BtZ42/11 - Kryptosam, Wuotan, Pirate as robot

[Monte Davis]

> Either way, British Intelligence knows all about it.

I'd always read it that way before, but as I noted a while back I'm now
entertaining at least the possibility that there's some freelancing going
on, and/or that "They" are less monolithic than I once thought. Kryptosam
was interwar, so by 1944 both sides (and the Dutch resistance) might have
it without forcing the inference of "current" top-down cooperation. And
given that Pirate has been back and forth into occupied Europe, I'm
inclined to give Katje credit for knowing his pleasure points without
having seen his dossier.

> this episode is misplaced chronologically.

Not impossibly so: by Weisenburger's timeline this scene is only the second
day after "incoming mail," and might be the first private moment Pirate has
had. It's a busybusybusy holiday season! :-)

https://pynchonnotes.openlibhums.org/articles/abstract/10.16995/pn.401/

BTW, Jack Hawkins has always been my "GR movie of the mind" pick for
Pirate. That he started his career in panto is just gravy.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0370144/

On Fri, May 27, 2016 at 1:28 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:

> Episode 11 is one of the shortest (the shortest? I haven't gone through
> and counted) in the book.
>
> Summary: This is the first mention of IG Farben in the book, coupled with
> the second mention of Dr. Jamf. We learned in the earlier conversation
> between Pointsman and Spectro that Slothrop was previously one of Jamf's
> subjects. Now, via a brochure for one of IG Farben's dye products, we get a
> view of Jamf's focus - the marriage of the chemical and the psychosexual.
> Pirate, his psychosexual profile being accurately pegged by Them, is
> quickly able to decode the Kryptosam-inked message. He's being asked to
> step in and save an operative from a perilous situation.
>
> Some specifics:
>
> The Kryptosam pamphlet is the first explicit mention of the running theme
> connecting control, death and sexuality. Kind of an early rendering of
> "grab 'em by the balls and their hearts and minds will follow." Or
> liebestod, Nazi-industrialized. Pirate's orgasm - petit mort - is a
> necessary step in a military-industrial process.
>
> That the hidden Kryptosam ink develops into a "Negro-brown" color seems an
> echoing of the Negro/shit paranoia of the Kenosha Kid episode. When we meet
> Katje some episodes later, she's wearing a dress in "a rich cocoa shade
> known as 'nigger' in this country [Britain]."
>
> "They hunt the sky like Wuotan and his mad army." Wuotan and his wild hunt
> signifying death to those who see it (a folkloric concept most recently
> ripped off by Game of Thrones, in the form of the White Walkers). After the
> obscurities of the Kenosha Kid, this is a little heavy-handed, no?
>
> "Pirate's own robot hands…" Pirate, having masturbated on command, has
> become a cog in the machine. His sexual kinks mapped with scientific
> precision - measured input creates the required output - Pointsman's dream
> subject.
>
> The chilling part of this episode is that it links IG Farben squarely with
> British intelligence. The operative - presumably Katje - wrote a message in
> Kryptosam. Was it made available to her by the Brits or was it readily
> available in Blicero's quarters?  Either way, British Intelligence knows
> all about it. In a sense, Kryptosam is the anti-W.A.S.T.E., an alternate
> form of communication, not for the preterite, but for Them.
>
> One final question: Are we to assume that this message was contained in
> the cylinder retrieved at the bomb site by Pirate, right after his banana
> breakfast? If so, this episode is misplaced chronologically.
>
> Laura
>
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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