Gravity's Rainbow Deathmarch, Week 1, thread 2

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• xian | January 14, 2005 10:58 PM | Reply

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  I don't think this is too far into the second week's read, but when Slothrop is "under narcosis" and remembering or fantasizing about an night at a jazz club in Roxbury, the men's room attendant is a red haired "negro" with a conk. I was thinking this might be Malcolm X given some of the descriptions in the autobiography of same, and then he goes and mentions that the guy's real name is Malcolm and that clinched it for me.

• Jeff | January 15, 2005 9:49 AM | Reply

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  Okay, here's a couple interesting annotations I found online regarding some of the names. (And I, for one, am someone who did, at least, get the "batman" joke, which, Cecil, as a comics fan, you really should have got--for shame!)....

  *V9.14-19 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.

  V11.25 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"! (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!)

• e. | January 15, 2005 4:38 PM | Reply

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  Thanks for the Malcolm connection, as well as the names background. That men's room scene, and the story that flowed out of it (anyone think of "Trainspotting"?) were the first really vertiginous trips of the book for me. Wonder about the name of the dreamer in that scene--Tyrone Slothrop.... Online resource is undecided about the meaning of it, although they say it's an anagram for "sloth or entropy." Could that possibly be by chance? Nahhh.

• Dr Vitz | January 15, 2005 5:23 PM | Reply

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  I'm not actually part of this group read, but xian told me about it. I did complete a dissertation on Pynchon (specifically analog and digital imagery).

  A couple of quick thoughts. First to xian - red Malcolm is generally taken to be Malcolm X in critical circles. Good catch.
  To e. - names...Names are tricky in Pynchon. I think they generally suggest meaning, but avoid by absolutely meaningful. Tyrone Slothrop is an anagram for "sloth or entropy." I can't help but note that it is also an anagram for "The plot? No, sorry" which could be advice to any reader hoping to find linear development by following Tyrone.

  For me, the sodium amytal scene is among the most potent (but it goes directly to the digital vs. analog issue). It basically blows apart the notion that the digital world of zero and one is limiting. The "You never did the Kenosha kid" variations show that with limited signal, you can get a lot of message. And at the end of the dream, Slothrop is told there is one of everything - but it's one pure indian, one mestiza, one criolla...between black and white or zero and one, there are more than enough fractions to confound the notion of limits.

• Other Dan | January 16, 2005 6:59 PM | Reply

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  i hate to bring up conspiracy thories but i have a strange feeling someone is out to get me.

• captain marsupial | January 16, 2005 9:48 PM | Reply

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  You Never Did:

  Finally got through the Kenosha Kid section. FYI Not good dinner conversation. Did some Web poking. Famous People from Kenosha: Orson Welles, Don Ameche.

  An interesting note about the chapter: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001288.html

  Did I mention Slothrop? -Throp, a variant of Thorpe. Meaning a dweller in a hamlet outlying a village. Pynchon's family came over with the Winthrop expedition back when. Perhaps the Winthrops won, the Slothrops slothed.

  Google Oddity: put in Crouchfield, it asks if you mean Crutchfield. Didn't find useful info in either search.

  Late. Kitty wants love.

• Jeff | January 17, 2005 9:19 AM | Reply

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  Okay, just finished the Kenosha Kid section. And in the language of the Internet, let me just say this: OMG! WTF?? LMFAOROFL!!!!!!11

  As pure language, it is an awesome passage--and I love the way he equates Charlie Parker's solo searchings with that search for...places...between 1s and 0s. But what in goodness' name is going on in that sequence---or is it just too hallucinatory to make sense of it? I mean, what is the point of him searching for his harp down a toilet, thinking about JFK, having it merge into some kind of Western-with-young-gay-sidekick story?

  I'm just asking. I don't know. I enjoyed the ride of that passage (as much as one can enjoy a ride filled with "dingleberries"), but I have no clue what that was all about.

  Also: yeah, Trainspotting. Surely Irvine Welsh must have been alluding to this scene. Ya think?

