Difference between revisions of "Chapter 41"

Latest revision as of 18:03, 6 August 2018

Page 463

Spuyten Duyvil
Spuyten Duyvil is a neighborhood of the Bronx, New York City, bounded on the north by Riverdale, on the east by Kingsbridge, on the south by the Harlem River, and on the west by the Hudson River, although some consider it to be the southernmost part of Riverdale. The area is named after Spuyten Duyvil Creek, where "Spuyten Duyvil" literally means "Spouting Devil" or Spuitende Duivel in Dutch; a reference to the strong and wild tidal currents found at that location. It may also be translated as "Spewing Devil" or "Spinning Devil", or more loosely as "Devil's Whirlpool" or "Devil's Spate." Spui and spuit are still today commonly used Dutch words involving outlets for water. Historian Reginald Pelham Bolton, however, argues that the phrase means "sprouting meadow", referring to a fresh-water spring. From WIKI.

Page 464

they can hear Elvis-movie music
Chazz is watching Girl Happy (1965), starring Elvis and Shelley Fabares.

Shelley Faberes

It's a scene from the Elvis Presley movie Girl Happy (1965).

See Faberes in action as Elvis sings "The Meanest Girl in Town."

Sillage from the Elvis Hitler song Green Haze mentioned on page 177?

Love will find a way
Pablo Cruise?

Page 467

Peaches & Herb oldie "Reunited and It Feels So Good"

Page 468

Inside the zona
The word Gulag was not often used in Russian — either officially or colloquially; the predominant terms were the camps and the zone, usually singular — for the labor camp system and for the individual camps.

Page 469

Mishpochathon
mishpocha - (Yiddish) the entire family network of relatives by blood or marriage (and sometimes close friends); "she invited the whole mishpocha"

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what happened to 'corrupt artifact of...' whatever it was?
Page 115. "“I don’t do lunch. Corrupt artifact of late capitalism. Breakfast maybe?"

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the fall of the afternoon
This way of expressing "late afternoon" could be from the Spanish poem "Soy yo quien anda?" by Juan Ramón Jiménez:

Is it I who walks, this night
by my room, or the servant
who walked around my garden

at the fall of the afternoon? (Spanish: al caer la tarde)

A quotation from Jiménez, "If they give you ruled paper, write the other way," is the epigraph to Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451.

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iterated diagonals
The hash mark, now most frequently read as "hashtag", has repeated {iterated} diagonals; it also, given the right font and spacing, is very close in form to the double lightning bolt emblem of the SS.

Mara Salvatrucha
Mara Salvatrucha (commonly abbreviated as MS, Mara, and MS-13) is a transnational criminal gang that originated in Los Angeles and has spread to other parts of the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Central America. The majority of the gang is ethnically composed of Central Americans and active in urban and suburban areas. In the U.S., the MS-13 has an especially heavy presence in Los Angeles County and the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California; the Washington, D.C. metropolitan areas of Fairfax County, Virginia, Montgomery County, Maryland, and Prince George's County, Maryland; Long Island, New York; the Boston, Massachusetts area; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Houston, Texas. There is also a presence of MS-13 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Members of MS distinguish themselves by tattoos covering the body and also often the face, as well as the use of their own sign language. They are notorious for their use of violence and a subcultural moral code that predominantly consists of merciless revenge and cruel retributions. This cruelty of the distinguished members of the "Maras" or "Mareros" earned them a path to be recruited by the Sinaloa Cartel battling against Los Zetas in an ongoing drug war south of the United States border. Their wide-ranging activities have drawn the attention of the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who have initiated wide-scale raids against known and suspected gang members – netting hundreds of arrests across the country. From WIKI.

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D and D
Done and Done!

Actually, I think this is supposed to mean "deaf and dumb." As in, "If anyone asks me, I don't know nuttin'!" Seems to fit more with the context, as well as Pynchon's soft spot for hardboiled/noir detective lingo and tropes.TuanJimmy (talk)

Agree, much more likely to be the latter, "deaf and dumb". Pynchon uses this expression unabbreviated and abbreviated twice (at least) in his novel "Inherent Vice". It's what Doc Sportello, the private eye, says to people to reassure them he'll keep the info they're feeding him confidential:

„You can't tell anybody about this, Doc.“ / „Deaf and dumb, part of the job. Any phone numbers you'd like to share?“ (Doc's response to Shasta, his ex-girlfriend, pg. 4 of the Vintage 2010 edition);

„And no, I haven't been near the heat with this. It would get back to these guys before I was out the door, and I'd end up a shark hors d'oeuvre.“ / „D and D, Tito.“ (Doc's response to his friend Tito Stavrou, pg. 184 of the Vintage 2010 edition).

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paraphrasing Cheech & Chong . . . "I woulda shot him, man."

set and setting, as Dr. Tim always liked to say...
From WIKI: Set and setting describes the context for psychoactive and particularly psychedelic drug experiences: one's mindset and the setting in which the user has the experience. This is especially relevant for psychedelic or hallucinogenic experiences. The term was coined by Timothy Leary, and became widely accepted by researchers in psychedelic psychotherapy.

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The Fatty Arbuckle Story

Here are all the "story of" films from the "BPX cable channel, which airs film biographies exclusively" (page 93) I could find. They often come, by the way, with disparaging remarks about Horst. Pynchon telling us something about Horst, the Biography Channel, film biographies and the actors who star in them and the people who watch them, perhaps even, Journey into the Mind of P and those who have seen it, etc?

page 94: Owen Wilson as Jack Nicklaus, Hugh Grant in The Phil Mickelson Story
page 94: Christopher Walken, starring in The Chi Chi Rodriguez Story
page 374: Anthony Hopkins in The Mikhail Baryshnikov Story
page 433: Ben Stiller in The Fred MacMurray Story
page 435: Alec Baldwin in The Ray Milland Story
page 466: The Anton Chekhov Story, starring Edward Norton, with Peter Sarsgaard as Stanislavski
Page 476: Leonardo DiCaprio in “The Fatty Arbuckle Story”

In the book, all the film titles were italicized except the last one, which had quotation marks. Just a slip of the pen? [Likely. Numerous instances of sloppy editing/proofreading toward the end of the book.]