“I’m caught in it ... It’s killing me. [. . .] I’m losing my mind”
February 1, 2017 2:32 PM Subscribe
How Thomas Pynchon Turned Seattle Into Nazi Germany by Tim Appelo
The magazine article was prompted by an academic paper by Jeffrey Severs: “A City of the Future”: Gravity’s Rainbow and the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair:
Drawing on archival sources, I argue that the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair (also known as Century 21) was an important source for Thomas Pynchon’s surreal depictions of the Raketen-Stadt in Gravity’s Rainbow. Accounts of the influence of Seattle on Pynchon have been limited to his work as a Boeing technical writer, and Century 21 goes unmentioned in work on the novel’s allusions by Steven Weisenburger and others. Pynchon responds throughout Gravity’s Rainbow to Century 21, particularly its Cold War views of space-age futurism and nuclear weapons. I draw new connections between the angel of Lübeck and John Glenn’s World’s Fair appearance; aspects of the Raketen-Stadt and the fair’s US Science Pavilion; and Pynchon’s many towers and elevators and that signature feature of Century 21, the Space Needle. The conclusion attends to the fair’s traces in Against the Day and Bleeding Edge, demonstrating Pynchon’s nearly career-long fascination with the event.
[Note: Severs' paper has many spoilers for Gravity's Rainbow, including the ending.]
Century21 previously.
The magazine article was prompted by an academic paper by Jeffrey Severs: “A City of the Future”: Gravity’s Rainbow and the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair:
Drawing on archival sources, I argue that the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair (also known as Century 21) was an important source for Thomas Pynchon’s surreal depictions of the Raketen-Stadt in Gravity’s Rainbow. Accounts of the influence of Seattle on Pynchon have been limited to his work as a Boeing technical writer, and Century 21 goes unmentioned in work on the novel’s allusions by Steven Weisenburger and others. Pynchon responds throughout Gravity’s Rainbow to Century 21, particularly its Cold War views of space-age futurism and nuclear weapons. I draw new connections between the angel of Lübeck and John Glenn’s World’s Fair appearance; aspects of the Raketen-Stadt and the fair’s US Science Pavilion; and Pynchon’s many towers and elevators and that signature feature of Century 21, the Space Needle. The conclusion attends to the fair’s traces in Against the Day and Bleeding Edge, demonstrating Pynchon’s nearly career-long fascination with the event.
[Note: Severs' paper has many spoilers for Gravity's Rainbow, including the ending.]
Century21 previously.
Rather compelling:
posted by grobstein at 3:21 PM on February 1, 2017 [8 favorites]
I live north of Seattle (in Canada) and agree that it is the gloomy edge of the world out here.
posted by My Dad at 3:31 PM on February 1, 2017
posted by My Dad at 3:31 PM on February 1, 2017
I live north of Seattle (in Canada) and agree that it is the gloomy edge of the world out here.
Ironically, it's a friggin' stellar February day today.
posted by humboldt32 at 3:40 PM on February 1, 2017 [9 favorites]
Ironically, it's a friggin' stellar February day today.
posted by humboldt32 at 3:40 PM on February 1, 2017 [9 favorites]
Does Gravity's Rainbow really have spoilers, other than THAT ONE SCENE everybody knows about? I've read it twice, many years apart, and it was much better the second time through.
posted by lagomorphius at 3:49 PM on February 1, 2017
posted by lagomorphius at 3:49 PM on February 1, 2017
Gravity's Rainbow - the only library book I've physically thrown out a window. (I like some of Thomas Pynchon's writing but hate this book so much. FLAMES. FLAMES ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE HATE LEVELS.)
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 4:06 PM on February 1, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 4:06 PM on February 1, 2017 [5 favorites]
The scene where the chimps break into the vodka stash and literally go ape and everything gets so nuts the author himself has difficulty following what's going on is my personal favorite. Seriously though, which scene is "that one scene"?
posted by Ndwright at 4:07 PM on February 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Ndwright at 4:07 PM on February 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
"That one scene" is no doubt this one:
Bread that would only have floated in porcelain waters
somewhere, unseen, untasted . . .
[warning, nsfw language]
posted by chavenet at 4:20 PM on February 1, 2017 [3 favorites]
Bread that would only have floated in porcelain waters
somewhere, unseen, untasted . . .
[warning, nsfw language]
posted by chavenet at 4:20 PM on February 1, 2017 [3 favorites]
The scene where the chimps break into the vodka stash and literally go ape and everything gets so nuts the author himself has difficulty following what's going on is my personal favorite. Seriously though, which scene is "that one scene"?
The scatophagia bit. Apparently the reason Pynchon didn't win the Pulitzer.
Please don't abuse library books, no matter how deserving, says the guy who works at the library.
posted by lagomorphius at 4:21 PM on February 1, 2017 [7 favorites]
The scatophagia bit. Apparently the reason Pynchon didn't win the Pulitzer.
Please don't abuse library books, no matter how deserving, says the guy who works at the library.
posted by lagomorphius at 4:21 PM on February 1, 2017 [7 favorites]
Doh! Beat me to it.
posted by lagomorphius at 4:22 PM on February 1, 2017
posted by lagomorphius at 4:22 PM on February 1, 2017
(The library book was undamaged by the excursion.)
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 4:28 PM on February 1, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 4:28 PM on February 1, 2017 [3 favorites]
One of my favorite things:
The Disgusting English Candy Drill
One day, just as he's entering a narrow street all ancient brick walls and lined with costermongers, he hears his name called---and hubba hubba what's this then, here she comes all right, blonde hair flying in telltales, white wedgies clattering on the cobblestones, an adorable tomato in a nurse uniform, and her name's, uh, well, oh---Darlene. Golly it's Darlene. She works at St. Veronica's hospital, lives nearby at the home of a Mrs. Quoad, a lady widowed long ago and since suffering a series of antiquated diseases---greensickness, tetter, kibes, purples, imposthumes and almonds in the ears, most recently a touch of scurvy. So, out in search of limes for her landlady, the fruit beginning to jog and spill from her straw basket and roll yellowgreen back down the street, young Darlene comes running in her nurse's cap, her breasts soft fenders for this meeting on the gray city sea.
"You came back! Ah Tyrone, you're back," a tear or two, both of them down picking up citrus, the starch khaki dress rattling, even the odd sniffle from Slothrop's not unsentimental nose.
"It's me love..."
Tire tracks in the slush have turned to pearl, mellow pearl. Gulls cruise slowly against the high windowless brick walls of the district.
Mrs. Quoad's is up three dark flights, with the dome of faraway St. Paul's out its kitchen window visible in the smoke of certain afternoons, and the lady herself tiny in a rose plush chair in the sitting-room by the wireless, listening to Primo Scala's Accordion Band. She looks healthy enough. On the table, though, is her crumpled chiffon handkerchief: feathered blots of blood in and out the convolutions like a Horal pattern.
"You were here when I had that horrid quotidian ague," she recalls Slothrop, "the day we brewed the wormwood tea," sure enough, the very taste now, rising through his shoe-soles, taking him along. They're reassembling... it must be outside his memory... cool clean interior, girl and woman, independent of his shorthand of stars... so many fading-faced girls, windy canalsides, bed-sitters, bus-stop good-bys, how can he be expected to remember? but this room has gone on clarifying: part of whoever he was inside it has kindly remained, stored quiescent these months outside of his head, distributed through the grainy shadows, the grease-hazy jars of herbs, candies, spices, all the Compton Mackenzie novels on the shelf, glassy ambrotypes of her late husband Austin night-dusted inside gilded frames up on the mantel where last tune Michaelmas daisies greeted and razzled from a little Sevres vase she and Austin found together one Saturday long ago in a Wardour Street shop...
