When I put down GR for a time, my own writing gets worse. So, to pick back up. This chapter probably has lost of math/aerodynamics jokes I don't understand, including the equation with the cabin and log cabin and houseboat -- that looks punny but can someone explain it to me?
Tons of real names of real aerodynamics scientists and engineers -- I'd say most of the names in this chapter are real not fictional.
Throughout the novel aerodynamics functions as a metaphor for free will vs. fate; obvious but worth mentioning here. The interplay between the model, the math on the paper, and the reality -- its not that the math on the paper causes the reality to unfold but there is still a determinism at work...and it all flips backwards at brenschluss. A lot of play with that in this chapter: "Does no one recognize what enslavement gravity is till he reaches the interface of the thunder?"
This quote: "They pray not only for their daily bread, but also for their daily illusion" by Stresemann, that's Gustav Stresemann, right-wing politician in the Weimar period
I'm having trouble parsing the paragraph where he first switches over to the second-person You, especially this Gomer reference, finding Chipuda. "the Gomerians whistling from the high ravines" ... "Gomera was the last piece of land Columbus touched before America." Google is telling me that Gomer is a biblical land thought to be in the caucuses or present-day Russia. "the mountains around Chipuda" is not giving me anything.
I think this bit on guilt after the war is illuminating to why Germany is so intensely zionist. the commodification and sale of guilt, "tickled and shivering with guilt"
"Weichensteller" -- one of the reentry people -- that's German for "Pointsman". "Fibel" = bible. (Bert Fibel)
Chinesische Blätter für Wissenschaft und Kunst was the original title of a German journal on Chinese art and culture published in the 1920s.
When I put down GR for a time, my own writing gets worse. So, to pick back up. This chapter probably has lost of math/aerodynamics jokes I don't understand, including the equation with the cabin and log cabin and houseboat -- that looks punny but can someone explain it to me?
Tons of real names of real aerodynamics scientists and engineers -- I'd say most of the names in this chapter are real not fictional.
Throughout the novel aerodynamics functions as a metaphor for free will vs. fate; obvious but worth mentioning here. The interplay between the model, the math on the paper, and the reality -- its not that the math on the paper causes the reality to unfold but there is still a determinism at work...and it all flips backwards at brenschluss. A lot of play with that in this chapter: "Does no one recognize what enslavement gravity is till he reaches the interface of the thunder?"
This quote: "They pray not only for their daily bread, but also for their daily illusion" by Stresemann, that's Gustav Stresemann, right-wing politician in the Weimar period
I'm having trouble parsing the paragraph where he first switches over to the second-person You, especially this Gomer reference, finding Chipuda. "the Gomerians whistling from the high ravines" ... "Gomera was the last piece of land Columbus touched before America." Google is telling me that Gomer is a biblical land thought to be in the caucuses or present-day Russia. "the mountains around Chipuda" is not giving me anything.
I think this bit on guilt after the war is illuminating to why Germany is so intensely zionist. the commodification and sale of guilt, "tickled and shivering with guilt"
"Weichensteller" -- one of the reentry people -- that's German for "Pointsman". "Fibel" = bible. (Bert Fibel)
Chinesische Blätter für Wissenschaft und Kunst was the original title of a German journal on Chinese art and culture published in the 1920s.
https://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/2013-October/183762.html
Weisenburger says in the Companion: In a figurative sense, the German "Los"
means "fate"; in a contrary and literal sense it means "free." As
represented in GR, the V-2 flight profile embodies both.
Anyone have leads on "the madness of Donar" -- is a mountain somewhere?
m'okamanga: "instantly" or "instantaneously" (Probably in the sense of this radio transmission would be "come in.") -- GR Wiki