Difference between revisions of "S"

Latest revision as of 15:45, 3 January 2012

Sabine
1007; Stray's neighbor in the tent city

St. Barbara
81; According to legend, Saint Barbara was the extremely beautiful daughter of a wealthy heathen named Dioscorus, who lived near Nicomedia in Asia Minor, in the 4th Century AD. Because of her singular beauty and fearful that she be demanded in marriage and taken away from him, he jealously shut her up in a tower to protect her from the outside world. When Barbara converted to Christianity, her enraged father killed her and was subsequently struck down by lightening. St. Barbara was venerated as early as the seventh century. The legend of the lightning bolt which struck down her father caused her to be regarded as the patron saint in time of danger from thunderstorms, fires and sudden death. When gunpowder made its appearance in the Western world, Saint Barbara was invoked for aid against accidents resulting from explosions — since some of the earlier artillery pieces often blew up instead of firing their projectile, Saint Barbara became the patroness of the artillerymen.From this website. According to Codex Vaticanos 866 (german translation) and the Golden Legend, St. Barbara, when fleeing her father prayed and "marvellously" a stone/rock took her in and released her on top of a mountain. That^s probably why she is patroness of miners, too. The wilsonalmanac lists some interesting facts about St. Barbara customs around the world. There seems to be a special icelandic St. Barbara legend but all i could find out is that Kirsten Wolf edited a book called "The Old Norse-Icelandic Legend of Saint Barbara"

St. Cosmo, Randolph
24; Ship Commander of The Inconvenience; Historically, there are two versions St. Cosmo (aka St. Cosmas): the "randy" St. Cosmos, aka the "modern Priapus," and the saintly martyred St. Cosmos of Catholic/Church lore. Pynchon, it seems, is connecting Randolph St. Cosmo to the former. "Randy," as astute observers will note, is an adjective which means, well, "horny." There's a distinct sexual thread woven throughout Against the Day (See the beginnings of exploring this angle...) — a-and Heartsease, St. Cosmo's skymate, is the first to get pregnant! — so this seems to fit right in. Read more about the historical St. Cosmo...; and Wikipedia entry

St. Masque
108; Indian Ocean island; volcano, 109;

St. Paul
107; Indian Ocean island

Saint-Saëns, Camille
27; his "wonderful 'Bacchanale'"; from his opera "Samson and Delila which premiered in Weimar, Germany on December 2, 1877; Wikipedia entry

Saksaul, H.M.S.F.
425; The saksaul is a plant/tree native to the deserts of Central Asia, particularly the Gobi desert where some believe Shambhala lies underground; it has a very hard wood and is covered with knobs Wikipedia pic; "subdesertine craft" 432; 434; attacked, 444;

Salas, José González
983; "former fencing coach" and "Madero's war minister" put in campaign against Orozco;

Salazar José Inés, General
983; "former Magonista ... raising a small army" in Casas Grandes, and Frank Traverse joins up

Salisbury, Lord (1830-1903)
58; Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, known as Lord Robert Cecil before 1865 and as Viscount Cranborne from 1865 until 1868, was a British statesman and Prime Minister on three occasions, for a total of over 13 years; Wikipedia entry

Sananzolo, Ettore
571; engineer at mirror factory in Venice

Sanatorium Böfli-Spazzoletta
692; "Bright red private hostel stamp"

sand-fleas
440; aka Chong pir ("big lice"), live under the desert and feed on human blood; Pulex;

Sands, Captain
444; aka Inspector at Whitehall in London; 607; "Inspector Sands" is a code phrase used on the London Underground to alert authorities of a potential emergency without causing panic amongst travellers. Wikipedia entry

San Miguel County
80; where Merle Rideout and Dally lived, in Colorado

Santos-Dumont, Monsieur
529; 576;

sap-head
7; a fool: a person who lacks good judgment

Saracens
436; Wikipedia entry

Saratoga chips
39; Potato chips; Wikipedia entry

Satan
"some ruler of some underworld," 231; "the Evil One," 333; Darby's and Chick's faith that Dr. Zoot "will prove not altogether diabolical," 403; Wikipedia entry

Scarlet Pimpernel
846; The Scarlet Pimpernel is a classic play and adventure novel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, set during the French Revolution. It first opened on 15 October 1903 at Nottingham’s Theatre Royal, in London; the character is an anonymous hero who, through a combination of courage and daring, has rescued many French aristocrats from the guillotine and brought them safely to England. Wikipedia entry; Double Identity: Sir Percy Blakeney, a British nobelman, is masked by various disguises as The Scarlet Pimpernel who seeks to undermine the Reign of Terror after the French Revolution.

