IVIV: chapter seven—the Golden Fang

[Robin Landseadel]

Trystero is not depicting a "real" conspiracy. It is more of a poetic  
conceit, like Nick Drake's "Theater full of sadness for a long  
forgotten show" in the song "Fruit Tree." Trystero contains elements  
of reality, but under it all is all the sadness and anger of leftist/ 
anarchist movements over time. "The Golden Fang" is its flip side and  
boils down to entrenched forces of greed. One of those elements to  
prop up the "Golden Fang" is the CIA and Pynchon is more explicit  
about that connection in this book than any other. But the CIA's  
involvement with "The Golden Fang" is a given and the characters in  
the book mention that connection in a very offhand way. It's an  
assumed element.

One aspect of the "The Golden Fang" is the ship:

	. . . her original name was Preserved, after her miraculous
	escape in 1917 from a tremendous nitroglycerin explosion in
	Halifax Harbor which blew away most everything else in it,
	shipping and souls.

This was real, much like the Tunguska event of 1908. and like that  
massive explosion serves as a preview of upcoming nuclear explosions:

	The Halifax Explosion occurred on Thursday, December 6,
	1917, when the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, was
	devastated by the huge detonation of the SS Mont-Blanc, a
	French cargo ship, fully loaded with wartime explosives, which
	accidentally collided with the Norwegian SS Imo in "The
	Narrows" section of the Halifax Harbour. About 2,000 people
	were killed by debris, fires, or collapsed buildings and it is
	estimated that over 9,000 people were injured.[1] This is still the
	world's largest man-made accidental explosion.[2]

	At 8:40 in the morning, the SS Mont-Blanc, chartered by the
	French government to carry munitions to Europe, collided with
	the unloaded Norwegian ship Imo, chartered by the
	Commission for Relief in Belgium to carry relief supplies. Mont-
	Blanc caught fire ten minutes after the collision and exploded
	about twenty-five minutes later (at 9:04:35 AM).[3] All buildings
	and structures covering nearly 2 square kilometres (500 acres)
	along the adjacent shore were obliterated, including those in
	the neighbouring communities of Richmond and Dartmouth.[1]
	The explosion caused a tsunami in the harbour and a pressure
	wave of air that snapped trees, bent iron rails, demolished
	buildings, grounded vessels, and carried fragments of the Mont-
	Blanc for kilometres.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion

This leads to the fictional history of film actor Burke Stodger and  
then to the not-so fictional history of Post-WWII Geopolitics:

	Shortly after World War II, as fishing schooners were giving way
	to diesel-powered craft, she was bought by Burke Stodger, a
	movie star of the period who not long after got blacklisted for his
	politics and was forced to take his boat and split the country.
	
	"Which is where the Bermuda Triangle comes in," recounted
	Sauncho.

	"Somewhere between San Pedro and Papeete, the ship
	disappears, at first everybody assumes she's been sunk by the
	Seventh Fleet, acting on direct orders from the U.S.
	government. Naturally, the Republicans in power deny all
	involvement, the paranoia keeps growing, till one day a couple
	years later, boat and owner suddenly reappear—Preserved in
	the opposite ocean, off Cuba, and Burke Stodger on the front
	page of weekly Variety, in an article reporting his return to
	pictures in a big-budget major-studio project called Commie
	Confidential. The schooner meantime, instantly, as if by occult
	forces, relocated to the other side of the planet, has been
	refitted stem to stern, including the removal of any traces of
	soul, into what you see out there. The owners are listed as a
	consortium in the Bahamas, and she's been renamed the
	Golden Fang. That's all we've got so far.

Coming up next: The CIA.