Talk:Chapter 3

to place at proper page

A reference to earlier "I want to kiss your feet" in chapter 2-- Note that the series of events in Dick Wharfinger's "sick" play (Chapter 3) are also set in motion by an act of foot kissing.

I think this is rather a covert flashforward in Chapter 2, pointing to yet-unread chapter 3; a kind of mock precognition. You cannot perceive it as a reference back to The Paranoids' lyrics, the Tragedy being a plot box which historically precedes the plot proper. A flashforward is something that can be noticed only when re-reading the text, so it empasizes the deep structure of the story, which is that of the labyrinth. Pynchon seems to use this tool to drive home the "instruction" that this is a text which should not be read in a linear way, i.e. just once from the first sentence to the last. --BortzImre 13:41, 3 January 2008 (PST)

fair enough, but the underlying reason for creating the spoiler-free annotations is to create a useful guide that even a first-time reader can refer to without a) worrying about overt spoilers (i.e. whodunit, which admittedly are not much of an issue in Pynchon novels), but more importantly b) feeling like the annotations are getting ahead of the reader in even the smallest way. We should therefore list this in Chapter 3 with something along the lines of "echoes the lyrics from Chapter 2" or something. Bleakhaus 13:36, 7 January 2008 (PST)

Czar Nicholas II

Considering Pynchon's depth of research, the construing of Nicholas II with Alexander II of Russia must be deliberate. Pynchon does this to make Fallopian an unreliable character. Jkvannort (talk)

More evidence for the actual Russian squadron, led by Rear Admiral Popov: [1]