GRGR (8) Mauve, Coal Tar & Seances, Part 2

[Doug Millison]

In addition to the great reference Joshua T provides, there's this _Pynchon
Notes_ reference from a GRGR(1) post I made way back when. I highly
recommend this article to anybody who is interested in TRP's color schemes
in GR.

On May 9, I wrote:
....Hayles and Eiser observe that Slothrop's first name, Tyrone,
"can be read as a variant of the first important synthetic dye, Tyrian
purple," aka "mauve, the first synthetic dye [...] discovered in 1856 by
William Perkin, then a student of Wilhelm August Hoffman, father of
coal-tar analysis and successor to Justus von Liebig, the first chemist to
work extensively with carbons and hydrocarbons. [...] The astonishing
success of this first synthetic dye stimulted the discovery of hundreds
more and ushered in the chemical technology that branched into such fields
as photography, plastics, pharmaceuticals and explosives. Historically, the
development of th dye industry in Germany proved crucial to the German
munitions industry, a fact lamented in a 1921 propaganda pamphlet issued by
the American Dyes Institute, urging the public to support the American dye
industry so that it too could develop the synthetic chemicals necessary for
superior military technology."
--Hayles & Eiser, "Coloring _Gravity's Rainbow_", _Pynchon Notes_ #16,
Spring 1985

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