"He was my good health," she often says. "Since he passed away I've had to become all but an outright witch, in pure self-defense." From the kitchen comes the smell of limes freshly cut and squeezed. Darlene's in and out of the room, looking for different botanicals, asking where the cheesecloth's got to, "Tyrone help me just reach down that---no next to it, the tall jar, thank you love"---back into the kitchen in a creak of starch, a flash of pink. "I'm the only one with a memory around here," Mrs. Quoad sighs. "We help each other, you see." She brings out from behind its cretonne camouflage a great bowl of candies. "Now," beaming at Slothrop. "Here: wine jellies. They're prewar."
"Now I remember you---the one with the graft at the Ministry of Supply!" but he knows, from last time, that no gallantry can help him now. After that visit he wrote home to Nalline: "The English are kind of weird when it comes to the way things taste, Mom. They aren't like us. It might be the climate. They go for things we would never dream of. Sometimes it is enough to turn your stomach, boy. The other day I had had one of these things they call 'wine jellies.' That's their idea of candy, Mom! Figure out a way to feed some to that Hitler 'n' I betcha the war'd be over tomorrow!" Now once again he finds himself checking out these ruddy gelatin objects, nodding, he hopes amiably, at Mrs. Quoad. They have the names of different wines written on them in bas-relief.
"Just a touch of menthol too," Mrs. Quoad popping one into her mouth. "Delicious."
Slothrop finally chooses one that says Lafitte Rothschild and stuffs it on into his kisser. "Oh yeah. Yeah. Mmm. It's great."
"If you really want something peculiar try the Bernkastler Doktor. Oh! Aren't you the one who brought me those lovely American slimy elm things, maple-tasting with a touch of sassafras---"
"Slippery elm. Jeepers I'm sorry, I ran out yesterday."
Darlene comes in with a steaming pot and three cups on a tray. "What's that?" Slothrop a little quickly, here.
"You don't really want to know, Tyrone."
"Quite right," after the first sip, wishing she'd used more lime juice or something to kill the basic taste, which is ghastly-bitter. These people are really insane. No sugar, natch. He reaches in the candy bowl, comes up with a black, ribbed licorice drop. It looks safe. But just as he's biting in, Darlene gives him, and it, a peculiar look, great timing this girl, sez, "Oh, I thought we got rid of all those---" a blithe, Gilbert & Sullivan ingenue's thewse---"years ago," at which point Slothrop is encountering this dribbling liquid center, which tastes like mayonnaise and orange peels.
"You've taken the last of my Marmalade Surprises!" cries Mrs. Quoad, having now with conjuror's speed produced an egg-shaped confection of pastel green, studded all over with lavender nonpareils. "Just for that I shan't let you have any of these marvelous rhubarb creams." Into her mouth it goes, the whole thing.
"Serves me right," Slothrop, wondering just what he means by this, sipping herb tea to remove the taste of the mayonnaise candy---oops but that's a mistake, right, here's his mouth filling once again with horrible alkaloid desolation, all the way back to the soft palate where it digs in. Darlene, pure Nightingale compassion, is handing him a hard red candy, molded like a stylized raspberry... mm, which oddly enough even tastes like a raspberry, though it can't begin to take away that bitterness. Impatiently, he bites into it, and in the act knows, fucking idiot, he's been had once more, there comes pouring out onto his tongue the most godawful crystalline concentration of Jeez it must be pure nitric acid, "Oh mercy that's really sour," hardly able to get the words out he's so puckered up, exactly the sort of thing Hop Harrigan used to pull to get Tank Tinker to quit playing his ocarina, a shabby trick then and twice as reprehensible coming from an old lady who's supposed to be one of our Allies, shit he can't even see it's up his nose and whatever it is won't dissolve, just goes on torturing his shriveling tongue and crunches like ground glass among his molars. Mrs. Quoad is meantime busy savoring, bite by dainty bite, a cherry-quinine petit four. She beams at the young people across the candy bowl. Slothrop, forgetting, reaches again for his tea. There is no graceful way out of this now. Darlene has brought a couple-three more candy jars down off of the shelf, and now he goes plunging, like a journey to the center of some small, hostile planet, into an enormous bonbon chomp through the mantle of chocolate to a strongly eucalyptus-flavored fondant, finally into a core of some very tough grape gum arabic. He fingernails a piece of this out from between his teeth and stares at it for a while. It is purple in color.
"Now you're getting the idea!" Mrs. Quoad waving at him a marbled conglomerate of ginger root, butterscotch, and aniseed, "you see, you also have to enjoy the way it looks. Why are Americans so impulsive?"
"Well," mumbling, "usually we don't get any more complicated than Hershey bars, see...."
"Oh, try this," hollers Darlene, clutching her throat and swaying against him.
"Gosh, it must really be something," doubtfully taking this nastylooking brownish novelty, an exact quarter-scale replica of a Mills-type hand grenade, lever, pin and everything, one of a series of patriotic candies put out before sugar was quite so scarce, also including, he notices, peering into the jar, a .455 Webley cartridge of green and pink striped taffy, a six-ton earthquake bomb of some silver-flecked blue gelatin, and a licorice bazooka.
"Go on then," Darlene actually taking his hand with the candy in it and trying to shove it into his mouth.
"Was just, you know, looking at it, the way Mrs. Quoad suggested."
"And no fair squeezing it, Tyrone."
Under its tamarind glaze, the Mills bomb turns out to be luscious pepsin-flavored nougat, chock-full of tangy candied cubeb berries, and a chewy camphor-gum center. It is unspeakably awful. Slothrop's head begins to reel with camphor fumes, his eyes are running, his tongue's a hopeless holocaust. Cubeb? He used to smoke that stuff. "Poisoned..." he is able to croak.
"Show a little backbone," advises Mrs. Quoad.
"Yes," Darlene through tongue-softened sheets of caramel, "don't you know there's a war on? Here now love, open your mouth."
Through the tears he can't see it too well, but he can hear Mrs. Quoad across the table going "Yum, yum, yum," and Darlene giggling. It is enormous and soft, like a marshmallow, but somehow---unless something is now going seriously wrong with his brain---it tastes like: gin. "Wha's 'is," he inquires thickly.
"A gin marshmallow," sez Mrs. Quoad.
"Awww..."
"Oh that's nothing, have one of these---" his teeth, in some perverse reflex, crunching now through a hard sour gooseberry shell into a wet spurting unpleasantness of, he hopes it's tapioca, little glutinous chunks of something all saturated with powdered cloves.
"More tea?" Darlene suggests. Slothrop is coughing violently, having inhaled some of that clove filling.
"Nasty cough," Mrs. Quoad offering a tin of that least believable of English coughdrops, the Meggezone. "Darlene, the tea is lovely, I can feel my scurvy going away, really I can."
The Meggezone is like being belted in the head with a Swiss Alp. Menthol icicles immediately begin to grow from the roof of Slothrop's mouth. Polar bears seek toenail-holds up the freezing frosty-grape alveolar clusters in his lungs. It hurts his teeth too much to breathe, even through his nose, even, necktie loosened, with his nose down inside the neck of his olive-drab T-shirt. Benzoin vapors seep into his brain. His head floats in a halo of ice.
