Slothrop, Tchitcherine's uniform

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jbor wrote:
> >From: --- <rosenlake at mac.com>
> > It's a clever bit in Gravity's Rainbow when Pointsman's crew are
> > drugging Slothrop to mine his presumed American black-hatred, and he
> > complies -- except he's making it up, hoping for an insanity discharge.
> 
> This is a new notion. Is there any textual evidence that Slothrop is able to
> evade the effects of the Sodium Amytal and actually do this, make it up?

Not able to "evade" the effects perhaps, but to use them for his own
pleasure or amusement. Anyway, page 114, as he's walking to Mrs Quoad's
for the wine jellies (and "Darlene"):

    "They've cut Slothrop loose again, he's back on the street, shit,
last chance for a Section 8 'n' he blew it. . . .
    "Why didn't they keep him on at that nut ward for as long as they
said they would -- wasn't it supposed to be a few weeks? ... The Kenosha
Kid, and that Crouchfield the Westwardman and his sidekick Whappo have
been all his world for these recent days . . . there were still problems
to be worked out, adventures not yet completed, coercions and vast deals
to be made on the order of the old woman's arrangement for getting her
pig home over the stile. ..."

He is referring to the episode of pages 60-71, "You never did the
Kenosha Kid".

(Note: another cinematic reference, Kenosha, Wisconsin, birthplace of
Orson Welles, who used the studio system for his own glory, came to fame
in radio for duping the nation into believing a play of H.G. Wells' War
of the Worlds, then in film for the story of a megalomaniac newsman
(Citizen Kane).)

> > Tchitcherine's Soviet uniform (a symbol of non-racial
> > non-religious internationalism?)
> 
> ????!

"So comrades, come rally
"And the last fight let us face
"The Internationale unites the human race!"

In solidarity,
Erik the Red