Discussion opener for GRGR(4)

[LBernier at tribune.com]

 Some off the top of my head responses.  (Don't have the book handy to 
 pontificate in more detail.)
     
     
 1) `row houses' (43.1) Does Pynchon mean what wee in Britain call a
    terraced house?
     
 Well, a row house is one of a series of identical houses on a street, 
 usually modest.  ("Little boxes, all in a row . . .") It can also be a 
 sort of "town" house, where you have your own entrance, and may have
 2 or more stories, but you share your walls the townhouse on either 
 side.  These are also generally identical one to each other.  So, yeah, 
 if this is what you mean by terraced house.
     
     
 3) `Pipe' (43.28) why does Beaver's pipe get capitalized?
     
 Um, pipe (or Pipe) as icon?  Really, poor Beaver is, in my mind, such a 
 stereotype of the Britisher that he's completely ridiculous.  I always 
 picture the Brigadier from Dr. Who when I read of him in GR.  The pipe is 
 an obligatory accessory to that image.
     
     
    
     
12) "Spectro" (47.1) As in spectre? spectrum? inspector?
     
 This is comic-book speak?  Or those 30's sci-fi serials?  Anyone?  
 Implies a spectre, not a spectrum.
     
    
     
20) "How Pointsman lusts aftre them, pretty children" (50.19) Why is
    the image used "lust"? Why link his scientific fantasies to sex?
     
 There is something disturbingly sexual in the images of the animals. 
 Maybe it's the detailed description of stimuli, to which the dogs 
 respond by producing fluids.  Rather biologically like sexual stimuli, 
 eh?  Plus, the S&M images of bondage.
    
     
32) "It'll be like this when I'm thirty . . . flash of several
    children, a garden window, voices Mummy, what's . . ." (59.11) 
    Roger's dream or Jessica's?
    
 Isn't Roger past 30 already?  Definitely Jess.  Is Jess destined to 
 become one of those "pepper-pot" ladies?
 
 Jean.