Even an hour later, the Meggezone still lingers, a mint ghost in the air. Slothrop lies with Darlene, the Disgusting English Candy Drill a thing of the past, his groin now against her warm bottom. The one candy he did not get to taste---one Mrs. Quoad withheld---was the Fire of Paradise, that famous confection of high price and protean taste---"salted plum" to one, "artificial cherry" to another... "sugared violets"... "Worcestershire sauce"... "spiced treacle"... any number of like descriptions, positive, terse---never exceeding two words in length---resembling the descriptions of poison and debilitating gases found in training manuals, "sweet-and-sour eggplant" being perhaps the lengthiest to date. [ . . . ]
--- Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon, pp. 114-119.
posted by Splunge at 4:37 PM on February 1, 2017 [18 favorites]
The Disgusting English Candy Drill
One day, just as he's entering a narrow street all ancient brick walls and lined with costermongers, he hears his name called---and hubba hubba what's this then, here she comes all right, blonde hair flying in telltales, white wedgies clattering on the cobblestones, an adorable tomato in a nurse uniform, and her name's, uh, well, oh---Darlene. Golly it's Darlene. She works at St. Veronica's hospital, lives nearby at the home of a Mrs. Quoad, a lady widowed long ago and since suffering a series of antiquated diseases---greensickness, tetter, kibes, purples, imposthumes and almonds in the ears, most recently a touch of scurvy. So, out in search of limes for her landlady, the fruit beginning to jog and spill from her straw basket and roll yellowgreen back down the street, young Darlene comes running in her nurse's cap, her breasts soft fenders for this meeting on the gray city sea.
"You came back! Ah Tyrone, you're back," a tear or two, both of them down picking up citrus, the starch khaki dress rattling, even the odd sniffle from Slothrop's not unsentimental nose.
"It's me love..."
Tire tracks in the slush have turned to pearl, mellow pearl. Gulls cruise slowly against the high windowless brick walls of the district.
Mrs. Quoad's is up three dark flights, with the dome of faraway St. Paul's out its kitchen window visible in the smoke of certain afternoons, and the lady herself tiny in a rose plush chair in the sitting-room by the wireless, listening to Primo Scala's Accordion Band. She looks healthy enough. On the table, though, is her crumpled chiffon handkerchief: feathered blots of blood in and out the convolutions like a Horal pattern.
"You were here when I had that horrid quotidian ague," she recalls Slothrop, "the day we brewed the wormwood tea," sure enough, the very taste now, rising through his shoe-soles, taking him along. They're reassembling... it must be outside his memory... cool clean interior, girl and woman, independent of his shorthand of stars... so many fading-faced girls, windy canalsides, bed-sitters, bus-stop good-bys, how can he be expected to remember? but this room has gone on clarifying: part of whoever he was inside it has kindly remained, stored quiescent these months outside of his head, distributed through the grainy shadows, the grease-hazy jars of herbs, candies, spices, all the Compton Mackenzie novels on the shelf, glassy ambrotypes of her late husband Austin night-dusted inside gilded frames up on the mantel where last tune Michaelmas daisies greeted and razzled from a little Sevres vase she and Austin found together one Saturday long ago in a Wardour Street shop...
"He was my good health," she often says. "Since he passed away I've had to become all but an outright witch, in pure self-defense." From the kitchen comes the smell of limes freshly cut and squeezed. Darlene's in and out of the room, looking for different botanicals, asking where the cheesecloth's got to, "Tyrone help me just reach down that---no next to it, the tall jar, thank you love"---back into the kitchen in a creak of starch, a flash of pink. "I'm the only one with a memory around here," Mrs. Quoad sighs. "We help each other, you see." She brings out from behind its cretonne camouflage a great bowl of candies. "Now," beaming at Slothrop. "Here: wine jellies. They're prewar."
"Now I remember you---the one with the graft at the Ministry of Supply!" but he knows, from last time, that no gallantry can help him now. After that visit he wrote home to Nalline: "The English are kind of weird when it comes to the way things taste, Mom. They aren't like us. It might be the climate. They go for things we would never dream of. Sometimes it is enough to turn your stomach, boy. The other day I had had one of these things they call 'wine jellies.' That's their idea of candy, Mom! Figure out a way to feed some to that Hitler 'n' I betcha the war'd be over tomorrow!" Now once again he finds himself checking out these ruddy gelatin objects, nodding, he hopes amiably, at Mrs. Quoad. They have the names of different wines written on them in bas-relief.
"Just a touch of menthol too," Mrs. Quoad popping one into her mouth. "Delicious."
Slothrop finally chooses one that says Lafitte Rothschild and stuffs it on into his kisser. "Oh yeah. Yeah. Mmm. It's great."
"If you really want something peculiar try the Bernkastler Doktor. Oh! Aren't you the one who brought me those lovely American slimy elm things, maple-tasting with a touch of sassafras---"
"Slippery elm. Jeepers I'm sorry, I ran out yesterday."
Darlene comes in with a steaming pot and three cups on a tray. "What's that?" Slothrop a little quickly, here.
"You don't really want to know, Tyrone."
"Quite right," after the first sip, wishing she'd used more lime juice or something to kill the basic taste, which is ghastly-bitter. These people are really insane. No sugar, natch. He reaches in the candy bowl, comes up with a black, ribbed licorice drop. It looks safe. But just as he's biting in, Darlene gives him, and it, a peculiar look, great timing this girl, sez, "Oh, I thought we got rid of all those---" a blithe, Gilbert & Sullivan ingenue's thewse---"years ago," at which point Slothrop is encountering this dribbling liquid center, which tastes like mayonnaise and orange peels.
"You've taken the last of my Marmalade Surprises!" cries Mrs. Quoad, having now with conjuror's speed produced an egg-shaped confection of pastel green, studded all over with lavender nonpareils. "Just for that I shan't let you have any of these marvelous rhubarb creams." Into her mouth it goes, the whole thing.
"Serves me right," Slothrop, wondering just what he means by this, sipping herb tea to remove the taste of the mayonnaise candy---oops but that's a mistake, right, here's his mouth filling once again with horrible alkaloid desolation, all the way back to the soft palate where it digs in. Darlene, pure Nightingale compassion, is handing him a hard red candy, molded like a stylized raspberry... mm, which oddly enough even tastes like a raspberry, though it can't begin to take away that bitterness. Impatiently, he bites into it, and in the act knows, fucking idiot, he's been had once more, there comes pouring out onto his tongue the most godawful crystalline concentration of Jeez it must be pure nitric acid, "Oh mercy that's really sour," hardly able to get the words out he's so puckered up, exactly the sort of thing Hop Harrigan used to pull to get Tank Tinker to quit playing his ocarina, a shabby trick then and twice as reprehensible coming from an old lady who's supposed to be one of our Allies, shit he can't even see it's up his nose and whatever it is won't dissolve, just goes on torturing his shriveling tongue and crunches like ground glass among his molars. Mrs. Quoad is meantime busy savoring, bite by dainty bite, a cherry-quinine petit four. She beams at the young people across the candy bowl. Slothrop, forgetting, reaches again for his tea. There is no graceful way out of this now. Darlene has brought a couple-three more candy jars down off of the shelf, and now he goes plunging, like a journey to the center of some small, hostile planet, into an enormous bonbon chomp through the mantle of chocolate to a strongly eucalyptus-flavored fondant, finally into a core of some very tough grape gum arabic. He fingernails a piece of this out from between his teeth and stares at it for a while. It is purple in color.
"Now you're getting the idea!" Mrs. Quoad waving at him a marbled conglomerate of ginger root, butterscotch, and aniseed, "you see, you also have to enjoy the way it looks. Why are Americans so impulsive?"
"Well," mumbling, "usually we don't get any more complicated than Hershey bars, see...."
"Oh, try this," hollers Darlene, clutching her throat and swaying against him.
"Gosh, it must really be something," doubtfully taking this nastylooking brownish novelty, an exact quarter-scale replica of a Mills-type hand grenade, lever, pin and everything, one of a series of patriotic candies put out before sugar was quite so scarce, also including, he notices, peering into the jar, a .455 Webley cartridge of green and pink striped taffy, a six-ton earthquake bomb of some silver-flecked blue gelatin, and a licorice bazooka.
"Go on then," Darlene actually taking his hand with the candy in it and trying to shove it into his mouth.
"Was just, you know, looking at it, the way Mrs. Quoad suggested."
"And no fair squeezing it, Tyrone."
