GRGR(31) Notes and Questions, Part Deux

[Doug Millison]

680.32 "immersed in this diffuse, though rewarding, work" -- Indeed. 
So much going on in this episode, scarcely scratching the surface 
here.

"weepers" (65.19; 674.20) -- same narrator (The Kid) as the earlier 
the The Kenosha Kid episode, same wacked-out voice and hallucinatory 
journey; this episode can perhaps be read as an extension of the The 
Kenosha Kid episodes; we've got "Old Kenosho" at 691.11; Kenosha, 
Wisconsin at 696. 11 and "the Kenosha kid" at 696.13. Jack Kennedy in 
both (65; 682), too, plus the Maximilian/"Red" Malcom X echoes.  The 
wild freedom of the word play and imagery in this episode (Ass 
Backwards, Shit and Shinola, the FF's adventures, etc.) seems of a 
piece with the earlier  Kenosha Kid episode, too

681.15 "Jehovah's Witnesses" among other things believe they are 
chosen by God for salvation at the final judgment, if I remember 
correctly; they produce one of the best apocalyptic monthly magazines 
I've read, The Watchtower.  This is the first of a series of 
religious references in this brief low-frequency listener segment, 
which continue on through the other segments in this episode. Like 
the "early Christian" (681.40), Jehovah's Witnesses spread the Gospel 
as they seek new converts to the faith. I'm assuming from Rohr's 
question "Should I have got on and told him about priests?" (682.2) 
that Jehovah's Witnesses share the Puritan suspicions of the Roman 
Catholic church in general and priests in particular. The Jehovah's 
Witness listens "for news of unauthorized crucifixions" at 68140;

682.6 "Congregationalists" were there with Slothrop's (and Pynchon's) 
ancestors in the Massachusetts Bay Colony:
http://www.ucc.org/aboutus/shortcourse/congo.htm
"In New England, congregations determined the politics and social 
organization of communities. Only church members could vote at town 
meetings, and until 1630, one could become a church member only by 
the minister's endorsement. Most colonists were not church members. 
The majority of immigrants came for social, political, and economic 
reasons, not to found a more perfect Christian society. Nevertheless, 
Puritanism was dominant. Biblical injunctions were specific guides 
for spiritual life and church organization; biblical law was common 
law. Puritans undertook a holy mission to demonstrate the "right way" 
to order church and society. John Cotton (1584-1652), considered the 
leading Puritan pastor in England, joined the Massachusetts Bay 
Colony in 1633. His "True Constitution of a Particular Visible 
Church," describing Congregational life and polity (organization and 
government), was read widely in England and influenced John Owen, 
chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, to embrace Congregationalism. As a 
result of reading Cotton's work, five members of the Presbyterian 
Westminster Assembly, "the Dissenting Brethren," would sign, in 1643, 
what was to become the manifesto of all Congregationalism, "An 
Apologeticall Narration." [...] The colonists displaced Native 
Americans and invaded their ancestral territories. At first, because 
of their nature and because land was abundant, many Indians received 
the newcomers with charity and shared with them land and survival 
skills. Later, the proprietary aggression of some settlers kindled 
fear in the hearts of Indians. The colonists brought not only their 
religion, government, and social patterns, but also diseases against 
which Indians had little or no immunity. During the 17th century, New 
England Indians were plagued by a smallpox epidemic. There followed 
further decimation of their numbers in wars and skirmishes for 
possession of land. Distressed by wanton disregard for human beings, 
convinced that their mission was peacefully to carry the good news of 
Christ to their Indian neighbors, there were others like John Eliot, 
who was ordained as a pastor so that he might pastor and teach 
Indians. His concern for Indian neighbors was not only for their 
conversion to Christianity, but to raise their standard of living to 
a level enjoyed by the settlers. For 30 years, Job Nesutan, a 
Massachusetts Indian, was employed by Eliot as a language tutor and 
chief assistant in the ministry to Indians. With his help, the Bible 
was translated into the Indian language and Indians were taught to 
read. By 1646, John Eliot drew increasingly large congregations each 
time he spoke. Churches in the colony were encouraged to support 
Eliot's work and Oliver Cromwell urged Parliament to help the 
movement financially. The "Corporation for the Promoting and 
Propagating of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in New England" was the 
result. A sum of £5,000 was sent to the colonies, much of this given 
to John Eliot for his work. Many Indian converts returned to the 
practices of their indigenous faiths, but others were filled with 
Christian missionary zeal and prepared the way for Eliot with the New 
England tribes. The chiefs and councils tried to discourage the 
spread of the gospel, and his aides used underhanded tactics to 
retain "converts." As a result, Eliot's work suffered. Finally, the 
Massachusetts General Court passed a law prohibiting the use of 
threats or force to ensure Indians' conversion to Christianity, but 
at the same time, required all Indians living within the colony to 
refrain from worshiping "false gods" and from conducting native 
religious services. Roger Williams became the advocate of Indian 
freedom to worship as they saw fit.

