BtZ42, 21: Slothrop backstory in UK

Wed Apr 6 09:48:19 CDT 2016

Rather than asking if TS is a reliable narrator (which I believe he is,
regarding the first Blitz and the 3 years anyway) I would like to ask:
could it be that he is there, in London, kind of not officially and then,
in November 1941, as a kind of avantgarde?

On April 6, 2016 6:15:40 AM Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> >is Slothrop  is a reliable narrator?
>>>
>>> The diction of the first quotation is Slothrop's, and I could question
>>> it as "his version." But the "three years" below has free-indirected its
>>> way into a more ornate, faintly old-fashioned narratorial voice which
>>> goes on to disparage his "barbarities" and "lapses."
>>>
>>> It's the same voice that starts us caring about the Tyrone-Tantivy
>>> friendship, which told us about the history of the bananery, and which
>>> will present the Slothrop genealogy coming up on 26, and so on. So if it
>>> isn't reliable (within the arena of fiction, of course), we're going to
>>> have to put "well, maybe" on a lot more than just Tyrone 1940-1944.
>>>
>>> I'm not prepared to do that. GR's narrator is (or if you prefer, GR's
>>> narrators are) sly, tricky, oblique, sometimes more addled than Tyrone at
>>> St. Veronica's. But there remain distinguishable degrees of credence and
>>> doubt, or we slide into "it was all a dream, and we have no way of really
>>> knowing he was Tyrone Slothrop of Mingeborough rather than Maureen Perkins
>>> of Pasadena." In which case I'm bored, and gone.
>>>
>>> On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 10:24 PM, Gary Webb <gwebb8686 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> The question to ask is wether or not Slothrop  is a reliable narrator?
>>>> How much of what he says is true? We generally want to take what he says to
>>>> be true at face value, and maybe it is... But when people go back to verify
>>>> anything about him, it all gets distorted, e.g. SEZ WHO ...
>>>>
>>>> On Apr 5, 2016, at 9:47 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> If it was maybe uncommon enough to be notable (if not strange/aberrant)
>>>> that he was there before the first Blitz, despite there being no overt
>>>> reason why that'd be the case, maybe we're sposed to feel like/wonder if
>>>> this is him preemptively gravitating toward the sites of future
>>>> rocketfalls like the docs suspect...Beyond even the zero of the start of
>>>> the US's involvement in the war. Gravity pulls him through
>>>> military-bureaucratic probability...
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 8:38 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> 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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