VV (1): Notes and Queries Section II

[Thomas Eckhardt]

Section II: Newport News and, for a very short time, Norfolk, Virginia 

p.17

"WAVE lieutenants"
???

"Teflon"
Patentized in 1945.  

"Teflon had a camera." 
The mediation of the world through the lens of a machine (film camera, TV
camera, video camera, telescope) is a major theme throughout Pynchon.
Compare the ending of M&D: "'The Stars are so close you won't need a
telescope.'" It would take a several PhD-theses to get a grip on the
subject, I guess, but it might be interesting to note that in Pynchon you
can make money out of the world's phenomena (sex, stars, window jumping)
seen and recorded through a lens. 

"nee Majistral" 
seems irrelevant here, except perhaps for the Spanish name meaning
"magister, master; Meister, Magister in German", but introduces, so to
speak, Fausto Majistral, of whom we will hear quite a lot much, much later. 

"Demain le noir matin etc."
History, in this case the colonial/postcolonial history of France, intrudes
again. 

"barbarities"
The tone gets a little darker here. A hint at what awaits us in "Mondaugen's
Story".

"F.L.N."
Front de la Libération Nationale, an Algerian nationalist organization.

"Profane (...) was only half Catholic (mother Jewish)"
Catholic and Jewish religion seem to be of high interest to Pynchon.
Emphasized already in "Mortality and Mercy in Vienna" - Siegel's mother, for
example, is a renegade Catholic, his father a Jew - not to mention all this
confessional/Freudian business going on in the story. I have not yet figured
out why exactly these religious/cultural backgrounds are so important and
what they tell us about the characters - apart from the guilt and repression
bit, which certainly is relevant here.

"Jesuits" 
Also of continuing interest in Pynchon, beginning with "Mortality and Mercy"
and ending, for the time being, with "M&D".

"WAVY"
??? Was/Is this an actual station or one of those dubious invented acronyms?

"Groan, went the bed."
Because of Benny and Paola making themselves comfortable or because of the
preceding dialogue? Probably both.

p.20: "snow-shrouds"
Pynchon's combination. Reminds at least this reader of "The Whiteness of the
Whale". The association of snow and death (also emphasized in Joyce's "The
Dead" and Mann's "Zauberberg", not to mention Derek Walcott's "Omeros")
seems of significance for the following description of Profane's fear of
inanimateness.

p. 20-21: Introduction of inanimateness which is a major, major theme in
"V.". See commentary section.

P. 21 "Susanna Squaducci"
???