GR | Spoiler | Bilicero @ The Heath...

[Dave Monroe]

On 3/6/07, Thomas Eckhardt <thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:

> The combination of the cross and the circle seems to be GR's counterpart
> to the letter/shape V. in "V." and the Tristero in COL49. It is
> certainly an overdetermined image, for the reader as well as for
> Slothrop: On page 624 of the Picador edition, shortly after we have
> learned about van der Groov's windmill dream via Pirate Prentice,
> Slothrop scratches a grafitto (the sign that says "Rocketman was here")
> depicting the V2 from above. Slothrop then thinks of other "fourfold
> expressions - variations on Frans van der Groov's cosmic windmill",
> including the swastika. On page 625, shortly before he becomes a
> crossroad himself, it says "Crosses, swastikas, Zone-mandalas, how can
> they not speak to Slothrop?"
>
> We should also remember that Frans experiences the "purest form of
> European adventure" (111) while obsessively aiming at and killing
> Dodoes. The haakbus did probably not yet have crosshairs, and Pynchon
> does not mention any, but the imagery certainly suggests a connection
> between Frans' genocidal obsession with shooting Dodoes and the
> "reticule of tree-branches" of the original quote.
>
> And then, of course, there is the wind that drives the mills....

Thanks again, good to have you back ...