Thomas Pynchon Wiki - User contributions [en]

Chapter 23

2014-12-15T22:26:27Z

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==Page 247==
'''anti-kibbutz''' 
A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. For more see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz WIKI].

'''Kyrgyz movie''' 
Recall [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=The_Kirghiz_Light The Kirghiz Light] in Pynchon's ''Gravity's Rainbow'' (1973). Interestly, he changes the spelling here, reflecting how it's now [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyrgyzstan commonly spelled].

Perhaps the 1998 film [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166503/ The Adopted Son] playing as a revival at the [http://www.filmlinc.com/ Film Society of Lincoln Center.]

'''Tongue Polonaise''' 
A traditional Jewish holiday dish. The recipe Pynchon describes may likely have come from
[http://books.google.com/books?id=PZTEv5vV8IMC&pg=PA154&lpg=PA154&dq=tongue+polonaise+gingersnaps&source=bl&ots=m7Bn8OBm0v&sig=D2GPLhldrSi6CDWYGlLJ_WvmEM4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=20I5Uu2NDMLqrQGEt4GAAw&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=tongue%20polonaise%20gingersnaps&f=false ''Cooking Jewish''] by Judy Bart Kancigor (Workman Publishing, 2007):

<blockquote>
If you attended Bar Mitzvahs in the 1950, you probably saw some permutation of this recipe on the buffet table. Tongue has fallen out of favor in the intervening decades, except on sandwiches in kosher delis, and even then it's ordered only by people old enough to remember that era. [...] Tongue has a soft, creamy texture and rich taste that is difficult to compare to anything else.

<blockquote>
1 pickled beef tongue (about 4 pounds) 
1 can (20 ounces) pineapple chunks, drained 
1 cup canned pitted black cherries, drained and chopped 
1/4 cup golden raisins 
1 jar (10 ounces) orange marmalade 
2 cups orange juice 
1/2 cup (packed) light or dark brown sugar 
1/4 cup distilled white vinegar 
Juice of 1 lemon (about 3 tablespoons) 
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard 
'''10 gingersnaps, crushed''' 
1/4 teaspoon kosher (coarse) salt, or to taste
</blockquote>
</blockquote>

==Page 248==
'''No hondeling''' 
Hondeling is the bargaining, or haggling, style in Israel.

'''blue lines on a stick''' 
This refers to a pregnancy-test device a "stick" that a woman uses to see if she is pregnant. The device displays one blue line to indicate the test has worked. A second blue line, forming a + indicates pregnancy. [http://www.errorprooftest.com/how-to-read-ept] So, yup, a Pregnant Pause...

==Page 249==
'''"He meets her gaze and then sits staring at her, as if she's some kind of screen..."''' 
Crap. More Lacan references, only now Maxine's a TV with a difference: instead of ''tubeside'', Avi is ''Maxiside''.

'''p'tcha''' 
A traditional Ashkenazi Jewish dish prepared from calves' feet, similar to an aspic.
In Eastern Europe, Jews served p'tcha with chopped eggs on Sabbath. In the early 20th century, Jewish immigrants in the United States continued to prepare the dish, and it was often served as an appetizer at Jewish weddings. But vegan?

'''classical piano novelty act''' 
a polonaise is a dance, and Chopin wrote a lot of polonaises for solo piano

==Page 250==
'''"...Avi pretends to be absorbed in the television."''' 
Told ya.

==Page 251==
'''Proust Schmoust''' 
In ''In Search of Lost Time'' (aka ''Remembrance of Things Past''), Marcel Proust uses madeleines to contrast involuntary memory with voluntary memory. The latter designates memories retrieved by "intelligence," that is, memories produced by putting conscious effort into remembering events, people, and places. Proust's narrator laments that such memories are inevitably partial, and do not bear the "essence" of the past. The most famous instance of involuntary memory by Proust is known as the "episode of the madeleine." Here, the Tongue triggers Ernie's involuntary memory.