682.8 "sshhhghhh" Weisenburger glosses this as Shekinah and links 
Nalline to Greta wearing Imipolex-G. "the Heavenly City" (682.29) 
might be the jewel-encrusted new Jerusalem of Revelations, in naughty 
Nalline's greeting card vision of the Apocalypse (she struggles, too, 
with the question of free will and predestination). We'll meet "army 
chaplains" later, at 693.8.

681.30 "No one Slothrop has listened to is clear who's trying whom 
for what, but remember that these are mostly brains ravaged by 
antisocial and mindless pleasures." "Mindless pleasures" is, 
famously, said to be the original title of the novel. Brains ravaged 
by antisocial and mindless pleasures may not know who's on trial for 
which crimes, may not be able to distinguish the guilty from the 
innocent -- back to that pesky morality, judging good and evil, again 
-- but we know because Pynchon already showed us when we followed 
Pokler into Dora and watched him try to make amends for his part in 
the war crimes by taking the wretched prisoner in symbolic marriage 
-- the scene Pokler confronts in Dora could easily come out of those 
Nazi war crime documentary films they played on TV and in school back 
in the '50s and '60s. Pynchon is related by marriage  to the chief 
U.S. prosecutor at the War Crimes Tribunal at Nurnberg (his 
father-in-law's father, Robert H. Jackson; see 
http://www.pynchonfiles.com/jacksom.htm );  "eccentric justice" 
(681.28) is off-center perhaps because, based on what we've read in 
GR, many of the criminals are not on trial, certainly not the 
corporate, government, and military officials at the top of the 
conspiracy to manipulate the War for Their own ends:  they won't 
stand trial at Nurnberg, but Pynchon indicts them here in his novel.

686. 5 "Der Platz" has always brought to mind the drug-infested 
("Sunshine!"), paranoid ..."police agents in disguise"), ingeniously 
"home-carpentered" hippie houses of Northern California, the kind of 
places JS and Chrissie whine about having actually lived in (but they 
were in Low Cal) while they say TRP was just a poseur passing through 
to rip off the scene for artistic purposes.  Pynchon includes a bit 
of advice about flushing a stash at 694.35.

688.28  "Eventually Jack and Malcom got murdered." You don't suppose 
they might have been assassinated by anybody like the hit-men we've 
met in GR, do you?

691.27 "The lover leaps in the volcano!"  -- That's what the hotel 
assistant manager worried Zoyd might do in Hawaii (Vineland, p. 60).

697.16 "the Dark Dream" -- Pynchon at perhaps his most paranoid

699.13   "Maybe there *is* a Machine to take us away, take us 
completely, suck us out through the electrodes out of the skull 'n' 
into the Machine and live there forever with all the other souls it's 
got stored there. *It* could decide who it would suck out a-and when. 
Dope never gave *you* immortality. *You* hadda come back, every time, 
into a dying hunk of smelly *meat*! But We can live forever, in a 
clean, honest, purified Electroworld--"  --  Pynchon here makes fun, 
perhaps, of what he makes Mucho Maas recall rather wistfully and with 
some bitterness in Vineland:  "That you were never going to die. Ha! 
No wonder the State panicked. How are they supposed to control a 
population that knows it'll never die? When that was always their 
last big chip, when they thought they had the power of life and 
death. But acid gave us the X-ray vision to see through that one, so 
of course they had to take it away from us." (VL 313-314)

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