V-2nd, under the rose. EXTRA! EXTRA!

[Mark Kohut]

Of course, 4 Google pages into the subject "under the rose", found by accident (even though there are
no accidents in Pynchon)  there would be a
cognitively-related NAUTICAL meaning, given TRP:


Under the lee (Naut.), to the leeward; as, under the lee of the land. Under the rose. See under Rose, n. Under water, below the surface of the water. ...
dictionary.die.net/under%20the%20rose- Cached
 
 



----- Original Message ----
From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: "Carvill, John" <john.carvill at sap.com>
Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wed, June 23, 2010 12:26:43 PM
Subject: Re: V-2nd, under the rose

It can be such speculative fun to simply think about how and when Pynchon's key
tropes, metaphors and notions came to him......

As it can be fun to, Stencil-like, to find THIS in Google Book Search: a 1903
novel entitled---You Guessed It..
    * Under the rose
  Frederic Stewart Isham - 1903 - 427 pages
UNDER THE ROSE CHAPTER IA NEST OF NINNIES "A song, sweet Jacqueline 1" "No, no—" "Jacqueline ! — Jacqueline ! — " "No more, I say — " A jingle of tinkling bells mingled with the squeak of a viola; the guffaws of a ...
books.google.com - Book overview - Full view- Add to My Library▼-  In My Library: Change▼   
    * This novel, page 4:  "Rabelais, too, that poor, dissolute devil of a writer, learned as Homer, brutish as Homer's swine....with
    * an overtly expressed fear of women "under the rose" by page 5!..            Such Kute Koincidences..................
 
 
 



 


----- Original Message ----
From: "Carvill, John" <john.carvill at sap.com>
To: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>; pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wed, June 23, 2010 11:03:39 AM
Subject: RE: V-2nd, under the rose

I posted this before, but in case you missed it: having been inspired by IV to watch some John Garfield films, I noticed a snatch of dialogue in 'Force of Evil'.... hang on I'll look it up...  nope can't find it... anyway, one character (a gangster, or a lawyer, or a gangsterish lawyer) is trying to get a more honest character to cooperate, and tells him (I'm paraphrasing all but the crucial phrase):

"...but I mean, this is a chance for you to make a little extra money for yourself, y'understand? On the quiet, under the rose..."

So of course you have to wonder about the chronology, did Pynchon happen upon that phrase somewhere else? Entirely possible of course. Or was he a fan of Garfield and 'Force of Evil' long enough ago to have picked up on that phrase, retained it, and then used it as the title for his short story?



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf Of Mark Kohut
Sent: 23 June 2010 15:50
To: pynchon -l
Subject: V-2nd, under the rose

P. 16, a short paragraph that states that Benny has his first intelligence that something----
love of a machine, linking Rachel's MG w Da Conho's machine gun----has been going on 
"under the rose'--in secret for longer and with more people than he ever suspected.

Uh, pretty straightforward presentation of the historical quest, yes? P publishes a
short story with this title that, changed, becomes a chapter in V. Rose appears in
other P works. 
 
http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/slowlearner/rose.html 

See "under the rose' below.....in which Venus makes an appearance

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-sub1.htm 
 
A...and N.B. Benny could have had his first hint or first inkling or first suspicion that
love of a machine had been long going on uner the rose............................
 
BUT, he had his first INTELLIGENCE. A word that started out meaning our human 
understanding  but then evolved to mean INFORMATION largely......and
see the full discussion in the link below, if interested, trying to define the word before the 1950s in which it
is generally agreed that 'intelligence' is info gathered IN SECRET. 
 
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol46no3/article02.html 
 
And finally, the Central Intelligence Agency has weighed in with the following sentence:
Reduced to its simplest terms, intelligence is knowledge and foreknowledge of the world around us—the prelude to decision and action by US policymakers.