GRGR(13) lapis lazuli eyes

[Doug Millison]

Great start on GRGR(13) ...and big thanks to Terrance for stirring up a fun
discussion on GRGR(12) ...

 "... from the hair of a blonde
> doll with lapis lazuli eyes. He kept those eyes." -- GR 282.1-2
is there an echo of _The Wasteland_ ("those were pearls that were his
>eyes") here

That originally comes from _The Tempest_ doesn't it, or am I hallucinating
again?  "Full fathom five. . ." Having picked that nit, I do like this
interlude with the doll and the little witch girl dancing over the "bones
of dead rabbits and kittens".  (Slothrop feeding the hair of the "Russian
Jewess" to the flames the hair's original owner probably didn't escape is
an extra creepy touch that plugs into the Holocaust background, too.) The
toy ape is nice after the recent King Kong allusions, and I wonder if the
toy crow lines up in any sort of mythical totem sequence I should
recognize. TRP expands on the little girl theme and otherwise parallels
Slothrop's paranoid quest in Pokler's story when we get to the mid-point
(Pokler with his little "daughters" at Zwolfkinder, Pokler's paranoia about
how and why he gets to be where he gets to be precisely when he gets there
echoing Slothrop's paranoia) of the novel.  (I just read that episode last
night and it blew me away, all over again. I don't want to jump the gun,
but .... I'm sure I'm not the first person to observe that Zwolfkinder and
its proximity to and the role it plays vis-a-vis the A4 industry brings to
mind Disneyland and the southern California aerospace industry in the 60s
-- complete with some of those old Nazi rocket scientists, too, I'll bet --
when Pynchon is writing it. And, well, lots to say about that episode, but
I'll wait until we get there I guess.)

>2) TRP professes admiration for the work of Kerouac in the intro to _Slow
>Learner_.
>is the inclusion of "out on the road" in the listing of places where Slothrop
>will hear the Displaced Person's song a nod to the Kerouac novel?

I also hear a lot of the late '50s early '60s folk revival in that
Displaced Person's song (the kind Richard and Mimi Farina might have played
for their buddy Tom, perhaps).  "Trains are meant for night and ruin. We
are meant for song, and sin." Is this song the first in GR that's not a
wisecracking parody? Wonder if that means the author wants us to take it
straight?  Geli Tripping (always loved that "gaily tripping", speaking of
LSD) sings a straightforwardly sentimental song, too, on pp. 289-290.

Catch you all next weekend, I'm off to Yosemite with my son and the rest of
the seventh graders (nearly 40 12-year-olds), as a parent chaperone for a
camping field trip. Along with the rest of the kids, I had to agree not to
bring any illegal drugs on this trip. Oh, and we had to agree not to pack
any guns either.

-Doug