I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: PHOEBUS CARTEL-“Difficult,” “Asylum Energy,” “November”

If I had any idea how many bands were named after things in Gravity’s Rainbow, or were perhaps tangentially related to it, like this one, I would have never bothered mentioning bands that I actually know.

Phoebus Cartel is a heavy metal band based out of Denmark.  And…  well, that’s really all I know about them.  I found this image for them online which linked me to their site on bandbase (if you must, you can also get it in English–although there’s no extra information).

There are three songs here on the site.  They are all sung in English and all have heavy guitars.  The band is clearly heavy metal inspired, but they also classify themselves as “alternativ.”

“difficult” has elements of Marilyn Manson in the singing (and even the melody). It’s a very catchy interesting song and very heavy.  “asylum enemy” has some great heavy chugging guitars. I like the part in the middle where we just get two heavy notes and a pause.  It reminded me a lot of Tool.  “November” has the most normal sounding singing in the bunch–it’s also the least metal sounding–more like heavy alt rock.  Although the break in the middle with slow guitars is nicely atmospheric.

I really enjoyed all three songs.  I’d like to learn more about these guys but I literally can find nothing else about them anywhere.

[READ: Week of April 23] Gravity’s Rainbow 4.1-4.6

Section 4, the final section is here at last.  We are out of The Zone and into The Counterforce.  The epigram here is by Richard M. Nixon.  Hilariously it is simply, “What?”  Unfortunately, I found it to be way too apt for my own feelings while reading this pretty confusing section.  While some sections advanced the “plot,” there were a ton of new characters added and, even more confusingly, a bunch of scenes that were either hallucinations or fantasies  or both.  And none of these do much for you sense of what the hell is going on.

Section 4.1 opens with…Bette Davis and Margaret Dumont?  It’s a scene from the Marx Brother’s A Day at the Races which Slothrop is dreaming about.  The racket that woke him was that he is flying with Pirate Prentice in a hijacked P-47 on route to Berlin.  Since the war is over and things don’t need to be gray anymore, it’s painted kelly green.  Pirate is having a good old time with the plane–trying out buttons, performing stunts and nearly crashing into the water.

And, to catch everyone up: Osbie Feel ought to be in Marseilles, trying to contact Blodgett Waxwing. Webley Silvernail is en route to Zürich.  Katje will be going to Nordhausen.  Pirate hasn’t heard from Katje since the parted, but then he doesn’t really expect to.

Since the war ended, Pirate’s lost his ability to live the fantasies of others, but he’s still haunted by Katje’s ancestor Frans van der Groov, dodo killer.

A quick shift to Gustav the composer and Säure, still arguing about composers “tonality is a game,” Gustav yells, (while Säure is hoovering cocaine…lots of cocaine. Slothrop is there too, walking down to a stream where he left his harmonica to clean (it happens to be the one he lost in the toilet in Boston, but he doesn’t know that).  Before he found the harmonica, he found, and learned to play, a Highlander’s bagpipes.  He played so much that soon people began leaving offerings of food by the lean-to he constructed.  When he quit the bagpipes he found the harmonica.

Slothrop spends his days naked, growing out his hair and beard.  He knows he should go somewhere, but he just wants to lie outside.  He wonders if he should still try to get papers, but why his he so obsessed with that?  He’s still thinking of getting back to America, apparently.   He worries about the Jamf/I dream.  He sees omens everywhere, including graffiti in a public shithouse “Willst Du V-2, Dann Arbeite” (if you want the V-2, then work).  But there’s also

“Willst Du V-4, Dann Arbeite.”  Phew.  It’s not a message for him.  But then he also sees “Rocketman was Here.”  Slothrop does his own graffiti–a circle in a circle with four lines sticking out at north south east west–like the A4 as seen from below.

There’s an interlude about a hanged man having an orgasm as his neck breaks and his one drop of sperm creating a mandrake root (fans of Harry Potter should know what that is).   In this case, the mandrake multiplies the magician’s money tenfold.

The section ends after a heavy rain.  Although Slothrop doesn’t recall it, he sees “a very thick rainbow here, a stout rainbow cock driven down out of pubic clouds into Earth, green wet valleyed Earth, and his chest fills and he stands crying, not a thing in his head, just feeling natural” (626).

