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| | a: 36, b: ? - '''Botticelli'''<br> | | a: 36, b: ? - '''Botticelli'''<br> |
| | Botticelli is a guessing game which requires the players to have a good knowledge of biographical details of famous people. The game has several variants, but the common theme is that one person or team thinks of a famous person, reveals their initial letter, and then answers yes/no questions to allow other players to guess the identity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botticelli_%28game%29 Wikipedia] | | Botticelli is a guessing game which requires the players to have a good knowledge of biographical details of famous people. The game has several variants, but the common theme is that one person or team thinks of a famous person, reveals their initial letter, and then answers yes/no questions to allow other players to guess the identity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botticelli_%28game%29 Wikipedia] |
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| − | [[Image:oscilloscope.gif|thumb|right|200px|Lissajous figures on an oscilloscope, with 90 degrees phase difference between x and y inputs.]]
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| − | a: 47, b: ? - '''oscilloscope... Lissajous figures'''<br>
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| − | An oscilloscope is a piece of electronic test equipment that allows signal voltages to be viewed, usually as a two-dimensional graph. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscilloscope Wikipedia] Lissajous curves (Lissajous figures or Bowditch curves) are the graph of the system of parametric equations which describes complex harmonic motion, and are displayed on oscilloscope monitors. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lissajous_curve Wikipedia]
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| − | a: 47, b: ? - '''Stockhausen'''<br>
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| − | Karlheinz Stockhausen (b. 1928) is a German composer, and one of the most important and controversial composers of the 20th century. He is best known for his ground-breaking work in electronic music and controlled chance in serial composition. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlheinz_Stockhausen Wikipedia]
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| − | a: 48, b: ? - '''Mike Fallopian'''<br>
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| − | Obviously, Fallopian tubes are two very fine tubes leading from the ovaries of female mammals into the uterus.
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| − | a: 49, b: ? - '''Disgruntled'''<br>
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| − | Pynchon's fictional navy includes the USS Scaffold and the Susanna Squaducci (V.), the John E. Badass (GR), and the Inconvenience (ATD).
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| − | a: 49, b: ? - '''Bogatir... Gaidamak'''<br>
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| − | The bogatyr was a medieval Russian heroic warrior, comparable to the Western European knight errant. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogatyr Wikipedia] The parallel with Charlemagne's "paladins" may be even closer.
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| − | At the time of the U.S. Civil War, gaidamak or haydamak denoted an 18th century Ukrainian fighter for national independence. The name is sometimes translated as "Ukrainian Cossack," perhaps in part because it was extended to Cossack anti-Bolshevik troops after the 1917 revolution.
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| − | a: 50, b: ? - '''Birch Society'''<br>
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| − | The John Birch Society is an Americanist organization founded in 1958 to fight what it saw as growing threats to the Constitution of the United States, especially a suspected communist infiltration of the United States government, and to support free enterprise. It was named after John Birch, a United States military intelligence officer and Baptist missionary in World War II who was killed in 1945 by armed supporters of the Communist Party of China, and whom the JBS describes as "the first American victim of the Cold War." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society Wikipedia]
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| − | "Our left-leaning friends in the Birch society" is a joke as the Birch Society was right-wing, although of course Fallopian is being serious. The PPS is beyond far right in this sense.
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| − | a: 51, b: ? - '''Marxism... Industrial ''anything'''''<br>
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| − | Some critics have interpreted this to mean that the Pinguid Society is so anti-communist that it even opposed capitalism... because it led inevitably to communism! While funny, this seems to miss the point. The guiding philosophy of the Pinguid Society is not anti-communism. It opposes "industrial ''anything''", which indicates a belief in another philosophy Pynchon has written much on, Ludditisim. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite Wikipedia entry on Luddite]; the 1984 essay, [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_luddite.html Is it OK to be a Luddite?] by Pynchon; and [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/paper_gibbs.html Portrait of the Artist as a Young Luddite], an essay on ''Minstral Island'', the aborted sci-fi musical written by Pynchon and future leading Luddite, Kirkpatrick Sale.
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| − | a: 53, b: ? - '''Washington and Dallas chapters'''<br>
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| − | For readers in 1966, singling out Washington and Dallas might bring to mind the recent assassination of President Kennedy.
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| − | :Charles Hollander sees CoL49 as a big coded commentary on the assassination. [http://www.vheissu.info/art/art_eng_49_hollander.htm Pynchon, JFK and the CIA: Magic Eye Views of The Crying of Lot 49]
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| − | a: 56, b: ? - '''reconstruction of some European pleasure-casino'''<br>
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| − | Perhaps the Casino Hermann Goering from ''Gravity's Rainbow''?
