GRGR(6) - section 8

[rj]

Terrance:
> The war was over before the seventh Christmas. [snip] This is the third episode
> in which Pynchon adds his  mysterious one year to the war.
> On the very next page we have, "six years of slander,
> ambition and hysteria..."
> 
> Does Pynchon provide a clue with *vespers* at the church?
> Vespers are the 6th and 7th hour. I think?
> 
> What's curious is that Roger and Jessica have matching time
> frames and this leads some to claim that Pynchon has a
> problem counting. Or is there another explanation? 

Tim Ware's Hyperarts site has a wonderful meditation on the way that
Pynchon indicates that Rog and Jess are "at sixes and sevens" all
through this sequence:

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/gravity-f.html?gravity.header.html&gravity.left.html&6-7.html

I offered another couple of more prosaic possibilities a week or two
ago:
> 
> 126.19 "seventh Christmas of the War ... " Starting from 1938? From when
> Roger was co-opted into war service, perhaps? Or is it suddenly 1945?

If part of Pynchon's theme is that "the War" is ongoing throughout human
history (as we've conjectured here before), then it isn't illogical for
Rog to refer to it in terms of the length of time he has been at its
disposal (i.e. employed in its service). "The War" is his mother (39.37)
in that it feeds and clothes him as well, and pays the bills.

Christmas 1944 *would* be the sixth Christmas of WWII, wouldn't it, so
the "six years of slander line" isn't innumerate?

Pynchon just doesn't make those sorts of "mistakes". Not accidentally,
anyway. (Cf. the 'Intro' to Slow Learner where he talks about the
temperature he chose for Aubade and Callisto's hermetically-sealed
eco-environment.)

best