Section 4.2 brings back Roger Mexico!  How I missed him! This section is long, but is mostly only about Roger’s two main focuses Jessica and…Slothrop.

He has carjacked a Horch, army green with a daffodil on it.  There are baby food jars full of some toxic substance rolling around on the floor but he hasn’t stopped to investigate them.   He’s too busy thinking about Jessica.

A week prior she came to “The White Visitation” for the last time.  She had gotten a haircut and hates it but he says its nice and then wonders why they are talking about haircuts.  The crux is that now that the war is over, it’s like a spell has broken and she no longer needs Roger.  “The War’ was the condition she needed for being with Roger.  Peace allows her to leave him” (628).  She’s leaving for Cuxhaven with Old Beaver.  Roger is devastated.

Point of view shifts to hers…she knows that she and Jeremy together is how it was meant to be.  Her future is with the world’s future, but Roger’s future is with that strange version of the war–he want to go and rescue Slothrop–

another rocket-creature, a vampire whose sex life actually fed on the terror of that Rocket Blitz-ugh, creepy, creepy. They ought to lock him up, not set him free. Roger must care more about Slothrop than about her, they’re two of a kind, aren’t they, well-she hopes they’ll be happy together (629).

Shift back to Roger in a very emotional and beautifully written couple of sentences;

She may know a little, may think of herself, face and body, as “pretty”… but he could never tell her all the rest, how many other living things, birds, nights smelling of grass and rain, sunlit moments of simple peace, also gather in what she is to him. Was. He is losing more than single Jessica: he’s losing a full range of life, of being for the first time at ease in the Creation. Going back to winter now, drawing back into his single envelope. The effort it takes to extend any further is more than he can make alone (629).

Roger tried to throw himself in Pointsman’s work but he couldn’t.  The one day Milton Gloaming showed up.  Gloaming was with Josef Schleim, a defector who had worked for the IG.  And he says that there are rumblings about who will take over the Slothrop surveillance now that Lyle Bland is gone.  The Slothrop surveillance was assigned to Sparte IV under Vermittlungstelle W.

The four Sparte each handled something different:

• I: nitrogen and gasoline
• II: dyes, chemicals, buna rubber, pharmaceuticals
• III: film and fibers
• IV: Slothrop and nothing else, except one or two patents acquired through IG Chemie in Switzerland.  An analgesic whose name he couldn’t recall and a new plastic, some name like Mipolam… “polimex” or something…

Mexico wants to know why they were under surveillance before the war, but Gloaming simply turns and leaves. Hmm, Roger thinks, Pointsman deals with ICI.  ICI has arrangements with Farben.  “Well say, what the hell is going on here?” (631).

Mexico takes the motorcycle (the Jaguar was repossessed by Pointsman), and as he’s heading to London, he decides that Pointsman sent Gloaming to freak out Roger.  Speaking of freaking out Roger, Poinstman “is apt these days to pop in at any time, usually while Roger is sleeping or trying to take a quiet shit, and actually stand there, in front of the toilet, reading aloud a pertinent text” (631).  Pointsman has no shame at all, he’s worse than Pudding was.  He probably even used Jessica to…  Oh shit, Jesscia….  Not her too.

He storms into Twelfth House demanding to see Pointsman who, of course, isn’t there.  Although only Géza Rózavölgyi is.  Mexico yells at him, “Shurrup you Transylvanian twit” and a major scene erupts.  A fight starts with lots of running around (I heard Benny Hill music).  A chubby secretary runs in and starts banging him on the shins.  Her glasses fall off and he says, “Miss Müller-Hochleben…you look beastly without your gasses  Put ssem back on, at vunce!” this comic Nazi routine being inspired by her surname” (633).

They begin looking for the glasses until Mexico crushes them under his boots.  The scene degenerates into chaos–bizarre delusional chaos.  This includes a trip to a Hawaiian island (including a song).  Géza finally gives in and tells him that Pointsman is in Mossmoons’ office .

