BtZ42/11 - Kryptosam, Wuotan, Pirate as robot

[Mark Kohut]

Re: Command structure. I've always, not trying to work it out granularly
(yet), seen it as a
fully-hidden *They* purposely. Reinforced after AtD because analogous.
 Perhaps as PISCES in that scene?

Pointsman I've seen as being given his head; he is in charge of the science
investigation, THEY
let him run it his way; others are made to help him and/or do other things
(simply report).

On Fri, May 27, 2016 at 6:27 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:

> I agree with the freelancing - Pointsman seems to be pretty independent.
> I'm sure it's been diagrammed somewhere, but as a reader it's hard to
> figure out the command structure that ties, say, Roger, Pirate and
> Pointsman together. All pretty obscure and ripe for renegade actions.
>
> I don't see Katje being the source of the picture based on Pirate's
> psychosexual profile. He's never told Scorpia. He's never told anyone.
> That's the horror of the situation.
>
> I'll second your Jack Hawkins as Pirate, but in return, I'm going to have
> to insist: William Holden ( a young incarnation, anyway) IS Slothrop.
>
> LK
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Monte Davis
> Sent: May 27, 2016 5:36 PM
> To: kelber
> Cc: “pynchon-l at waste.org“
> Subject: Re: BtZ42/11 - Kryptosam, Wuotan, Pirate as robot
>
> > 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
>>
>
> - Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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