GRGR(4) Snap--to, Slothrop!

[Doug Millison]

The parody of "Bye, Bye Blackbird" seems to signal the rush of the drugs
(Bye, Bye Slothrop) as they overtake Tyrone. It's interesting that the
bizarre exchange of letters (which echoes -- foreshadows? -- the exchange
of letters that TRP uses to kick-off M&D, after Cherrycoke's intro in
Chapter 1) and the changes on Kenosha Kid in points 2, 2.1, 3, 3.1, and 4
all precede the injection of the sodium amytal:  Tyrone is apparently
day-dreaming. (The numbering of those paragraphs reminds me of a similar
convention in technical documents -- you see it in software manuals all the
time; wonder if that might reflect the technical writing TRP did at
Boeing?)

In the song, I've always enjoyed the line "Tap my head"  -- the way the FBI
and CIA were known to tap the phones of activists and suspected activists
during the 50s and 60s -- "and mike my brain" -- the ride we're about to
take reads like the kind of ride you get behind a few hundred mikes
(micrograms) of righteous acid, the way nefarious CIA and other
intelligence types used LSD in experiments at Harvard, and perhaps
elsewhere, in the 1950s.

In the midst of this hallucination of American racial stereotypes and
suppressed fears, we encounter GR's first explicit reference to Jack
Kennedy (on p. 65 TRP writes "say, where the heck is that *Jack* tonight,
anyway?" and it seems safe to say that when TRP was writing that he knew
that Jack Kennedy was dead and buried, assassinated -- and, speaking of
conspiracy theories, anybody else catch the news that Oliver Stone was
arrested for drunk driving and possession of hashish yesterday? ).

A lot of names here I wish I had the time to go track down in the library,
following the advice to see where the names lead, but a quick online search
turned up some tantalizing possibilities:

"Gobbler Biddle" (Biddle's a good old American name, the current Boomer
holder of which if I remember correctly got busted some years ago for
running a high-class whorehouse back East). Encyclopædia Britannica Online
has articles on:
--Biddle, John "controversial lay theologian who was repeatedly imprisoned
for his anti-Trinitarian views and who became known as the father of
English Unitarianism."
--Biddle, James  "career U.S. naval officer who negotiated the first treaty
between the United States and China."
--Biddle, Nicholas     "financier who as president of the Second Bank of
the United States
    (1823-36) made it the first effective central bank in U.S. history.
--Duke, Angier Biddle " from Year in Review 1995: Obituary      U.S. heir
to the American Tobacco Co. fortune, diplomat, and chief of protocol to
Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson (b. Nov. 30, 1915--d.
April 29, 1995). "

Dumpster Villard
Encyclopædia Britannica Online  has articles on:
--Villard, Henry    "U.S. journalist and financier, who became one of the
major United
    States railroad and electric utility promoters."
--Villard De Honnecourt   "French architect remembered primarily for the
sketchbook compiled while he travelled in search of work as a master mason.
The book is  made up of sketches and writings concerning architectural
practices  current during the 13th century. "

Will Stonybloke -- Will Rockyfellow?

 J. Peter Pitt
An Encyclopædia Britannica Online search -- my search found Peter and Pitt
in this article -- turned up a gentleman with possible Pynchonian overtones:
"Cobbett, William, "b. March 9, 1763, Farnham, Surrey, Eng. d. June 18,
1835, London, pseudonym PETER PORCUPINE English popular journalist who
played an important political role as a champion of traditional rural
England against the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution.  [...] An
effusive welcome accorded Joseph Priestley by radical republican groups in
the United States after the radical scientist had left England in 1794 drew
Cobbett into controversy. Convinced that Priestley was a traitor, Cobbett
wrote a pamphlet, Observations on the Emigration of Joseph Priestley. It
launched his career as a journalist. For the next six years he published
enough writings against the spirit and practice of American democracy to
fill 12 volumes. His violent journalism won him many enemies and the
nickname "Peter Porcupine." After paying a heavy fine in a libel judgment,
Cobbett returned to England in 1800.  The Tory government of William Pitt
welcomed Cobbett and offered to subsidize his powerful pen in further
publishing ventures. But Cobbett, whose journalism was entirely personal
and always incorruptible, rejected the offer and in 1802 started a weekly,
Political Register, which he published until his death in 1835. Though the
Register at first supported the government, the Treaty of Amiens (1802)
with France disgusted him, and he promptly called for a renewal of the war.
Cobbett believed that commercial interests were dictating English foreign
policy and were responsible for all that was wrong with the country. In
1805 he announced that England was the victim of a "System," which
debauched liberty, undermined the aristocracy and the Church of England,
and almost extinguished the gentry. His conviction grew in the following
year after he witnessed the widely accepted corruption in parliamentary
elections. Cobbett's career as an orthodox Tory was over. Advocacy of
radical measures brought him into an uneasy association with reformers.
Cobbett and the radicals could never be close, however, since his goals
were so different from theirs. "

Crutchfield or Crouchfield?  No EB entries.

Whappo (no EB entries) sounds a bit like Natty Bumppo.  The "Norwegian
mulatto lad" characterisation might find a partial echo, at least,  in M&D,
in Stig's tale of the inhabitants of the far north.  The whole Crutchfield
or Crouchfield/Whappo/Toro Rojo intrigue reads like a Saturday morning
Western cliffhanger serial twisted and perverted a la Zap Comix.

The "one of each thing" seems to carry some heavy philosophical freight
which I'm not equipped to unpack. I have read a bit of Plato, enough to
wonder if TRP might be playing with P's ideas of Forms, or with some later
response to Plato:
"The theory of Forms has as its foundation the assumption that
beyond the world of physical things there is a higher, spiritual realm of
Forms, or Ideas, such as the Form of Beauty or Justice. This realm of
Forms, moreover, has a hierarchical order, the highest level being that of
the Form of the Good. Whereas the physical world, perceived with the
senses, is in constant flux and knowledge derived from it restricted and
variable, the realm of Forms, apprehensible only by the mind, is eternal
and changeless. Each Form is the pattern of a particular category of
things in this world; thus there are Forms of man, stone, shape, colour,
beauty, and justice. Yet the things of this world are only imperfect copies
of these perfect Forms."
--Plato" Encyclopædia Britannica Online
<http://www.members.eb.com/bol/topic?eu=115123&sctn=9>
[Accessed June 15, 1999].


This land beyond the toilet does seem to be a symbolical landscape --
something like an animated Dali, perhaps? (still thinking about that nifty
art exhibit in NYC someone posted about earlier).
"Some are real, and some aren't" (p. 70) reminds me of the people in
Vineland, some are alive, some are Thanatoids.
The "deep regular wave" (p. 67) that pulses through would be the
peristaltic movement of the material through the sewer, I guess; this
country, with its "masonry ruins", recalls bombed-out London under bomber,
V-1 and V-2 attack especially the way London is re-imagined in GR's opening
dream sequence.
Linking the shitstorm to "the rhythm of some traditional American tune" (p.
67) and then having that tune turn out to be one that was sung by American
pioneers as they crossed the continent, fulfilling Manifest Destiny no
matter the human cost, is rich, too:

Oh do you remember Sweet Betsy from Pike
She crossed the wide prairie with her lover, Ike
With two yoke of oxen and one spotted hog,
A tall Shanghai rooster and an old yeller dog.

("That kid with the Red Devil Lye in his hair . . . " -- is Malcom the
Kenosha Kid?)

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