Mexico storms in, past all of the sentinel girls (and in a wonderful aside: each of them wearing a frock of a radically different color from the others “(and this goes on for a while, so you can imagine what 3-sigma colors these are to begin with, if that many can be so “radically different,” you know, like that- oh, colors such as lizard, evening star, pale Atlantis to name a few)” (635).  Roger starts pounding on the door, giving a speech (the door opens before the speech is over but he continues nonetheless) about how Pointsman’s jig is up.

Pointsman tells him to come down off the table, but instead, Mexico whips it out and starts pissing all over everyone (“men of hair-trigger minds, are still not quite willing to admit that this is happening, you know, in any world that really touches, at too many points, the one they’re accustomed to… and actually the fall of warm piss is quite pleasant as it sweeps by) (636).  Poinstman won’t even look at him, which makes Roger happy. But then the police come–anticlimax or what?  But, thank you to the narrator:

aficionados of the chase scene, those who cannot look at the Taj Mahal, the Uffizi, the Statue of Liberty without thinking chase scene, chase scene, wow yeah Douglas Fairbanks scampering across that moon minaret there-these enthusiasts may find interest in the following: (637).

What follows is indeed a chase scene.  Roger dives under the table grabs a man (by the necktie or the cock) and drags him under.  He keeps the man as a hostage until he gets out of the building.  He has no reason to go back to “The White Visitation”  so he grabs the motorcycle with a line I would have loved in college:

a pocket full of spare change and anger unlimited, what more does a 30-year-old innocent need to make his way in the city? (637).

Pirate is at home, apparently waiting for him.  Pirate’s Mendoza is in pieces being cleaned.  When Roger starts complaining about Gloaming, Pirate says that Pointsman didn’t send Gloaming, we sent him.

What follows is a semantically confusing section that makes sense overall but is tough in the details.  Basically Pirate tries to explain that if you have a They-system you need a We-system.  After a few paragraphs, “Roger is totally confused” (638).  But then in wanders Milton Gloaming and a black man from Mossmoon’s office who turns out to be Jan Otyiyumbu, a Schwarzkommando liaison man.  Then Blodgett Waxwing shows up with a girl who is dancing–a dance which Osbie Feel (with a Porky Pig tattoo on his stomach) pokes his head out and says is heroin-induced.

Sir Stephen Dodson-Truck is there too, cleaning his Sten.  He only thinks of the weapon, no thoughts of Nora are in his head. But Nora is there too and she has realized that her true identity is, literally The Force of Gravity (639).  She will be suckered in at seances that wouldn’t fool you great aunt, get visits from the likes of Ronald Cherrycoke in a Jesus Christ getup.  Somehow this transforms into a scene with a lesbian elephant and she’s about to get hit in the face with a Yorkshire pudding.  [I wasn’t sure how much effort to put in to figure out what the hell was going on so I didn’t do much].

Soon, everyone is singing a travelling song.  And Roger drives to Cuxhaven singing, “it isn’t a resistance, it’s a war.”

Section 4.3 opens with the another mention that potato crops went to make alcohol for rockets.   But this time it mentions that there are small arms aplenty.  And we are introduced to another new character: Pfc Eddie Pensiero, a replacement in the 89th Divsion and an amphetamine enthusiast.  He shivers inordinately, but he is also the company’s barber.  Pensiero is trying to get warm but his Sargeant Howard (“Slow”) Lerner tells him a colonel wants his haircut.  The colonel is sitting under a bulb which is powered by an enlisted man hand pedaling a crank (whose name is Paddy “Electro” McConigle from New Jersey and who likes busting Pensiero’s chops..

Eddie hears someone playing a song on a harmonica out in the night.  But no one else seems to notice it. There’s a humorously offensive Italian joke (from McGonigle and Pensiero’s expense) with the punchline Pinnnggguinea-guinea-guinea wopwopwop.”  Pensiero’s haircuts take hours, sometimes days; he is very focused on follicles.

