GRGR 1,2 oddments

[David Casseres]

Narodniks were members of the Narodny Volya (People's Will) movement,
a peasant- based pre-Marxist revolutionary movement.  They introduced
bomb-throwing, but also had a mystical, religiously influenced side. 
I believe suppressing the Narodniks was one of the first things the
Bolsheviks needed to do.

On 11/6/05, Cometman <cometman_98 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> p11, line 34
> "they are making believe to be narodnik"
> according to the Companion, I think a narodnik was a revolutionary
> agitator trying to radicalize the proletariat
>
> --
> Pirate's career
> The Adenoid story could be an iridescent hallucinatory bubble floated
> over some colder facts:
> "Lord Blatherard Osmo was discovered mysteriously suffocated....Some
> have seen in this the hand of the Firm" (p16, lines 31-33)
>
> Pirate works for the Firm.  Maybe this is how he's chosen to remember
> "The Osmo Affair" which episode could have involved Osmo being a double
> agent with Pirate witnessing and/or enabling Osmo's cocaine habit, and
> finally killing him and/or witnessing/failing to prevent his death.
>
> -------------------------------
>
> p16, line 5 - "daily demarche"
> not familiar with this term, I Clusty'd it (Clusty being a clustering
> search engine)
> and got
> dé·marche 1) A course of action; a maneuver. 2) A diplomatic
> representation or protest 3) A statement or protest addressed by
> citizens to public authorities.
> (this definition is on a blog called "the daily demarche"; the
> self-description on the blog reads "A blog by members of the State
> Department Republican Underground- conservative Foreign Service
> Officers serving overseas commenting on foreign policy and global
> reactions to America" -- busman's holiday: don't they get enough of
> that sort of thing at work?  the great game goes on)
> -----------------------
>
> the other friends at the Banana Breakfast
> I flashed on the notion of "First Breakfast" vs "Last Supper" but only
> count 7:
> 1) Bartley Gobbitch  -- "garbage"?
> 2) DeCoverley Pox
> 3) Maurice "Saxophone" Reed
> 4) Teddy Bloat
> 5) Joaquin Stick
> 6) Pirate Prentice
> 7) Osbie Feel
> (anonymous others)
>
> here's a search result for "Snipe and Shaft" (the intaglio inscription
> on the purloined pub sign Bloat's using for a cutting board)
>
> http://mediajunkie.com/jack/backtalk.cgi?entry_id=6369
>
> "*V9.14-19 Bartley Gobbitch, DeCoverley Pox . . . SNIPE AND SHAFT,
> Teddy Bloat
> "Gobbitch" comes from the archaic word "gobbet," which Webster's New
> World Dictionary defines as "a fragment or bit, especially of raw
> flesh." The names "Pox" and "Bloat" are obvious enough, but
> "DeCoverley" comes from Sir Roger Decoverley, the prototypical country
> squire created by Addison and Steele for the Spectator and named in
> turn for a country reel dance. Overall, the names suggest another
> version of the "Whole Sick Crew" of Pynchon's V. "Snipe" (backbite,
> take potshots) and "shaft" (undercut, screw over) are what these men
> are presumably assigned to do to others in their various bureaucratic
> jobs and what they do in conversations at the eponymous pub."
>
> --------------------
>
> I had posted something about "Bloat's nervous hand" on the "great
> isosceles knife" but on rereading, the phrase is actually
> "knife, from beneath whose nervous blade" (p9, line 20-21)
> The knife itself is nervous,
> and of course we know from V that inanimate objects do have feelings.
> ----------------
>
> One more puzzling image:
> p9, lines 36-37
> Elsewhere in the maisonette, other drinking companions disentangle from
> blankets (one spilling wind from his, dreaming of a parachute)
>
> Is this a fart reference?
>
>