I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: ARMY OF LOVERS-Massive Luxury Overdose (1991).

The only way that I, and I suspect any American, knows this band is because they were  mocked on Beavis and Butthead for their video “Crucified.”  In the video, which I have thoughtfully tacked on at the end here,  the three members of the  band are dressed up like extras from a  Duran Duran by way of Adam and the Ants music video (and maybe that’s not over the top enough).  This, by the way, seems to be their regular costumery (a French-seeming design despite their Swedish origins).

Beavis and Butthead cheer for the (impressive) cleavage and then gag at the lead singer’s  largely naked hairy body dancing in a bathtub.  It’s  pretty confusing.  But it’s also super catchy in a really over the top Europop way.

I have learned over the years that while I don’t really like pop music, I like Europpop a lot more than Ameripop.   It’s much crazier and outlandish, hence: Army of Lovers.

“Crucified” is a really fun, over the top bit of nonsense.  The chorus is incredibly catchy with a wonderful choral voice singing, and the verses are catchy too, they are spoken and in part French.   It’s good campy fun.

Having said that, the rest of the album is a mix of songs that aren’t quite as good as “Crucified” and songs that are just really bad.

The opening of “Candyman Messiah” is dreadful.  “Obsession” features a very mousey-voiced guy singing.  It’s a change and an interesting one, although like a lot of Europop, there’s not a lot of substance to it.

But it’s clear that the Army are not taking themselves seriously, “Dynasty of Planet Chromada” anyone.  The band has some really catchy choruses and I’ll bet it ‘s a hell of a lot of fun to dance to.  Especially if you have a pencil thin mustache.

Believe it or not, Army of Lovers were not just a one-hit wonder .  They released four albums.  And although their website seems to be updated often, I’m fairly certain the band broke up in 1995.  Well, why should that stop anyone?

[READ: Week of March 5, 2012] Gravity’s Rainbow Sections 1.19-2.3

I postulated that Section 1 (called Beyond the Zero) was a mostly expository set up (in one way or another).  And that seems to have been true.  Yes there was some plot development, but it was a lot of setting up new people.  New people are introduced in Section 2, but it is primarily about Slothrop (so far).  These first three sections don’t do a lot to advance the “plot” (I don’t really know what the plot is exactly but it must have something t o do with the war, right?)  Section 2 zooms in on Slothrop.  And while we do learn about the monitoring that goes on with him, for me, Section 2 is all about providing character depth and sympathy for Slothrop.

I found this week’s read to be the easiest so far, with only a few moments of stream of consciousness or reverie to get lost in.   And there were a lot of farcical moments–moments that were practically like a sitcom, which were fun to read and enjoyably insubstantial.

Towards the end of the reading, when Katje ultimately leaves Slothrop, she uses a metaphor comparing the rockets to sex.  And I wondered if maybe that’s why there is so much sex in the book–is it a physical manifestation of the theoretical idea?  Or does he just like using the word cock?

This week’s reading begins more or less where last week’s ended.  In Section 1,18, we saw Peter Sachsa and learned that he was in love with Leni who was married to Franz. Section 1.19 opens with Leni leaving Franz for Peter.   Leni grew up in Lübeck.  [CONTEXT: During World War II, the city of Lübeck was the first German city to be attacked in substantial numbers by the Royal Air Force. The attack on the night of 28 March 1942 created a firestorm that caused severe damage to the historic centre, the bombs destroying three of the main churches and large parts of the built-up area. It led to the retaliatory ‘Baedeker’ raids on historic British cities. (thanks Wikipedia).  It’s also the site of “Basher’s” Angel.]

Leni is currently in the Studentenheim with Rudi, Vanya and Rebecca.  The place is a dump—smelly, covered with roaches.  The other students are talking revolution, Inspired by some graffiti that reads “An Army of Lovers can be beaten” although Leni knows that the revolution died with Rosa Luxemburg (died 1919).   Nobody knows who wrote the graffiti, but they agree that it is true.  And the students talk about pornography and masturbation.  I really liked the power of this quote:  “Though they have never made love she means it as a reproach.  But he turns away as we do from those who have just made an embarrassing appeal to faith there’s no way to go into any further.” (155).