Scent
See Smell, below.

Schicksal, das
635; german: fate, destiny

Schiff, Jacob Henry
131; banker Wikipedia Entry

Schleppingsdorff
914; Royal advisor in The Burgher King; the name is reminiscent of the German actor Max Schlepzig in Gravity's Rainbow; a "schlep" is Yiddish slang for a stupid person, a loser.

Schmidt, Chief
59; Cleveland cop

Schwärmer
613; gas pressure;

Schwartz
511; mathematician at University of Berlin

Scioto
66;

Scorcher cap
42; "In […]1892 [… a] bicyclist to be considered genuine had to be dressed in bicycle clothes. A man had to wear bicycle pants which were baggy at the top and tight to the legs below. Then he had to have bicycle socks and shoes. The shoes were made of canvass. Then he had to have a loose fitting grey colored shirt which we would designate now as a sport shirt. Then on his head he had to wear a tight fitting cap with a long bill in front, the longer the better up to a certain ceiling length. With this outfit and a bicycle with drop handlebars he was ready to appear in public as a real cyclist. If he could make 20 miles an hour on a good track he was called a "scorcher," the idea being that he was going so fast that he would scorch at least the end of his nose if nothing else." (From this website...)

Screaming
145; 404; 440;

scuttlebutt
3; The origin of the word scuttlebutt which is nautical parlance for a rumor, comes from a combination of scuttle - to make a hole in the ship's side causing her to sink - and butt - a cask or hogshead used in the days of wooden ships to hold drinking water; thus the term scuttlebutt means a cask with a hole in it. Scuttle; describes what most rumors accomplish if not to the ship, at least to morale. (from The Goat Locker Website)

Scylla
1043; "astrologer of Lew's acquaintance"

Second Law of Thermodynamics
1020; The second law of thermodynamics is an expression of the universal law of increasing entropy. In simple terms, it is an expression of the fact that over time, differences in temperature, pressure, and density tend to even out in a physical system which is isolated from the outside world. Entropy is a measure of how far along this evening-out process has progressed; Wikipedia entry

Secret Service
94; "to keep the President from gettin shot [...] and go after counterfeiters"

Self-reference
117; "my harmless little intraterrestrial scherzo"; "Hundreds, by now thousands, of narratives, all equally valid — what can this mean?" 681-82;

Semana Santa
376; Easter or Holy Week; Wikipedia entry

Sempitern
452; Candlebrow's canoeable river; "sempiternal" means "enduring forever" or "eternal" and derives from the Latin sempiternus : semper, always.

Senta
834; member of The Black Hand, the feared Serbian outfit

Sentience
Sentient Rocksters, 133, 149; the railroad's "steel webwork was a living organism" 177; sand dunes, 752; the journey as "conscious being" 765; wind 773; talking wolves, 784; Ssagan, the talking horse, speaking Buriat, 785; the sea, 818; roses, 949; Tesla rig, 952;

Sentient Rocksters
133. The phrase also appears on p. 612 of Gravity's Rainbow

Sergei, Grand Duke
595; assassinated;

Sergeievitch, Pavel
780; on the Bol'shaia Igra

"serpentine hypnosis," "serpent-like," 141; 145; 195; "Serpent in the Garden was never symbolic," 223; "Aztec foundation story of the eagle and the serpent

Seurat, Georges-Pierre (1859-1891)
584; French painter and the founder of Neoimpressionism. His large work Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte is one of the icons of 19th century painting; 587; Wikipedia entry

Seven Sisters
159;

