The Disgusting English Candy Drill

[Tore Rye Andersen]

Thanks for that close reading of what is one of my (countless) favourite 
passages in GR. I mostly agree with your analysis, and have added some 
comments below:

>Slothrop's suffering is a metaphor, or perhaps a prefiguring, for
>what no-one (in the novel) knew for sure at the time: Millions of
>people (Polish, Jewish, Gypsy people, Christian German  homosexuals,
>German Communists, aged and infirm Germans, as well as aged and infirm
>Christians from the conquered nations) were being rounded up and
>forced, en masse, into gas chambers where millions perished.  It is a
>very deft treatment of what it might have been like to inhale those
>truly lethal toxic fumes, done under the cover of Pynchon's
>"Disgusting English Candy Drill," where Slothrop inhales merely mock
>toxic fumes generated by the "all-but witch's" candies.
>    To let us on to his intent he uses the word "holocaust" once,
>though not in the sense that it has come to be used since WWII, "his
>tongue's a hopeless holocaust."  This word, with some other buzzers,
>like "horrible alkaloid desolation" (the pouring of lye on the
>cadavers), and "pure nitric acid" (one of the poisons the breathing of
>whose fumes was truly lethal) are sprinkled around this episode.  It
>seems Pynchon wants us to carry the notions of the historical
>Holocaust, a disgust at how the people were killed, and how their
>corpses were disposed of, while we enjoy a tension-filled chuckle over
>the series of disgusting candies Slothrop eats and their various
>effects on him.

And this episode is certainly not the only time the word Holocaust appears 
in the novel: The word is used in different connections (often describing 
the weather) on pages 69, 112, 118 (your example), 134, 205, 415, 688, and 
716. (I just tried using Amazon.com's Search-Within-This-Book-feature to see 
whether I'd missed any examples, but that only provided 6 hits in the novel, 
leaving out the last two: Apparently the machine is not infallible). Taken 
together, all these occurences of the word do of course, as you argue, point 
our attention in the direction of that awful historical event, as do all the 
other exterminations in the novel, such as the extermination of the Dodoes 
(108), von Trotha's Vernichtungsbefehl (see e.g. 317, 362), General Roca's 
extermination of the Argentinian Indians (264, 387), and the extermination 
of Sarts, Kazakh, Kirghiz, and Dungans (340).
All of these oblique references to the Holocaust point to the deliberate 
vacancy of the Holocaust itself, just as the figures in Hunter Penhallow's 
paintings in AtD point to the "deliberate vacancies" of his compositions 
(AtD, 897). (And WW1 in AtD is conspicuously absent in much the same way as 
the Holocaust in GR).
The atomic bomb over Hiroshima is (non-)represented in much the same way in 
GR, through a torn newspaper photo and through General Wivern's dance 
(593-94). In fact, Wivern's dance - an apparently innocent and funny scene, 
which points to dark historical horrors - seems to function in much the same 
way as The Disgusting English Candy Drill.

>To further clarify his method, he actually describes the candies
>with their shapes being those of "hand grenades," ... "a .455 Webley
>cartridge," ... "a six-ton earthquake bomb," and a "licorice bazooka,"
>all instruments of murder.  He couldn't have been more explicit,
>failing to shape a candy guillotine.  The candies are all metaphors
>for political murder.

And this description of the corruption of something innocent (candies) by 
the War is even prefigured earlier in the chapter, where Pynchon makes an 
offhand reference to the toy section in Woolworth's, where one can find "a 
heap of balsa-wood fighter planes and little-kid-size Enfields" (114). War 
has insinuated itself into the innocent games of kids (which becomes even 
clearer on p. 558, where Chiclitz's horrible Yoyodyne toys - including the 
"enormously successful Juicy Jap" - are described), and there'll be replicas 
of weapons in the kids' stockings this Christmas.

>Mrs. Quoad has something to do with Slothrop's memories.  "I'm the
>only one with a memory around here," Mrs. Quoad sighs.  "We help each
>other, you see."  Slothrop thinks, "but this room has gone on
>clarifying: part of whoever he was inside it has kindly remained."
>She is a self-described "all but outright witch," and she will tempt
>Slothrop with candies, as might a witch in Grimm's fairy tales.

And thus the story of Mrs. Quoad/Slothrop/Darlene maps onto the story of 
Blicero/Katje/Gottfried, which maps onto the story of The 
Witch/Hansel/Gretel. And round and round it goes....

>After Slothrop's confectionery-torture at the hands of the
>mischievous Mrs. Quoad, "His head floats in a halo of (menthol) ice."
>And, "Even an hour later, the Meggezone still lingers, a mint ghost in
>the air."  At the metaphorical level, Slothrop (as we've known him)
>has died, killed by candies resembling weapons, emitting "poison and
>debilitating gases found in training manuals."  Slothrop's
>disintegration begins from this point.  It is now he begins his haloed
>and ghostly ascent to heaven.

I hadn't considered that, but it's a very good point. Thank you!

>And just for the hell of it, he has Mrs. Quoad (or some other
>sinister figure) peeking through a window (or glass door) at Slothrop
>and Darlene, while they are making love.  Slothrop spots this Peeping
>Tom and can't quite make up his mind if it is a little-old-lady
>voyeur, or an intelligence type operative who is assigned to keep him
>under surveillance.  If he can't make up his mind, is this a variation
>on Oedipa's never knowing if she knew or knew not?  Which leaves us to
>wonder if we got it, or not, whatever it was.

Yes, did we get it? One of the more unsettling scenes in GR occurs as the 
inept couple Harvey Speed and Floyd Perdoo are sent out into the city to 
"investigate a random sample of Slothropian sex adventures" (270). Here's 
what they discover (in addition to some delicious canteloupes):

"No Jenny. No Sally W. No Cybele. No Angela. No Catherine. No Lucy. No 
Gretchen. When are you going to see it? When are you going to see it?"
No "Darlene" either. That came in yesterday. They traced the name as far as 
the residence of a Mrs. Quoad. But the flashy young divorcée never, she 
declared, even knew that English children were named "Darlene." She was 
dreadfully sorry. Mrs. Quoad spent her days lounging about a rather 
pedicured Mayfair address, and both investigators felt relieved to be out of 
the neighborhood...." (271)

It's pretty hard to reconcile this flashy young divorcée with the old 
metaphorical witch from the earlier scene. What should we make of the 
discrepancy? At one point, of course, we are told about "the gentlemanly 
reflex that made him edit, switch names, insert fantasies into the yarns he 
spun for Tantivy back in the ACHTUNG office" (302), but is this what has 
happened here? We also know that Slothrop has plenty of fantasies about 
girls. His encounter in Nordhausen on p. 304 is a clear example of such a 
fantasy/dream, but there are other scenes where it's not so clear whether 
Slothrop is experiencing or dreaming: e.g. his dance with a little 
Katje-like girl on p. 283 who evaporates from his arms, and the sex-scene 
with Bianca, which can easily be construed as a dream/fantasy. So what about 
The Disgusting English Candy Drill? Is it one of Slothrop's fantasies, where 
he's given an American name (Darlene) to an imagined English Rose? The 
reality/unreality of the scene doesn't change its metaphorical implications, 
of course: it's still an oblique holocaust, as you point out, but I still 
find it pretty unsettling that the 'reality' of the scene is destabilized in 
this manner.

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