Rebecca, a “Jewess” is sensual, half-flirting, half-arguing with Vanya.  And Leni wonders what it would be like to go to bed with a woman like that.  This fantasy continues, as she imagines being a prostitute, meeting Richard Hirsch (from the Mausigstrasse) and in a cinematic moment the scores of other frolicking nude people defer to their love as they come together.  And soon the President calls an end to the war.  The Left elects Rosa Luxembourg and Revolution will come!

And yet this student hovel is an improvement over her life with Franz.  She plans to run to Peter.  If his moods are good she will stay with him, if not, she will use him to find someplace to get away to.

The problem with Franz is that he is completely passive and stuck in the world of fantasy.  He believed she would carry him out of his life (“burrowing his face into her armpit mumbling, “Your wings… oh Leni, your wings” (162).  When they first got together he was so passive he couldn’t give her an orgasm.  Finally she started making things up in her head.  And yet (as the students said) this too was solitary.   Franz has a “way of removing all the excitement from things with just  few words.  Not even well-chosen words” (159).  He has no passion and would probably still be working at the same dead end job (creating patterned paint –with stripes, polka dots, stars of David)—if the owner hadn’t burned it down.  [I’m pointing out the Angel details here because of a post I wrote at Infinite Zombies, by the way]

After the fire, Franz looked for menial task (while Leni was pregnant with Ilse).  Then one night he ran into some men trying to launch a homemade rocket.  One of the men was Kurt Mondaugen, his former flatmate on Liebigstrasse.  (This was a good omen, because Justus von Liebig was one of his heroes in chemistry).  He was even more excited to be taught a course by Laszlo Jamf who was part of the following succession: Justus von Liebig> August Wilhelm von Hofmann> Herbert Ganister> Laszlo Jamf.

Although the rocket was a failure, the engineers celebrated their minor success.  It was exhilarating for Franz top hang out with the “Society for Space Navigation.”  But Leni was furious that he then chose to spend most of his time with those fools.

So she left for Peter’s.  When she arrived, he was conducting a séance with corporate Nazis looking to contact Walter Rathenau, the late foreign minister.  Peter doesn’t know what they wants (they don’t tell him) but he is just the medium.  They need military advice from the minister but when they finally contact him he is not helpful.  “I’m finding it harder to put myself in your shoes.  Problems you may be having, even those of global implication, seem to many of us here only trivial side-trips” (165).  Finally, he gives them something to work with: mauve.  He explains that it was discovered in England by a man who was trained by Hoffman who was trained by Liebig.  He then mentions Ganister and the chemists he trained.  And tells them to talk to Wimpe about all of this.

Finally he dismisses cause and effect: “All talk of cause and effect is secular history, and secular history is a diversionary tactic.  Useful to you, gentlemen, but no longer so to us here” (167).  The section ends with a comic note in which Heinz Rippenstoss, “the irrepressible Nazi wag and gadabout” (what a wonderfully weird sentence!) asks “Is God really Jewish?” (167).

Section 1.20 returns us to Dr Pointsman walking around on Christmas Eve.  He is thinking about his dead friends Pumm, Easterling, Dromond, Lamplighter and now Spectro (the brightest star of all).  But he is happy—his experiments are working, his funding is increased and his gift of Slothrop is a go.  He even says “News from the Riviera is splendid” [we’ll see Slothrop in France soon].  At the annual PISCES Christmas Party he even gets  a blow job in the closet from Maud Chilkes, who handles PISCES finances.  [I admit I am still a bit confused by all of these acronyms].

We also see get a little history of Thomas Gwenhidwy, a fat Welshman with a booming voice.  He sings the bass to “Diadem” and you can hear him over the roar of a Flying Fortress airplane taking off.  He is a big drinker—basically mixing grain alcohol with anything.  In a drunken rant, Gwenhidwy claims that the Welsh were once Jews too—a lost tribe of Israel.