==Page 252==
'''Purple Drank T-shirt''' 
Purple drank is a slang term for a recreational drug popular in the hip hop community in the southern United States, originating in Houston, Texas. Its main ingredient is prescription-strength cough syrup containing codeine and promethazine. Cough syrup is typically mixed with ingredients such as Sprite soft drink or Mountain Dew. The purplish hue of purple drank comes from dyes in the cough syrup. From [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_drank WIKI].

'''enough dress-code violations to get thrown off the L train''' 
The L (not "El") runs along 14th Street past the old Stuyvesant H.S. (Eric Outfield from Stuyvesant), through the East Village on its way to Brooklyn. From [http://web.mta.info/nyct/service/lline.htm].

The L train goes to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and is heavily relied on and populated by "hipsters" (meaning the 2000's version of "hipster's" as opposed to the 1950's version) who reside in Williamsburg and ride the L into the Village. So the remark refers to Windust not dressing in current hipster attire and being recognized as not belonging with hipster's on the the L train.

'''Just some schmatte from H&M''' 
"Schmatte" is Yiddish for a rag. H & M Hennes & Mauritz AB (H&M) is a Swedish multinational retail-clothing company, known for its fast-fashion clothing for men, women, teenagers and children. It opened its first U.S. store in New York City, on Fifth Avenue (at 51st Street) in March 2000. As of August 2010, the company had nearly two hundred individual stores in the United States.

==Page 253==
'''As Deborah Kerr, or Marni Nixon, might say, or actually sing''' 
Marni Nixon (b. 1930) is an American soprano and playback singer for featured actresses in movie musicals. She is most famous for dubbing the singing voices of the leading actresses in films, including ''The King and I'', ''West Side Story'' and ''My Fair Lady''. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marni_Nixon Wiki] says she earned the nickname the "Ghostess with the Mostest" because her work was often uncredited.

In 1956, she worked closely with actress Deborah Kerr to supply the star's singing voice for the film version of Rodgers & Hammerstein's ''The King and I'', and the next year she again worked with Kerr to dub her voice in ''An Affair to Remember''.

==Page 254==
'''ghetto-ass g's''' 
Ghetto-ass gangsta's

'''Paradise Garage''' 
Again, see chapters 14 and 15, Maxine recalls going to the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Garage Paradise Garage.]

'''9:30 Club... maybe he caught Tiny Desk Unit and Bad Brains in their local-band period... maybe the smell of the 9:30 Cologne is his last, his only link with the uncorrupted youth he was?''' 
The 9:30 Club was a late 70's-early 80's club in Washington D.C. where as mentioned, new wave/punk bands like Tiny Desk Unit and Bad Brains once played. In a negative marketing twist, Pynchon implies here that, though seemingly unrelated, Windust's use of 9:30 Cologne and its appeal is tied with the 9:30 Club of his youth.

'''Maybe's ass, OK?''' 
Another way of putting it... “Fuck all the maybe's!” In other words, all those speculations are bullshit.

==Page 255==
'''Princess Heidrophobia''' 
Heidi, a pun on hydrophobia (= rabies).

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Chapter 17

2014-12-15T22:10:03Z

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==Page 185==
'''when WYNY switched formats overnight from country to classic disco''' 
Some anachronistic joshing from Pynchon here, perhaps an old WYNY country fan, as per [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WYNY_%28AM%29 WIKI] on July 5, 2012 WYNY changed their format from country to adult contemporary.

==Page 186==
'''what Jodi Della Femina might call shortcuts''' 
In 1999 Jodi Della Femina published a book ("Jodi's Shortcuts") about the Hamptons. "The book outraged plenty of Hamptons folks who aren't blue-chip Maidstone types, since it revealed all the sacred backroads detours through leafy neighborhoods off the Montauk highway." (NY Mag)

==Page 187==
'''some Meat Loaf reference''' 
Bat Out of Hell?

==Page 188==
'''schadenfreudefest''' 
The enjoyment, and making it a festive occasion, of others's failures and misfortunes.

==Page 189==
'''Cheatin side of town, as the Eagles like to say''' 
Here are some lyrics from the song "Lyin' Eyes" by the Eagles: "She is headed for the cheatin' side of town." See the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Van_%28actor%29 WIKI].

