GRGR(19): Whipping Gretel

[Paul Mackin]

On Sun, 23 Jan 2000, Jeremy Osner wrote:

> The transition from Slothrop's experience whipping and fucking Greta
> Erdmann, to Pökler's experience years earlier, fantasizing about doing
> it,
> is totally seamless, which suggests to me some sort of kinship between
> the
> two of them. What do they have in common besides their real/imagined
> coupling with Marge? -- They are both engineers, I guess -- I mean I
> never
> really thought of Slothrop as an engineer before, but he is, right? Or
> else
> how could he understand all the A4 stuff...

I never thought of Slothrop an as Engineer. Wouldn't P have had him
going to MIT instead of Harvard? Yet, he musta had some techinical
expertise or else he'd a been off--at the time we first meet him--leading
an infantry platoon some place.

But the answer to the question of what S and P have in common is the
answer Benjamin was given in The Graduate--Plastics--or more specifically
Imipolex G which figured in Slopthrop's early conditioning and Pokler's
(the pickler) development of "a plastic fairing, of a certain size, with
certain insulating properties" for rocket 0000. Both gentlemen had
"special destinies" as far a GR is concerned. Something like that anyway. 

			p.