He and Poinstman are heading to Gwenhedwy’s house (dogs run barking at them while Pointsman eyes them professionally).  Pointsmasn really likes Gwenhedwy but he’s too proud to ever say so.  Recently, a bomb landed very close to Gwenwedwy’s house and Gwenwedwy tells Pointsman that all of the bombs lately are being dropped out here where they are rather than on Whitehall.  Pointsman reminds him of the Poisson distribution, and tries to calm him from a paranoiac rant.  But it is too late.

Gwenhedwy claims that the people out here (in the South East) were meant to go first; they are expendable.   Oh and that the babies born during the Blitz are also following a Poisson distribution.

The end of the section is a surprisingly lengthy paragraph about the water bugs in Gwenhedwy’s house

Section 1.21 returns us to Roger Mexico and Jessica on Boxing Day.  They are visiting Jessica’s sister Nancy in a nice domestic scene.  We see Elizabeth, Claire and Penelope, Nancy’s daughters and Sooty the cat.  (While Nancy is in the W.C).  The most recent bomb was an hour ago.  In a weird twist (especially if Roger knows this detail from Katje, which he should) he has taken the kids to see Hansel and Gretel.  The bomb landed down the street from the theatre.  The performance stopped until Gretel silenced everyone with a beautiful song: “peppermint face in the sky.”

Back in the house Penelope is yelling at a chair telling it he is not her father (demonic possession in this house is not unknown).

Although Roger knows that fathers are often taken (in war especially) they also tend to leave.  And he realizes how easy it would be for Jessica to leave him. There’s death from the rockets but there’s also Beaver who is all about settling down.  He “will take her like the Angel itself” (177).  She will become a domestic bureaucrat and Roger will be forgotten.

Section one ends with the plaintive words.. “Oh Jess. Jessica.  Don’t leave me…” (177).

Section 2 is called Un Perm’ au Casino Hermann Goering.  (I’m not sure what Perm means in this context).

Indeed much of the activity in section 2 (so far) takes place in and around the casino and mostly with Slothrop.

Slothrop is “on leave” in France.  He has a room to himself.  Tantivy Mucker-Maffick and Teddy Bloat are sharing a room down the hall.  There’s no bombs, no Blitz.  And he’ll get used to the silence just as it’s time to head back.  The pair come to see Slothrop and talk to him about scoring “Mamzelles.” Bloat tries to sound enthusiastic about Slothrop’s amazing room (and his prowess with the ladies), but in an aside to himself, Slothrop thinks something is up with him.

In a series of exploits that reminds me again of Ulysses [another post at Infinite Zombies], many of these sections are full of drunken song.  This first one (listed as a Fox-Trot) is called “The Englishman’s Very Shy” and Bloat and Tantivy split verses about the shyness of Englishmen.

But soon enough the men are calling down to some French women (dancers at the casino–whose name has yet to be changed since the liberation).  The dancers invite them to a picnic (wicker basket and all).  The pair head down first and, moments later, Slothrop comes down in a gaudy Hawaiian shirt (much to the massive chagrin of Tantivy and Bloat). He tells them that the women will go crazy for it as it is genuinely from the Pacific, unlike the barbed-wire clothes the Englishmen are wearing.

The women immediately paw at the Hawaiian shirt and take the men to the beach for a delicious breakfast.  Just as they are settling in, Bloat points to a woman who “must be coming out of the sea.” (186).  [In terms of misdirection, this ranks up there with my favorites: from A Fish Called Wanda: “Ken [pause] someone just called.  They said that the police know that the loot is in a garage in Fulham.”

A beautiful girl is walking out of the water.  She is blond, long-legged and looking at Slothrop.  As he turns away to pop a cork from the champagne, she is attacked by the largest octopus he has ever seen!  Slothrop tries to attack the beast, but Bloat pulls out a crab (from where??) and gives it to Slothrop to distract the octopus.  The brave American rescues the woman from the beast.  When she says she is Dutch, her bracelet confirms the readers’ suspicions.  Her name is “Katje Borgesius.”

