GRGR(6) Discussion Opener

[Joe Varo]

Okay foax...here goes the Discussion Opener for Gravity's Rainbow Group
Reading, Part 6 [GRGR(6)] which, according to Penguin pagination, runs
from pages 72-92, from "In Germany, as the end draws upon us..." to
"...and a little later were taken out to sea."

I hope that my topics are at least somewhat close to the caliber as Andrew
Dinn's have been, but I wouldn't hold my breath over it.

While we're discussing this section, we'll be reading pages 92 - 113, "In
silence, hidden from her, the camera follows..." to "...with an old
tarnished silver crown".  Discussion on these pages will begin on Friday,
13 Dec 96 and will be lead by Chris Karatnytsky and/or John Mascaro.

As a reminder, in case you want to check out the GRGR itinery or
the archives, Andrew's Pynchon Page is at:

http://www.cee.hw.ac.uk/~andrew/pynchon-l.html

Off we go.....


P. 72

1) Would someone who reads German, for the sake of those of us who do not,
   care to translate for us:  WAS TUST DU FUR DIE FRONT, FUR DEN SEIG?
   WAS HAST DU HEUTE FUR DEUTSCHLAND GETAN?

2) "Grafitti of ice the sunless day,..."  
   
   Does this seem like an odd or awkward clause to anyone besides me?

P. 73

3) "Ice of varying thickness, wavy, blurred, the legend to be deciphered
   by lords of winter, Glacists of the region, and argued over in their
   journals."  
   
   Is this a dig at scientists, literary theorists or academics in 
   general? (no offense intended to the .edu-foax)  Are we here talking 
   about some kind of hidden meaning, a plaintext, in a cipher of ice?

4) "Reg Le Froyd" -- anyone care to play with the possible meanings,
   permutations and combinations of this name?

5) "`Bert,' suggests the constable, trying to remember if it's right hand
   grasps left arm above elbow or left hand grasps...."  
   
   Any significance in naming the Lord of the Sea "Bert"?  What's the 
   arm-elbow-hand stuff?

P. 75

6) Myron Grunton and the "truffles of truth".  More ovine imagery -- any
   comments?

7) "They all talk of effectiveness, an American heresy...".  
   
   Why is effectiveness an American heresy?

8) What is "Hippocratic temperment"?

P. 76

9) "Old Brigadier Pudding can live ... it's gone, another gone, another,
   oh dear...."  
   
   What's going on in this paragraph?  We seem to go from a description 
   of Pudding to Pudding's attitude towards Pointsman, to Pudding's 
   reminscence about Pointsman's father to Pudding daydreaming about 
   Polygon Wood (a WWI battle site?).  Did Pudding serve with Pointsman's 
   father?  Who *was* the ginger-haired chap?  What's "no bleeding use"?  
   What's "gone"?

10) "...where the front each day or hour changes like a noose, like the
    gold-lit borders of our consciousness (perhaps, though, it oughtn't
    to get too sinister here, exactly like them...better, then `like a
    noose') -- but also of the War-State itself, it's very structure."
    
    So consciousness is like a noose, which is also the structure of the
    War-State?  Are we talking about the tightening and loosening of a
    noose, or some other kind of change?

11) "Who can find his way about this lush maze of initials...?"  
    
    Indeed. Is the narrator here being rather tongue-in-cheeky-self-
    referential?  Isn't GR itself a bit of a maze of initials?

P. 77

12) Why is combinatorial analysis the favorite pastime of retired army
    officers?

P. 78

13) What is Pudding's "Old Testament style"?

14) "...where the country bedlamites sat around, scowling, sniffing 
    nitrous oxide, giggling, weeping at an E-major chord modulating to a
    G-sharp minor...".  
    
    Any of you less musically-impaired people care to comment on this?

P. 79

15) "Geza Rozsavolgyi, another refugee (and violently anti-soviet, which
    creates a certain strain with ARF)...".  
    
    Presumably ARF is pro-soviet? Why?  Because of the Pavlov connection?

P. 80

16) What's a "toad"?

17) "...some mashed pulp all magenta...".  There's that color again.

P. 81

18) "But if personalities could be replaced by abstractions of power,
    if techniques developed by the corporations could be brought to
    bear, might not nations live rationally?  One of the dearest post-
    war hopes: that there should be no room for a terrible disease like
    charisma...".  
    
    Has this "postwar hope" come to be?  Couldn't tell it by American 
    politics.

19) Anyone have anything to say about the MMPI and how it gives infor-
    mation different from a Rorschach test?  Structure vs. lack thereof.

P. 82

20) Who is Rosie's "most famous compatriot" and what would make the staff
    "swear they've seen him crawling headfirst down the north facade"?

21) Any comments on the transition from Poinstman's "We want to expose
    Slothrop to the German rocket...." to the description of the White
    Visitation?  Personally, I can almost see the camera work.

P. 83

22) Why does Pynchon begin this section by writing in a script form?  
    What purpose/function does it serve?

P. 84

23) Who are "Watson and Rayner"?

