GRGR(6)--Episode 15 notes

[Gary Thompson]

There's a lot to ask about here and even more in the next section
(Advent). If I've passed over something, I'm sure the list will a)
mention it and b) fill in the gap, fairly soon.
 
114.5	Section 8--US service slang for discharge on grounds of mental
unfitness [W71-72]. Here as elsewhere in GR the narrator dips into a
representation of Slothrop's thoughts and dialect. Para. before ("He
stumbled out alone") describes action and setting; but in this para.
("They've cut Slothrop loose again, he's back on the street, shit, last
chance for a Section 8 ‘n' he blew it. . . . ") we segue into the
character's thoughts and something like his language. This shiftiness in
and out is one of the most interesting narrative features of GR, and the
source of much confusion and critical disagreement. We wouldn't want it
any other way, right?

114.12-13	"the old woman's arrangement for getting her pig home over the
stile."  (See W72) The folktale that Slothrop (or the narrator?) alludes
to is reminiscent of the House that Jack Built--she tries to get a dog
to bite the pig, but it won't; she asks a stick to hit the dog, but it
won't, and so on. Eventually she offers the right stimuli for the
response she needs to get the pig going. 

I suppose this is another pig reference (still well behind the list ref.
to dogs) to link up with Plechazunga, William Slothrop's preterite
swine, and now golden swine . . . 

Slothrop's inner journey in the Kenosha Kid section, recalled here,
anticipates the kind of arrangements which will have to be made as modus
vivendi in the Zone. See Geli Tripping's gloss on 290: 

> "‘It's an arrangement,' she tells him. ‘It's so unorganized out here. There have to be arrangements. You'll find out.' Indeed he will--he'll find thousands of arrangements, for warmth, love, food, simple movement along roads, tracks and canals. Even G-5, living its fantasy of being the only government in Germany now, is just the arrangement for being victorious, is all. No more or less real than all these others so private, silent, and lost to History." 

[More of this is worth quoting, but that's getting ahead.] 

Other arrangements will include the Argentinians who procure Slothrop
Jamf's dossier from "the classified files at Sandoz" (261) [is this IG
Farben? Slothrop's procuring information from Them comes to resemble
Oedipa's attempt to sift information which is all tainted by association
with Pierce Inverarity]; von Göll and other black marketeers; and Roger
and Jessica, who have an arrangement to seize private moments of peace
under the shadow of the barrage balloons (which also appear here,
114.2).

114.15-16	"But something's different . . . something's . . . been
changed . . . don't mean to bitch, folks, but--well for instance he
could almost swear he's being followed, or watched anyway." Here and at
other places in this section, as throughout _GR_, the narrator offers us
moments of his characters' dialect as well as their thoughts. It has to
be Slothrop who says "don't mean to bitch, folks," and yet the statement
seems to indicate an awareness of an audience--readers of the novel,
presumably. 

Cf. below, "hubba hubba what's this then, . . . an adorable tomato in a
nurse uniform": period slang punctuates the narrative of Slothrop's
wanderings and descriptive passages, raising mild contrasts with items
such as "her breasts soft fenders for this meeting on the gray city
sea," which to me at least seem too ingenious and poetical for Slothrop.
(Fenders as in Fender-Belly Bodine, the soft bumpers that intervene
between ship and dock.)

Previously Slothrop has felt reflexive paranoia, e.g., when he's just
about to be sighted by two Wrens in cahoots--but I think this might be
the earliest point in the novel where Slothrop senses the coherent plot
which will develop against him.

115.16 ff.--Slothrop has accompanied Darlene to Mrs. Quoad's, a
connoisseur of antiquated diseases (115.2). Presumably she has somehow
acquired the information to diagnose and treat these, independently of
the medical establishment ("‘I've had to become all but an outright
witch, in pure self-defense'"). Not to make too much of the witch
reference, but this may recall Geli Tripping to GR re-re-readers: a high
proportion of P's characters have had to work outside official channels
in order to gain some control over their lives; P. ties them together
late in the novel [ref. to those who, like Slothrop, have the greatest
interest in knowing how things fit--anyone have a page ref.? Cf. also
590, re Lyle Bland; the rest of us just have Kute Korrespondences].

116.9- "After that visit he wrote home to Nalline . . ." Link here is
through Thayer's Slippery Elm Lozenges (18). Anyone know whether
"Nalline" is as unusual a name as it seems?

116.15--"ruddy gelatin objects" The image I have of these is the
brightly colored candy "worms" which appeared in convenience stores a
few years ago. Anyone have experience with wine jellies? 

Pynchon draws on national stereotypes for this scene as for others, here
juxtaposing Slothrop's period Americana such as comic strip/radio
references (Hop Harrigan and Tank Tinker) and college chemistry and
biology references ("pure alkaloid desolation," "the most godawful
crystalline concentration of Jeez it must be pure nitric acid," "Benzoin
vapors"; "Polar bears seek toenail-holds up the freezing frosty-grape
alveolar clusters in his lungs") with Darlene's "blithe, Gilbert &
Sullivan ingenue's thewse" and "pure Nightingale compassion" and both
women's reference to the infamous English character ("Show a little
backbone"). 

W points out that Mrs. Quoad's wine jellies couldn't have included a
"licorice bazooka," as bazookas were first invented and used during
WWII. Has Pynchon nodded, or has he deliberately (if inconspicuously)
broken the period frame?

118.23--"Hunting across the zero between waking and sleep". Here is
another of the many places where a GR concordance would be useful, to
calibrate and set next to each other the novel's many uses of _zero_, as
in the section title, and most recently Infant Tyrone's Pavlovian
conditioning (85). Mrs. Quoad's dreams reference events in "the East"
which are part of the backdrop for the Great War, and should perhaps be
set alongside Brigadier Pudding's unfinished _Things That Can Happen in
European Politics_. W points out that King Yrjö is drawn from "The
Secret Integration"--someone else will have to add context here. 

118.39--P segues from the perils of the DECD to Slothrop's prize after
these perils, sleeping w/ Darlene, by changing tones in reference to the
Fire of Paradise, "the one candy he did not get to taste." Not to make
too much of it here, but this should be filed away with the other many
references to Slothrop's preterition. "Every now and then one will
surface," perhaps like Byron the Bulb, posed against the probabilities
of extinction represented by the War (119.18).

120.11--"but God's sake why shouldn't this stupid Blitz be good for
something?" In Darlene's own rapid transition across the zero, the
rocket's near miss and the sound of its approach and Slothrop's hardon
seem to be one phenomenon. The watcher behind the curtain is able to
note the rocket strike and the rest while "breathing carefully"? Perhaps
better at his job than Sir Stephen Dodson-Truck (215-16).

Question: Does anyone know when "on the street" took on metaphorical
meaning? (back on the street (114.4)) Street seems to be a useful
keyword, one that I suspect shifted a bit in the '60s from its
appearance in _V._, capitalized, into "street smarts." I remember "on
the street" from a Lovin' Spoonful song circa 1965; does it go back as
far as WWII?

"Don't mean to bitch, folks" (114.16) This one's been around; Oxford
Dict. of Modern Slang finds a usage in G. Greene c. 1931. 

Other linguistic tidbits?

Back on Wed. with more.


Gary Thompson