Re: GR translation: dithering between executioner’s silence and the Big Time

[Michael Bailey]

I read it a little differently, as there's a bifurcation or alternation of
events and attitudes on the part of those watching the Anubis.  We get the
singling up of lines after the seduction of the Soviet guards, so they are
sailing into Poland, right?

And Those watching, aka They, are sending each other messages about the
Anubis in plaintext one day, code the next.

So rather than the executioner's silence and the Big Time being one thing,
how about they are the 2 possible states of a finite-state machine!

it seemed to me that They are dithering between just blowing up the little
boat, letting it sink unnoticed, or letting it go until someone finds it
and decides to very publicly object to its presence.

The somebodies who will find it (or re-find it) will most likely be the
Soviets, who run Poland, and they will loudly claim Anubis to be spies,
capturing international headlines (thus the Big Time, as in, "the formerly
insignificant little craft suddenly made the Big Time")

They - which I take to be in GR in general the Allied military-industrial
complex with complications, ramifications, in stereo, on steroids and with
adenoids - are dithering between terminate-with-prejudice mode and watching
for usefulness ("we may be able to turn this weirdness to Our purposes")

Which is where the whole world stood even then in 1973 when GR came out,
and, of course the author himself - this weirdness Gravity's Rainbow, will
They let it continue and cause a stir or, well, we all know the kind of
stuff They can do...

Mutatis Mutandis, the Anubis is humanity itself, e.g. and the situation
continues to this day: the Anubis, c'est moi!
On Dec 9, 2013 1:25 AM, "David Morris" <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> This is almost as difficult as your crackling towers question.
>
> Are you familiar with the phrase, "The Big One?"  It means the A-bomb.  So
> the "Big Time" would be the time of the Big One's use.  The "executioner's
> silence" would be what the person waiting for the order to push the button
> experiences before the Big Time.
>
> On Sunday, December 8, 2013, Mike Jing wrote:
>
>> V489.27-38   How probable is the Anubis in this estuary tonight? Its
>> schedule has lapsed, fashionably, unavoidably: it should have been through
>> Swinemünde weeks ago, but the Vistula was under Soviet interdiction to the
>> white ship. The Russians even had a guard posted on board for a while, till
>> the Anubian ladies vamped them off long enough to single up all lines—and
>> so the last long reprise of Polish homeland was on, across these
>> water-meadows of the north, radio messages following them in clear one day
>> and code the next, an early and shapeless situation, dithering between
>> executioner’s silence and the Big Time. There are international reasons for
>> an Anubis Affair right now, and also reasons against, and the arguments go
>> on, too remote to gather, and orders are changed hour to hour.
>>
>> What does "the Big Time" imply here?
>>
>
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