Difference between revisions of "ATD 149-170"

Revision as of 07:55, 8 December 2006

Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.

Page 150

Tammanoid creatures, able to deliver votes
As in "Tammany Hall", the often corrupt political machine that played a role in New York City politics for nearly two centuries. Wikipedia entry.

Pages 154-155

Hunter Penhallow's escape might be read as a happy ending getaway inversion of the claustrophobic opening sequence of Gravity's Rainbow, where nobody gets saved; "in this world brought low" echoes "the Light that hath brought the Towers low" on the final page of Gravity's Rainbow..."Light" may prefigure Against the Day's treatment of that subject, too.

Page 156

"crimson" is cognate with "worm"
Largely true. The American Heritage Dictionary gives the etymology for worm as "Middle English, from Old English wurm, variant of wyrm." The root wyrm in turn derives from the Indo-European base wer-², meaning to turn or bend. (Words descended from wer-² include stalwart, weird, vertebra, wrath, wrong, wrestle, briar and rhapsody.) The modern word crimson derives from Middle English cremesin, which (via one of several alternative pathways) comes from Arabic qirmizy, a word based on qirmiz, the kermes insect. This insect, which lives on the Kermes oak (Quercus coccifera), was an early source for red dye but fell out of favor after the introduction of cochineal. The Arabic name for this insect probably stems from the Sanskrit kṛmi-ja-, referring to a red dye produced from worms. The -ja is from an Indo-European root *gene-, meaning "to produce" (whence, ultimately, our word "gene" and the -gen in chemical element names). The other component, kṛmi-, means "worm", and takes us back to Indo-European wer-².

Page 167

...it was a time honored principle to do nothing for free [...] Trust me. Buy Rand shares
There seems to be a double meaning here. The text implies that Rand is a gold mining company (does anyone know if this is/was a real company?). Regardless, Yitzhak and Fleetwood are talking about South Africa, where the rand is the currency, the Krugerrand is a gold coin, and the Witwatersrand is the ridge upon which Johannesburg is built. On another level, however, it seems as though Pynchon is mocking the philosophy of Ayn Rand, which is often characterized as a defense of selfishness or strong individualism. Pynchon previously parodied Ayn Rand and her Theory of Objectivism as "Mafia Winsome" and her "Theory of Heroic Love" in V.

Page 168

"like Baku with giraffes"

Gravity's Rainbow mentions Baku by name three times, according to the Pynchon Pages index (http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/alpha/b.html):

352; seaport capital of Azerbaydzhanskaya SSR, Soviet Union, on the west coast of the Caspian Sea; 353; Blobadjian "pursued through the black end of Baku by a passel of screaming Arabists" 354

After reading this section, and the oddly-separated text of Fleetwood's reverie about his pursuit of wealth in the Transvaal, and his murder of the Kaffir, the family name struck me, "Vibe" = "V" I be. Certainly this section brings back the African horror of "V."

Annotation Index