GRGR(5) some questions on pp. 92-113

[rj]

Rilke's notion of "Change" represents the inevitable loss of the war
(from the vantage of 1944?) and the Allied Occupation of Germany for
Blicero, does it? (97 passim) 

Who is "young Rauhandel"? A German gridiron player? (98.16)

"IN HOC SIGNO VINCES"? (101.2) Here the sign (of God? Death?) prevails?

The "hoarse and cindered passages of the trains at night" are in the
Sudwest, are they, as with the rest of the parenthesis? How can this be?
(102.5)

Blicero hypothesises a non-existent black counterpart to Katje, "a
genius of meta-solutions -- knocking over the chessboard, shooting the
referee". (102.12) More images of subversion (of broken rules and ruined
games, of moving outside of the prevailing system, the frame, of the
'game' or 'frame' of reading as well?) Do these operate reflexively in
the text, just as a good postmodern novel w/should?

Who are "Piet, Wim, the Drummer, the Indian"? (104-5) I read this
section as the Dutch Resistance fighters realising that Katje has been
double crossing them, or that she is guilty of witholding vital
information at the very least -- a treasonable offence in itself -- but
being unwilling to waste a bullet on her. The "lives invested ... three
Jewish families sent east" implies that Katje has been responsible for
sending three Jewish families to a concentration camp, doesn't it? To
their inevitable deaths? In full knowledge of this fact?

It is *Pirate's* penchant for the Mendoza over the Sten which is
juxtaposed with Frans van der Groov's for the haakbus over the snaphaan.
(107, 109) What is Pynchon doing with this connection? Is it simply that
the Dutch and the English, just like the Germans were/are imperialists,
colonisers, butchers? 

The reference to "golden swine" (108) and the Dutch pigs killing off the
dodo babies (108) connects with the later reference to the Gadarene
swine Slothrop's ancestor had to lead to market and the abbatoir's
blade, does it? Cosmic justice? Or a series of portrayals of a human
essence, that admixture of ignorance, fear, love, hate, pity, cruelty,
zeal which always and ultimately leads to the total annihilation of 'the
Other' -- whether dodo, pig, Herero or Jew? 

The image of Frans and the dodo egg as a Vermeer (109) is one of the
most chilling and vivid in the novel, up there with the skating Zouave.
Why does Frans leave it to hatch? Sometimes it's a good thing to be
passed over, preterite, or is it? (Who'd want to be the *last* one?)
This (and Frans' vision of the "Conversion of the Dodoes" which follows)
ties in with the Gadarene swine section, too, I think, the one pig who
rises up like Moses (or whatever it is) not to mention Ludwig's lucky
lemming, Ursula, and Slothrop as Plechauzunga? And then there's the
justification, the colonisers loading their muskets in a "devotional
act" (110.17), just like *religious* anti-Semitism in the western world.
And this:

"But if they were chosen to come to Mauritius, why had they also been
chosen to fail and leave? Is that a choosing, or is it a passing over?
Are they Elect, or are they Preterite, and doomed as dodoes?" (110.19)
 
Is Pynchon sympathising with Frans &co? Is it wrong if we do? Can we
translate this sympathy (empathy/understanding) over to Blicero? To
Pointsman? To the Nazis? Or is the last glib cliche just a kind of black
irony referring to the fate of the Dutch vis a vis WWII? 

The bitter travesty of the miracle of the dodoes, their sanctification
and subsequent utility to human civilisation, the reversion to an
admission of "our" complicity in this "purest form of European
adventuring" (111), and then the sudden cut to Osbie and Pirate watching
the Thames, that "imperial serpent", with its factories and dwellings --
there's a lot of analogising going on here.

What is "the metered winter holocaust" (112.5)? Again, is this Pynchon
playing the mortality trump? Death, for each individual, is holocaust?

And, "noted film critic Mitchell Prettyplace" doesn't cop such a bad rap
here at all, does he?

best