As soon as Pensiero touches the colonel’s head, the colonel starts speaking about how they normally do house to house sweeps.  He’s from Keonsha (the Keonsha Kid?), and he talks about his old farm–snow, chicken fetuses, ’37 Fords escaping the Karmic Hammer.  Somehow a person named Skippy comes into this, is it the colonel in  a flashback?  I think so.  Talking about the lack of production of cars because of the war, that’s why the ’37 will still be around.  There’s an interesting aside here:

See that man back there.  He is wearing a white hood.  His shoes are brown.  He has a nice smile, but nobody sees it.  Nobody sees it because his face is always in the dark.  But he is a nice man.  He is the pointsman.  He is called that because he throws the lever that changes the points.  And we go to Happyville instead of to Pain City (644).

Wow, I don’t even know what to make of that.  Is it related to Pointsman?  Is this Pointsman giving someone a happy drug?  Whatever it is, Mister Information tells Skippy about the necessity of war, how it eliminates all the people who need to be eliminated (The ones who slip and show a moment’s weakness to the enemy.  The ones who stand up in basic, in the middle of the machine gun pattern” (645).

And then it starts to get really weird.  Skippy is rescued from the acoits (bandits) by a squat robot who speaks in one-liners (crab is Cancer in Latin).  Then he confuses the robot, which runs away, and is replaced by Lazlo Jamf, preserved in old age.

Then we get on to light bulbs.  The light bulb over the colonel’s head is the same one that Pökler used to sleep under in Nordhausen.  And this bulb is immortal.  Which leads to the very lengthy The Story of Byron the Bulb.

This story is interesting in some ways and seems to tangentially touch other characters from the story.  And yet, it is the story of a lightbulb.  The first connection is that Byron (for this whole story is about Byron) was supposed to be manufactured in Budapest and would have been sold by Géza Rózavölgyi’s father, Sandor.

And then it shifts to Bulb Baby Heaven.  Now, normally in these posts I try to keep to the relevant stuff and summarize the digressions.  I have no idea what to make of this whole thing.  It is so bizarre; who knows what’s relevant.  It seems to be a description of where lightbulbs come from, only personified.  Byron hates the other babies in Bulb Baby Heaven and wants to get out and into it.  He’s agitated and developing the bulb equivalent of Diaper Rash and Colic.  But he has plans to overthrow humanity by having all of the bulbs in Europe pulse at the same time (and some will explode, too!)

But Byron’s plans will never happen because of an organization known as Phoebus, the international lightbulb cartel, which is essentially run by GE.   Phoebus fixes the prices and determines the life span of all lightbulbs.  [All this time, I thought this was a crazy story, but I just looked it up and there really was a Phoebus cartel. Pynchon has his fingers EVERYWHERE]

But Phoebus doesn’t know Byron is immortal.  Byron starts life in a brothel, mourning the losses of his fellow bulbs.  Once he hits 600 hours, the cartel begin to notice him: “that through no bulb shall the mean operating life be extended.  You can imagine what it would do to the market if that started happening” (650).  When he passes 1000 hours, a hit man is sent for him.  But before he can be taken out, a young street urchin, Hansel Geschwindig, (which means “speed”) steals him and runs off with him [that was massively condensed, by the way].

Phoebus is not too upset…this happens, and surely no one knows that Byron is immortal. Which ties back to Lyle Bland and his psychological experiments.  A law firm was mentioned earlier and I wanted to shout it out, and since it’s hear again, I will: Saltieri, Nash, De Brutus and Short.  [Nasty, brutish and short, a quote about humanity from Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan].  The Bulbsnatching heresy is Bland’s greatest legacy–no one is buying a bulb AND no one is using the electricity for it.

Byron’s fate is unexpected (or maybe not, given Pynchon).  Byron is traded to a prostitute (for morphine).  And the prostitute uses him for a customer who likes to have lightbulbs screwed into his asshole. Byron then gets flushed down the toilet and sent into the North Sea to Helgoland where he is picked up by a monk who knew of Byron’s immortality because of a dream.

There’s a chase (of course) which involves my favorite word in the book so far: transectite, “a Lutheran named Mausmacher who likes to dress up in the Roman regalia” (653).  Eventually Byron is found by a poor Jewish ragpicker.  He is put into the Grid, and the more contact he makes with other appliances, the wiser he becomes.  But he can’t do anything, the Grid is too powerful.  He is condemned to go on forever, knowing the truth and powerless to change anything” (655).  The narrator digs into the conspiracy a bit more and sees it all settled across the globe, with prices of tungsten fixed per country.  [In college we all loved Tungsten because the chemical symbol is W–crazy man].