Under its tamarind glaze, the Mills bomb turns out to be luscious pepsin-flavored nougat, chock-full of tangy candied cubeb berries, and a chewy camphor-gum center. It is unspeakably awful. Slothrop's head begins to reel with camphor fumes, his eyes are running, his tongue's a hopeless holocaust. Cubeb? He used to smoke that stuff. "Poisoned..." he is able to croak.
"Show a little backbone," advises Mrs. Quoad.
"Yes," Darlene through tongue-softened sheets of caramel, "don't you know there's a war on? Here now love, open your mouth."
Through the tears he can't see it too well, but he can hear Mrs. Quoad across the table going "Yum, yum, yum," and Darlene giggling. It is enormous and soft, like a marshmallow, but somehow---unless something is now going seriously wrong with his brain---it tastes like: gin. "Wha's 'is," he inquires thickly.
"A gin marshmallow," sez Mrs. Quoad.
"Awww..."
"Oh that's nothing, have one of these---" his teeth, in some perverse reflex, crunching now through a hard sour gooseberry shell into a wet spurting unpleasantness of, he hopes it's tapioca, little glutinous chunks of something all saturated with powdered cloves.
"More tea?" Darlene suggests. Slothrop is coughing violently, having inhaled some of that clove filling.
"Nasty cough," Mrs. Quoad offering a tin of that least believable of English coughdrops, the Meggezone. "Darlene, the tea is lovely, I can feel my scurvy going away, really I can."
The Meggezone is like being belted in the head with a Swiss Alp. Menthol icicles immediately begin to grow from the roof of Slothrop's mouth. Polar bears seek toenail-holds up the freezing frosty-grape alveolar clusters in his lungs. It hurts his teeth too much to breathe, even through his nose, even, necktie loosened, with his nose down inside the neck of his olive-drab T-shirt. Benzoin vapors seep into his brain. His head floats in a halo of ice.
Even an hour later, the Meggezone still lingers, a mint ghost in the air. Slothrop lies with Darlene, the Disgusting English Candy Drill a thing of the past, his groin now against her warm bottom. The one candy he did not get to taste---one Mrs. Quoad withheld---was the Fire of Paradise, that famous confection of high price and protean taste---"salted plum" to one, "artificial cherry" to another... "sugared violets"... "Worcestershire sauce"... "spiced treacle"... any number of like descriptions, positive, terse---never exceeding two words in length---resembling the descriptions of poison and debilitating gases found in training manuals, "sweet-and-sour eggplant" being perhaps the lengthiest to date. [ . . . ]
--- Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon, pp. 114-119.
posted by Splunge at 4:37 PM on February 1, 2017 [18 favorites]
Von Braun attended the Fair with astronaut John Glenn, who’d just become the first human to orbit Earth.
There was this guy named "Yuri Gagarin" that Tim Appelo might want to read up on.
posted by Pseudoephedrine at 5:19 PM on February 1, 2017 [11 favorites]
There was this guy named "Yuri Gagarin" that Tim Appelo might want to read up on.
posted by Pseudoephedrine at 5:19 PM on February 1, 2017 [11 favorites]
One incidental side effect of reading Gravity's Rainbow is that you come away with a damn encyclopedia's worth of words for light, diaphanous fabrics left in your head. Chiffon, voile, organdy, &c. I swear that the definition of every other word I looked up in that book actually started with the words "a light, diaphanous fabric."
posted by invitapriore at 5:21 PM on February 1, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by invitapriore at 5:21 PM on February 1, 2017 [5 favorites]
And banana recipes. Don't forget the banana recipes.
posted by Splunge at 5:32 PM on February 1, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by Splunge at 5:32 PM on February 1, 2017 [4 favorites]
No love for Byron the Bulb?
posted by Death and Gravity at 5:33 PM on February 1, 2017 [7 favorites]
posted by Death and Gravity at 5:33 PM on February 1, 2017 [7 favorites]
Of course. In GR digressions are both expected and cherished.
posted by Splunge at 5:38 PM on February 1, 2017
posted by Splunge at 5:38 PM on February 1, 2017
Well... most of them. :)
posted by Splunge at 5:38 PM on February 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Splunge at 5:38 PM on February 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
I joined the Peace Corps in 1973 and went to Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), and took a few books with me. One of them was Gravity's Rainbow. Read the whole thing on the way there (a trip that involved a forced stay in Kampala, and an odd flight in a very old airplane where I could watch the jungle through a hole under my feet). Then few english books for a while, so I read and reread GR until I arrived at a place with a good library of both english and french books. I hung onto my copy (and probably still have it) and read it a few more times during my stay in Africa.
I got to know GR quite well.
posted by Death and Gravity at 5:42 PM on February 1, 2017 [5 favorites]
I got to know GR quite well.
posted by Death and Gravity at 5:42 PM on February 1, 2017 [5 favorites]
No love for Byron the Bulb?
A faintly strobing love, certainly.
posted by jamjam at 5:47 PM on February 1, 2017
A faintly strobing love, certainly.
posted by jamjam at 5:47 PM on February 1, 2017
Boggle.
How had I missed that Pynchon was a Lazy B man?
I have always associated certain aspects of the book with not Seattle Center but the New York World's Fair of 1932. I believe my lifetime readthrough count is currently at five, but the last one was some time ago, pre-ebook habit probably, placing it on the other side of 1999.
I won a "MIR" pin from a cosmonaut on the grounds of the Pacific Science Center in the early 1990s in the context of immediate post-Cold War comity and Russian cash-seeking. There was an (AMAZING) touring exhibition of Russian space hardware, largely engineering duplicates of flown units, you know, the reference copies kept for troubleshooting during the mission, including Veneras and Lunokhods.
Paul Allen's Flying Heritage Collection up at Paine has an assortment of Nazi hardware including a Visible Rocket-ized V2.
Still, if Frank Herbert can make the PNW into Caladan and the Oregon Dunes into Arrakis (with a hefty assist from Lawrence of Arabia), sure, why not?
posted by mwhybark at 6:02 PM on February 1, 2017
How had I missed that Pynchon was a Lazy B man?
I have always associated certain aspects of the book with not Seattle Center but the New York World's Fair of 1932. I believe my lifetime readthrough count is currently at five, but the last one was some time ago, pre-ebook habit probably, placing it on the other side of 1999.
I won a "MIR" pin from a cosmonaut on the grounds of the Pacific Science Center in the early 1990s in the context of immediate post-Cold War comity and Russian cash-seeking. There was an (AMAZING) touring exhibition of Russian space hardware, largely engineering duplicates of flown units, you know, the reference copies kept for troubleshooting during the mission, including Veneras and Lunokhods.
Paul Allen's Flying Heritage Collection up at Paine has an assortment of Nazi hardware including a Visible Rocket-ized V2.
Still, if Frank Herbert can make the PNW into Caladan and the Oregon Dunes into Arrakis (with a hefty assist from Lawrence of Arabia), sure, why not?
posted by mwhybark at 6:02 PM on February 1, 2017
also
I got to know GR quite well.
posted by Death and Gravity at ...
eponywhoosiswutsis
posted by mwhybark at 6:09 PM on February 1, 2017 [3 favorites]
I got to know GR quite well.
posted by Death and Gravity at ...
eponywhoosiswutsis
posted by mwhybark at 6:09 PM on February 1, 2017 [3 favorites]
clearly time for a re-read (should be #5 for me) once I'm done with Watership Down (re-read #1xx?). the Banana Breakfast is a beautiful affirmation in the face of mortal fear and I love Grigori the Octopus, and yeah that scene, I make funny faces when I'm reading it.
Cubeb? He used to smoke that stuff. ROFL...
posted by supermedusa at 6:11 PM on February 1, 2017
Cubeb? He used to smoke that stuff. ROFL...
posted by supermedusa at 6:11 PM on February 1, 2017
Von Braun took the side of America and the angels, saying that only “people who are guided by the Bible” could be trusted with nukes.
