Difference between revisions of "Chapter 6"

Revision as of 07:04, 7 December 2007

Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.

If your edition has 183 pages, follow the pages marked a:

If your edition has 152 pages, follow b:

a; 139, b: - Edna Mosh Mucho Maas deliberately distorts the sound of his wife's name to compensate for the distortions of AM radio in the mid-sixties.

a: 143, b: 117 - She Loves You
According to The Complete Beatles Chronicle by Mark Lewisohn, the Beatles third single and the band's first single to go to number one on the British charts, not once but twice. was recorded on July 1, 1963 at EMI studios #2 in London. The single was mixed to mono along with its 'b' side I'll Get You on July 4th at EMI Studio # 2 [not yet generally known as Abbey Road Studios]. 'She Loves You' was issued as a single on the Parlophone label in the U. K. on August 23, 1963. Because the A & R people at U. S. EMI subsidiary Capitol Records were disinterested in the music of a group of British rock & roll wanna-be's, the obscure and tiny Swan Records released 'She Loves You' on September 16th, 1963, making it the last of the Beatles singles to be issued on a label other than one of the subsidiaries of the giant multi-national corporation EMI. Much more information and trivia on the curious history of "She Loves You"/"Sie Liebt Dich" can be found all over the web, starting with the Wikipedia article on She Loves You

Mucho's revelation terrifies Oedipa. His declaration:

"Whenever I put the headset on now," he continued, "I really do understand what I find there. . . ."

. . . .has the sound of Gnosis, as things that once were obscure and veiled are now revealed for what they truly are. The 'Doors of Perception' have been cleaned. Mucho Continues:

". . . .When those kids sing about 'She loves you," yeah well, you know, she does, she's any number of people, all over the world, back through time, different colors, sizes, ages, shapes, distances from death, but she loves. And the 'you' is everybody. And herself. Oedipa, the human voice, you know, it's a flipping miracle." His eyes brimming, reflecting the color of beer.

Wendell "Mucho" Maas is having a religious experience. About the only 'Christian' religion that would consider this spiritual experiance anything other heresy would be the Unitarians and maybe a Quaker or two, but the Wiccans would [and do] have a field day with this one, this glorious outpouring for the Goddess, this pean to what Goethe called the Das Ewig-Weiblich, the eternal feminine, the zero before the one.

Mucho & Zoyd further expound on the spiritual meaning of 'Acid' in 'Vineland':

"Well I still wish it was back then, when you were the Count. Remember how the acid was? Remember that windowpane, down in Laguna that time? God, I knew then, I knew. . . ."

They had a look. "Uh-huh, me too. That you were never going to die. Ha! No wonder the State panicked. How are they supposed to control a population that knows it'll never die? When that was always their last big chip, when they thought they had the power of life and death. . . ."

Vineland, Pgs. 313/314

a: 151, b: 124 - K. da chingado
Chingado is Spanish slang meaning "fucker."