enough money to pay off Schweitar for his information and then some. He gets half the money up front and we next see him aboard a DC-3 plane whose description I find aspirational: “chosen for its affinity for moonlight, the kind expression on its windowed face, its darkness inside and outside.” Joke only… On the flight to Geneva, the spectral voice of real-life vanished explorer Richard Halliburton tells Slothrop, “There’s nowhere to go, Slothrop, nowhere”. Slothrop meets his Argentine contact and they make the handoff in a splaying out of all manner of paper products on a café table in which Squalidozzi’s message can be shrouded and passed along.

Back to Zürich where he finds Schweitar once more and pays him half his fee, then gets the location of Jamf’s grave, the site where they agree to finish up their dealings. Squalidozzi is nowhere to be found. After days camping out in Jamf’s crypt without so much as a measly haunting he receives a big fat envelope from Mario’s delivery boy and goes back to the crypt to light a fire and start poring over the Information: “not as much as he wanted but more than he hoped”.

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“When everything has been taken care of, when nothing can go wrong, or even surprise us… something will.”

It’s Whitsun, or Pentecost, May 20th, 1945 (Easter having fallen on April 1st that year). The Nazis signed their unconditional surrender less than two weeks before. Pointsman, feeling “a certain obligation to go relax”, takes a seaside holiday with some of his White Visitation besties Roger, Jessica, and Katje as well as a Shell Mex House rep, Dennis Joint, whose prerogative is to take PISCES under the umbrella of SPOG (Special Projectiles Operations Group). Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, does it? Slothrop has been out of Pointsman’s sight for almost a month after he made the mistake of letting the Secret Service take over the surveillance work in place of PISCES for the purpose of balancing the budget, the surveillance bill being “the most excruciating thorn in the crown of funding problems” Pointsman has to bear.

We learn that, with some funds freed up, Pointsman assembled SEZ WHO (Slothropian Episodic Zone, Weekly Historical Observations) the Anglo-American crack team of Harvey Speed and Floyd Perdoo who investigate some of Slothrop’s supposed sexcapades (“Don Giovanni’s map of Europe”) 2,065 of them to be precise. After a cute li’l canteloupe (sp?) diversion it’s revealed that Harvey and Floyd have come up short: “No Jenny. No Sally W. No Cybele. No Angela. No Catherine. No Lucy. No Gretchen.” They even tracked down dear old Mrs. Quoad, pusher of candied horrors, who has no recollection of the nurse Darlene. Pointsman fears Slothrop’s starred map may have referred to “sexual fantasies instead of real events” but reasons that PISCES is concerned only with a “clinical version of truth” and, fantasy or not, the correlation still holds water.

Shell Mex House is losing its collective mind now that Slothrop is running wild knowing “everything it’s possible to know” about the A4/V-2 as well as everything Great Britain knows about it. There’s serious concern that he’s fallen into Soviet hands, especially now that the uneasy alliance between the USSR and Europe has lost its use. More about PISCES’ disintegration is revealed, notably Brigadier Pudding (name conjuring what he’s been munching on, yech) seems to have lapsed on his penicillin intake. I think it’s sweet that mama bird Katje seems worried about him.

Then we get the vignette of Pointsman and co. near a seaside fair of sorts. The details are pointed and unique as ever. I especially laughed at “The donkeys hee-haw and shit, the children walk in it and their parents scream.” Dennis Joint is making goo-goo eyes at Katje, Roger and Jessica do the opposite, and Pointsman, initially trying to play it cool and “wait for the others to betray themselves” seems to be losing touch with reality. There’s a callback to Part 2’s opening quote from Merian C. Cooper in the bit about Mitchell Prettyplace and his 18-volume study of King Kong for which he even interviewed the King Kong Kultists (womp, womp) whose members have seen the movie at least 100 times and passed an 8-hour entrance exam. Maybe a bit of a poke at people who read into media a bit too much? There’s a connection being made between the fictional “black scapeape” and its mutant offspring, the Schwarzkommando. It seems some version of the Schwarzkommando was not just a fabrication of Operation Black Wing’s psy-op but a living, breathing group of Herero rocket troops sweeping across the Zone. News of this has melted ax-wielding Edwin Treacle’s mind who we find chasing a blue-skinned Gavin Trefoil through some decorative trees while screaming “Giant ape? I’ll show you a giant ape all right!”

Meanwhile Pointsman’s insane mutterings continue to freak out his pals who “begin to edge away, in definite alarm”. The voice he hears tells him that Roger Mexico is key to his operation and that Jessica is the only thing standing in the way. SPOG, by way of Dennis Joint, could be called upon to dispatch Jessica once and for all and then Roger, in his despair, would find work is “the best ointment for the burns.” The voice tries to convince him that he can be both hero and villain in this situation, Nayland Smith and Fu Manchu, Yang and Yin…

“Oh ha, ha,” he sez instead “Talking to myself here.”

Gravity’s Rainbow Week Five

It’s been a very long time since I last read this book any my memory was fuzzy, but this week I remembered. Oh boy did I remember. And then, with decades of maturity behind of me, I was all like, huh. 

– Johanna

Illustration by Zak Smith – borrowed from the Internet Archive

Recap & Reflections

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As Part 2 began last week, the great “fuck with Slothrop” routine was just getting started, and the aftermath of his tangle with Grigor the Octopus is reverberating through the Casino. Like so many in Pointsman’s path, Grigor’s handler Porkyevitch is fretting about his usefulness (can anyone remind me what the Bukharin conspiracy is? p. 192)

Slothrop and Tantivy are carousing, and Slothrop is wearing a really killer Hawaiian tie with naked hula dancers on it. Katje is playing cool and Slothrop decides to ratchet up the carouse, to better get her attention. Can you imagine having a personalized drinking song that everyone knows? I’m a little jealous.

