VLVL2 (9): Ninja Death Touch

[Tim Strzechowski]

131.32  "Ninja Death Touch"

"I have heard," Ralph almost misty-eyed, "there's this touch that you can put on somebody, so lightly they don't feel it then, but a year later they drop dead, right when you happen to be miles away eating ribs with the Chief of Police."

The Science Behind Dim Mak (history, theories, techniques, etc.)
http://www.dimmak.net/

Remember that Ralph is here enticing DL to have a "good crack at a evil man" (131.10).  As DL explains at the bottom of p. 131, the death touch, when used, was "a profoundly moral act."  There is a certain ambiguity that Pynchon is establishing here, equating assassination with morality, and he uses DL as a vehicle for exploring this ambiguity (perhaps much as Dostoyevsky uses Raskolnikov to explore the morality of killing a parasitic pawnbroker).

and, of course:
http://www.theonion.com/onion3535/disgruntled_ninja.html

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