BtZ42, 21: Slothrop backstory in UK

[David Morris]

Schooled offlist?  I hope you gave them shinola.  Offlist isn't where
schooling should happen.  Grow-up/own-up and do it onlist.

David Morris

On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 1:49 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:

> I got schooled, off-list, about the date. Jeez, just didn't know how to
> read it!
>
> Yeah, I think Pynchon just wanted Slothrop in the blitz - it has happened
> before, but there is nothing to compare it to now, indeed.
>
> Laura
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Monte Davis
> Sent: Apr 6, 2016 2:03 PM
> To: kelber
> Cc: Jochen Stremmel , David Morris , “pynchon-l at waste.org“
> Subject: Re: BtZ42, 21: Slothrop backstory in UK
>
> The "6:43:16" (p. 26) is hr:min:sec in the evening of Sept. 8, 1944 --
> Slothrop hearing the first V-2 to hit  London.
>
> I too don't feel winking --or not nearly as much as some places we know --
> and remain open to the possibility that Pynchon
>
>  (1) just wanted Tyrone to have experienced the "conventional" Blitz and
> to have a long-established friendship with Tantivy, and
>
> (2) just adjusted dates to make that possible, not reckoning with how
> pedantically paranoid readers like me can get.
>
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 1:07 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>> The whole passage is about Tyrone's history of dealing with crap falling
>> from the sky: the family gravestones that he may or may not have been
>> dragged to see as a kid, assorted meteor showers and fourth of July
>> firework-cinders, the Northern Lights, the hotel fire, the first Blitz,
>> something in the sky right now in 6:43:16 (surely that's a date in 1943?),
>> on into the "present" of 1944, where he's talking about being four years
>> overdue for a hit - back to 1940.
>>
>> Could he have been a Yank in London during the Blitz? Sure. I just don't
>> feel Pynchon winking here, the way he might be with one of his many "who
>> should happen to turn up" statements in ATD. He's not telling us that
>> Slothrop happened to be in Novi Pazar, after all.
>>
>> My own fantasy-theory: Slothrop, feckless harmonica-playing new Harvard
>> grad, through the Crimson grapevine got a minor staff job in the British
>> embassy ( a la young Henry Adams) with that Kennedy guy, and decided to
>> stay put when said Kennedy turned tail.
>>
>> LK
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Monte Davis
>> Sent: Apr 6, 2016 12:01 PM
>> To: Jochen Stremmel , David Morris
>> Cc: “pynchon-l at waste.org“
>> Subject: Re: BtZ42, 21: Slothrop backstory in UK
>>
>> Jochen and David: yes, there were small US military missions in London
>> even before Sep 1939, growing larger and more numerous with the 1940
>> destroyer deal, again with Lend-Lease, and exploding after December 1941.
>> I'd bet they were more Navy than Army early on, but as I said: in itself,
>> Slothrop's presence that early is not a Big Red Flashing Clue.
>>
>> But that he and Tantivy have (at least as I read p.21) since late 1941
>> been colleagues engaged in joint US/UK "technical intelligence" aimed at
>> Northern Germany... that really raises my eyebrow. Given how slow
>> bureaucracies -- government, military, and intelligence -- are to work out
>> their collaboration, that's a quite specific team and target for late 1941.
>> If P had tossed in some chaff about them studying German radar at
>> Ludwigshavn, or advanced mines protecting the Kiel Canal... but he didn't.
>> The Allies had only scraps and rumors about the V-weapons, and no dedicated
>> intelligence effort I know of, until May 1943.
>>
>> ...or at least that's what the history books say.
>>
>>
>
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