Difference between revisions of "Chapter 5"

Revision as of 02:58, 15 July 2024

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:

b: 80 - German-baroque
The Baroque style used contrast, movement, exuberant detail, deep color, grandeur, and surprise to achieve a sense of awe. In Germany baroque style arrived as the counter-reformation.[1] Here is a Germany travel guide on Baroque German Cities Baroque Cities

b: 81 - Shattuck Avenue
A major thoroughfare of the city of Berkeley and the University of California, Berkeley.[2]

a: 101, b: 81 - Plays of Ford, Webster, Tourneur and Wharfinger
John Ford is famous for Tis pity she's a whore, John Webster wrote The Duchess of Malfi and Cyril Tourneur wrote The Atheist's Tragedy, while the Revenger's Tragedy is ascribed to Tourneur with a great deal of controversy as regards authorship.

b: 81 - Quarto A format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produce eight book pages. Each printed page presents as one-fourth size of the full sheet. Establishes the time period of the "text".[3]

b: 82 - Alexandrine
A line of poetic meter comprising 12 syllables. [4]

b: 82 - Folio
A folio is made up of one or more full sheets of paper, on each of which four pages of text are printed, two on each side; each sheet is then folded once to produce two leaves. Each leaf of a folio book thus is one half the size of the original sheet. Ordinarily, additional printed folio sheets would be inserted inside one another to form a group or "gathering" of leaves prior to binding the book.[5]

b: 82 - Whitechapel
A East London, East End that has a long history. Whitechapel's spine is the old Roman Road, that ran from the Aldgate on London's Wall, to Colchester in Essex (Roman Britannia's first capital), and beyond. This road, which was later named the Great Essex Road, is now designated the A11. This historic route has the names Whitechapel High Street and Whitechapel Road as it passes through, or along the boundary, of Whitechapel. For many centuries travellers to and from London on this route were accommodated at the many coaching inns which lined Whitechapel High Street.[6]

b: 82 - Wheeler Hall and Sather Gate
Both of these national historical landmarks demonstrate Pynchon's eye for detail regarding location and setting. Wheeler Hall is in the Classical Revival style and named after Benjamin Ide Wheeler, philologist and university president.[7] Sather Gate, also in the Classical Revival Beaux-Arts style. The gate opens into the Sproul Plaza, the plaza where the busy protesting occurs.[8]

b: 82 - a plaza teeming with...
This is Sproul Plaza with a combination of a stairway that can be used as a large raised platform and a ready audience makes Upper Sproul Plaza a popular location for student protests, the first of which occurred in 1964 with the Free Speech Movement.[9]

a: 103, b: 83 - FSM's, YAF's, VDC's
Free Speech Movement, Young Americans for Freedom, and Vietnam Day Committee. The Free Speech Movement was a long-lasting protest on the University of California, Berkeley campus. It demanded that students be allowed to freely discuss the Vietnam War.[10] The Young Americans for Freedom was a conservative student coalition that supported Barry Goldwater in 1964. It was made up of conservatives and libertarians.[11] The VDC was a coalition of left-wing political groups, student groups, labour organizations, and pacifist religions in America that opposed the Vietnam War. It was formed in Berkeley in 1965 and was active through the majority of the war. [12]

a: 103, b: 83 - a national reflex to certain pathologies in high places only death had the power to cure
Presumably, the McCarthy era, which only ended with McCarthy's death in 1957.

a: 103, b: 83 - Siwash
A fictional college in stories by George Fitch (d. 1915), American author. Also, a small usually inland college that is notably provincial in outlook.

Also related to Native Americans?

Since "Siwash" is here compared to Berkeley university, I'd say no. Bleakhaus

b: 83 - Hondas and Suzukis
These Japanese motorcycles, which were flooding the market by the early 1960s, exemplify the beginning of the fall of American manufacturing. By 1964, Honda had become the world's largest manufacturer of motorcycles.[13] Meanwhile Suzuki had established a subsidiary in Los Angeles to produce motorcycles for US consumers.[14]

a: 104, b: 83 - Secretaries James and Foster and Senator Joseph
James Forrestal, John Foster Dulles, and Joseph McCarthy.

a: 104, b: 84 - a shirt on various Polynesian themes and dating from the Truman administration
Recalls the shirt worn by Slothrop in Part 2 of Gravity's Rainbow, even though that one was Hawaiian and worn a few months before Truman took office.

b: 84 - Watusi
The Watusi is a solo dance that enjoyed brief popularity during the early 1960s. It was one of the most popular dance crazes of the 1960s in the United States.[15] Nefastis probably watches American Bandstand, the popular music/dance show that aired on Saturday mornings. The show had recently (1963) moved to Los Angeles from Philadelphia.[16]

b: 84 - simpatico
Two definitions of simpatico, 1) having a compatible temperament or pleasing qualities; 2) compatible (with a person, thing, etc.). Which definition applies to Nefastis?[17].

b: 84-85 - entropy
This is the first mention of entropy in the book. Nefastis identifies two areas of entropy theory: thermodynamics and information theory. Entropy is a scientific concept that is most commonly associated with a state of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty. The term and the concept are used in diverse fields, from classical thermodynamics, where it was first recognized, to the microscopic description of nature in statistical physics, and to the principles of information theory.[18] Nefastis finally describes it as a "figure of speech, ...a metaphor" which connects thermodynamics to information theory.