P. 85

24) Jamf was supposed to have "de-conditioned" Infant Tyrone.  How does
    one go about de-conditioning?  How is a conditioned reflex 
    "extinguished"?  What is this "silent extinction beyond the zero"?

P. 86

25) "Suppose, Pointsman argues, that Jamf's stimulus x was some loud
    noise...".  
    
    Just a note to anyone using the Banatam Edition:  in the Bantam
    paperback edition, p. 99, this sentence reads:  "Suppose, Pointsman
    argues, that _Strobes's_ stimulus x...".  Up until now I'd been using
    the Bantam edition and racking my brain trying to figure out who in
    the hell "Strobe" was.  Apparently it's a MAJOR typo!

P. 88

26) Mexico says to Pointsman:  "...but I wonder if you people aren't a 
    bit too -- well, strong, on the virtues of analysis.  I mean, once
    you've taken it all apart, fine, I'll be the first to applaud your
    industry.  But other than a lot of bits and pieces lying about, what
    have *you* said?"
    
    This reminds me of a passage in another book, a passage which has
    stuck with me for quite sometime:

    ...reflection is not only crucial to human experiencing (by raising
    it above passive reception of the melee of sense data to coherence
    and meaning) but also to the world that we experience.  That is not
    a world we find; it is a world we make.  The romantic attempt to
    reach beyond it to a more primitive, unshaped reality is self-defeat-
    ing.  It cannot uncover "the real world."  It can only destroy the
    one real world there is, the world we mold by our experience, and
    reduce us to the poverty of raw material and raw act.  Destruction, 
    finally, is never a creative act, because reflection in the broadest
    sense does not distort a pure reality but makes it.  Very metaphoric-
    ally stated, reality os not a peach which under a coat of skin and 
    soft flesh hides a true, hard core.  It is an onion, made up of,
    rather than hidden by, its skins.  If we peel long enough, we will
    not reach the true, hard core.  Instead we will end up weeping over
    a meaningless handfull of onion skins.

    Erazim Kohak
    Idea & Experience: Edmund Husserl's Project of Phenomenology
    in Ideas I

    Is this what we have going on here, a debate between phenomenology
    and analytic philosophy?  Or a debate between Pointsman's binarism
    and Mexico's statistics?  Or both?

P. 89

27) Mexico: "...but there's a feeling about that cause-and-effect may 
    have been taken as far as it will go.  That for science to carry on
    at all, it must look for a less narrow, a less...sterile set of
    assumptions."
    
    Are we here referring to the onset of quantum mechanics, a statis-
    tical enterprise?

28) "A gull goes screaming sidewise along the frozen berm."
    
    Another screaming coming across the sky?

29) "Pointsman has turned now, and...oh, God.  He is smiling [...] it 
    will haunt him [Mexico] as the most evil look he has ever had from
    a human face."  
    
    Then, a few senteces along, Pointsman is referred to as the 
    "AntiMexico".  Is Mexico Christ and Pointsman the AntiChrist?

P. 90

30) Slothrop's MMPI show him to be "a latent paranoiac".  Another bit of
    irony here: the people out "to get" Slothrop don't want to use him
    because his test score shows him to be paranoid!  But then, is he
    truly paranoid, since They really ARE out to get him?  Like the old
    saying goes, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean They *aren't*
    out to get you.

31) What's all this about "equivalent", "paradoxical" and "ultra-para-
    doxical" phases of conditioning?

    I realize that my binary representations may be stretching things a
    bit, but I can't help but feel, in light of Jamf's comment on Infant 
    Tyrone's erection as "binary, elegant", that this Pavlovian conditioning 
    can be represented in some binary form.  In my feeble attempt at 
    schematizing the phases binarily, the number of 1's indicate the 
    strength of the stimulus or response.  Are there any bitwise operations 
    which can fit in here?  I'm probably just nutz.
    
    NORMAL PHASE
    strong stimulus ==> strong response            11 ==> 11
    weak stimulus ==> weak response                 1 ==> 1
    no stimulus ==> no response                     0 ==> 0

    EQUIVALENT PHASE
    strong stimulus ==> some degree of response    111 ==> 11
    weak stimulus ==> same degree of response        1 ==> 11
    no stimulus ==> no response (?)                  0 ==> 0

    PARADOXICAL PHASE
    strong stimulus ==> weak response               11 ==> 1
    weak stimulus ==> strong response                1 ==> 11
    no stimulus ==> no response (?)                  0 ==> 0

    ULTRA-PARADOXICAL PHASE
    any stimulus ==> no response                     1 ==> 0
                                                    11 ==> 0
    no stimulus ==> strong (?) response              0 ==> 111


    Anyway, the ultra-paradoxical is where Pavlov says that all diseases
    of the mind can be explained, i.e. you react to things that aren't
    there.

P. 91

32) What about the "black latticework [which] is propped up by longer
    slanting braces, lances pointing out to sea"?  There must be some-
    thing here, I just can't visualize it.

33) What is a "Zouave"?

33) Does this section end with Pointsman and Mexico walking off into the
    sunset?