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

[Mark Kohut]

Belated thought.

Kilroy, as graffiti doodle, is drawn from a human soldier, so goes the history. 
>From way back around WW1 (or around the
historical time of V.)

Whereas by WW2, as Mr. Chad, he is drawn from an electronic image....

As Laura sez, like V.'s 'progression........




----- Original Message ----
From: "kelber at mindspring.com" <kelber at mindspring.com>
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Sent: Tue, February 22, 2011 2:57:03 PM
Subject: V-2nd - Chapter 16, Part I:  Kilroy Was Here

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