b: 84 - Maxwell's Demon
Maxwell's demon is a thought experiment that appears to disprove the second law of thermodynamics. It was proposed by the physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1867.[19]

b: 85 - Yogi Bear
Yogi Bear is an anthropomorphic animal character who has appeared in numerous comic books, animated television shows, and films. He made his debut in 1958 as a supporting character in The Huckleberry Hound Show.[20]

b: 85 - Magilla Gorilla
Magilla Gorilla (voiced by Allan Melvin) is a fun-loving yet trouble-prone anthropomorphic Western gorilla who spends his time languishing in the front display window of Melvin Peebles' pet shop, eating bananas and being a drain on the shop's finances.[21]

b: 85 - Peter Potamus
Peter Potamus is a purple animated hippopotamus that first appeared in the 1964–1966 animated television series The Peter Potamus Show, produced by Hanna-Barbera and first broadcast on September 16, 1964.[22]

b: 88 - Wells Fargo
Surviving the Panic of 1855 gave Wells Fargo two advantages. First, it faced virtually no competition in the banking and express business in California after the crisis; second, Wells Fargo attained a reputation for dependability and soundness. From 1855 through 1866, Wells Fargo expanded rapidly, becoming the West's all-purpose business, communications, and transportation agent.[23]

a: 110, b: 88 - Roos Atkins
Chain of upscale men's clothing stores in San Francisco [24]

b: 88 - North Beach
North Beach is a neighborhood in the northeast of San Francisco adjacent to Chinatown, the Financial District, and Russian Hill.[25]

a: 112, b: 90 - sinophile
Someone fond of chinese culture. On occasion, the term is used to describe people who exhibit a sexual preference for Chinese or Asian partners. [26] The character being referred to is John Nefastis, who likes to do it when "there is something about China" on TV.

a: 115, b: 93 - IBM 7094
At the time of publishing, this was the top-of-the-line computer. One of those HUGE room sized ones.[27]

b: 92 - Zachary All suit
Zachary All Clothing on Wilshire Boulevard provided inexpensive suits with salesmen who were professional tailors. [28] The owner of the store was Edward Nalbandian, a local, Armenian-American businessman who made commercials that included such lines as "Eddie, are you joking? No, I am not joking." which inspired a song by Frank Zappa. [29]

a: 119, b: 96 - Jesus Arrabal
Jesus Arrabal' conflates Jesus' a word, generally fixed in meaning as the figure at the Center of Christianity, [and also a common Christian Name in Catholic Latin American], with Arrabal a Spanish word that grew from Arab roots, arrabal (suburb - al-rabad). The word changed in meaning over time to include the suburbs, the outlands, and the slums, all zones of exclusion. The word Arrabal as a proper name leads us to Fernando Arrabal, noted playwright working in the Theater of the Absurd.[30] It may also refer to James Jesus Angleton, a high-ranking CIA official who led Operation Chaos against domestic dissidents.[31] Finally, spoken aloud it sounds like Jesus 'orrible. See a: 129, b: 105 - high magic to low puns, below.

a: 119, b: 96 - Conjuración de los Insurgentes Anarquistas
A fictional Anarchist organization with the acronym C.I.A., a pun that serves to remind us once again of the secretive intelligence organization. Conjuración is both conjuration and conspiracy, so it is both a Conspiracy of Insurgent Anarchists and a Conjuration of Insurgent Anarchists. As in both Pan's Labyrinth and Against the Day there is an Anarchist/Magical co-conspiracy.

a: 119, b: 96 - Flores Magon brothers
Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magón led anarchist movements in Mexico in the early 1900's.

a: 119, b: 96 - Zapata
Emiliano Zapata was another Mexican revolutionary in the early 1900's.

b: 98 - priistas
Members of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Spanish: Partido Revolucionario Institucional or PRI): a Mexican political party. It was formed in 1929 and was the dominant political party for much of the 20th century.

a: 125, b: 101 - jitney
A type of taxi, but with a regular route, that stops at any point along the way that you want. It is also shared with other riders. Jitneys are run, usually, entrepreneurially and often unlicensed. A kind of off-the-grid "taxi".

a: 129, b: 105 - high magic to low puns

see High Magic to Low Puns

a: 132, b: 107 - Oedipa checked out of the hotel and drove down the peninsula
This may be a continuity goof by Pynchon. "in chapter 5, Oedipa parks her car in San Francisco's North Beach, then spends the night wandering through the Bay Area on foot and by bus, ending up the next morning at her hotel in Berkeley; after a short sleep she "check out of the hotel and drove down the peninsula." How did her car get from San Francisco to Berkeley?" Edward Mendelson, "Gravity's Encyclopedia," fn. 12.

8 cent Airmail stamp

b: 109 - Speer and his ministry of cretins
Albert Speer was Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich and Hitler's chief architect. Despite doubts about his credibility, at the Nuremberg trials, he was the only defendant to accept responsibility for his involvement with the Nazi regime, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison, while many of his colleagues were executed.

b: 112 - nicht wahr
German: not true? : isn't that so?

a: 139, b: 114 - 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
The Beatles third single, first issued in the U.S. on the obscure Swan label.

See: She Loves You And More