BtZ42, 21: Slothrop backstory in UK

Wed Apr 6 15:08:54 CDT 2016

I believe it’s wonderful to analyze in order the appreciate and understand  great works like Gravity’s Rainbow and all those other great works on many levels,  but  a discussion can reach the point of discussing for instance the merits of --   If Time is infinitely divisible?’  --- maybe, but how does it work if applied to a delicious chocolate cake. What are we left with if it were true? No longer a chocolate cake that one can eat and enjoy.

SCB

From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf Of kelber at mindspring.com
Sent: Wednesday, April 6, 2016 3:30 PM
To: Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>; Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>; pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Subject: Re: BtZ42, 21: Slothrop backstory in UK

I read "Atlantics" as, aside from the current desk (or is it a pub table?), cultural differences between Brits and Yanks.

LK

-----Original Message----- 
From: Mark Kohut 
Sent: Apr 6, 2016 3:08 PM 
To: Monte Davis , pynchon -l 
Subject: Re: BtZ42, 21: Slothrop backstory in UK 

Weisenburger says Part one of GR begins on  Dec 18, 1944. [Companion, Introduction, p10 ] Which means three years before would be right after Pearl Harbor---if he meant exactly 3 years and did not round up 2 years 10 or 11 months--or round down from 3 years a month or two for that matter,  as we often do when we comment on knowing someone, esp as "lots of stuff..is getting blurry" . 

An early Pynchon reader, explainer, Thomas Slade, sez Slothrop was in London for a year. I read that book back in the day----published as a mass market paperback, ladies & gentlemen, amazing but true--but lots of stuff in it is really blurry now and I think I must have internalized that time period, whether Slade is right or wrong, because I have always assumed Slothrop was only there in London at that desk at ACHTUNG a shorter time than the time he knew Tantivy. About a year maybe, Mr. Internalizer self-jokes. 

P. 22 Miller edition of GR: "..and Tantivy about to laugh or snort oh God across the wood Atlantic of their table."

"Atlantics aplenty there have been these three years, often rougher, etc"  ...

I have read this, perhaps superficially, as indicating many desks (or distances) over those three years. 

Here is a snippet where Slade's time assertion is mentioned. Neither in this snippet, nor in the blurring of possible memory, can I remember if it is backed up or simply assumed in his book. 

---https://books.google.com/books?id=pUH_AQAAQBAJ <https://books.google.com/books?id=pUH_AQAAQBAJ&pg=PA70&dq=When+was+Slothrop+in+London?&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjHnLurpvrLAhXC5CYKHf5zCOgQ6AEIPTAE#v=onepage&q=When%20was%20Slothrop%20in%20London%3F&f=false> &pg=PA70&dq=When+was+Slothrop+in+London?&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjHnLurpvrLAhXC5CYKHf5zCOgQ6AEIPTAE#v=onepage&q=When%20was%20Slothrop%20in%20London%3F&f=false

Since The Blitz usually refers, it seems, to all the sorties, I have assumed Slothrop is here seeing the V-2 bombings as a 'second Blitz' although I guess History distinguishes differently. 

War, bombardment, blurs the mind almost totally, one might say as we meet the war-harried, mostly worried Slothrop.  

On Tue, Apr 5, 2016 at 7:38 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com <mailto: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? 

- Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=nchon-l

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