ATDTDA (5.3) - Word Power

[Tore Rye Andersen]

John:

>The ¡Cuidado Cabrón! section has some great little stabs of Pynchon humour, 
>punctuating the gloom and foreboding nicely - people overdoing the sauce 
>and "the evening that resulted was notable for hysteria and recrimination", 
>which of course could just possibly be another 9/11 reference?

I was mostly reminded of this hilarious bit from GR:

"Out at the edge of town are the remains of an A4 battery, left where it 
stood as the troops fled south, trying to escape British and Russian 
pincers. Marvy and Chiclitz are going to have a look, and Slothrop is 
welcome to come along. But first there is the matter of Duane Marvy's Atomic 
Chili, which turns out to be a test of manhood. The champagne bottle is 
there within easy reach, but drinking from it will be taken as a sign of 
weakness. Once Slothrop would have been suckered in, but now he doesn't even 
have to think it over. While the two Americans, blinded, noses on fire and 
leaking incredible quantities of snot, undergo what the authoritative "A 
Cheapskate's Guide to the Zone" aptly describes as "a Götterdämmerung of the 
mucuous membranes," Slothrop sits guzzling champagne like soda pop, nodding, 
smiling, and mumbling da, da now and then for authenticity's sake." (GR, 
559)

But of course hot'n'spicey food carries more positive connotations in M&D, 
cf. Dixon's - and later Mason's - gastronomical forays into the Malay 
quarter during their stay in Cape Town:

"'Tis then Mason and Dixon are most likely to be out rambling among all the 
Spices armies us'd to kill for, up in the Malay quarter, a protuded tongue 
[ready for those spices, perhaps?] of little streets askew to the Dutch 
grid" (M&D, 82)

>Another word that caught my eye was 'toroid', as in "toroidal 
>dispensation".  Rather than make a clumsy attempt at my own definition 
>here's wikipedia again:
>
>"A toroid is a doughnut-shaped object whose surface is a torus. Its annular 
>shape is generated by revolving a circle around an axis external to the 
>circle.

Once again, this leads us back Dixon's Northern caper in M&D. Compare this 
description from AtD:

"And this current expedition, if not by its official remit bound all the way 
to Ginnungagap, must nonetheless acknowledge its presence up there ahead in 
the fog, in the possible darkening of some day's water-sky to the reflection 
of a mythical Interior, the chance, in this day and age, of sailing off the 
surface of the World, drawn into another, toroidal dispensation, more 
up-to-date topologically than any simple disk or spheroid." (128)

- with this significant occurence of the word 'toroid' in M&D:

"Consider. We've an outer and an inner surface, haven't we, which 
mathematickally, 'tis easy, using Fluxion, to warp and smooth, by small, 
continuous changes, into a Toroid, with openings at either end, leading to 
--"
"Hold," cries Mason, " -- An Inner Surface? Are you by chance seeking 
analogy between the Human Body and the planet Earth? The Earth has no inner 
Surface, Dixon."
"Have you been to its End, to see?"
"Tho' I come from pret-ty far North," Stig puts in, "yet there's a lot more 
North, North of even that,-- out of which, now and then, a Sail will appear 
upon the Horizon" (M&D, 602)

And of course, on pp. 738-42, Dixon - led by his "Rapture of the North" 
(738) - goes through that "great northern portal." It seems that there are 
plenty of verbal echoes between Dixon's Northern adventure in M&D and the 
Vormance section in AtD, including the repeated use of unusual phrases like 
"toroid" and "Rapture of the North". Surely Pynchon means for the reader to 
catch these echoes (harkening back to one of your first questions this week, 
about the connections between AtD and Pynchon's other novels). The 
recurrence of these statistically unlikely phrases in similar contexts can't 
just be coincidental, but must be Pynchon's way of telling us: "Here: This 
is a connection I would like you to draw."

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