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| − | a: 57, b: ? - '''trimaran'''<br>
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| − | A multihull boat consisting of a main hull and two smaller outrigger hulls, attached to the main hull with lateral struts.
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| − | a: 57, b: ? - '''Godzilla II'''<br>
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| − | There seems to be some kind of joke from somewhere that Pynchon was rumored to be writing a novel aboubt Godzilla and Mothra at some point... More???
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| − | a: 58, b: ? - '''sfacim'''<br>
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| − | Italian slang, literally "semen" but also used as an insult roughly equivalent to "son of a bitch."
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| − | a: 58, b: ? - '''Darrowlike'''<br>
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| − | Clarence Seward Darrow (1857 - 1938) was a famous American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, best known for defending teenaged thrill killers and defending John T. Scopes in the so-called "Monkey" Trial. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Darrow Wikipedia]
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| − | :Hollander [http://www.vheissu.info/art/art_eng_49_hollander.htm#chap_3 interprets] the mention of Darrow as proof of his theory that the Russian naval encounter described by Fallopian is a reference to the purchase of Alaska from Russia, "Seward's folly."
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| − | [[Image:jaguarxke.jpg|thumb|150px|right|a 1965 Jaguar XKE]]
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| − | a: 59, b: ? - '''XKE'''<br>
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| − | The Jaguar XKE was a famous sportscar, later selected by the Museum of Modern Art in New York as the 'world's most beautiful automobile.' Some connection with mafioso Tony Jaguar?
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| − | a: 61, b: ? - '''Lago di Pietà'''<br>
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| − | An actual historical event?
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| − | a: 63, b: ? - '''The Courier's Tragedy'''<br>
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| − | See [[Making sense of The Courier's Tragedy]]
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| − | a: 64, b: ? - '''civil war'''<br>
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| − | The English Civil War consisted of a series of armed conflicts and political machinations that took place between Parliamentarians (known as Roundheads) and Royalists (known as Cavaliers) between 1642 and 1651. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War Wikipedia]
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| − | a: 66, b: ? - '''Maenad roar of nitre's song'''<br>
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| − | In Greek mythology, Maenads were female worshippers of Dionysus, the Greek god of mystery, wine and intoxication, and the Roman god Bacchus. The word literally translates as "raving ones". They were known as wild, insane women who could not be reasoned with. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maenads Wikipedia]
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| − | Niter or nitre is the mineral form of potassium nitrate, KNO3, also known as saltpeter, an essential ingreident of gunpowder.
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| − | a: 66, b: ? - '''cantus firmus'''<br>
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| − | In music, a cantus firmus ("fixed song") is a pre-existing melody forming the basis of a polyphonic composition, often set apart by being played in long notes. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantus_firmus Wikipedia]
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| − | a: 66, b: ? - '''Thurn und Taxis'''<br>
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| − | The Princely House of Thurn and Taxis (German: Das Fürstenhaus Thurn und Taxis) is a German family that was a key player in the postal (mail) services in Europe in the 16th century and is well known as owners of breweries and builders of countless castles. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurn_and_Taxis Wikipedia]
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| − | a: 67, b: ? - '''aqua regia'''<br>
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| − | Aqua regia (Latin for "royal water") is a highly corrosive mixture of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid. It is one of the few reagents that dissolves gold and platinum. It was so named because it can dissolve the so-called royal, or noble metals. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_regia Wikipedia]
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| − | a: 73, b: ? - '''blank verse'''<br>
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| − | Blank verse is a type of poetry, distinguished by having a regular meter, but no rhyme. In English, the meter most commonly used with blank verse has been iambic pentameter. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blank_verse Wikipedia]
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| − | a: 75, b: ? - '''picket the V.A.'''<br>
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| − | what's the VA?
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| − | a: 76, b: ? - '''Young Republican'''<br>
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| − | Young Republicans is the name of an organization for members of the Republican Party of the United States between the ages of 18 and 40. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Republicans Wikipedia]
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| − | a: 76, b: ? - '''Hap Harrigan comics'''<br>
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| − | Hap Harrigan was a character in the 1931 film, [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021973/ The Hot Heiress] (IMDB), but Weisenburger and Grant believe that Pynchon may have meant Hop Harrigan, a comic strip and radio character from the 1940s.
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| − | a: 79, b: ? - '''I'm the projector of the planetarium'''<br>
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| − | This reference to creation recalls the Remedios Varo painting in Chapter 1, in which the girls in the tower weave the world.
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| | {{CL49 PbP}} | | {{CL49 PbP}} |
Pynchon uses this term in almost all his novels, notably as the first sentence of Against the Day. For more, see ATD page 3.