I have to wonder if he was making an ironic comment about how few people in America are guided by the Bible.
posted by straight at 6:13 PM on February 1, 2017
I have to wonder if he was making an ironic comment about how few people in America are guided by the Bible.
posted by straight at 6:13 PM on February 1, 2017
Still, if Frank Herbert can make the PNW into Caladan and the Oregon Dunes into Arrakis (with a hefty assist from Lawrence of Arabia), sure, why not?
Hey, don't forget the Great Palouse Earthworm, which even comes with a spicy smell:
Hey, don't forget the Great Palouse Earthworm, which even comes with a spicy smell:
Driloleirus americanus is a large, pinkish-white earthworm as much as 3 feet long, said to smell like lilies when handled. Threatened by habitat loss (Palouse bunchgrass prairie) and non-native worm species. The worms' burrows are as deep as 15 feet. They were reportedly abundant in the late 1800's around the Palouse.posted by jamjam at 6:20 PM on February 1, 2017 [3 favorites]
Read the whole thing on the way there (a trip that involved a forced stay in Kampala, and an odd flight in a very old airplane where I could watch the jungle through a hole under my feet).
I have only read the book once, also in a time of transition, though not so dramatic. But the craziness of it matched that moment in time and I've been reluctant ever since to reread it in fear of disappointment.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:22 PM on February 1, 2017
I have only read the book once, also in a time of transition, though not so dramatic. But the craziness of it matched that moment in time and I've been reluctant ever since to reread it in fear of disappointment.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:22 PM on February 1, 2017
My copy has the spiderlike script of an ex-girlfriend in the white space of various pages. A phone number. Sometimes a weird comment that has nothing to do with the story, only a comment on her life. Re-reading it brings me back to a time of love and joy. Also a time of breakup and sadness. I wouldn't give it up for anything. It's my version of time travel.
posted by Splunge at 6:49 PM on February 1, 2017 [8 favorites]
posted by Splunge at 6:49 PM on February 1, 2017 [8 favorites]
I joined the Peace Corps in 1973 and went to Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), and took a few books with me. One of them was Gravity's Rainbow. Read the whole thing on the way there (a trip that involved a forced stay in Kampala, and an odd flight in a very old airplane where I could watch the jungle through a hole under my feet).
It would be very much in the spirit of the source material to make with the stories at this point.
posted by invitapriore at 7:02 PM on February 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
It would be very much in the spirit of the source material to make with the stories at this point.
posted by invitapriore at 7:02 PM on February 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
scatophagia
I believe the more common word is coprophagia.
posted by Slothrup at 7:38 PM on February 1, 2017 [3 favorites]
I believe the more common word is coprophagia.
posted by Slothrup at 7:38 PM on February 1, 2017 [3 favorites]
Heh, long story short.
A planeload of Peace Corps volunteers going from the US to Bukavu (Katanga/Shaba Zaire). Only PCVs on the plane.
We were supposed to stop in Bujumbura for refueling, but there was a coup in Burundi that week, so we went to Entebbe (yes, that Entebbe, indeed, that terminal) instead. Got there just about the time that President Bongo of the Gabon did, so Idi Amin was at the airport. He somehow decided we were a planeload of mercenaries, so after we took off, jets chased us and we turned back.
Ended up spending a couple days in Entebbe airport until President Bongo left (a very strange and kind of scary time, but with oddities like the locals coming to the airport bar, and they'd stand us drinks, or the games of baseball played on the tarmac with no balls or bats - just mime), then a day or two in a local hotel. At one point we were all being searched and people were getting a hard time for having the Michelin maps of Africa, and there was a incident with a Frisbee : "what is that?", "A frisbee." "What is it for?" Person throws frisbee across hall. It bounces off a soldiers chest and guns get ready. Motions about how to toss it are made, the guard tosses the frisbee and all laugh and relax.
After all and sundry in East Africa intervened, they flew us to Kinshasa and then back to Bukavu (halfway across the middle of Africa then back). It was the flight back to Bukavu where I got to watch Africa between my feet while reading (probably for the second time since we'd started the trip) GR.
posted by Death and Gravity at 7:45 PM on February 1, 2017 [14 favorites]
A planeload of Peace Corps volunteers going from the US to Bukavu (Katanga/Shaba Zaire). Only PCVs on the plane.
We were supposed to stop in Bujumbura for refueling, but there was a coup in Burundi that week, so we went to Entebbe (yes, that Entebbe, indeed, that terminal) instead. Got there just about the time that President Bongo of the Gabon did, so Idi Amin was at the airport. He somehow decided we were a planeload of mercenaries, so after we took off, jets chased us and we turned back.
Ended up spending a couple days in Entebbe airport until President Bongo left (a very strange and kind of scary time, but with oddities like the locals coming to the airport bar, and they'd stand us drinks, or the games of baseball played on the tarmac with no balls or bats - just mime), then a day or two in a local hotel. At one point we were all being searched and people were getting a hard time for having the Michelin maps of Africa, and there was a incident with a Frisbee : "what is that?", "A frisbee." "What is it for?" Person throws frisbee across hall. It bounces off a soldiers chest and guns get ready. Motions about how to toss it are made, the guard tosses the frisbee and all laugh and relax.
After all and sundry in East Africa intervened, they flew us to Kinshasa and then back to Bukavu (halfway across the middle of Africa then back). It was the flight back to Bukavu where I got to watch Africa between my feet while reading (probably for the second time since we'd started the trip) GR.
posted by Death and Gravity at 7:45 PM on February 1, 2017 [14 favorites]
Still, if Frank Herbert can make the PNW into Caladan and the Oregon Dunes into Arrakis (with a hefty assist from Lawrence of Arabia), sure, why not?
wait, what?
posted by Dr. Twist at 8:29 PM on February 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
wait, what?
posted by Dr. Twist at 8:29 PM on February 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
scatophagia
I believe the more common word is coprophagia.
I'm still sending it back.
posted by lagomorphius at 9:05 PM on February 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
I believe the more common word is coprophagia.
I'm still sending it back.
posted by lagomorphius at 9:05 PM on February 1, 2017 [2 favorites]
wait, what?
Herbert got the genesis of the idea for Dune - and specifically, the plan to transform Arrakis - while researching an article about efforts to stabilize the Oregon Dunes.
The Lawrence of Arabia flavor to Paul Atreides is obvious.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:39 PM on February 1, 2017 [3 favorites]
Herbert got the genesis of the idea for Dune - and specifically, the plan to transform Arrakis - while researching an article about efforts to stabilize the Oregon Dunes.
The Lawrence of Arabia flavor to Paul Atreides is obvious.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:39 PM on February 1, 2017 [3 favorites]
Does Gravity's Rainbow really have spoilers
For De Mille, young fur-henchmen can't be rowing.
posted by RogerB at 10:40 PM on February 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
For De Mille, young fur-henchmen can't be rowing.
posted by RogerB at 10:40 PM on February 1, 2017 [1 favorite]
wait, what?
Herbert got the genesis of the idea for Dune - and specifically, the plan to transform Arrakis - while researching an article about efforts to stabilize the Oregon Dunes.
Thanks, Chrysostom.
Additionally, he was living in Seattle. I learned this from a fascinating interview that used to be online somewhere or other in which he describes driving from Seattle to San Francisco and being gobsmacked by the Dunes, and then pitching the magazine piece, and if I recall correctly I think I understood him to say that he saw Lawrence pretty much at that exact time.
Lemme go scrounge, I may have blogged it back in the day.
So the wettest green parts of the PNW are Caladan. Furthermore, if we apply The Force in order to acheive another transumutative commutation, we see that Caladan is Alderaan, as Arrakis is Tattooine.
posted by mwhybark at 1:45 AM on February 2, 2017
Herbert got the genesis of the idea for Dune - and specifically, the plan to transform Arrakis - while researching an article about efforts to stabilize the Oregon Dunes.
