Difference between revisions of "Chapter 10"

Revision as of 08:27, 13 December 2007

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

Page numbers refer to editions with 385 pages, where the story begins on page 3. Not sure if there are other editions with variant pagination. Please let us know otherwise.

p. 192 "Zero Profile Paint & Body" Another zero.

p. 192 "proprietary lacquer" makes Trans-Am invisible. A distant echo of Imipolex G in GR?

p. 193 "little robot fridge [named Raoul], with two round video screens...each with an image of a cartoon eye." This is so cute! And, significantly, this robot icebox delivers "refrigerator tunes."

p. 193 "tachyon chamber" Science fiction window dressing, presumably an imaginary subassembly of the make-believe time machine. Tachyons are whimsical sub-atomic particles; the root is from the Greek = swift.

p. 193 "exactly a tenth of a second after the warranty ran out, the 'sucker blew..." Clearly a hair-trigger critical-need-detector.

p. 194 "distant wash of freeway sound, the concrete surf" Nice writing. Is this the sound beer-riders hear? Or Chuck Berry's "highway sound" (from "Maybelline")?

p. 195 "ECO stock" See note, p. 116.

p. 196 "grown up in New York City and, except for geographically, never left it..." Ah, we know the type.

p. 197 "Xanthocroid looks" Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) classified mankind into types, according to physical appearance. Xanthochroi, one of his classes, is a subdivision of the Leiotrichi, or smooth-haired type, having yellow or light-colored hair and a pale complexion. This is the prevailing type in Northern Europe. Aryan. Either Pynchon, his editor, or his typesetter has dropped the "h" in "chroi."

p. 197 "Sledge Poteet" Cool name.

p. 198 "When backs were left uncovered and chores undone..." The interpersonal dynamics of 24fps are very convincing.

p. 198 "Tsuris" = Yiddish for "trouble."

p. 198 "Tzimmes" = Yiddish for "a state of confusion." Yiddish is very rich in words for trouble and confusion.

p. 199 "shaygetz" = Yiddish for "non-Jewish man." This one happens to be Brock Vond.

p. 200 "this one [shot] of Brock ended up on a bedsheet" Specifically, this means projected on an improvised bedsheet screen, but of course it also foreshadows the smell of sexual developments before the fact.

p. 200 "...you got some real pretty takes of this creep..." DL catches on right away that Frenesi is falling for Vond.

p. 200 "The roll ended." But the flashback continues. Very smooth transition.

p. 201 "Then a man in a uniform, with a big pistol, would have to make you come" Sinister/sexy wordplay foreshadows the rapid development of Vond's takeover of Frenesi, and her infatuation with him. It's actually a microcosmic bondage scene, in which Frenesi, the bound partner, is freed of responsibility and guilt.

p. 201 "grid-access devices" Some resonance here to Gravity's Rainbow, and the tale of Byron the Bulb.

p. 202 "You don't die for no motherfuckin' shadows" Good advice.

p. 203 "CZ gas" High-powered tear gas--but note that the initials are the same as DL's Czech motorcycle.