Wow, what the hell was that all about?

The section ends with Laszlo Jamf walking away while the colonel is left in Happyville. Although in reality, the colonel is about to be killed by Eddie Pensiero and Paddy McGonigle, “a one man power system with dreams of his own [who wants the colonel out of the way as much as anyone]” (655).

What a bizarre section.

Section 4.4 tempers that somewhat. It too is a little confusing in the beginning, but it settles down into what is the revealing dialogue in possibly the whole book.

Katje is riding down the lane on a bicycle and she is captured (maybe?) by a Hereo man.  And then appear a group of Hereo dressed in sailor suits and carrying a brassy dame–which she realizes is her.  Katje, dressed in white is the epitome of whiteness and she is afraid of all the blackness around her.  And she wonders, how can she find Slothrop among such blackness?

She deals well with Andreas, but she is afraid of Enzian since “each in a way has been loved by Captain Blicero” (658).

Enzain knows her as the Golden Bitch of Blicero’s last letters (he has no real picture of who Blicero was talking about, and he didn’t picture this).

She is surprised by his politeness, especially when he asks after Blicero.  But he’s not being timid, he’s being decent.  She says when she last saw him he was alone, looked old and may not have left Holland alive.  But Enzian knows he got as far as Lüneberg Heath.  He admits he’s been looking for him and thinks Slothrop has too although he may not realize that.

Enzian tells her that there were certain aspects of Blicero that he never followed–despite what the stories about him say.  And when she asks Enzian what Blicero means to him, he says

I would show you the Raketen-Stadt.  Plexiglass maps of the webs we maintain across the Zone.  Underground schools, systems for distributing food and medicine. (660)

She assumes he is speaking of the Raketen-Stadt as a gift, but he says, no, he feels like he is distanced from it all–that he has lost everything but this vantage point.  There is no humanity left.

When she asks what he thinks of her, Enzian says that her story is the saddest of all: “You’ve only been set free” (661).

He reminds her that she doesn’t have to go any deeper than waiting for Slothrop to show up.  But she feels that she ought to be going deeper  She wants to know why he is out there, she wants to stop Them.  He says that they have someone who was with Blicero in May, just before the end.  She says she wants to come and listen to what he has to say.

There’s an insert of a letter from Blicero about Katje: “her masochism is reassurance for her.  That she can still be hurt, that she is human and can still cry at pain” (662).

And the section drifts off…

Section 4.5 returns us to Thanatz.  It opens again with the weird narrator: “You will want cause and effect” (663) which then goes on to explain what happened to Thanatz on the Anubis.  He was rescued by a Polish undertaker.  The undertaker is out in the storm trying to get struck by lighting because he knows that will make him interesting.  (He’s inspired by Benjamin Franklin: of course, he doesn’t know that Franklin was a Mason “and given to cosmic forms of practical jokesterism” (664).

This section starts by talking about getting struck by lighting and Carmen Miranda hats.  The narrator may actually be going crazy: “Ha-ha! But the lightning-struck know, all right! Even if they may not know they know” (664).  The story then follows a thread about a “club newsletter” called Long Enough which relates minutiae from people’s lives (although there is a tale of an electrical tidal wave in which every bulb in the place burned out (which must reference Byron the Bulb).

The undertaker is investigating lighting because he thinks it will help him in his job–he wants to handle bereaved families better.  The undertaker drops Thanatz off in an all male community created by 175s–homosexual prison-camp inmates.

[I’m interrupting here because, while it is clear that Pynchon is anti-racist, I’m not entirely sure what his take on homosexuality is.  He’s got very swishsy characters, and then there’s the whole thing about the faggotry at the end of section 3.32.  And then there’s this whole section, which makes me uncomfortable.]

These men were in Dora and they were there so long that they are homesick for it–the liberation was a banishment.  So they have set up a hypothetical SS chain of command–some really mean ass imagery.  At the top of the complex is Scutzhäftlingsführer Blicero (which is more of a placeholder: “The name has found its way this far east, as if carrying on the man’s retreat for him, past the last stand in the Lüneburg Heath” (666).