Slothrop feels something is amiss in this whole proceeding.  The crab, the girl, everything seems forced.  He looks around.  Tantivy is getting drunk with two women, but Bloat is completely sober, watching Slothrop.  Even Bloat’s companion, Ghislaine seems like she knows something.  He finally talks to her and she asks if he knew about the octopus, that it looked scripted.  He says no and she tells him in that case to be very careful.

As the section ends, Katje squeezes Slothrop’s hand and says “We were meant to meet.”

Section 2.2 opens with a pan out to sea where, standing on the deck of a fishing boat Dr. Porkyevitch is watching. Below deck, octopus Grigori frisks happily (having been sated by the crab).  The Dr wonders if there is any hope of help from Pointsman now that Porkyevitch and his octopus (whom he calls Grischa) have done so well.

Later that evening, Slothrop and Tantivy go to dinner.  Slothrop is wearing what he calls the Wormwood Scrubs School tie (Wormwood scrubs is a prison, the tie is of a naked lady and Tantivy is again mortified).   Slothrop has a date, but Katje is there, ignoring him.  Until, that is, her knee starts brushing his under the table.  This makes Sothrop burst into song: “The Ballad of Tantivy Mucker Maffick”  (the chorus: Tantivy’s been drunk in many a place.”  During a pause she whispers for him to come up to her room at midnight.

After dinner, Slothrop asks Tantivy is something is up.  He doesn’t trust the octopus or Bloat.  Tantivy says that it looked like Bloat had been receiving some kind of code—he works for Supreme Headquarters after all).  Slothrop says that that’s not it and Tantivy reveals that he finds Bloat a bit distant as of late, too.  When Tantivy told Bloat that he liked Katje too, Bloat warned him to stay away from her.  He feels that Bloat is only friends because Tantivy is useful to him.

But Tantivy tells him to enjoy his date because for a change the girls are interested in him tonight too and Slothrop feels that he finally has a British ally.  He goes up to Katje’s room at midnight and gives her a minor third degree.  She says she is interested in him, he can even check her closet to see if something is fishy.  The clothes are real, but Slothrop detects something that says they are mainly props.  So he breaks into another fox-trot “Too Soon to Know.”

[Throughout this chapter there has been talk of Slothrop’s paranoia and right around here it becomes obvious that he starts talking about “They” and “Them.”  Earlier in the section he may have been as well, although there were a lot of “They’s” that started a sentence making it very hard to determine the paranoiac level.]

Anyhow, Slothrop and Katje get down to the inevitable.  There’s a moment at the end where he wants to see her face but she won’t surrender.  Until finally she does, as she comes [presumably showing that she has feelings for him?].  Later that night when he is snoring she bats him with a pillow.  The scene devolves into a scene out of a madcap 60s comedy (Peter Sellers perhaps?) with seltzer and pillow feathers and finally a red tablecloth under which the re-aroused couple get to business again.

In the morning, Slothrop awakes to the sound of a belt buckle and determines that it is his and that he is being robbed.  He goes into the room and realizes that his clothes have been taken and the thief has just run out the door.  In more madcap antics, he sees a head turn the corner and a middle finger come out.  Slothrop puts on a purple sheet and makes chase.

The chase leads him into a tree.  He goes up; the thief went down and soon he is crashing down the tree and landing (surreally) in a croquet match.  A General and Teddy Bloat are playing with ladies.  And it is decided that Bloat will give him some clothes (they are roughly the same size).  In Slothrop’s room, he realizes that all of his things have been removed (including his I.D.) and his room has been prepped for a new guest. They go to Bloat’s room.  Slothrop asks for Tantivy but Bloat doesn’t know where he is.  Bloat gives him an English uniform (which means that Slothrop has to do a lot of uncomfortable saluting (he almost gets in trouble for not doing so) as he looks for Tantivy.  In his search, he goes into a room which he believes has a dual, hidden purpose [this reminded me a lot of Twin Peaks].  He knows it’s Them at work and he toys with the idea of sneaking in and scribbling Fuck You in a word balloon on the walls.