Sfinciuno Itinerary
248; "a map or chart of post-Polo routes into Asia, believed by many to lead to the hidden city of Shambhala itself" 248; "not a geographical map at all"? 425; Alonzo Meatman arrives with a copy of the "enigmatic map." 436; "additional level of encryption" 437; DISCUSSION

Shabotshi
390; The Tarahumare Indians of the Sierra Madre, one of the least known among the Mexican tribes, live in caves to such an extent that they may properly be termed the American Cave-Dwellers of today. In their iconography, the devil is always represented with a beard, and the Tarahumari call Mexicans "Shabotshi" ("the bearded ones"); About the Tarahumare Indians

shady side of forty
1051; that would be over forty; I vaguely recall Pynchon referring to his wife as being on the "sunny side of forty" ... what goes around comes around.

Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)
344; English poet and playwright widely regarded as the greatest writer of the English language, and as the world's preeminent dramatist (although some don't buy it!); 385; Merchant of Venice (Antonio, the merchant in the play, is worried about pirates attacking his shipping), 819; Wikipedia entry

Shambhala
248; 259; 435; In Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Shambhala (also spelled Shambala or Shamballa) is a mystical kingdom hidden somewhere beyond the snowpeaks of the Himalayas; 441; 609; "An ancient metropolis of the spiritual, some say inhabited by the living, others say empty, in ruins, buried someplace beneath the desert sands of Inner Asia. And of course there are always those who'll tell you that the true Shambhala lies within."" 628; 631; "the Pure Land" 686; 718; and secular European politics, 748; and Rinpungpa, 750; "north of the Taklamakan" 767; Kit's vision of, 770; Khocho, 772; post-Tunguska, 793; "not a goal, but an absence" 975; album of Shambhala postage stamps, 1081; Wikipedia entry Notes on Shambhala in the Gobi Desert; History of the Search for Shambhala Website; Edwin Bernbaum's The Way to Shambhala: A Search for the Mythical Kingdom Beyond the Himalayas (The resource!)

Shambles
The Chicago Stockyards, 10; "'End of the line for you all,'" 82; "Ireland has become a literal shambles," 230; "great planetary killing-floor," 443;

Sharma
760; Mushtaq's cousin

Shorty
506; ship's cook near Krakatoa

Siege of Paris
19;

Signat
584;

Signori di Notte
880; Doge Gradengio's "cutthroat squad" in Venice;

Sigurd, King
127;

Silent Frock
803; Noellyne's

Sillery
162; drinking;

Siluro Dirigibile a Lenta Corsa
529; 706;

89; repeal of in 1893, 89; President Cleveland, convinced that the Sherman Silver Act, passed in 1890, was the cause of the drain on the U.S. gold reserves, called a special session of congress and convinced them to repeal the Act. Read more...; Wikipedia entry

758; Now Shimla, Simla was the summer capital of the erstwhile British Raj in India. Wikipedia entry

single up all lines
3; 442; 821;

Sipido
528; Anarchist assassin

Ball Lightning

73; sentient ball lightning; Ball lightning reportedly takes the form of a short-lived, glowing, floating object often the size and shape of a basketball, but it can also be golf ball sized or smaller. It is sometimes associated with thunderstorms, but unlike lightning flashes arcing between two points, which last a small fraction of a second, ball lightning reportedly lasts many seconds. There have been some reports of production of a similar phenomenon in the laboratory, but some still disagree on whether it is a real phenomenon; Wikipedia entry

sky-dogs
14; canines who rode in the airships

Sleepcoat, Professor
940; piano-playing colleague of Ratty McHugh

Sloane laboratory
29;

Sloper, Phoebe
486; childhood friend of Tace Boilster's;

Slow and the Stupified, The
611;

"Smegmo"
407; "an artificial substitute for everything in the edible-fat category, including margarine"; More on Smegmo...

