Tyrone Slothrop's horoscope

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: <vze422fs at verizon.net>
To: "David Morris" <fqmorris at hotmail.com>; <ottosell at yahoo.de>;
<pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, September 21, 2002 9:06 AM
Subject: Re: Tyrone Slothrop's horoscope


> on 9/20/02 10:09 AM, David Morris at fqmorris at hotmail.com wrote:
>
> >
> >> From: <vze422fs at verizon.net>
> >> The legal drinking age for a pal of Joseph Kennedy's son in the 1930's,
> >> such as Tyrone Slothrop, would be "old enough to order without slurring
too
> >> much or causing a fight".
> >
> > I would agree with this.  And don't forget that the bar was in Roxbury,
> > where legality would be second to making a buck.  Tyrone would as an
> > undergraduate have been between 18 and 21.  I don't remember if we're
told
> > which year of College he's in...
> >
> > DM

>
> Thanks for the backup. Where would Red Foxx and Malcom X be in this
> particular scenario? My point was that you cannot infer someone's birth
year
> by the date at which he started drinking in a college city which is also a
> merchant port with a substantial immigrant population and a history of
> smuggling, corruption, back-room deals, and Catholicism. I frequent a bar
> which proudly boasts that it did not close for prohibition. The mayor and
> the police commissioner needed somewhere to meet for a beer. In a much
later
> decade, I drank at the Rat in Kenmore Square at age 16. I was considered a
> regular. Pynchon knows Massachusetts culture.  Someone who guesses at a
> character's age based upon legal drinking requirements in the Commonwealth
> is orbiting a planet that I have never visited.
>
> "I am shocked! Shocked to learn that gambling is going on in this
> establishment!"
>
> "Your winnings, sir"
>
> "Thank you very much."
>
> Still laughing,
>
> Joe
>

Ich schau' Dir in die Augen, Kleines

This is still fiction, a composed text. You say that "you cannot infer
someone's birth year by the date at which he started drinking (...)", but
this is only one of the points Douglas has used to get this date which
seemed to be the most plausible to him. It's his (maybe risky) thesis that
Pynchon at least went so far into astrology to look for a specific date that
would fit if someone ever would take a closer look.

I am neither an astrologer nor an expert on drinking in Roxbury but if this
is your only objection . . . what does your astrologer say? If I could only
get mine to read Pynchon! So I am glad & thankful that Douglas took up the
task as the first one to look at Pynchon's numerous references to astrology
from an astrologer's point of view.

regards

Otto

"Kepler said that Astrology is Astronomy´s wanton little sister,
who goes out and sells herself that Astronomy may keep her virtue."
(M&D 136)


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