FW: Discussion opener for GRGR(4)

[Paul Mackin]

My reactions to Jean's anwers to the questions:

 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.
 
Me: In Washington DC, where I live, the second defintion would apply. In some parts of town virtually all the houses are called row. E.g., Georgetown and Capitol Hill where all  tend to be joined at the side.  The first defition is of track houses, isn't it?
    
     
 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.
     
Me:  Does this also explain the initial caps in "Downtown Bus Station" (p. 50)--not so much a place, maybe not a place at all, but a quintessential crossroads
for submissive victims? Nice of old Pynch to help us through the thickets.
    
     
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.
     
Sounds like it to me also. But Spectro is not exactly the mad scientist. 
Pointsman fills that role well enough.
     
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.
    
 Seems like scientific investigation is being likened to sexual exploitation--
even down to the fact that octupi are valued for the trait of being docile under
surgery. Pointsman is portrayed not only as a mediocre scientist but probably
not even a very good pedaphile. Couldn't even manage something as 
submissive as a pet dog.
    
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?
 
Roger must be way  past 30. What's a pepper-pot lady? 
 

					P.