He is their highest oppressor.  The chain of command is not the same as in Dora, but is assumed from the Rocket structure from the Mittelwerke next door. As soon as Thanatz hears the name Blicero, his asshole tightens.  Not that he’s paranoid, he just doesn’t even want to be reminded of the man–“reminded that he’s had no word, since the noon on the Heath when the 00000 was fired” (667).  Like Schrödinger’s cat, he doesn’t want to think about whether Blicero is alive or dead.   The 175s are hoping that Blicero is alive and will fill the spot for them.

A nice call back says that the white Anubis has gone on to salvation.  But those left here are the preterite.  And Thanatz, yells to them, “I wasn’t supposed to be left with you discards” (667).  Too bad, nobody’s listening.  He heads away from the camp only to be grabbed by the Russian police–there’s an agreement that no one leaves 175-Stadt.

But by strange coincidence, his transport vehicle is captured by a guerrilla group who then realize he’s not who they are looking for. He is then herded with 1,999 others being sent to Berlin.  He is doomed to be moved around the Zone forever.  Thanatz, who felt exempted, realizes he is exempt from nothing–his shoes are stolen, he is beaten up.

He then remembers back to the rocket-firing on the Heath.  He remembers a windmill, but there are no windmills on Lüneburg Heath.  And he remembers Blicero dressed as a Dragon Lady.  And that he himself longed for the touch of women’s clothes.  He is rambling on and on.  And he is rambling to the Schwarzkommando.  He had been shouting “I’ve seen the Schwargerät” for a week, and they finally brought him in to hear what he had to say.

He knows he lost Gottfried and Bianca but now he can’t remember in what order or if they were even the same person.  He also may have even gotten rid of Blicero himself.

Random scenes flash past for him.  From Morituri, from Great Erdmann, from an unknown person he sees a flash about Bianca.

The Erdschweinhöhlers are thrilled to have Thanatz now, their Angel, on the day that they have their Rocket all assemnled.  Thier single A4 scavenged from pieces across the Zone.  By the time Thanatz is done,” they will all know what the Schwargerät was, how it was used, where the 00000 was fired from, and which way it was pointed” (673).  [Is this the person Enzian was just telling Katje about?  Does she get to see Thanatz confess?].

And as the section ends we see the Schwarzkommando prepping for their rocket.  We see Christian walking past.  He has had a dream from his sister Maria (so there is some callback to that confusing scene from 3.21)–she wants no revenge on anyone.  As he passes Enzian their hands brush–a sign of temporary trust

Section 4.5 is crazy.  And reminds me of Ulysses‘ “Wandering Rocks” section because of all of the different people being talked about.

This is set in Raketen-Stadt.  Which I believe is meant to be entirely fictional, right?  But jeepers, it’s a detailed description of this hallucinatory location:

It’s a giant factory-state here, a City of the Future full of extrapolated 1930s swoop-facaded and balconied skyscrapers, lean chrome caryatids with bobbed hairdos, classy airships of all descriptions drifting in the boom and hush of the city abysses, golden lovelies sunning in roof-gardens and turning to wave as you pass. It is the Raketen-Stadt. (674).

It starts with a memo for Tyrone: Go and find the Radiant Hour “(Weepers! Didn’t know it was lost! Sounds like ol’ Pop’s up to somma those tricks again!)” (674).  This thing about Pops is set up in the first paragraph: “It is this typical American teenager’s own Father, trying episode after episode to kill his son. And the kid knows it.” (674).  He is given a clue as to where the Radiant Hour is, and he assembles his team: Myrtle Miraculous, a negro named Maximilian, and Marcel, a mechanical chessplayer.  Together they are the Floundering Four, dealing with the Paternal Peril.  Each of the four has a gift and a flaw:

Myrtle performs miracles, impossible for humans and so she has lost love and respect for them.
Maxmillian has a natural sense of rhythm including the cosmic–so he’ll never accidentally get hurt by anything (manholes, falling pianos) but his flaw is that he never ventures far into danger.

