VV(12): Mondaugen

[Dave Monroe]

"Mondaugen's Story" (V., Ch. 9, pp. 229-79)

"Mondaugen" = "moon eyes" (Ger.)

Appropriate enough given not only his possibly
astronomical concern, i.e., "sferics" ...

"No one knew exactly what caused any of them.  Some
said sunspots, others lighting bursts; but everyone
agreed that in there someplace was the earth's
magnetic field ..." (p. 230)

Not to mention his physiognomy in general.  In 1956
...

"a balding and porcine gentleman" (p. 227)

But even that "May morning in 1922" ...

"More voluptuous than fat, with fair hair, long
eyelashses and a shy smile" (p. 229)

Moon eyed, moon faced, and, eventually, moon headed,
even moon, er, mooned?  But also ...

"he had worked, yes, at Peenemunde, developing
Vergeltungswaffe Eins and Zwei" (pp. 227-8)

... that is, of course, V(engeance) Weapons 1 and 2,
the latter of course being the precursor to both the
Saturn V and the ICBM, "a good Rocket to take us to
the stars, an evil Rocket for the World’s suicide" (GR
727).  By the way, thanks, Otto, for having that line
online ...

http://www.itap.de/homes/otto/pynchon/gr71.htm

We've posted plenty here on Peenemunde, the V-2, et
al., here, of course, so ... but I will note that it
does lend a certain harmonic to that "aged Cape cart"
(p. 229), "Cape" not only as in "South" or "Southwest
Africa," but, also, as in "Canaveral" (later,
"Kennedy" (later, "Canveral")).  A "turbo cart,"
indeed, although ...

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4204/ch13-1.html

But also ...

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/PAO/html/lvpo.htm

Harmonics which multiply, resonate, feed back.  "But
he soon discovered that many Germans who'd been
landowners before the war had simply continued on,
allowed by the government of the Cape to keep their
citizenship, property and native workers" (p. 230). 
Think "the government of the Cape" = NASA = the U.S.
o' A., those "many Germans," those "landowners" = the
U.S. Space Program under Walter von Braun, the "Rocket
Team" many of whom "had, yes, worked at Peenemunde"
...

Beon, Yves.  Planet Dora: A Memoir of the
   Holocaust and the Birth of the Space Age.
   Trans. Richard L. Fague.  Boulder, CO:
   Westview, 1997.

Dornberger, Walter.  V-2.  New York: Viking, 1954.

Neufeld, Michael J.  The Rocket and the Reich:
   Peenemunde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile
   Era.  Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1996 [1994]

Wegener, Peter P.  The Peenemunde Wind Tunnels:
   A Memoir.  New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1996.

http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy/history/VonBraun/VonBraun.html

http://foia.fbi.gov/vonbraun.htm

... and recall the "native workers" at Dora (albeit
euphemized by Walter Dornberger in his memoir as
"foreign labor") ...

http://members.aol.com/InfDiv104/CONCAMP.HTM

http://web.mit.edu/mindell/www/peenemunde.htm

http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/pages/t060/t06000.html

... and for "citizenship" read "careers," "freedom,"
"lives"?  And thanks, Terrance, for your notes on Long
Island, for your notes on the georgraphy of V. in
general (for starters).  Helps to have someone who
knows the area.  But I see the Digest has just come
down the pipe here, so ...

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