BtZ42, 21: Slothrop backstory in UK

[Monte Davis]

I'm not positive: Jove *does* nod. There's that "seventh Christmas of the
War" (126), best explained as a simple miscount... and the much-argued
ambiguities of Bianca's age, which IMHO result from a mixture of
carelessness and deliberation.

But yeah... Slothrop in London "comes into focus" with the first V-2, and
the book's main narrative with his visits to V-2 impact sites, and Them
taking an interest in his map. As best I remember, this page is almost all
we know of him between Harvard and summer 1944. I can imagine Pynchon
wanting Slothrop to have experienced the 1940-41 Blitz, as a
baseline/contrast to heighten what's different about the rockets, and just
accepting the resulting timeline...

But I can also imagine Pynchon wanting us to wonder: Did *They* want
Slothrop to experience the first Blitz as a baseline...?  Heh-heh-heh...

I may have been primed for this by knowing very little about what my father
did as a Marine war correspondent in Londonderry in 1942-43. The USMC
detachment there provided shoreside security for a large joint convoy/naval
base, and I know he did the routine news releases about a promotion for
Cpl. Morris of New Orleans, high morale, training, toys for the local
orphanage, etc. But given the tight security around all Atlantic shipping
(because of U-boats), he couldn't have been able to write much about the
central activities -- the reason for being there -- of the USMC or USN. So
what *was* he doing? Heh-heh-heh...


On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 8:18 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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