GR translation: sugar faces

[David Morris]

I didn't know punch cards were common or even real back in WWII.  The fear
of folding walls as unsupported punched planes fits there ("fold, spindle,
mutilate").  And lace cookies are German? Yes.

http://germanfoodie.com/food_blog/2011/12/18/lace-cookiesflorentines/

On Sunday, March 3, 2013, Bekah wrote:

> I doubt "sugar faces"  is something tangible -  it brings to my mind
> cookies of some sort -  white cookies with faces on them - but very fragile.
> http://www.bakingandmistaking.com/2011/04/coconut-lace-cookies.html  -
>  but I've never seen a white one -  maybe OBA's mom had a recipe.
>
> I suspect the "files of cards pierced frail as sugar faces"  are old
> computer punch cards so full of holes they look like lace cookies (white of
> course).  These cards were in use both during WWII and in the early '70s,
>  when GR was written.
>
> Surely TPR could have found a more appropriate metaphor, but … .
>
> Bekah
>
>
> On Mar 2, 2013, at 10:03 PM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com<javascript:;>>
> wrote:
>
> > P254.21   Here Slothrop stages a brilliant Commando raid, along with
> faithful companion Blodgett Waxwing, on Shell Mex House itself—right into
> the heart of the Rocket’s own branch office in London. Mowing down platoons
> of heavy security with his little Sten, kicking aside nubile and screaming
> WRAC secretaries (how else is there to react, even in play?), savagely
> looting files, throwing Molotov cocktails, the Zoot-suit Zanies at last
> crashing into the final sanctum with their trousers up around their
> armpits, smelling of singed hair, spilled blood, to find not Mr. Duncan
> Sandys cowering before their righteousness, nor open window, gypsy flight,
> scattered fortune cards, nor even a test of wills with the great Consortium
> itself—but only a rather dull room, business machines arrayed around the
> walls calmly blinking, files of cards pierced frail as sugar faces, frail
> as the last German walls standing without support after the bombs have been
> and now twisting high above, threatening to fold down out of the sky from
> the force of the wind that has blown the smoke away. . . .
> >
> > What are "sugar faces"?
> >
>
>
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