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

David Morris fqmorris at gmail.com
Tue Feb 22 15:08:43 CST 2011


Kilroy enters the mythology of GR also.  Just after our first
introduction to Slothrop "divining rod" perking up, we learn that his
ancestors were also sensitive to the aspect of Death descending from
the sky.  Images on weathered New England tombstones are listed,
including:

"sunfaces about to rise or set with eyes peeking Kilroy-style over the horizon"

In GR Kilroys face is the abstraction of a numinous (one-eyed) object
traversing the horizon (like the parabola-arc of the rocket).  The
mention of it both rising and setting connects the "eyes" (only one
eye seen at a time) to the arc of travel below the horizon (Kilroy's
nose), thus the "sunface's" whole is only seen in visualizing the
entire path.

http://tinyurl.com/45ru52r

I LOVE Gravity's Rainbow!


On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 1:57 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> 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
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