Together they are a disaster–not a team so much as a collection of impulses.  And Slothrop has no hope for success or failure–he can’t decide, he is a “glozing neuter”.

Slothrop goes into the fridge for “the pause that refreshes” and then sees bananas in the fridge (you should never do that , right Chiquita Banana?).  And there’s a joke about his brother putting the banana label on his erect cock.  While he’s thinking about this, Tyrone gets locked in the fridge.  Myrtle lets him out but they realize the Radiant Hour is long gone. Slothrop snivels for a miracle and M.M. comes through.

The scene shifts to Slothrop going to a cigarette machine, which is Marcel of course. He buys a pack of Armies and inside is a message:

“I’m sure you wouldn’t want Them to know about the summer of 1945. Meet me in the Male Transvestites’ Toilet, level L16/39C, station Metatron, quadrant Fire, stall Malkuth. You know what time. The usual Hour. Don’t be late” (680).

And soon enough Slothrop is in the Transvesite’s Toilet in the smoke and buzzing lights.

Then The Low-Frequency Listener begins [this section is broken down into lots of tinier sections with all-caps headlines].

A word about German U-boats.  The antennae for these boats is in the Jehovah’s Witnesses branch in Magdeburg.  Slothrop is there trying to get in touch with the Argentinean anarchists, although he doesn’t remember why…it may have something to do with Squalizozzi.

Slothrop learns of a War Crimes tribunal in Nürnburg, although no one knows who’s trying whom for what.

Then there’s a letter:
Mom Slothrop’s Letter to Ambassador Kennedy.  She’s on her fourth martini writing to Joe Kennedy (she called him Jew-zeppy and Hozay at one point).  She asks for any word about their youngest son (Tyrone) while he’s in London.  It ends with the awkward “Jacks’ a fine boy. Really, I love Jack like Hogan and Tyrone, just like  a son, my own son.  I even love him like I don’t love my son, ha-ha!”

The book shifts to On the Phrase “Ass Backwards”

They are in Säure’s tenement which is now known as Der Platz.  And it suddenly looks nice(r).  Light streams in, there is a garden and an irrigation system in place.  And there’s dope stashed everywhere.  They are even working on a moat.  Säure’s (who is calling Slothrop Yankee pig-because, well, he was in the pig suit forever) says he doesn’t understand the expression ass backwards.  Since your ass is already backwards.  You ought to be saying ass forwards.  There’s a funny flashback to a German misunderstanding of words.  A woman (who turns out to be dating Wimpe) who couldn’t pronounce umlauts.  When Säure tries to rob her she shouts Hübsch Räuber (which means Cute looking robber) but it comes out Hubschrauber which means Liftscrewer (helicopter).  Nobody knows what that is except for one paranoid guy who would eventually become the Spörri that Achtfaden would confess to the Schwarzkommando.

Seaman Bodine says ass is an intensifier like “stupid ass”.  Bodine does impressions of supporting role characters like Arthur Kennedy or Sam Jaffe.

Säure is tyring to create his own cadenza and is driving every one crazy by practicing it all the time.  Trudi stomps off (and Säure hopes it’s not for good).  Bodine is composing his own to ease tensions.  His is called “My Doper’s Cadenza”

Then Säure asks the Shit ‘N’ Shinola question.  Bodine gets mad that he’s asking all these slang questions. But Säure just wants to know.  He thinks of Schitt, Herr Bumer or Scchhit! down comes a cartoon guillotine.  And Shinola he believes is Schein-Aula, an open air alabaster stadium.

But the narrator tells us that Shit n Shinola come together in the Roseland Ballroom where Slothrop when down the toilet.

Shit is the color white folks is afraid of (have you ever seen a brown toilet?).  Shinola shoe polish is the color of shit.