Thanks, Chrysostom.
Additionally, he was living in Seattle. I learned this from a fascinating interview that used to be online somewhere or other in which he describes driving from Seattle to San Francisco and being gobsmacked by the Dunes, and then pitching the magazine piece, and if I recall correctly I think I understood him to say that he saw Lawrence pretty much at that exact time.
Lemme go scrounge, I may have blogged it back in the day.
So the wettest green parts of the PNW are Caladan. Furthermore, if we apply The Force in order to acheive another transumutative commutation, we see that Caladan is Alderaan, as Arrakis is Tattooine.
posted by mwhybark at 1:45 AM on February 2, 2017
The interview is still up. It dates to 1970. There is a brief mention of Lawrence but not the anecdote that I recalled, so I may have invented that memory.
Herbert does specifically cite Conrad's Nostromo, though, and mentions growing up in Fife.
posted by mwhybark at 2:13 AM on February 2, 2017
Herbert does specifically cite Conrad's Nostromo, though, and mentions growing up in Fife.
posted by mwhybark at 2:13 AM on February 2, 2017
(Also, the interview does not specify that the drive was from Seattle to San Francisco)
posted by mwhybark at 2:33 AM on February 2, 2017
posted by mwhybark at 2:33 AM on February 2, 2017
Pynchon is so inscrutable. It's like looking through a broken lens. The extraordinary perversion in Gravity's Rainbow, child rape, incest, eating shit... it's all so horrible. Against the backdrop of postwar Europe, where there are no lines, not on a map or in your conscience or even in space.
It's a disgusting book. I read the whole thing.
posted by adept256 at 2:43 AM on February 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
It's a disgusting book. I read the whole thing.
posted by adept256 at 2:43 AM on February 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
Note: Severs' paper has many spoilers for Gravity's Rainbow, including the ending.
Come to think of it I'm still not sure what happened at the ending
posted by thelonius at 2:49 AM on February 2, 2017 [2 favorites]
Come to think of it I'm still not sure what happened at the ending
posted by thelonius at 2:49 AM on February 2, 2017 [2 favorites]
games of baseball played on the tarmac with no balls or bats - just mime
cf. the jazz combo scene from V.
posted by oheso at 3:21 AM on February 2, 2017
cf. the jazz combo scene from V.
posted by oheso at 3:21 AM on February 2, 2017
Does Gravity's Rainbow really have spoilers
Yes, it's the bit where they finally explain what happened in Central Asia, and the exact nature of the Kirghiz Light.
posted by vanar sena at 4:48 AM on February 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
Yes, it's the bit where they finally explain what happened in Central Asia, and the exact nature of the Kirghiz Light.
posted by vanar sena at 4:48 AM on February 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
All together now!
A pig is a jolly companion,
Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt --
A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale,
Though mountains may topple and tilt.
When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you,
When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig,
Though you may be thrown over by Tabby and Rover,
You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig,
You'll never go wrong with a pig!
posted by whuppy at 6:06 AM on February 2, 2017 [4 favorites]
A pig is a jolly companion,
Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt --
A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale,
Though mountains may topple and tilt.
When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you,
When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig,
Though you may be thrown over by Tabby and Rover,
You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig,
You'll never go wrong with a pig!
posted by whuppy at 6:06 AM on February 2, 2017 [4 favorites]
PS. The castration is my choice for That One Scene.
posted by whuppy at 6:07 AM on February 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by whuppy at 6:07 AM on February 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
In these dark times, I'm keeping a printout of the hymn (written by Slothrop's ancestor, William) hung above my desk.
There is a Hand to turn the time
Though thy Glass today be run
Till the Light that hath brought the Towers low
Find the last poor Pret'rite one...
Till the Riders sleep by ev'ry road,
All through our crippl'd Zone,
With a face on ev'ry mountainside,
And a Soul in ev'ry stone....
Now everybody..
posted by rocketman at 6:30 AM on February 2, 2017 [4 favorites]
There is a Hand to turn the time
Though thy Glass today be run
Till the Light that hath brought the Towers low
Find the last poor Pret'rite one...
Till the Riders sleep by ev'ry road,
All through our crippl'd Zone,
With a face on ev'ry mountainside,
And a Soul in ev'ry stone....
Now everybody..
posted by rocketman at 6:30 AM on February 2, 2017 [4 favorites]
it's funny because this is a fictional dystopia about a place we know is an ideal liberal paradise that's
absolutely
not
an actual
dystopia
well, at least it isn't for the important people who share a similar demographic makeup with our current elected officials
posted by runt at 7:33 AM on February 2, 2017
absolutely
not
an actual
dystopia
well, at least it isn't for the important people who share a similar demographic makeup with our current elected officials
posted by runt at 7:33 AM on February 2, 2017
rocketman: "Now everybody.."
Eponys.....wait for it...terical.
(Fickt Nicht Mit!)
posted by chavenet at 11:26 AM on February 2, 2017 [2 favorites]
Eponys.....wait for it...terical.
(Fickt Nicht Mit!)
posted by chavenet at 11:26 AM on February 2, 2017 [2 favorites]
Yeah, seconding (nth-ing?) the confusion over whether the ending of GR can be spoiled. I think that would first require that it could be explained...
posted by hwestiii at 12:10 PM on February 2, 2017
posted by hwestiii at 12:10 PM on February 2, 2017
Does Gravity's Rainbow really have spoilers, other than THAT ONE SCENE everybody knows about? I've read it twice, many years apart, and it was much better the second time through.
Well, the end. You know, when Blicero stuffs Gottfried into a rocket that blows up ... the (fake?) "Orpheus Theatre on Melrose"? (To be honest, I'm not sure if that part was real. Was the audience watching a movie of Gravity's Rainbow?)
Also, the little switcheroo with Slothrop and Marvy was a fun surprise, one of the only linear plotlines I could follow.
Anyway, it took me SEVEN times to finish Gravity's Rainbow, and it was worth it, but it's not Pynchon's best (that would be Mason & Dixon, hands down, imo). I think Inherent Vice or Vineland are both better too. Against the Day is even harder to read than GR, and I'm not sure what the fuck it was about. I probably still liked it better than GR. I liked GR better than V or the new one, tho.
posted by mrgrimm at 1:05 PM on February 2, 2017
Well, the end. You know, when Blicero stuffs Gottfried into a rocket that blows up ... the (fake?) "Orpheus Theatre on Melrose"? (To be honest, I'm not sure if that part was real. Was the audience watching a movie of Gravity's Rainbow?)
Also, the little switcheroo with Slothrop and Marvy was a fun surprise, one of the only linear plotlines I could follow.
Anyway, it took me SEVEN times to finish Gravity's Rainbow, and it was worth it, but it's not Pynchon's best (that would be Mason & Dixon, hands down, imo). I think Inherent Vice or Vineland are both better too. Against the Day is even harder to read than GR, and I'm not sure what the fuck it was about. I probably still liked it better than GR. I liked GR better than V or the new one, tho.
posted by mrgrimm at 1:05 PM on February 2, 2017
I love the epitaph on a Slothrup ancestor's gravestone:
Death is a debt to Nature dueposted by jamjam at 1:07 PM on February 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
Which I have paid, and so must you
For me, "the scene" would be Slothrop down the toilet:
"You never did. The Kenosha Kid."