• Rib | January 17, 2005 9:21 AM | Reply

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  First post from me. Greetings all. Have enjoyed commentary and insights so far. And the book. Had to pick up another book to keep me from ploughing too far into GR. ("Stiff-The Curious Life of Human Cadavers" by Mary Roach. Imagine a room full of severed heads in baking pans awaiting face-lifts and you get the picture.)

  Only two smallish notes today:

  -- Re: the journey into the toilet. Fascinating and disgusting. I had really hoped that Trainspotting would have been the last time I encountered that imagery. Methinks Mr. Welsh did borrow too liberally from GR.

  -- Recently read "Outline of Philosophy" by Bertrand Russell (1927). Much discussion of behaviorists and conditioned responsese, the acquisition and limits of knowledge, metaphysics meets physics and such. Many of these issues (science vs. mysticism, or science + mysticism) seem to be popping up all over GR. That, or I've just been conditioned to notice them.

• the RaptorMage@astound.net | January 17, 2005 10:26 AM | Reply

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  Thank goodness I never saw _Trainspotting_. Twice down the toilet in a lifetime is once too many.

• xian | January 17, 2005 1:45 PM | Reply

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  just about every time you read a passage without understanding the context or what it means or what is literally happening or whether it's a dream or a hallucination or a metaphor or magic reality, sometime maybe 20 pages down the road some character ends up explaining exactly what was going on. for example, an explanation will come of exactly why and how slothrop was being encouraged to remember/imagine race relations in roxbury.

• heuser | January 17, 2005 2:46 PM | Reply

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  Enjoying everyone's comments. My main worry right now is remembering all of these little things that will probably be important down the road. I mean, I'm a busy guy, lot's on my mind, you know?

  However, I want to thank Cecil for starting this mess. There has been an unexpected benefit. I am in the midst of writing an orchestra piece, which is due soon and is a major reason for why I'm a busy guy right now. Anyway, I did not have a name for this overture, and I hate working without a title. It's fast, aggressive, sometimes violent music (so far at least). And then it hit me. I went back, and right there on page one I found it. So if you're in Houston in early July you can catch the premiere of "A Screaming Comes Across the Sky." Thank you TP.

• Jeff | January 17, 2005 6:13 PM | Reply

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  Yeah, okay, I just got past the "explanation" of Slothrop's hallucination---the experimentation being done for Operation Black Wing.

  I'm actually just having a little bit of trouble, still, understanding what that's about. They, um, fabricated some kind of bogus "black army" to demoralize the Germans? And to get more info in how to do this, they were trying to get insight from Slothrop on "race relations" in the U.S.? Am I getting that right?

  And what exactly was the point of the experiment done to "Baby Slothrop?"

  My brain hurts. Too much GR, too fast. That's what I get for falling behind.

• Other Dan | January 18, 2005 6:42 AM | Reply

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  So there are two weeks posts for week one (thread 2)? So for week 2 we should post comments for week 3? This system is more confusing than GR. Averaging about 1 hour per 17 pages, seems kind of slow for me but who am I to argue.

• Alex Vaughan | January 18, 2005 9:34 AM | Reply

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  The comment about Malcolm is interesting - I never thought of this book as political (although I guess it need not be).

  Any clues on the origin of Slothrop's name? (Or have I missed something?).

  Off to make me a banana shake now!

• Alex Vaughan | January 18, 2005 9:37 AM | Reply

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  Oh yes! I remember where I know slothrop!
  (The following is stolen from http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/alpha/s.html)

  Slothrop, Hogan Jr.
  744; son of Hogan Slothrop; [From Pynchon's short story "The Secret Integration" in Slow Learner:"the doctor's kid, who at the age of eight had taken to serious after-bedtime beer-drinking and at the age of nine got religion, swore off beer and joined the Alcoholics Anonymous, a step his father, who was what is know as permissive, gave his blessing" (p.151)]

• Bleu | January 20, 2005 5:45 PM | Reply

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  I am behind.

• collin99 | July 17, 2007 5:09 PM | Reply

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  Alright, so my clearest memory of this book is reading it while standing in line for a ferry in Patras, Greece in 1977. Is it worth reading again to explore the variations (brilliant as they were) on "Do you know "the Kenosha" kid? That was my favorite. Really, we should all just get a life.