6; 70; Chums "guided only by their sense of smell," 115; "a scent, a sea-smell of deep decay and reproduction," 127; "scentless snow walls," 142; 144; 297; 382; 388; "a strong polyaromatic gust, exhaled from the lungs of Depravity herself," 399; "'Gotta use ah snoot,'" "'till ah snoot tells us we're dere,'" 401; "odor of spilled . . . whiskey," 403; "the smell of excrement and dead tissue," 404; "Nasotemporal Transit," 408;

Smith, "Pixie" Coleman
901; Pamela "Pixie" Coleman Smith was the designer who designed and executed the Tarot deck conceived by Arthur Edwart Waite

Smoked Haddock
447; one of Gaspereaux's many "locals" in London

Smokefoot, I.J.&K.
345; department store where Dally goes to buy a dress and briefly glimpses a woman she thinks might be her mother.

Smokestacks
10; 243; cf., Towers of Silence

Snakes
See Serpents, above.

Snazzbury, Dr.
500; of Oxford University, "Snazzbury's Silent Frock";

Snidell, Bert
75; former husband of Erlys; Dally's biological dad who died before she was born, 357;

Snidell sisters
573;

Soane, Sir John (1753-1837)
219; mansion that houses T.W.I.T. is attributed to him; John Soane was born in Goring-on-Thames in 1753. In 1809 Soane became Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy. In 1814 Soane he was appointed to the Board of Works, a post which lasted until his retirement in 1832. Soane displays an originality and control that places him among a small group of architectural innovators. In his work he concentrates on the detailing of internal spaces and lighting. He frequently incorporated shallow domes, segmental arches, and clerestories which he emphasized with linear ornamentation and color. [1]

Socialism
32;

Sodality of Ǣtheronauts
1030; Heartsease, Primula, Glee, Blaze, and Viridian, who "found [their] way to this Ǣtherist sorority through the mysteries of inconvenience..."

Soltera, E. B.
644; Dwayne's contact in Juarez — Regeneration Equipment;

Somble, Strool & Fleshway
34; Scarsdale Vibe's attorneys; 455;

South Seas Pavilion
26; at the Chicago World's Fair

Spazzoletta
669; Italian: small brush (as in a wire brush); 670;

Special Relativity
797; The special theory of relativity was proposed in 1905 by Albert Einstein in his article "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies". Some three centuries earlier, Galileo's principle of relativity had stated that all uniform motion was relative, and that there was no absolute and well-defined state of rest; a person on the deck of a ship may be at rest in his opinion, but someone observing from the shore would say that he was moving. Einstein's theory combines Galilean relativity with the postulate that all observers will always measure the speed of light to be the same no matter what their state of uniform linear motion is; Wikipedia entry

Spectral Theory
603;

speed of sound
770; shades of the V-2 rockets in [Gravity's Rainbow

Spengler, Dr.
412;

Spielmacher, Herr
615; International Manager - Bank of Prussia;

Spirit of Bimetallism
895; statue Dally modeled for in New York

Spokeshave, "Doggo"
906; acquaintance of Crouchmas; "doggo" is slang for "in hiding" or "out of sight" o-or "invisible"

Spongiatosta, Principessa
582; semi-notorious aquaintance of H. Penhallow; Spongia Toasta ("roasted sponge") is a homeopathic remedy for goitre and other thyroid problems; 730-31; family arms, 731; 798; "regular associate" of Theign's, 867; elixirs.com

Spooninger, Bing
419; "Mouthorganman Apprentice"

Squalaccio, Il
855; Italian: the evil shark; Pino's and Rocco's submarine

Squanto and the Pilgrims
416;

Squarciones, Francesco
725; Italian painter; teacher of Mantegna. According to tradition he was a tailor and embroiderer who turned to painting c.1429 and established a school of painting in Padua. Only two signed works of his exist, Madonna with Child (Berlin) and an altarpiece in five sections (Padua). [2]

Ssagan
785; "Buriat pronunciation of tsagan"; "pure white" reindeer who speaks Buriat to Kit Traverse; In Burkhanism, a Russian religious movement that flourished among the indigenous people of Russia's Gorno Altai region between 1904 and the 1930s, Ak-Burkhan ("White Burkhan) is a deity who is depicted as an old man with white hair, a white coat, and white headgear, who rides a white horse. Possibly analogous to the Mongolian "white old man," Tsagan Ebugen. The Buryat language (or Buriat) is a Mongolic language spoken by the Buryats of Siberia. [3]

Standard Oil
101;

Stein, Aurel
436;

Steve, aka Ramon
638; in Mexico (recall Foppl's in V.);

Stiftskaserne
703; Military barracks area in Vienna; The Stiftskaserne tower was the most heavily-armed Vienna flak tower, mounting four twin 128mm guns.

