On yellow

[Mark Kohut]

I do not think most of what is below is helpful in determining why Cyprian makes his yellow
  remark........probably has to do with indentification with certain countries, as has gone around...........
   
  But, Pynchon is nothing if not layered and, at least, it is all part of our tangential education that comes out of the Pynchon surround............There we go, another way to define Pynchon's 'music': Surround sound...
   
  I like the shield etymology and do wonder............................?
  The word yellow comes from the Old English geolu, or geolwe which derived from the Proto-Germanic word gelwaz.[4] The oldest known usage of this word in English is in the Old English poem Beowulf, in a description of a shield made of wood from a yew tree.[5] In the English language, yellow is used to describe objects having the color between green and orange in the visible light spectrum (gold, egg yolks, sunflowers, etc.). The color is associated with age and aging, both with people and objects (i.e. yellowed-paper). Ethnographically, the term yellow has also been used as a slang term for both oriental persons and light-skinned African-Americans. The term is associated at times with jealousy, as well as cowardliness. Lastly, it is associated with sensational journalistic practices, or yellow journalism, and resistance to militant trade unions.[5

       
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