As he walks on the beach front looking for Tantivy, there’s a brief look into Slothrop’s historical past–when the first Slothrop made the voyage to America as a mess cook.

It begins raining and he runs back to the casino.  No one has seen any of the three girls from yesterday.  Not Ghislane, nor the two that Tantivy was with.  He feels like he might cry.  He now has no friends over here, no I.D., no clothes.  Nothing.  Except one thing.  He heads back up to Katje’s room.  And she welcomes him in.

Section 2.3 ends this weeks reading with more Slothrop.  He is being instructed

in German by Sir Stephen Dodson-Truck (recall that Nora Dodson-Truck was with Eventyr earlier).  Slothrop is trying to understand a schematic where the resistors look like coils and vice versa.  Dodson Truck tells him to think of German runes and how sôl is represented by s.

Where the hell did Dodson Truck some from? One day Slothrp was reading Platsicman comics and Dodson-Truck came upon them and introduced himself (he knew Katje and also knew who Slothrop was).  Dodson-Truck focuses on words and the Slothrops love words (remember his ancestor’s wonderful names).  Do They know that?

He is now completely on to Katje, but he doesn’t blame her—she’s a patsy.  And besides, he’d rather be warm with a woman in the French Riviera than getting bombed at by the Blitz. But sometimes there’s a look in her eyes that depresses him.  She says that she was in ‘s Gravenhage (The Hague) when bombs were going up while he was in London while bombs were coming down.  She knows a lot about him.

Slothrop thinks back to a room, now forbidden to him, where something very bad happened.  Maybe Katje knows what it was.

Slothrop also realizes that he is entirely alone now.  There’s no word from London or ACHTUNG.  Even Bloat is gone.  And so, he decides to grow a mustache.  He’s loved them since he was a kid (the clip-on Groucho or Fu Manchu which were great until they got soggy with snot).  Katje says he should grow a good guy mustache “But good guys don’t have–” (210).  She counters with Wyatt Earp as a good guy with a mustache.  Then one day General Wivern of SHAEF proposes to give him mustache wax to make the ends curl up (it even tastes bad so you won’t chew on the hairs).

He grows his mustache and studies.  And he finds that after each lesson he has a raging hardon.  Although he can’t imagine why.  And, hmm, Dodson-Truck is checking a stopwatch and taking notes.  Slothrop can’t imagine why that either.  He has no idea that it might have something to do with this hardon.  Slothrop can’t get to the bottom of the man so he hatches a plan.

Dodson-Truck is a chess fan.  Slothrop doesn’t play chess, but he plays Prince which proves to be an unholy drinking game.  In another crazy sequence, the champagne flows (evidently They are paying for anything Slothrop wants).  Slothrop explains the “rules” of Prince, but as people get drunk and fall out of the game, new people waiting for free booze jump in.  It is free-flowing champagne and utter chaos.    Half the room a singing a vulgar song (“Last night I poked the Queen of Transylvan-ia.”

The drunken pair of Slothrop and Dodson-Truck stumble out of the casino into the (gorgeous) sunset.   There are (ghostly) visitors standing outside:

out at the horizon, out near the burnished edge of the world, who are these visitors standing . . . these robed figures — perhaps, at this distance, hundreds of miles tall — their faces, serene, unattached, like the Buddha’s, bending over the sea, impassive, indeed, as the Angel that stood over Lübeck during the Palm Sunday raid, come that day neither to destroy nor to protect, but to bear witness to a game of seduction . . . (214).

Incidentally, this comment about the war is interesting, totally unrelated to Slothrop:

because sending the RAF to make a terror raid against civilian Lübeck was the unmistakable long look that said hurry up and fuck me, that brought the rockets hard and screaming, the A4s, which were to’ve been fired anyway, a bit sooner instead. . . (215).

As they walk along, Dodson-Truck (D-Ts?) breaks down and admits that Nora ha been the “sweetheart” of the psychic crowd for years.  And Slothrop remembers she was caught with the kid who can change his color (Gavin Trefoil).  Stephen had a son with Nora, Frank, who was sent to Indochina and Stephen has no idea where he is or if he’s alive. He admits he loved Nora but that he was impotent (does that mean Frank is not his son?  Or was he impotent after?)

