Difference between revisions of "ATD 678-694"

Revision as of 16:42, 21 January 2007

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

Page 678

exhibiting that sinister British craving for the dark and shiny...
Perhaps an Orwellian reference here:

'It's this bloody thing that does it,' she said, ripping off the scarlet sash of the Junior Anti-Sex League and flinging it on to a bough. Then, as though touching her waist had reminded her of something, she felt in the pocket of her overalls and produced a small slab of chocolate. She broke it in half and gave one of the pieces to Winston. Even before he had taken it he knew by the smell that it was very unusual chocolate. It was dark and shiny, and was wrapped in silver paper.^[1]

queasy albedo
Albedo is the ratio of reflected to incident electromagnetic radiation power. It is a unitless measure indicative of a surface's or body's reflectivity. The word is derived from albus, a Latin word for "white.

streetlighting as a ...shriek
Thematic.

Whitechapel and white color theme all over.

Page 679

co-tenant of Tarot Card XV...Renfrew
Werfner is other co-tenant surely.
Card XV is the Devil.

K. & K. Landwehr
German. K. und K. or K-K, Kaiserlich-Königlich, Imperial and Royal. Landwehr, the army, not the special security detachment.

Page 680

Sowieso
German: anyway.

"including the blood everyone's come for"
The audience at a musical about Jack the Ripper 'comes for blood'? Revenge motivations even here? Notice response of other audience member...

Page 681

Liebestod
German: love-death. Denotes in particular the climactic scene in Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde, but here means the fatal end of an affair.
And Rudolf's unfortunate love-death led to Austria's death-love thru Ferdinand!?

Fachsimpelei
German: shop talk.

Ach, die Vetsera
German: ah, the Vetsera. Baroness Mary Vetsera was the mistress of Crown Prince Rudolf. In 1889 both were found dead at the Mayerling hunting lodge.

cherchons la femme
French: let us seek the woman. The phrase usually means to look for the woman who has set events in motion; here it's used ironically to mean that focusing on the search for the woman will mask any questions about Rudolf and his father.

[Pynchon thru]Khautsch links the first famous serial killer in history, Jack the Ripper, with the assassination of Crown Prince Rudolf--he could have been at Mayerling!--and the serial genocidal killings of Austria? "Railway depot...gates disposed radially in all directions"...p.683 "lives by the trainload"...

Page 683

gemütlicher alter Junge
German: good old boy.

Page 685

[D.C.]
Musical direction, Italian: da capo = (repeat) from the top.

impersonating British idiots
Again and again in AtD we see the vital importance of being able to act the part of an idiot.

Lew, detective realizing he is also a hired hand, has epiphany into bilocation/doubling theme re Renfrew and Werfner.
"kept separate.. [by].. two distinct kinds of light."p. 686

Page 687

Plafond Lumineux
French: luminous ceiling.

Page 688

we risk being divided in two . . . Atonement, in any case comes much later
A superbly constructed wordplay. "Atonement" means seeking and gaining release from guilt or ostracism, but the word is constructed from "at one." So the risk of splitting in two is followed, at length, by becoming one again.

Page 690

irreversible, pitiless
Definition of a Doomsday Machine. See Dr. Strangelove and too many other authorities to count.

Charlottenburg
District of Berlin, west and south of the city center. Woods, a castle.

Page 691

carbonyl chloride
Phosgene.

References

1. ↑ 1984, George Orwell, 1948, Ch. X

Annotation Index