Gravity's Rainbow: Part VI

Some sections of the book seem so straightforward that they leave me suspecting I completely missed something. This is one of those sections. I suspect my ability to understand this section stems from having read this section previously and also having read 130 pages following this section. Therefore I know who Roger Mexico is as he's introduced. I know who Jessica Swanlake is. I know of their relationship and their sexual exploits and their other sexual exploits and also their sexual exploits. So when Pirate secretly hopes that it works out for them even though Jessica is practically married to a guy named Beaver, I already understand how things are sort of working out for them already!

Plotwise, the reader discovers that Pirate transfers Bloat's microfilm pictures of Slothrop's sexual conquests to Mexico so that Mexico can take them to the White Visitation to be analyzed. The reader also learns that there's some serious paranormal hokey-pokey taking place within the Allied war effort.

Is that the correct use of hokey-pokey? Fuck it. Pynchon wouldn't care!

If this isn't the first section to mention The Firm, it's the first time I noticed it mentioned. They're the capitalized "They" that's often referred to by any number of the characters swept up in Their plot. Roger Mexico runs statistics for them while feeling completely out of place in that he has no paranormal powers and isn't quite sure he believes in them. He's a statistician not a hokey-pokey man!

Pirate works for them doing his controlled fantasizing gimmick. Pirate mentions his work for Operation Black Wing, a super duper top secret initiative to ruin German morale through propaganda, both through paranormal means and strange films of native Africans living among the Germans. I think. It seems to be some kind of push to create paranoia and racial instability.

In comparing Roger Mexico's relationship with Jessica, Pirate reminisces about his affair with a married woman, Sylvia Mossmoon. I only brought her up because she has a great name. Also, maybe more importantly, the story highlights the difficulty of soldiers returning to civilian life. Pirate believes Mossmoon is his last chance at normality and when the relationship inevitably ends, he shrugs and rejoins the army.

I've known people like this and, in their embarrassment that the rejoining of the army is at best a result of failing as a civilian, they pretend to greater ideological reasons for their re-enlistment. But, in the end, it's almost certainly just a shrug and a "Well, what else can I do?"