GRGR(6)--Episode 15 Summary

[Gary Thompson]

Here goes. GRGR(6) pertains to episodes 15 and 16, a.k.a. the Disgusting
English Candy Drill and the Advent chapter: pp. 114-36 in the Viking
pagination. If you've a Penguin, you're on your own (that Redbug has an
algorithm for everything). Glosses from Weisenburger identified by a W.
For episode 16, see subsequent post.

Section 15 summary (114-20; date can be identified as Sat., Dec. 23,
1944, on the basis of the BBC radio reference [W73]): this segment runs
continuously with no breaks in chronology, unless you count the
insertion of Tyrone's letter to Mom Slothrop or Mrs. Q's dream.

We pick up Slothrop after his release from his TDY "service" at St.
Veronica's, disappointed at the interruption of his Sodium Amytal dreams
involving turns of phrase on the Kenosha Kid and Crouchfield the
Westwardman. It's curious that, in this narrative account of Slothrop's
recollections, he doesn't return to the insights into blackness which
dominate that section and which were the ostensible reason for his
assignment there. Repression?

At any rate, we get here an early incursion of Slothropian paranoia:
he's being tailed, in movie theaters and on random shopping trips. On
one of these he bumps into a girl he's met previously, Darlene, who
rooms with Mrs. Quoad, an older lady who suffers from antiquated
diseases. (Does Darlene rate a star, previously or after this meeting?
Is this meeting accidental or arranged?)

Slothrop here enjoys the dubious privilege of indulging in some of Mrs.
Quoad's English wine jellies, candies distinctly in conflict with
Slothrop's American notions of sweets. (Our erudite UK members might
know whether these still exist in any form, or whether they've been
supplanted by Cadbury and Mars bars.) Perhaps these are plausible as
treats only because of the wartime sugar shortage. Slothrop has nothing
to wash them down with, however, other than bitter tea with lime, and
oscillates between these in one of the novel's early comic delights.
This Scylla and Charybdis routine modulates into Slothrop asleep with
Darlene, while Mrs. Quoad dreams in the living room: a nearby rocket
strike illuminates the bedroom, followed by the inrushing sound of its
approach; immediately Slothrop discovers a hardon and he and Darlene put
it to good use, while they are apparently being observed by someone
behind the shade with what is at least professional interest in the
apparent connection between the rocket and Slothrop's penis.

The whole incident is called into question later (as is the map of
stars), after Slothrop's escape into the Zone, when Pointsman, flush
with his postwar funding, begins trying to follow up on his trail: no
Darlene, and Mrs. Quoad turns out to be a young divorcée who morphs into
the worst traits of the mothers of both investigators (269-71).

More to follow--

Gary Thompson