GRGR Finale: launching the 00000

[jbor]

I'm actually wondering what relevance all this Neufeld hooha has to the 
novel at all. As I understand it, the *only* modification which Blicero
orders for the 00000 is the Schwarzgerat in whose Imipolex contours
Gottfried's lithe young bod is enshrouded. No nuclear warhead ("Nucular,
jbor", sez Homer J. American, "It's nucular."), no bubonic plague, no weapon
of mass destruction whatsoever. Apocalypse? No way.

It's what dropped out of Miss Enola Gay's clit ("Enola ... GAY, a-HA!" I can
hear monroe's eureka from here, "an obvious allusion to Nietzsche .... and
the Stonewall riots ... and *Australian* slang ...." ) that upped the ante
in the M.A.D. stakes. Recall how Slothrop sees the ripped newspaper headline
on a German street somewhere:

         MB DRO
          ROSHI

It's worth rereading that fragment in the text entitled 'Streets' again
(692-4) -- think it must have been GRGR31, strange how we seemed to gloss
over it back then -- just to gauge the full force of Pynchon's depiction,
Slothrop's reaction, that final paragraph:

      At the instant it happened the pale Virgin was rising in the east,
     head, shoulders, breasts 17~ 36' down to her maidernhead at the
     horizon. A few doomed Japanese knew of her as some Western deity.
     She loomed in the eastern sky gazing down at the city about to be
     sacrificed. The sun was in Leo. The fireburst came roaring and
     sovereign. . . .

How can one more puny V-2 sent across the Channel compare to this? There's
nothing special about the technology of the German rockets that the Allies
couldn't have gleaned from one of the unexploded ones -- say, the one
carrying Katje's message to Pirate, for example -- let alone in that
treasure trove they plundered at Nordhausen. So, what *is* the significance
of Blicero launching the 00000 in the text?

best