BtZ42, 21: Slothrop backstory in UK

[David Morris]

Wow. Nice find. I wonder under what pretense Slothrup believes he is
serving in the UK before any formal US involvement.  This is surely not an
accident by Pynchon.  He's too precise for such a big gap to be accidental.

David Morris

On Tuesday, April 5, 2016, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:

> "A lot of stuff prior to 1944 is getting blurry now. He can remember the
> first Blitz only as a long spell of good luck."
>
> So Slothrop was in London for the first Blitz, usually dated 7 Sep 1940 to
> 11 May 1941, heaviest for the first 2-3 months. That means a minimum of 3
> 1/2 years -- 4 yrs and 2 months if he witnessed the whole thing, which is
> closer to the feeling I get here.
>
> Keep in mind that the US didn't enter WWII until Dec 1941... Lend-Lease
> cooperation began after Mar 1941... and even the dodgy swap of US
> destroyers for rights at UK bases in the Western Hemisphere was Sep 1940.
>
> Compare also to "these three years" farther down the page, applied to
> Slothrop's friendship with Tantivy and the shared office at ACHTUNG. Which
> would take that back to Nov. 1941, again before US entry into the war and
> *long* before -- historically -- there was any special focus on "technical
> intelligence" re "Northern Germany," i.e. V-2s.
>
> No note on this discrepancy -- or at least loose end -- at the Pynchon
> Wiki or in Weisenburger's Companion.
>
> So... Does GR explain anywhere what US Army Lt. Slothrop was *doing* in
> London in 1940-1941? It's not necessarily a ***CLUE*** - even without
> formal alliance, even in peacetime, likely allies with shared strategic
> concerns often maintain small military missions in each other's capitals.
>
> But given what we'll later learn about plans for Slothrop going way
> back... maybe we're *supposed* to wonder about it, hmmm?
>
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