But Slothrop can’t shake the weirdness of the octopus battle, and Tantivy gives him a little bit of assurance that he’s not batty – he notes that Teddy Bloat has been acting a little weird, and that he warned Tantivy about Katje. Armed with this info, Slothrop decides to still meet Katje up in her room – a “keep your enemies closer” sort of thing, I imagine. Plus, she’s so hot.

Katje’s wardrobe is just amazing. I love the descriptions of her clothes. And Slothrop is impressed too, until he gets a whiff of something operative about the whole thing.  From here, Slothrop is experiencing everything from (some would say and they might be wrong) a paranoiac’s view of things. They, capital “T” are messing with everything, and he’s seeing planted and adulterated situations everywhere. He just doesn’t know why. Why would They plant a seltzer bottle in the room just so Katje could spray him with it like some Catskills comedy trope? And has he been lured here to participate in the world’s best pillow fight just so his pants (and papers) can be stolen? (p. 201). I love how he just rolls with everything, chasing (a gremlin?) up a tree, wrapped in a sheet, only to tumble into a croquet game, where (coincidentally?) Bloat is there, and ready to help him into a spare British uniform, which he will stay in for the duration of this section.

The dissonance Slothrop is feeling is best articulated, and foreshadowed, in this passage “Shortly, unpleasantly so, it will come to him that everything in this room is really being used for something different. Meaning things to Them it has never meant to us. Never. Two orders of being, looking identical…but…but…(p. 205).”

Slothrop is feeling the “rainbow edges of what is almost on him” – the Forbidden Wing (p.205, 212). He is adrift, alone, the promised help long gone, with his papers.  He is bereft, and returns to Katje.

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Sir Stephen Dodson-Truck “just materialized one day, out on the beach in a black suit” (p.209) which reminds me a lot of how the octopus arrived.  D-T and Katje have a relationship, that much is clear.  I love how Slothrop considers They may have chosen Dodson-Truck to “seduce his brain” while he reads Plasticman comics. (p. 210).

Slothrop knows Katje is doing her job as seductress, and we get a memory of them playing roulette, which leads Slothrop to consider that the game of chance is something They have control over.  We are briefly given allowed a glimpse of Slothrop’s hazy memory of the abuse he suffered as a baby (“Back in a room, early in Slothrop’s life, a room forbidden to him now, is something very bad” p. 211) and he sees kinship in Katje.

There’s something important in Katje’s declaration of their positions within the rocket’s trajectory/parabola/Rainbow (p. 212) – let’s remember that!

Slothrop is “raising” a moustache. He knows he is being observed. He’s feeling out Dodson-Truck, and conceives of a drinking game to get him sloshed and talking.  Under the gaze of the Angels, D-T drunkenly spills it. He’s spying on Slothrop and Katje, and has some of his own stuff going on. Poor guy.

We transition to Eventyr & Sascha, grilled by Sammy Hilbert-Spaess on the content of Caroll’s conversations with Peter. Eventyr wonders about the connection he has with Peter vis a vis the connection Nora may have with Leni, and Peter recalls his last moments with Leni.

Sir Stephen is gone and Katje is pissed. Slothrop has “sabotaged the whole thing , with your clever little collegiate drinking game” (p. 224). They have angry sex.  There is more talk of the arc of the rocket “as a clear allusion to certain secret lusts” (p. 226).  She disappears.

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Is this a poem written by Pavlov? By Pointsman? Or just another Pynchon song?

Things are in disarray at “The White Visitation” – people are afraid the funding has been yanked, Slothrop has kertwanged their plans, Clive Mossmoon (Scorpia’s husband? Father?) is sniffing around and someone’s lying about it, Pudding is nowhere to be found, and Pointsman is just trying to hold the whole thing together. I love the contrast of the chaos here with Slothrop’s weird calm.

Webley Silvernail gives us a view of the labs, as he gathers his film equipment (remember, they only have the one projector!) and the lab mice and rats chat in der Brooklyn accents. Webley sees the lab animals grow to human size and dance in some Busby Burkeley-esque choreography.  V2 indeed.

Pudding makes his visitation to the Night Mistress (surely Katje). I am sure each chamber he visits has some meaning (1. Hypodermic kit 2. Coffee tin w “Savarin/Severin” 3. File drawer w Kraftt-Ebbing’s likely Psycopathia Sexualis 4. Human Skull 5. Malacca Cane 6. A corpse / or just a coat? and then finally the 7th chamber – Domina Nocturna).

It is no big surprise (like Blicero before him) that old powerful men have a penchant for sexual degradation. And discuss!

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“You may never get to touch the Master, but you can tickle his creatures” (p. 240).  Slothrop is so powerful in his own way. They’ve even made him into an adjective – “Slothropian.”  Ronald Feldspath, deceased, is an expert on control systems and is seemingly attracted to Slothrop in a way he doesn’t even understand (“Is this the one?” p. 241). He has a death mission to complete.

And here is where I fail you all as a guide, my friends. I can’t make heads or parabolic tails of this section at all. Slothrop has been given some understanding of the Control that the rocket brings through Feldspath. Slothrop is tweaked to the idea that Germans are using Dutch Shell headquarters to launch their rockets. He has been force-fed secret files to analyze at the Casino, and he is being followed.  Halp.