... or actually, the orgy on the boat. that one sentence:
"Two of the waiters kneel on deck lapping at the juicy genitles of a blond in a wine velvet frock, who meantime is licking ardently the tall and shiny French heels of an elderly lady in lemon organza busy fastening felt-lined silver manacles to the wrists of her escort, a major of the Yugoslav artillery in dress uniform, who kneels with nose and tongue well between the bruised buttocks of a long-legged ballerina from paris, holding up her silk skirt for him with docile fingertips while her companion, a tall Swiss divorcée in tight-laced leather corselette and black Russian boots, undoes the top of her friend’s gown and skillfully begins to lash at her bared breasts with the stems of half a dozen roses, red as the beads of blood which spring up and soon are shaking off the ends of her stiff nipples to splash into the eager mouth of another Wend who’s being jerked off by a retired Dutch banker sitting on the deck, shoes and socks just removed by two adorable schoolgirls, twin sisters in fact, in identical dresses of flowered voile, with each of the banker’s big toes inserted now into a downy little furrow as they lie forward along his legs kissing his shaggy stomach, pretty twin bottoms arched to receive in their anal openings the cocks of the two waiters who have but lately been, if you recall, eating that juicy blond in that velvet dress back down the Oder River a ways…"
posted by mrgrimm at 1:14 PM on February 2, 2017 [2 favorites]
"You never did. The Kenosha Kid."
... or actually, the orgy on the boat. that one sentence:
"Two of the waiters kneel on deck lapping at the juicy genitles of a blond in a wine velvet frock, who meantime is licking ardently the tall and shiny French heels of an elderly lady in lemon organza busy fastening felt-lined silver manacles to the wrists of her escort, a major of the Yugoslav artillery in dress uniform, who kneels with nose and tongue well between the bruised buttocks of a long-legged ballerina from paris, holding up her silk skirt for him with docile fingertips while her companion, a tall Swiss divorcée in tight-laced leather corselette and black Russian boots, undoes the top of her friend’s gown and skillfully begins to lash at her bared breasts with the stems of half a dozen roses, red as the beads of blood which spring up and soon are shaking off the ends of her stiff nipples to splash into the eager mouth of another Wend who’s being jerked off by a retired Dutch banker sitting on the deck, shoes and socks just removed by two adorable schoolgirls, twin sisters in fact, in identical dresses of flowered voile, with each of the banker’s big toes inserted now into a downy little furrow as they lie forward along his legs kissing his shaggy stomach, pretty twin bottoms arched to receive in their anal openings the cocks of the two waiters who have but lately been, if you recall, eating that juicy blond in that velvet dress back down the Oder River a ways…"
posted by mrgrimm at 1:14 PM on February 2, 2017 [2 favorites]
also, while I'm at it, this GR-inspired art from Max Haering is darn cool.
posted by mrgrimm at 1:15 PM on February 2, 2017
posted by mrgrimm at 1:15 PM on February 2, 2017
The place where he wrote all that good stuff was for sale a couple years ago.
posted by lagomorphius at 1:31 PM on February 2, 2017
posted by lagomorphius at 1:31 PM on February 2, 2017
naw man, "that one scene" is the gross-out menu...."pimple pie with filth frosting"
posted by ergomatic at 7:09 PM on February 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by ergomatic at 7:09 PM on February 2, 2017 [1 favorite]
ergomatic, I didn't remember that scene at all (it's near the end), but it's another great one...
They are grinning at each other like fools. Their auras, for the record, are green. No shit. Not since winter of '42, in convoy in a North Atlantic gale, with accidental tons of loose 5-inch ammo rolling all over the ship, the German wolf pack invisibly knocking off sister ships right and left, at Battle Stations inside mount 51 listening to Pappy Hod tell disaster jokes, really funny ones, the whole gun crew clutching their stomachs hysterically, gasping for air—not since then has Seaman Bodine felt so high in the good chances of death.
"Some layout, huh?" he calls. "Pretty good food!" Conversation has fallen nearly silent. Politely curious faces are turning. Flames leap in the pit. They are not "sensitive flames," but if they were they might be able now to detect the presence of Brigadier Pudding. He is now a member of the Counterforce, courtesy of Carroll Eventyr. Courtesy is right. Seances with Pudding are at least as trying as the old Weekly Briefings back at "The White Visitation." Pudding has even more of a mouth on him than he did alive. The sitters have begun to whine: "Aren't we ever to be rid of him?" But it is through Pudding's devotion to culinary pranksterism that the repulsive stratagem that follows was devised.
"Oh, I don't know," Roger elaborately casual, "I can't seem to find any snot soup on the menu. ..."
"Yeah, I could've done with some of that pus pudding, myself. Think there'll be any of that?"
"No, but there might be a scum souffle!" cries Roger, "with a side of—menstrual marmalade!"
"Well I've got eyes for some of that rich, meaty smegma stew!" suggests Bodine. "Or howbout a clot casserole?"
"I say," murmurs a voice, indeterminate as to sex, down the table.
"We could plan a better meal than this" Roger waving the menu. "Start off with afterbirth appetizers, perhaps some clever little scab sandwiches with the crusts trimmed off of course . . . o-or booger bis-
cuits! Mmm, yes, spread with mucus mayonnaise? and topped with a succulent bit of slime sausage. ..."
"Oh I see," sez Commando Connie, "it has to be alliterative. How about. . . urn . . . discharge dumplings?"
"We're doing the soup course, babe," sez cool Seaman Bodine, "so let me just suggest a canker consomme, or perhaps a barf bouillon."
"Vomit vichysoisse," sez Connie.
"You got it."
"Cyst salad," Roger continues, "with little cheery-red squares of abortion aspic, tossed in a subtle dandruff dressing."
There is a sound of well-bred gagging, and a regional sales manager for ICI leaves hurriedly, spewing a long crescent of lumpy beige vomit that splatters across the parquetry. Napkins are being raised to faces all down the table. Silverware is being laid down, silver ringing the fields of white, a puzzling indecision here again, the same as at Clive Mossmoon's office. . . .
On we go, through fart fondue (skillfully placed bubbles of anal gas rising slowly through a rich cheese viscosity, yummm), boil blintzes, Vegetables Venereal in slobber sauce. ...
A kazoo stops playing. "Wart waffles!" Gustav screams.
"Puke pancakes, with sweat syrup," adds Andre Omnopon, as Gustav resumes playing, the Outer Voices meantime having broken off in confusion.
"And spread with pinworm preserves," murmurs the cellist, who is not above a bit of fun.
"Hemorrhoid hash," Connie banging her spoon in delight, ''bowel burgers!"
Frau Utgarthaloki jumps to her feet, upsetting a platter of stuffed sores—beg pardon, no they're deviled eggs—and runs from the room, sobbing tragically. Her suave metal husband also rises and follows, casting back at the troublemakers virile stares that promise certain death. A discreet smell of vomit has begun to rise through the hanging tablecloth. Nervous laughter has long embrittled to badmouth whispering.
"A choice of gangrene goulash, or some scrumptious creamy-white leprosy loaf," Bodine in a light singsong "le-pro-sy [down a third to] loaf," playfully hounding the holdouts, shaking a finger, c'mon ya little rascals, vomit for the nice zootster. . . .
"Fungus fricassee!" screams Roger the Rowdy. Jessica is weeping on the arm of Jeremy her gentleman, who is escorting her, stiff-armed,
shaking his head at Roger's folly, away forever. Does Roger have a second of pain right here? Yes. Sure. You would too. You might even question the worth of your cause. But there are nosepick noodles to be served up buttery and steaming, grime gruel and pustule porridge to be ladled into the bowls of a sniveling generation of future executives, pubic popovers to be wheeled out onto the terraces stained by holocaust sky or growing rigid with autumn.
"Carbuncle cutlets!"
"With groin gravy!"
"And ringworm relish!"
Lady Mnemosyne Gloobe is having a seizure of some kind, so violent that her pearls break and go rattling down the silk tablecloth. A general loss of appetite reigns, not to mention overt nausea. The flames in the pit have dwindled. No fat to feed them tonight. Sir Hannibal Grunt-Gobbinette is threatening, between spasms of yellow bile foaming out his nose, to bring the matter up in Parliament. "I'll see you two in the Scrubs if it kills me!" Well. . .
