V-2nd - Chapter 16, Part I: Kilroy Was Here

[kelber at mindspring.com]

This section is a tedious story centering on Fat Clyde and Pappy Hod (Paola's husband) on shore leave in Valetta.  Does anyone else get the feeling that this started out as a self-contained story that Pynchon unsuccessfully peddled to various campus and real-world literary periodicals?

The Navy must have been a time of real idea-percolation for a budding writer like Pynchon.  Pig Bodine must have been based on one or more of Pynchon's shipmates.  But this shore-leave story, while probably true-to-life, doesn't make for fascinating reading.  Maybe some of you feel otherwise?

But when all is lost, that Pynchon magic suddenly explodes with the discussion of Kilroy, his meaning and electronic origins.  This is definitely one of the moments in the book that most enthralled me when I first read it back in college.  It's simply ... cool.

1.  On the one hand, Pynchon's talking about something that's not general knowledge (I think) to anyone who hasn't read V. 

Here's one possible source:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=iUgEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA23#v=onepage&q&f=false (article on Chad starts on p. 17)

more Kilroy info:

http://www.kilroywashere.org/001-Pages/01-0KilroyLegends.html

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

There are various ways to design a band pass filter (used to allow a narrower frequency to emerge as output, on a radio or loudspeaker, for example - resulting in better sound quality).  Here's one:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Band_pass_filter.svg

They no longer use capacitors, inductors (coils) and resistors in this age of electronic chips.  Pynchon's likely source for the Kilroy-esque diagram may have been one of his electronics teachers, or one of his radioman shipmates.  So the bandpass/Kilroy connection was passed down as electronics lore, sort of in the oral tradition.  Recalling that GR quote Dave Monroe recently posted about the power of graffiti.

2.  Kilroy's a marker, not an observer or participant, of Anglophone (US and/or Brit) military presence.  And isn't that really what V. herself is? [p. 428-9]:  "She was only there.  But being there was enough, even as a symptom."  Kilroy looks human, but look deeper and he's made of inanimate parts.  Ditto for V.

Laura