This section begins with a primer on plastics, a brief history leading up to Jamf's Imipolex G. I'm not a chemist so I don't understand the lingo but I've done enough chemistry so I get the gist. That's the fairly standard description of my intelligence! I can't explain anything to anybody in great detail (except maybe why Cerebus can't get pregnant) but I'll definitely understand any amount of detailed explanation of a subject with which you'd like to bore me. Here's an example of me reading this book:
Jamf at the time was working for a Swiss outfit called Psychochemie AG, originally known as the Grossli Chemical Corporation, *Me, yawning, nodding along, eyes glazing over* a spinoff from Sandoz (where, as every schoolchild knows, the legendary Dr. Hoffman made his important discovery). *me, eyes flashing open, grin on my face, nodding enthusiastically. "Yeah, yeah! Every schoolchild! Good old Albert Hoffman! My hero! Genius!"*
The primer also describes the links between all the petrochemical companies of the time. It's probably supposed to show how big business and corporations and the advancement of science (particularly plastics, in this case) had no loyalty to any nation. It was all about profits and advancements and more profits. One of the companies had an address at Schokoladestrasse which made me happy because I knew those words. I'm not bragging! Obviously everybody knows those words! It just made me happy! In the same way somebody in the book could have said "Ziegenstrasse" and I would have come in my pants.
This is all discovered by Slothrop as he researches Jamf and Imipolex G and the German blueprints for rockets and especially this one weird rocket that was built with a section composed of Imipolex G which seems to have been top secret: The "S-Gerät, 11/00000." While doing the research, he also comes up with "Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." Hmm, that may have been a proverb for paranoids in 1945 and also 1973 but I think it's just standard operating procedure for anybody with any money or power at this point. I don't think saying that makes me paranoid. I think it makes me observant.
During the days of researching, Slothrop discovers Tantivy has died. Or might have died. Basically, They want Slothrop to think he's dead so whether they sent him out to a dangerous mission to get killed or they just planted a story in the paper so Slothrop would read it, it hardly matters. Thinking Tantivy has not just died but was most likely killed by Them to get to Slothrop, Slothrop's path becomes clear. He's no longer content to sit in the Casino and study and sort of ignore that they're manipulating his life. It's time to head into The Zone and figure out what's going on.
He heads to Nice to find the address given to him by Waxwing, the address where he can get a new identity.
Just for the knife-edge, here in the Rue Rossini, there comes to Slothrop the best feeling dusk in a foreign city can bring: just where the sky's light balances the electric lamplight in the street, just before the first star, some promise of events without cause, surprises, a direction at right angles to every direction his life has been able to find up till now.
For Slothrop, that moment must be heaven. A promise of events without cause?! How does one so paranoid as Slothrop ever reach that stage? I guess upon arriving in a new city at dusk before he has a chance to see the strings, the facades, the seeming random coincidences that, upon slight reflection, prove themselves to be manipulations.
Slothrop arrives at the address given to him by Waxwing and winds up among a bunch of bohemian drifters and squatters. In a description of their shoes: . . . saddle-stitching in contrasting colors (such as orange on blue, and the perennial favorite, green on magenta. . . . What is it with magenta and green?! Did Pynchon suffer from some kind of PTSD derived from wearing bowling shoes?!
After a lot of paranoid delusions of conversations with people he thinks he knows but they're just wanderers and drunks, squatters and Johns, he gets his papers. He's now Ian Scuffling, war correspondent, and he's headed to Zurich.
Jamf at the time was working for a Swiss outfit called Psychochemie AG, originally known as the Grossli Chemical Corporation, *Me, yawning, nodding along, eyes glazing over* a spinoff from Sandoz (where, as every schoolchild knows, the legendary Dr. Hoffman made his important discovery). *me, eyes flashing open, grin on my face, nodding enthusiastically. "Yeah, yeah! Every schoolchild! Good old Albert Hoffman! My hero! Genius!"*
The primer also describes the links between all the petrochemical companies of the time. It's probably supposed to show how big business and corporations and the advancement of science (particularly plastics, in this case) had no loyalty to any nation. It was all about profits and advancements and more profits. One of the companies had an address at Schokoladestrasse which made me happy because I knew those words. I'm not bragging! Obviously everybody knows those words! It just made me happy! In the same way somebody in the book could have said "Ziegenstrasse" and I would have come in my pants.
This is all discovered by Slothrop as he researches Jamf and Imipolex G and the German blueprints for rockets and especially this one weird rocket that was built with a section composed of Imipolex G which seems to have been top secret: The "S-Gerät, 11/00000." While doing the research, he also comes up with "Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." Hmm, that may have been a proverb for paranoids in 1945 and also 1973 but I think it's just standard operating procedure for anybody with any money or power at this point. I don't think saying that makes me paranoid. I think it makes me observant.
During the days of researching, Slothrop discovers Tantivy has died. Or might have died. Basically, They want Slothrop to think he's dead so whether they sent him out to a dangerous mission to get killed or they just planted a story in the paper so Slothrop would read it, it hardly matters. Thinking Tantivy has not just died but was most likely killed by Them to get to Slothrop, Slothrop's path becomes clear. He's no longer content to sit in the Casino and study and sort of ignore that they're manipulating his life. It's time to head into The Zone and figure out what's going on.
He heads to Nice to find the address given to him by Waxwing, the address where he can get a new identity.
Just for the knife-edge, here in the Rue Rossini, there comes to Slothrop the best feeling dusk in a foreign city can bring: just where the sky's light balances the electric lamplight in the street, just before the first star, some promise of events without cause, surprises, a direction at right angles to every direction his life has been able to find up till now.
For Slothrop, that moment must be heaven. A promise of events without cause?! How does one so paranoid as Slothrop ever reach that stage? I guess upon arriving in a new city at dusk before he has a chance to see the strings, the facades, the seeming random coincidences that, upon slight reflection, prove themselves to be manipulations.
Slothrop arrives at the address given to him by Waxwing and winds up among a bunch of bohemian drifters and squatters. In a description of their shoes: . . . saddle-stitching in contrasting colors (such as orange on blue, and the perennial favorite, green on magenta. . . . What is it with magenta and green?! Did Pynchon suffer from some kind of PTSD derived from wearing bowling shoes?!
After a lot of paranoid delusions of conversations with people he thinks he knows but they're just wanderers and drunks, squatters and Johns, he gets his papers. He's now Ian Scuffling, war correspondent, and he's headed to Zurich.
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