'''where a man can kick out the jambs''' 
A play on "Kick Out the Jams," an album and song by the band MC5. And Pynchon has used this before, see [http://vineland.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_9#Page_191 Vineland pg. 191].

'''Penthouse Forum''' 
The letters page of Penthouse magazine was famous for people writing in with funny/crazy stories about sex. Or so I've been told.

==Page 190==
'''Bobby Van's people''' 
Bobby Van was born Robert Jack Stein to vaudeville parents in The Bronx, New York City, and grew up backstage, witnessing many memorable Depression-era acts. See the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Van_%28actor%29 WIKI].

Bobby Van's was then (and is still in 2014) a steakhouse in Bridgehampton on Montauk Highway. It had a reputation of be frequented by both writers (some of whom reportedly wrote there) and by both celebrities and celebrity watchers. The statement that "Got to lose this scrunchy thing, right now you are lookin to much like these Bobby Van's people"likely refers to Maxine needing to dress down a bit for the establishment she in.

==Page 191==
'''Gurney's''' 
Gurney's Inn is a historic oceanfront resort on the very tip of Long Island, located on 290 Old Montauk Highway in Montauk, New York. U.S. President Richard Nixon wrote his acceptance speech at the Skippers Cottage. It has a famous Thalasso spa. From [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurney%27s WIKI].

'''Har-Tru tennis court''' 
American-style green clay court. Clay courts aren't made of clay, by the way. Instead they are made of "shale, stone, or brick." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_court WIKI.] Har-Tru courts are typically constructed with crushed Pre-Cambrian metabasalt.
More trivia: the Har-Tru company got its odd name by combining the first initials of the owner's name "Henry Alexander Robinson" and a variant spelling of "true" that stressed the "true bounce" of the court. [http://hartru.com/about-har-tru/history/ Company history page.]

==Page 193==
'''Bluebeard's Castle''' 
Bluebeard is a French folk tale, in which a wealthy aristocrat leaves his castle and tells his wife not to enter a mysterious locked room in the castle under any circumstances. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebeard Wikipedia]

:[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebeard Bluebeard,] thank you, wiki, is possibly based on a real man, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_de_Rais Gilles de Rais,] who lived in France in the early 1400s. He was executed in 1440, having been found guilty of committing numerous child murders. Centuries later, in 1697 Paris, Charles Perrault published a fairy tale that really got the Bluebeard legend rolling. In the [http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/bluebeard/ Perrault] version, Bluebeard is slain and the story has a happy ending.

Could be another opera reference too. In Bela Bartok's version, there are multiple locked rooms which the new wife insists on seeing, and each of which turns out to contain the corpse of a previous wife. The last room of course is reserved for the new Duchess Bluebeard. The mood of the opera is very close to that of an Alfred Hitchcock film (eg Psycho), and we've seen more than a couple of Hitchcock references in this book so far, so this connection might not be that much of a stretch.

'''phonetic letters including Whisky, Tango, and Foxtrot''' 
a.k.a., WTF or What The Fuck 

But we later learn what they stand for. See [http://bleedingedge.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_24#Page_261 Page 261].

==Page 194==
'''her coordinates all at once shift ninety degrees, so that she can't tell if she's staring vertically down uncountable levels or straight ahead down another long hallway. It lasts only a heartbeat, but how does it have to?''' 
About 33 seconds into this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je0NhvAQ6fM clip] from Hitchcock's "Vertigo" see something similar, an effect created, by the way, with a model of the stairwell laid down horizontally on the floor. [http://faculty.cua.edu/johnsong/hitchcock/pages/stills-vertigo/shot.html More] on the "Vertigo Effect."

'''a child? Something in a child-size fatigue uniform...rising as if on wings''' 
Very Korean horror.

And, 1:32 into this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-sWReV2DDQ clip] from, yes, "Vertigo" again, see a small, but quickly enlarging, frightening form emerge from the darkness, a creature that evokes great fear in a woman.

