"Togetherness"

[Dave Monroe]

I posted earlier a link to the first page here ...

   "Pynchon at some point in 1960 moved into a rear 
apartment at 4709 Ninth Ave., N.E. in the University
district of Seattle. This meant a commute of about ten
mile to Boeing Aerospace Operations at E. Marginal
Way. Boeing have denied that Pynchon was ever an
employee, since they can find no records. However, the
Boeing internal directories, shown here for the first
time, show the exact nature of Pynchon's work.
   "For the year 1960, Pynchon didn't feature in any
directory, being both new and probably missing the
publication of the guide. The first recorded post he
held was with the Bomarc Service Information Unit,
which included the Bomarc Service News magazine. As
described to Files, technical writing at Boeing for
the Bomarc project was 'by the book'. Work was
assigned, the subject studied, for example a
loading-pin mechanism, then a visit was made to the on
site manufacturing and application of the pin, a chat
with the design engineers, then the writing up of the
paper, using a Boeing style-book as reference, before
editorial approval."

http://web.archive.org/web/20010405172919/pynchonfiles.com/Boeing,Boeing.htm

But Doug's reminded me offlist of this as well ...

   "The December 1960 issue of Aerospace Safety
Magazine, an US Air Force publication featured an
article by Thomas H. Pynchon (sic.), Bomarc Aero-Space
Dept., and titled 'Togetherness'. The article focuses
on potential risks involved in moving completed, but
not armed, missiles to launching sites. This article,
may have originally been included in some form in the
Bomarc Service News, and then used by Aerospace
Safety. 
   "In his story 'Entropy' published earlier that
year, there is a possible clue to Pynchon’s true
feelings writing this sort of work.
   "'I believe the phrase is Togetherness.'
   "'Aarrgghh.'
   "'Exactly. You find that one a bit noisy, don't
you.'" 
   "Did Pynchon find his inspiration from the Lenny
Bruce album, 'Togetherness'?"

http://web.archive.org/web/20010415011608/pynchonfiles.com/BoeingPage2.htm

And, further ...

   "Boeing is called Yoyodyne Inc., in Pynchon's
novels. (A play on the rocket engineering company
Rocketdyne who developed the F-1 engine for the Saturn
V, which Boeing was also a contractor.) Described as
an east coast company with so many defense contracts
it didn't know what to do with them."

http://web.archive.org/web/20010418175219/pynchonfiles.com/Boeingpage3.htm

And wait, there's more ...

http://web.archive.org/web/20010422023316/pynchonfiles.com/Boeingpage4.htm

Thank you, Wayback Machine ...

http://web.archive.org/web/20010603025543/pynchonfiles.com/PynchonFilesMainPage.htm

And tahnks again, Doug.  Okay, we seem to have a whole
'nother week here, so (right, Tim?) ... but really,
Terrance, et al., anytime you want to set in o
Gravity's Rainbow, or whoever's hosting next ...

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com