Difference between revisions of "ATD 219-242"

Revision as of 08:09, 12 December 2006

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

Page 222

The Number 22
I found it interesting that the significance of the number 22 was first brought up on page 222. might be nothing, really.

"There is but one 'case' which occupies us"
This echoes the famous quote from Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: "The world is all that is the case." (See the full text of the Tractatus here.) This quote also factors in heavily in V. (Specifically, in two places: there's the P's and Q's love song, and also in Captain Weissman's repeating, encoded, hallucinated message over the telegraph in Africa.)

Page 224

On this island [...] all English, spoken or written, is looked down on as no more than strings of text cleverly encrypted
A sentiment echoed in the first sentence of Pynchon's December 2006 letter written in defense of novelist Ian McEwan: "Given the British genius for coded utterance..." Image of Letter

crosswords in newspapers
The first crossword to appear in a newspaper was in 1913. Cryptic crosswords in British newspapers certainly match Pynchon's description. See, for example, the Listener crossword.

Page 226

Renfrew at Cambridge and Werfner at Göttingen
Note that each Professor's name is the other's spelled backward. Given the importance of railway lines in this and other chapters, it is also interesting to note that Cambridge's rail system was built in 1845 while Gottingen's was built in 1854.

Page 227

"The Great Game" in this case does not refer to Padzhitnoff's airship, but it's the same name.

Page 236

The Gentleman Bomber of Headingly
Reminds me of the Krikkit Robots in Douglas Adams' Life, The Universe, and Everything, where a bomb is put in place of a Cricket Ball at a match between Britain and Australia.

Page 237

Hebrew letter Shin- sign
"This person greeted the Cohen by raising his left hand, then spreading the fingers two and two away from the thumb so as to form the Hebrew letter shin, signifying the initial letter of one of the pre-Mosaic (that is, plural) names of God, which may never be spoken.

" 'Basically wishing long life and prosperity,' explained the Choen, answering with the same gesture"

compare with the following from M&D 485:
Dixon discovers "The Rabbi of Prague, headquarters of a Kabbalistick Faith, in Correspondence with the Elect Cohens of Paris, whose private Salute they now greet Dixon with, the Fingers spread two and two, and the Thumb held away from them likewise, said to represent the Hebrew letter Shin and to signify, 'Live long and prosper.' "
So is there connection between The Cohen of T.W.I.T., the "Cohens of Paris"? and these backwoods Kabbalists?
Obvious connects with Star Trek's Vulcan greeting and with Leonard Nimoy's jewish faith.

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