And there’s this crazy connection put together here:

Shoeshine boy Malcolm’s in the toilet slappin’ on the Shinola, working off whiteman’s penance on his sin of being born the color of Shit ‘n’ Shinola. It is nice to think that one Saturday night, one floor-shaking Lindyhopping Roseland night, Malcolm looked up from some Harvard kid’s shoes and caught the eye of Jack Kennedy (the Ambassador’s son), then a senior. Nice to think that young Jack may have had one of them Immortal Lightbulbs then go on overhead-did Red suspend his ragpopping just the shadow of a beat, just enough gap in the more there to let white Jack see through, not through to but through through the shine on his classmate Tyrone Slothrop’s shoes? Were the three ever lined up that way-sitting, squatting, passing through? Eventually Jack and Malcolm both got murdered. Slothrop’s fate is not so clear. It may be that They have something different in mind for Slothrop (688).

Wow, that’s pretty intense.

Then on to the ridiculous: An Incident in the Transvestite’s Toilet

A small ape gives Slothrop (who is dressed like Fay Wray) a bomb with a lit fuse.  Slothrop freezes until a tall Oriental looking transvestite takes the bomb and heaves it into a toilet where it explodes (KRUPPALOOMA) (690).  Turns out it was a sodium bomb which explodes when it touches water–so get the bastard who threw it in there.

This gives way to A Moment of Fun with Takeshi and Ichizo the Komical Kamikazes.  This sequence was pretty offensive until it turned out to be something other than what it seemed.  But anyhow, Takeshi is tall and fat, Ichizo is short and skinny.  They are the only two Kamikazes on this air base, far from any people they can attack.  “No dying today! So Solly! (691). This crazy sequence is explained this:

It sounded like something right outa Hollywood? Well Captain–yes you, Marine Captain Esberg from Pasadena,–you, have just had, the Mystery Insight!  …and so you–are our Paranoid…For the Day! (691)

It’s just another WWII situation comedy!

This shifts to Streets.  There is a general discussion of various locations that zooms in on army chaplains–soldiers who sat or stood, and listened.  But the crux here is that Slothrop is sitting on the curb staring vacantly at a newspaper.

Shift to Listening to the Toilet, where They will come and shut off the water first, so you should always have your valve cracked a bit to maintain some flow.

This shifts to the idea that there is sound in outer space (They just don’t want you to know that) the Sonfierous Aether.  Except now and then there will be a pocket of no-sound (for 6 tenths of a second), Central War Time.  There’s a list of cities that must be significant to something, “Well, you’re wrong, champ–these happen to be towns all located on the borders of Time Zones, is all” (695). [Snotty narrator].  And then there’s some brouhaha about Kenosha and the Kenosha Kid and a few words from a Kamikaze unit.

Then Witty Repartees sees the return of Ichizo and Takeshi (oh goody?).  But there’s a shout-out to Pirate Prentice (who had seen the gun that the Kamikazes have).

Cut to Heart-to-Heart, Man-To-Man, a brief chat between Slothrop and pops about shooting waves of electricity into your head and taking a vacation.  “We can live for ever, in a clean, honest, purified Electroworld–” (699).

And this bizarre, seemingly pointless and really kind of irritating section ends with the promising Some Characteristics of Imipolex G

“Imipolex G is the first plastic that is actually erectile” (700).  Sadly, the rest of the paragraphs are technical gibberish with the only part that seems significant is “subscript R is for Rakete and B for Blicero” (700).

And we can only hope the last 60 pages are more sensible than that was.

—–

I was really looking forward to Section 4.  As I’ve said I don’t really know what to expect from this book.  I have no idea how it ends–will it wrap up nicely?  Will questions be answered?  Do I even have question to answer?   Will it end mid sentence?  No idea.  And yet I didn’t expect this section to be as hallucinatory as it has been.  I kind of hoped there’d be a bookend to the beginning with the return of most of  our earlier characters.  That has happened somewhat, and I understand that post-War they are all kinds of messed up, but I didn’t expect it to be so literal.

At this point I have no idea what to expect for the end of the book.  I’m not looking for (or expecting) the book to be tied with a bow.  I’m still not sure if there is a plot to tie up.  But  I would like certain closures to come along.

For ease of searching, I include: Zurich,  Saure,  Geza Rozavolgyi,  Pokler,  Luneberg,  Scutzhaftlingsfuhrer Blicero,  Schrodinger’s cat,  Schwargerat,  Erdschweinhohlers,  Nurnburg,  Sporri