BtZ42/12 - Acronyms, Pudding's recipes, and a projective test

[Mark Kohut]

Brigadier Ernest Pudding
Someone want to characterize him as we encounter him on the page?

If not a 'round' character, hardly ever enough room for that in Pynchon,
certainly
in this novel, a two-dimensional line drawing, at least, so to speak?

On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 1:53 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:

> The last episode consisted mostly of Pirate's quickie, but this episode is
> much longer and packed with information.
>
> Summary:
>
> We're introduced to the White Visitation, in the fictional town of Ick
> Regis - somewhere in the Dover region. The White Visitation originally
> housed a mental asylum, from which one patient, Le Froyd escaped and leapt
> to his death in the sea. Now it houses the remnants of SHAEF (the
> American-led Supreme headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, relocated
> from London to Versailles by this time) in the form of various British and
> American groups it umbrellaed - PWE (British - Political Warfare
> Executive), PWD (American/British - the Psychological Warfare Division),
> SOE (British - the Special Operations Executive), and PISCES (fictional -
> Psychological Intelligence Schemes for Expediting Surrender, which
> encompasses everything from Pointsman's ARF - AbreactionResearch Facility
> to a laundry-list of psychics, spiritualists and flakes). Basically, the
> assorted stealth and propaganda wings of the British and American armies,
> providing ample space for all of our various characters to rub shoulders.
>
> The fictional BBC propagandist, Myron Grunton (oink, oink), is
> broadcasting (hopefully) disturbing reports to Germans about the existence
> of the Schwarzkommando - Herero commandos who survived the German genocide
> and are now in German - doing what? Grunton has two sources to stoke these
> racist anxieties in the enemy: Pirate, in one of his SOE missions into
> Germany (possibly the one where he rescued Katje?) reports that there is
> some Herero involvement in the secret-weapons program; and generalized info
> obtained from Slothrop - "willing to go under light narcosis to help
> illuminate racial problems in his own country." [Aha! now we see how
> Pointsman was able to get Slothrop under the needle]. What better source of
> racism is there than the good old US of A?
>
> We meet Brigadier Pudding - in charge of the funding for all of these
> schemes, and therefore, has to be at least superficially tolerated by
> Pointsman et al). He's in his 80s, suffering from a mixture of WWI-induced
> battle fatigue and senility. Amidst flashbacks to horrifically brutal and
> incompetent battles in which his orders led to a wastage of only 70% of his
> unit, Pudding prattles on to the bored assemblage of White Visitation
> factions about - recipes? Perhaps this is when the idea for Pudding's
> special meal, later in the book, is hatched?
>
> Dr. Rozsavolgyi (sorry - too lazy to hunt down the special symbols -
> stupid, smug Yank that I am) a Hungarian refugee who works within PISCES in
> some capacity, and Pointsman discuss the latest test in store for Slothrop.
> A projective - i.e. free-form - test whose results can't be faked or
> compromised like the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. But still
> structured, insists Pointsman: "We want to expose Slothrop to the German
> rocket …"
>
> The episode ends with a grotesque list of the design features of the
> building that houses the White Visitiation - sort of the architectural
> equivalent of the Banana Breakfast, in terms of surreal excess.
>
> LK
>
> - Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
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