GRGR 1, 2 pirate's phantasmagoria, his innocence /mostly rank speculation

[Cometman]

sandwiched in between the Banana Breakfast and the Adenoid is Pirate's
song in the Lagonda.  

PMS Blackett was a Nobelist physicist who lobbied against nuclear
weapons, I haven't found his quote from p.7, line 15 "You can't run a
war on gusts of emotion" (but did find an interesting snatch of
testimony from Philip Morrison, another nuke-building physicist who
expressed a reasonable horror of the Bomb's effects, in an article of
his own and in a review of Blackett's anti-nuke book. He was called
before the SISS - Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, which I never
heard of, but apparently was a counterpart of HUAC - just for his
rather mild writings)

("telegram for Philip Morrison - looks like a subpoena" - sorry!)

Skipping over the song and the magical cane, I'm visualizing the
phantasmagoria as a movie effect.
"...rushing toward the screen," (what screen?) "in over the heads of
the audiences" (what audiences?)  pg 12, ln 32-33

Reading and rereading, not-quite-obsessively (I haven't got any
amphetamines, nor any reefer for that matter, gave all that stuff up
years ago) but with a vim, I'm pretending I can think like a person who
could write a book like this.  You'd have to start by laying down
layers of thought about the plot developments, like one of those charts
where you pull down a transparency with the skeleton, and another with
the nervous system, and another with the muscular system, and another
with the lymph, blood, etc; or at least have a persistence of vision
through numerous rethinkings, like poorly erased palimpsests on reused
parchment (only in a good kind of way.)

If I were the one who had written this, it would be indicative that I
might seriously be thinking of a movie treatment (if I win a really big
Lotto, I'm going to see if I can get the rights and cinematize GR -
you're all invited - no, I won't make you all into galley slaves);
might have had notes, sketches, dating back years (I've heard that
writers do this) and this might have been from a picaresque treatment
of the Pirate-book, originally conceived under the covers while reading
Guadalcanal Diary and Sherlock Holmes by flashlight, and next to the
fireplace while reading Terry and the Pirates and Dondi in the Sunday
funnies; which Pirate book then morphed into a Catch-22-like satire in
the melting pot of folk music and antiwar spirit, (folks getting
together in public and saying that killing people is WRONG, the
wonderful freedom of saying that, the crystalline god-given voice of
Joan Baez, the discovery that American corporations were tightly bound
with the Nazi movement having taken some of the glow of admiration from
the heroes of those war days; and yet still feeling an admiration for
the can-do spirit of the GIs, the intellects of the code-breakers, the
genuine gratitude of liberated Europe, the defeat of the bad guys, so
we _must_ be the good guys) and Catch-22 did great at the box office. 


or not   

(also more unclear thoughts about the Bloat/TR resemblance)
 

jody wrote
>Pirate's innocence is in question.

No, no, say-it-ain't-so!
- just kidding, I think that if Pynchon had stayed with Pirate as the
main character the book could have been a picaresque novel, and we
don't really need for a picaroon to be totally innocent.  Of course,
Conftant Slothrop (and his son, Variable) being preachers, would
disapprove of the picaresque genre, preferring works like The Pilgrim's
Progress... (which is actually quite a read)

If he'd stayed with Pirate, the group dynamics could have played off of
Yossarian's squadron as they seem to be starting to, since all the
"warm bodies of friends" (p 6, line 7) who've woken up to the feast
have obviously flown on too many missions.

If the scrap of a play that someone posted a few weeks ago is genuine
and indicative of Pynchon's earlier work, a draft game plan for the
novel could have been to follow the antics of Pirate and friends, a
"Whole Sick Crew" of the War.  But, I suggest, perhaps a few bowlfuls
of the "Mythical Muthalode Mindfuck" (as in the Ted Williams
40-Year-Old-Hippie comic book and t-shirt, "I ain't been high since the
pot o' 69") made it into the pipe of TRP and suggested a further
knotting-into, a realization that Pirate didn't have enough innocence
or independence to face off the whole War.

standard disclaimer: those were different times

Some rather vague thoughts about Pynchon's use of a main character, but
lots of other strong characters too.  

Of the phantasmagoria, we see 3 vignettes (of a suggested greater
number) - a) "your sound will be the sizzling night" (p 13, ln 16)
b) H A Loaf (p 13, ln 29 to p 14, line 15)
and c) the Adenoid (the rest of the chapter)

While we, the audiences, watch the vignettes, Pirate is riding in the
Lagonda.  Presumably in his present-time, he's still dealing with the
dreams of the "exiled Rumanian royalist" (p 12, ln 3 and 4) - that's
speculation, but the phantasmagoria is 2nd nature to him and wouldn't
occupy his full attention. 

We never see him arrive at his destination.  The Adenoid eats the rest
of the section.  

And then in 1, 3 we're with Bloat, but I'm (as the Rain Man would say)
definitely not ready for him yet.