Difference between revisions of "Chapter 1"
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Port city.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norfolk%2C_Virginia] | Port city.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norfolk%2C_Virginia] | ||
The city has a long history as a strategic military and transportation point. Norfolk is home to both the Norfolk Naval Base, the world's largest naval base and was in 1955. Urban renewal, starting | The city has a long history as a strategic military and transportation point. Norfolk is home to both the Norfolk Naval Base, the world's largest naval base and was in 1955. Urban renewal, starting | ||
| − | in the 1970s | + | in the 1970s also included the demolition of many prominent city buildings, and large swaths of urban fabric that, were they still in existence today, might be the source of additional historic urban character, a-and including the East Main Street district (where the current civic complex is located), and where Benny starts yo-yoing.<br> |
<div id="tin can"> 9/1 - '''his old tin can's'''</div> | <div id="tin can"> 9/1 - '''his old tin can's'''</div> | ||
Revision as of 17:15, 25 May 2007
- Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.
Port city.[1]
The city has a long history as a strategic military and transportation point. Norfolk is home to both the Norfolk Naval Base, the world's largest naval base and was in 1955. Urban renewal, starting
in the 1970s also included the demolition of many prominent city buildings, and large swaths of urban fabric that, were they still in existence today, might be the source of additional historic urban character, a-and including the East Main Street district (where the current civic complex is located), and where Benny starts yo-yoing.
His particular naval ship.
A seaman apprentice. See "Deuce Kindred," a character in Pynchon's Against the Day, his 2006 novel.
Here, actually beginning on the first page, appears Pynchon's lifelong stylistic use of capitalization--for a certain kind of emphasis?, for a kind of reification?, and for much, much more certainly. See Pynchon's 1997 novel, Mason & Dixon for the most extensive use of capitalization.
Cf. Zoyd Wheeler's annual "act of televised insanity" in Pynchon's 1990 novel, Vineland[2]
Shore Patrol, the naval 'police'.
This is the first appearance of the letter that is the title. It describes ugly green mercury-vapor lamps. Not positive associations--to say the least-- in Pynchon's world. See Against The Day, passim, especially in the Telluride sections. The V of the lamps recedes to the east, usually a positive association in Pynchon, especially in intellectual connotations.
The word trocadero, which in Spanish means "place of barter" (from trocar: "to barter"), goes back to a fortified site near Cadiz, Spain, that was the stronghold of the Constititutionalists in the revolution of 1820 and that fell to the French in 1823. During the International Exhibition of 1878 an ornate palace was built to commemorate the French victory. "Trocadero" became a popular name for public places in Europe, one being the Trocadero Palace of Varieties in London, known as "The Troc," which opened as a music hall in 1882 on the corner of Shaftsbury Avenue and Windmill Street.
A "bravo" is a villain, desperado; esp. a hired assassin
| Chapter 1 In which Benny Profane, a schlemihl and human yo-yo, gets to an apocheir 9/1 |
Chapter 2 The Whole Sick Crew 44/39 |
Chapter 3 In which Stencil, a quick-change artist, does eight impersonations 61/59 |
Chapter 4 In which Esther gets a nose job 95/97 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chapter 5 In which Stencil nearly goes West with an alligator 111/115 |
Chapter 6 In which Profane returns to street level 134/141 |
Chapter 7 She hangs on the western wall 152/161 |
Chapter 8 In which Rachel gets her yo-yo back, Roony sings a song, and Stencil calls on Bloody Chiclitz 213/229 |
| Chapter 9 Mondaugen's story 229/247 |
Chapter 10 In which various sets of young people get together 280/305 |
Chapter 11 Confessions of Fausto Maijstral 304/333 |
Chapter 12 In which things are not so amusing 347/385 |
| Chapter 13 In which the yo-yo string is revealed as a state of mind 367/407 |
Chapter 14 V. in love 393/437 |
Chapter 15 Sahha 415/461 |
Chapter 16 Valletta 424/471 |
| Epilogue, 1919 456/507 |