Then he comes clean.  He does care about Slothrop and Katje, but his “function” to observe Slothrop.   Slothrop’s “function” is “learn the rocket, inch by inch” (217).  Slothrop asks if he’s been spying through the keyhole ,too.  Dodson says it doesn’t matter, he can’t even get it up anymore.  Then there’s a song from Dodson-Truck called “The Penis He Thought was His Own.”

The figures out to sea are difficult to reach across to.  Carroll Eventyr and Peter Sachsa both found out how hard it is to communicate while trying to confirm the Lübeck Angel.  Then there’s the newly introduced double agent Sammy Hilbert-Spaess.  When Sammy starts talking to Eventyr, Eventyr realizes that They know everything he’s been communicating with Sachsa.   And that they have been censoring the transcripts that he gets to see.

Sammy calls Sachsa, “Zaxa” and talks about how he died—in the street—but not why he was out there in the first place.  And Sammy is here to tell Eventyr…don’t ask why.   But now Eventyr is worried that they will try to get Nora as well.  As Carroll is to Peter, so Nora is to Leni Pökler.  But where will Leni be now?  Carrying her child and her dreams?

The section ends with the most confusing part of the entire read this week.  A “vision” of the end days of Peter Sachsa as seen, perhaps, by Eventyr.

Either Leni was lost (a mistake??) or she was taken as part of Peter’s death.  “She has swept with her wings another life—Peter Sachsa” (218) and not her husband Franz (who wanted her wings and prayed for such a thing to happen to him).   Why is Peter rushing along to her end (was he swept in her wake as Eventyr is sucked into Nora’s).  Her body blocks everything from his sight.  They are being pushed backwards by police.  Then they are on the Hamburg Flyer, an express train.  And then they are separated.

Peter had asked Leni what would happen if she were to be taken—what would happen to Ilse (whom he has grown quite fond of).  Leni says that being a mother is what They want. But that she loves him and is here because of him.

And then the question—did she goad him into the street?  From the other side, Peter says no, but he feels he was sent for a reason.  While Peter was out in the street, Schutzmann Jöche came along, truncheon already in backswing, which he brings down hard on Sachsa’s head.

During the night Sir Stephen vanishes from the casino after he tells Slothrop that his erections are of high interest to Fitzmaurice House.

And Katje I pissed.  She tells him that he has sabotaged the whole thing with his drinking game.  They get into a fight (naked) which ends as many men wish such fights would end.  And that last fuck is the end of their time together.

She asks him what it’s like in London when the bombs hit.  He says, “Uh, you don’t know it’s there till it’s there. Gee, till after it’s there. If it doesn’t hit you, then you’re O.K. till the next one. If you hear the explosion, you know you must be alive” (222).

She asks him some technical questions about the rockets; he spews out answers without realizing it.  And she speculates about the arc of a missile being comparable to sex.

Katje has understood the great airless arch as a clear allusion to certain secret lusts that drive the planet and herself, and Those who use her—over its peak and down, plunging, burning, toward a terminal orgasm . . . which is certainly nothing she can tell Slothrop (223).

He reaches for her but she tells him that he doesn’t really want her:  “No more than [the] A4 [rocket] wants London” (223).

They reminisce about the time he came upon her at the Himmler Spielsaal (where they ate the dinner the night she first invited him up to her room).  They watch the waves, Slothrop hears music.. a clarinet or a kazoo?  And that night when he falls asleep, she sneaks out, leaving him alone.

And much like Roger fears about Jessica, Slothrop is truly alone.  And suddenly, this story has a real heart to it.

—–

Although I was enjoying the story before, with these two sequences of emotional loss (real and feared) I feel like the story has added some heft and I’m really hooked.  Whether or not the story proves to be about Slothrop or even Mexico, it’s nice to have someone to care about.  I’m excited to finish Section 2.

For ease of searching I include: Lubeck, sol, Leni Pokler, Schutzmann Joche