Chapter 5

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: 103, b: 83 - FSM's, YAF's, VDC's
Free Speech Movement, Young Americans for Freedom, and Vietnam Day Committee. 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. Wikipedia

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

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.

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

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. Wikipedia

But what character is this referring to? Bleakhaus 14:26, 10 May 2007 (PDT)

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.

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.

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".