BEg2 chapter 9 BPX cable channel

[Mark Kohut]

>From Cowart and another war allusion within bourgeois society:

late in World War II, along with ballistic missiles (the V-1 and V-2
rockets) and the first jet fighter (the ME-262), the Germans fielded a
mobile anti-aircraft gun, ancestor of such shoulder-fired weapons as the
Stinger that figures in *Bleeding Edge*. They called it the Kugelblitz.



On Fri, Dec 17, 2021 at 6:02 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Cowart shows the ball lightning 'level' is present in BE if changed by
> lightning strikes.
>
> A droll-sounding name, Kugelblitz ought to mean “casserole lightning” or
> “pudding blitz,” but the word is standard German for the mysterious type of
> atmospheric electricity called, in English, ball lightning. Unlike the
> familiar flashes that link sky and ground in storms, ball lightning floats
> or hovers in the air. Though not to be confused with St. Elmo’s Fire or the
> will o’ the wisp, Kugelblitz does seem to beckon from marshy hermeneutical
> ground. One errs, that is, to go haring off after the science that
> theorizes it as something like a miniature Tunguska event, a minuscule
> “ancient black hole” piercing the atmosphere (Muir 48). In another sense,
> however, the ball lightning phenomenon reigns over the novel’s meanings the
> way Iceland spar does in *Against the Day*. One discerns its significance
> not in meteorology but in that branch of history devoted to military
> innovation: late in World War II, along with ballistic missiles (the V-1
> and V-2 rockets) and the first jet fighter (the ME-262), the Germans
> fielded a mobile anti-aircraft gun, ancestor of such shoulder-fired weapons
> as the Stinger that figures in *Bleeding Edge*. They called it the
> Kugelblitz.
>
> On Fri, Dec 17, 2021 at 1:42 AM Michael Bailey <
> michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Apparently fictive.
>>
>> A search led to this by a familiar name, David Cowart:
>>
>>
>> http://www.pomoculture.org/2016/09/25/down-on-the-barroom-floor-of-history-pynchons-bleeding-edge/
>>
>> It looked like pornoculture.org, is why I clicked. But, a nice essay.
>>
>>
>> BPX cabling, though, is a thing.
>>
>>
>> https://docstore.mik.ua/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/wanbu/bpx8600/8_4/ref84/bpx_cabl.htm
>> --
>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>>
>