Winthrop Tremaine

[Dave Monroe]

   "'What's your name?' Oedipa said.
   "'Winthrop Tremaine,' replied the spirited
entrepreneur, 'Winner, for short.  Listen [...]" (Lot
49, Ch. 6, p. 149)

>From J. Kerry Grant, A Companion to The Crying of Lot
49 (Athens: U of Georgia P, 1994) ...

"'It is, of course, no accident that Winthrop
Tremaine, the Swastika salesman, should have as his
first name the last name of one of the oldest New
England Mayflower families, the Winthrops.  Pynchon
seems to want to create a link between Nazism and the
fanatic early American Puritan persecution of Quakers,
witches, Indians, and other "heretics" and
consequently the very foundation of America, which
seems and important element in the novel's "tapestry"'
(Colville 27).  Perhaps, too, Pynchon brings in the TV
show 'Johnny Tremaine' as a way of providing a further
diminution of the American past." (p. 122)

Citing ...

Colville, Georgiana M.  Beyond and Beneath the
   Mantle: On Thomas Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49."
   Ansterdam: Rodopi, 1983.

Johnny Tremain (1943, no "e"), is, of course, Esther
Forbes' Newbery Medal-winning children's novel set
during the Revolutionary War ...

http://www.mcdougallittell.com/disciplines/_lang_arts/litcons/johnny/guide.cfm

http://www.nevada.edu/~treed/trwebquest/

Disney adaptation released 1957 ...

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0050567

A.k.a., Johnny Deformed ...

Marge: Bart, I'd like you to read this copy of
       "Johnny Tremain."  It's a book I read as a
       girl.
Bart:  A book!?  Pfffft.
Marge: I think you might like this.
       It's about a boy who goes to war.
       His hand is deformed in an accident.
Bart:  Deformed?  Why didn't you say so! They should
       call this book "Johnny Deformed" ...

The Simpsons, "Whacking day" ...

http://www.snpp.com/episodes/9F18.html

I can't find any spinoff teevee series, but what was
eventually released as the film was shot in order to
be broadcast on television in two parts, and was
indeed shown afterwards as "The Boston Tea Party"
(November 21, 1958) and "The Shot That Was Heard
Around the World" (December 5, 1958) on Walt Disney
Presents, which also, as I've mentioned, was twice
given over to Wernher von Braun ...

http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/special/disney.html

http://www.ccsi.com/~srogers/hobbies/rockets/retro/vonbraun/

http://www.vonbrauncelebration.org/HistoryArts.html

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0102&msg=574&sort=date

At any rate, note Oedipa's reaction to the swastika
saleman ...

"She left, wondering if she should've called him
something, or tried to hit him with any of a dozen
surplus, heavy, blunt objects in easy reach.  There
had been no witnesses.  Why hadn't she?
   "You're chicken, she told herself, snapping her
seat belt.  This is America, you live in it, you let
it happen.  Let it unfurl.  She drove savagely along
the freeway, hunting for Volkswagens." (Lot 49, Ch. 6,
p. 150)

Volkswagens having been designed and built initially
as wagens for the Volk of the Third Reich, of course. 
Cf. "Sick Dick and the Volkswagens" (p. 23), or
Richard M. Zhlubb's "managerial Volkswagen" near the
end of Gravity's Rainbow ...  

And, again, note the recognition of responsibility
here, "you let it happen," not to mention the nifty 
vexillological trope, "Let it unfurl," the flag as
daily life, history, America, doubleplusgood there. 
And do note ...

"I took some space in a couple of the girlie
magazines, and I had to hire two extra niggers last
week just to take care of the mail." (Lot 49, Ch. 6,
p. 149)

Again that articulation betwixt sex, pornography,
racism and fascism.  But working the other end of the
name here, see also ...

Winthrop, Wilma.  Tryst with Terror.
   New York: Lancer Books, 1965.

>From the back cover ...

"... fear hovered in the air around her, so real she
could almost feel it.
   "It was partly the whispers that did it....

"It was a place of hatred and secrets--and Denise had
to plumb their depths before finding her elusive haven
of security and love!"

Well, you get the picture.  That title of course leapt
at me from the library discard rack ...


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