'''Vosne-Romanée''' 
Vosne-Romanée wine is produced in the commune of Vosne-Romanée in Côte de Nuits of Burgundy as well as in the neighbouring commune of Flagey-Échezeaux. The Appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC) Vosne-Romanée may only be used for red wine with Pinot noir as the main grape. There are a total of 15 Premier Cru vineyards in the two communes, as well as six Grand Cru vineyards in Vosne-Romanée and two in Flagey-Échezeaux. These Grand Cru vineyards include Burgundy's most iconic, sought-after and expensive red wines, with Romanée-Conti of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti at the pinnacle: "There can be little doubt that in the firmament of the Cote de nuits, Vosne-Romanée is the brightest star." From [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vosne-Roman%C3%A9e_wine WIKI].

==Page 195==
'''Roll on, four-wheeler, roll on.''' 
Riffing on [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEL7nGyQ_iA Charley Pride?] Randy Newman's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPmjTG8NLuw Burn On,] as in, "burn on, big river, burn on"? The possibilities must be legion.

==Page 196==

'''Woodbury Common, Paramus''' 
Shopping malls.

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Chapter 8

2014-12-15T21:50:40Z

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==Page 80==
'''cheese danish''' 
A reference that cannot help but invoke memories of Slab's hilarious obsession in V to paint this pastry.
“The cheese Danish was a recent obsession of Slab’s. He had taken, some time ago, to painting in a frenzy these morning-pastries in every conceivable style, light and setting. The room was already littered with Cubist Fauve and Surrealist cheese Danishes. ‘Monet spent his declining years at his Home in Giverny, painting the water lilies in the garden pool,’ reasoned Slab. ‘He painted all kinds of water lilies. He liked water lilies. These are my declining years. I like cheese danishes, they have kept me alive now for longer than I can remember.”

==Page 81==
'''hawala''' 
"an informal value transfer system based on the performance and honour of a huge network of money brokers, which are primarily located in the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the Indian subcontinent. It is basically a parallel or alternative remittance system that exists or operates outside of, or parallel to traditional banking or financial channels." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala Wikipedia]

'''"Kim Novak comes floating down the river"''' 
The 1955 film ''Picnic'' features a small town festival, where every year a woman is named Queen of Neewollah ("Halloween" spelled backwards). Kim Novak floating in the boat can be seen in the final seconds of the film's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1A1vqmkftw trailer]

Is there any reason, other than a typo, that the film in "Bleeding Edge" is said to have come out in 1956? Wiki says it had a limited release in November 1955 and went nationwide in 1956.

Odd trivia fact about "Picnic." This is the film that James Vicary in 1957 lied about containing subliminal messages that successfully caused people to drink more Coke and eat more popcorn. [http://www.snopes.com/business/hidden/popcorn.asp Read more] about the famous hoax.

==Page 82==
'''sharia-compliant workarounds''' 
Sharia is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia deals with many topics addressed by secular law, including crime, politics, and economics, as well as personal matters such as sexual intercourse, hygiene, diet, prayer, and fasting. Though interpretations of sharia vary between cultures, in its strictest definition it is considered the infallible law of God—as opposed to the human interpretation of the laws (fiqh). From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharia WIKI].

==Page 83==
'''pigeon drop''' 
"Pigeon drop is a confidence trick in which a mark or "pigeon" is persuaded to give up a sum of money in order to secure the rights to a larger sum of money, or more valuable object. In reality, the scammers make off with the money and the mark is left with nothing." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeon_drop Wikipedia]

'''Tomcat''' 
Baretta 3032 Tomcat: a small, semi-automatic pistol designed to be easily concealed

==Page 85==
'''toilet wall''' 
Recalls these scene in ''Crying of Lot 49'' where Oedipa Maas sees the W.A.S.T.E. horn written on the bathroom wall.

==Page 86==
'''chick who did the tarot deck''' 
Pamela Coleman Smith died penniless despite doing the illustrations for a tarot deck whose design has been sold millions of times. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Coleman_Smith Wikipedia]
<blockquote>This deck is referenced heavily in ''Against the Day'', with it being a major plot feature for T.W.I.T.</blockquote>

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