Stinerite
528;

Stockmen's Hotel
31;

Stockyards
See Shambles, above.

Stockton, Bob
368; his bar in Denver

stranniki
663; wandering men in Russia; 745;

Strauss, Richard (1864-1949)
498; German composer of the late Romantic era, particularly noted for his tone poems and operas. He was also a noted conductor; Salome opera, 626; Strauss Jr., 741; Wikipedia entry; The Official Richard Strauss Website

straw "skimmer"
13; straw hat with a narrow brim, popular boating hat during the 1890's;

Stuffed Edge
609; "remote and horrible town of..."; a perversely English pizza reference; Google search

Stupendica, S.S.
356; liner takes Zombini's to Europe; distinct versions of, 514; "latent identity as the battleship H.M.S. Emperor Maximilian" 515; "Liner-to-Battleship Effect" 518; "Two-Stupendica problem" 521;

Suárez, Pino
994

sub-Clerkenwell trinket
489;

Suckling, Darby
3; the baby of the Inconvenience crew who serves "as both factotum and mascotte"; 109-110; as "Ship's Legal Officer," 398;

Sue, Marie Eugène (1804-1857)
125; a roman-feuilleton by; M. Eugène Sue was a French novelist, born in Paris. A feuilleton (a diminutive of French feuillet, the leaf of a book) was originally a kind of supplement attached to the political portion of French newspapers. A roman-feuilleton is a serialized novel;

Sukhomlinoff, General
780; intelligence officer on Bol'shaia Igra

Svegli, Professore
569; University of Pisa

Swedes
441;

Swift, Tom
794; Chums of Chances' "Brother"; Tom Swift is the young protagonist in several series of juvenile adventure novels starting in the early twentieth century and continuing to the present. More exactly, each such series stars a young protagonist named Tom Swift who is a genius inventor and whose breakthroughs in technology (especially transport technology) drive the plots of the novels, thus placing them in a genre sometimes called "invention fiction" or "Edisonade". The Chums of Chance stories are titled like the Tom Swift novels, eg Tom Swift and His Motor Cycle; or, Fun and Adventure on the Road; Tom Swift and His Motor Boat; or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa; Tom Swift and His Airship; or, The Stirring Cruise of the Red Cloud; Tom Swift and His Submarine Boat; or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure &c &c.

Swinburne
535;

Swome, Lionel
628; T.W.I.T. travel coordinator; 668; 720; 752;

Spirit of Ecstacy

895; In May 1902, Montagu founded the weekly magazine Car Illustrated, which Charles Rolls was a contributor to. He also opened the new Rolls-Royce factory at Derby in 1908 and owned a Silver Ghost. It was for this car that Montagu commissioned a one-off mascot from artist Charles Robinson Sykes. The model was Eleanor Velasco Thornton, a vivacious beauty, and the figure was called The Whisper - the woman has her fingers to her lips as if to tell the onlooker to help her keep a secret.

Such was the popularity of the mascot fad that people were attaching all kinds of things to their cars: golliwogs, toy policemen, etc. Claude Johnson, now general managing director of Rolls-Royce Ltd and Eleanor’s old boss, decided to commission an official mascot for Rolls-Royce. This would ensure that the mascot was in keeping with the overall style and quality of the car. Charles Sykes was once again the man chosen to create it and The Spirit of Ecstasy bears many similarities to The Whisper. Although initially offered as an optional extra from February 1911, in practice, the Spirit adorned almost all Rolls-Royce motor cars from that day onwards.

Symmetry
537;

Symons, Arthur William (1865-1945)
945; called Boulevard Knyaginya Mariya Luiza "the most horrible street in Europe"; a British poet and critic; Wikipedia entry

syntonic wireless
951; to communicate with the dead