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Gravity Rainbow Notes: Der Feind hoert zu

433-447: The enemy is listening, Der Feind hoert zu.

33 more sections left, including this one.

Tyrone Slothrop, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army toward the end of World War II. Stationed in England, he is sent on a strange mission to locate the staging area both for the V-2 rockets bombarding England and for the prototype of a new rocket, the A4. The A4 is even more destructive than the V-2. The Germans are preparing to launch it in a desperate effort to change the course of the war. Slothrop goes to the French Riviera, to Switzerland, and ultimately to the “Zone,” occupied Germany after the hostilities officially have ended. Slothrop is a naïve young man who is never fully aware of what he is doing. As an infant, he had been experimentally conditioned by a famous behaviorist, and the behaviorist psychologist Ned Pointsman tries to make use of that conditioning for his own purposes. Made aware on the Riviera that he is being manipulated, Slothrop escapes from the surveillance that Pointsman and his masters have arranged and roams around Europe in the chaos of the first months of “peace.” He is still searching for the rocket, and he finds traces of it in many places but never discovers the rocket itself. After numerous strange adventures, he loses whatever it was that made him unique and becomes completely ordinary, seeming simply to disappear.

Greta Erdmann, a onetime German film star whom Slothrop meets in the ruins of postwar Berlin. She is one of his lovers and takes him with her aboard the Anubis, a ship sailing the Baltic carrying sensualists whose only desire is to avoid responsibility.

Tchitcherine, a Soviet espionage agent and the half brother of Enzian. He always has been a maverick in the Soviet intelligence system. During a period of exile in Siberia, he underwent a mystical experience that he never fully understands. He is valuable because he has special perceptions that his superiors think will help him find the super rocket before the Western powers do. His own crusade is to find and kill Enzian, whom he has never seen but for whom he nurses a burning hatred. When they finally meet, they fail to recognize each other because of a spell cast by Tchitcherine's lover, a witch named Geli Tripping.

Major Characters

P434 quote: "There is something comforting--religious, if you want--about paranoia, there is still anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long.”

434 Chalcedony is a cryptocrystalline form of silica, composed of very fine intergrowths of quartz and moganite. Category: Tectosilicate minerals, quartz group

437 Preterite is a grammatical tense or verb form serving to denote events that took place or were completed in the past; in some languages, such as Spanish, French, and English, it is equivalent to the simple past tense.

437 quote: “…eyes like two pissholes in a snowbank…”

439 woodbine twineth: the saying is usually used to refer to a pawn shop – or the act of going to one. (Also)

442 Hubsch: pretty, bodengeschmac: Soil flavor is the term used to describe a wine's particular flavor – French: goût de terroir – that derives from the location of the vines and the soil of the vineyard. The wine doesn't then "taste" of slate, shell limestone, or the like; rather, it acquires its distinctive flavor note that distinguishes it from comparable wines based on its location and soil. In this respect, the term "soil flavor" or "soil tone" is rather neutral. Ultimately, it depends on the wine itself whether it should be viewed as a quality enhancer or, if it seems broad and coarse, as negative. Kroper: Body. Suffig: goes down well. Bukettreich: Prominent bouquet. There are more German words to describe cannabis feels, if I was in weed marketing, I'd use those words somehow.


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