GR translation: except that the man was never really alive

[alice wellintown]

On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 5:07 PM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> A quick glance into Weisenberger or into Fowler will help here, but,
> again, these questions have been beaten like dead slave drivers under
> the lash of a Quaker's wake, or brim tilted back, his fist not
> extended from the pectoral or elbow, but, nonetheless, stiff in the
> face of an on coming cracker, the whip now a prop in a tale told by a
> man with a broken remembrabcer...so Slothrop is to make certain
> discoveries about
> Imipolex G which connect Sandoz (LSD), a Swiss chemical cartel, IG
> Farben, Shell Oil, and Psychochemie AG of Zurich. Psychochemie?  Mmmmm
> there's the rub! A-and, Slothrop (he fantasize here? does it matter?)
> raids
> Shell Mex House in London. He learns that the number of the rocket
> with the Imipolex G insulation's device is 00000, and that it is
> called an SGERAT--a unique designation. He finds Tantivy's name in the
> list of "Fallen Officers" and , as  Weisenburger tells us, all the
> names are fictional,  in a copy of the London
> Times (Weisenburger says, probably the Tuesday, April 24, 1945, dating
> this scene late April--around the 30th).
> Slothrop is now convinced that he must escape, he lifts a car and
> drives to Nice. There with the aid of Waxwing's card he acquires
> papers as an English war correspondent called Ian Scuffing, passage to
> Zurich, and the address of an underground figure there. So Slothrop is
> playing different roles here, his most difficult (impossible?) role is
> perhaps that of Slothrop.
>
> We begin to see that Slothrop's connection with the rocket is is more
> complex than Pointsman's
> obsessive analysis allows, for it seems Slothrop has never had an
> existence independent of the rocket. In Zurich he meets the Russian
> emigre Semyavin, who tells him to which cafe he must go in search of
> industrial information.
>
> At a cafe he meets Mario Schweiter from Sandoz, who tell him that Jamf
> is dead but that for five hundred Swiss franks he, Schweitar, can get
> any information on Jamf Slothrop may require. At the Odeon cafe,
> Slothrop meets Francisco Squalidozzi, one of the group of Argentine
> anarchists who hijacked a U-boat, sailed it across the Atlantic, and
> are planning to take it to Germany. Slothrop agrees to take a message
> from Squalidozzi to his contact in Geneva for a financial
> consideration large enough to pay off Schweiter and keep himself
> alive. Squalidozzi gives Slothrop half the money "up front" then
> disappears leaving Slothrop with enough to pay Schweiter but not much
> more. Slothrop takes delivery of Schweitar's material at Laszlo Jamf's
> grave.