A gentle, precarious soft-shoe out the door, Bodine waving his widebrim gangster hat. Ta-ta, foax. The only guest still seated is Constance Flamp, who is still roaring out dessert possibilities: "Crotch custard! Phlegm fudge! Mold muffins!" Will she catch hell tomorrow. Pools of this and that glitter across the floor like water-mirages at the Sixth Ante-chamber to the Throne. Gustav and the rest of the quartet have abandoned Haydn and are all following Roger and Bodine out the door, kazoos and strings accompanying the Disgusting Duo:
Oh gimme some o' that acne, à-la-mode, Eat so much-that Ah, jes'ex-plode! Say there buddih? you can chow all nite, on Toe-jam tarts 'n' Diarrhea Dee-lite. . . .
"I have to tell you," Gustav whispering speedily, "I feel so awful about it, but perhaps you don't want people like me. You see ... I was a Storm Trooper. A long time ago. You know, like Horst Wessel."
"So?" Bodine's laughing. "Maybe I was a Melvin Purvis Junior G-Man."
"A what?"
"For Post Toasties."
"For whom?" The German actually thinks Post Toasties is the name of some American Führer, looking vaguely like Tom Mix or some other such longlip bridlejaw cowboy.
The last black butler opens the last door to the outside, and escape. Escape tonight. "Pimple pie with filth frosting, gentlemen," he nods. And just at the other side of dawning, you can see a smile.
posted by mrgrimm at 11:46 AM on February 6, 2017 [1 favorite]
They are grinning at each other like fools. Their auras, for the record, are green. No shit. Not since winter of '42, in convoy in a North Atlantic gale, with accidental tons of loose 5-inch ammo rolling all over the ship, the German wolf pack invisibly knocking off sister ships right and left, at Battle Stations inside mount 51 listening to Pappy Hod tell disaster jokes, really funny ones, the whole gun crew clutching their stomachs hysterically, gasping for air—not since then has Seaman Bodine felt so high in the good chances of death.
"Some layout, huh?" he calls. "Pretty good food!" Conversation has fallen nearly silent. Politely curious faces are turning. Flames leap in the pit. They are not "sensitive flames," but if they were they might be able now to detect the presence of Brigadier Pudding. He is now a member of the Counterforce, courtesy of Carroll Eventyr. Courtesy is right. Seances with Pudding are at least as trying as the old Weekly Briefings back at "The White Visitation." Pudding has even more of a mouth on him than he did alive. The sitters have begun to whine: "Aren't we ever to be rid of him?" But it is through Pudding's devotion to culinary pranksterism that the repulsive stratagem that follows was devised.
"Oh, I don't know," Roger elaborately casual, "I can't seem to find any snot soup on the menu. ..."
"Yeah, I could've done with some of that pus pudding, myself. Think there'll be any of that?"
"No, but there might be a scum souffle!" cries Roger, "with a side of—menstrual marmalade!"
"Well I've got eyes for some of that rich, meaty smegma stew!" suggests Bodine. "Or howbout a clot casserole?"
"I say," murmurs a voice, indeterminate as to sex, down the table.
"We could plan a better meal than this" Roger waving the menu. "Start off with afterbirth appetizers, perhaps some clever little scab sandwiches with the crusts trimmed off of course . . . o-or booger bis-
cuits! Mmm, yes, spread with mucus mayonnaise? and topped with a succulent bit of slime sausage. ..."
"Oh I see," sez Commando Connie, "it has to be alliterative. How about. . . urn . . . discharge dumplings?"
"We're doing the soup course, babe," sez cool Seaman Bodine, "so let me just suggest a canker consomme, or perhaps a barf bouillon."
"Vomit vichysoisse," sez Connie.
"You got it."
"Cyst salad," Roger continues, "with little cheery-red squares of abortion aspic, tossed in a subtle dandruff dressing."
There is a sound of well-bred gagging, and a regional sales manager for ICI leaves hurriedly, spewing a long crescent of lumpy beige vomit that splatters across the parquetry. Napkins are being raised to faces all down the table. Silverware is being laid down, silver ringing the fields of white, a puzzling indecision here again, the same as at Clive Mossmoon's office. . . .
On we go, through fart fondue (skillfully placed bubbles of anal gas rising slowly through a rich cheese viscosity, yummm), boil blintzes, Vegetables Venereal in slobber sauce. ...
A kazoo stops playing. "Wart waffles!" Gustav screams.
"Puke pancakes, with sweat syrup," adds Andre Omnopon, as Gustav resumes playing, the Outer Voices meantime having broken off in confusion.
"And spread with pinworm preserves," murmurs the cellist, who is not above a bit of fun.
"Hemorrhoid hash," Connie banging her spoon in delight, ''bowel burgers!"
Frau Utgarthaloki jumps to her feet, upsetting a platter of stuffed sores—beg pardon, no they're deviled eggs—and runs from the room, sobbing tragically. Her suave metal husband also rises and follows, casting back at the troublemakers virile stares that promise certain death. A discreet smell of vomit has begun to rise through the hanging tablecloth. Nervous laughter has long embrittled to badmouth whispering.
"A choice of gangrene goulash, or some scrumptious creamy-white leprosy loaf," Bodine in a light singsong "le-pro-sy [down a third to] loaf," playfully hounding the holdouts, shaking a finger, c'mon ya little rascals, vomit for the nice zootster. . . .
"Fungus fricassee!" screams Roger the Rowdy. Jessica is weeping on the arm of Jeremy her gentleman, who is escorting her, stiff-armed,
shaking his head at Roger's folly, away forever. Does Roger have a second of pain right here? Yes. Sure. You would too. You might even question the worth of your cause. But there are nosepick noodles to be served up buttery and steaming, grime gruel and pustule porridge to be ladled into the bowls of a sniveling generation of future executives, pubic popovers to be wheeled out onto the terraces stained by holocaust sky or growing rigid with autumn.
"Carbuncle cutlets!"
"With groin gravy!"
"And ringworm relish!"
Lady Mnemosyne Gloobe is having a seizure of some kind, so violent that her pearls break and go rattling down the silk tablecloth. A general loss of appetite reigns, not to mention overt nausea. The flames in the pit have dwindled. No fat to feed them tonight. Sir Hannibal Grunt-Gobbinette is threatening, between spasms of yellow bile foaming out his nose, to bring the matter up in Parliament. "I'll see you two in the Scrubs if it kills me!" Well. . .
A gentle, precarious soft-shoe out the door, Bodine waving his widebrim gangster hat. Ta-ta, foax. The only guest still seated is Constance Flamp, who is still roaring out dessert possibilities: "Crotch custard! Phlegm fudge! Mold muffins!" Will she catch hell tomorrow. Pools of this and that glitter across the floor like water-mirages at the Sixth Ante-chamber to the Throne. Gustav and the rest of the quartet have abandoned Haydn and are all following Roger and Bodine out the door, kazoos and strings accompanying the Disgusting Duo:
Oh gimme some o' that acne, à-la-mode, Eat so much-that Ah, jes'ex-plode! Say there buddih? you can chow all nite, on Toe-jam tarts 'n' Diarrhea Dee-lite. . . .
"I have to tell you," Gustav whispering speedily, "I feel so awful about it, but perhaps you don't want people like me. You see ... I was a Storm Trooper. A long time ago. You know, like Horst Wessel."
"So?" Bodine's laughing. "Maybe I was a Melvin Purvis Junior G-Man."
"A what?"
"For Post Toasties."
"For whom?" The German actually thinks Post Toasties is the name of some American Führer, looking vaguely like Tom Mix or some other such longlip bridlejaw cowboy.
The last black butler opens the last door to the outside, and escape. Escape tonight. "Pimple pie with filth frosting, gentlemen," he nods. And just at the other side of dawning, you can see a smile.
posted by mrgrimm at 11:46 AM on February 6, 2017 [1 favorite]
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