Thomas Pynchon Wiki - User contributions [en]

G

2007-06-18T07:47:44Z

Gorodish:

'''Gage, General''' 
307; gave small-pox-infected blankets to Indians

'''gahn-on''' 
363; NE dialect: "a mess"; bonny: "good or fine" (reference to Laurel & Hardy)

'''Galactica''' 
465; milk-maid Nathe McClean fancies

'''Galena''' 
547

'''Galileo (1564-1642)''' 
98; Italian astronomer credited with perfecting the refracting telescope

'''Galuppi, Baldassare (1706-85)''' 
377; Italian composer of 95 operas; a pupil of Lotti, he
developed opera buffa style in the period between Scarlatti and Mozart.
Immortalized in Robert Browning's poem 'A Toccata of Galuppi's'

'''Gaming''' 
421; 422

'''Gamma Draconis''' 
107; a second magnitude star and the brightest star in the constellation was the principal object of measurement used by the British astronomer [[B#bradley|James Bradley]] in 1729 in discovering the [[Aberration of Light|aberration of light]]. It is Greenwich's Zenith star; 188; 587

'''gannin straights''' 
239; aka dating

'''Gaol''' 
10; Archaic: "Jail"

<div id="garrick"></div>'''Garrick, David (1717-79)''' 
184; British actor; Garrick and [w.html#woffington">Woffington</a> were amorously linked and lived together from 1742-45. Apparently Woffington never married and the "Mrs." was more along the lines of an honorary title. Although Garrick married in 1749 and remained so until his death there seems some evidence that he retained an attachment to Woffington (e.g. he wore the shoe buckles she gave him until his death). He was also author of the play, [[F#florizel|''Florizel and Perdita'']], "A Dramatic Pastoral, in Three Acts."; Garrick was also a pupil of [[J#sjohnson|Dr. Samuel Johnson]] and a member of his literary club, along with [[B#boswell|James Boswell]] and others. [http://www.bartleby.com/100/257.html Garrick Quotes]; 405

'''Gastreau, Le''' 
385

'''gawpy Look''' 
241; from gawp: to yawn, gape or stare stupidly or in astonishment, L17c.

'''''Gematria''''' 
479; a method of exegesis used by medieval Kabbalists wherein numbers were substituted for letters of the Hebrew alphabet in order to derive new insights into the texts; "a system known to the Kabbalists of the Second Century"; Astral, 772

'''Geminorum''' 
142

<div id="geordie"></div>'''Geordie''' 
27; 'Geordie' is the regional dialect ('tho some insist it's a distinct language and idiom) most famously associated with the North East of England, although there are some significant variations of this within the region. Also, a Geordie is one who speaks this dialect. The most widely agreed definition of the Geordie 'homeland' covers the cluster of towns that lie on either side of the River Tyne. This includes Newcastle-upon-Tyne through to Whitley Bay on the north bank, and Gateshead through to South Shields on the south. There are some similarities between 'Geordie' and Scandinavian languages, which have their origins in the times of Viking occupation. For example, the phrase 'gan hyem' (go home) is almost identical to the Danish equivalent. The name probably derives from the 1715 [[J#jacobites|Jacobite]] uprising, when the good citizens of Newcastle refused to support the Scots against King George. [http://www.geordie.co.uk/slang.htm Geordie Slang Dictionary]; [http://www.whoohoo.co.uk/geordie-translator.asp Geordie Translator]; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geordie Wikipedia entry]

There must be some doubt over the insistence in the novel that Dixon is a Geordie, given that he was born and raised in the vicinity of Bishop Auckland, some distance from the Geordie domicile of Tyneside. Two points, however: the restriction of 'Geordieness' to Tyneside may not date back as far the period in which the novel is set; also, Dixon may be using the 'Geordie' tag for convenience. It is doubtful that the fine distinctions of NE English nomenclature would be of much interest to the other characters.

'''George, The''' 
190; tavern Mason goes to in Stroud; 503; 556; 760

'''George of England''' 
160; George III (1738-1820) was King of England from 1760 to 1811 when he
succumbed to madness; G. Rex, 423; Toy image of, 548; 572

<div id="georgian"></div>'''Georgian''' 
95; original name of the planet Uranus; 708

'''''Georgie''''' 
367

'''Gerloh, John''' 
576; friend of Tom Hynes

'''GERMAN''' 
"Sobald das Geld in Kasten Klingt, [. . . ] Die Seele aus dem
Fegefeuer springt": "As soon as the coins jingle in the
coffer, the soul flies out of Purgatory" 162 - From [[Martin Luther's 95 Theses]]; ''aus dem Kipp'', 359

'''Gershom''' 
276; Geo Washington's black Jewish slave; name-connected to Gershom, Moses'
child by Zippora, daughter of [[J#jethro|Jethro]]; 278; 572; [[Gershom|MORE]]

'''''Ghastly Fop, The''''' 
117; Gothick novel; 178; 347; 457; 527; 767

'''Ghost-fish''' 
660; in Yochio Geni River; [[Charles Mason's Journal#ghost|Mason's Journal]]

'''Giant Beaver''' 
620

'''Giants' Caves''' 
218

'''Gibbon, Mr.''' 
349; his "sort of History"

'''Gibson''' 
614; veteran of Braddock's defeat

'''Giuseppe''' 
439; wicked

'''Glass Armonica''' 
268; musical instrument consisting of a set of graduated and tuned glass bowls sounded by the friction of wet fingers on the rims. It was invented by [[F#franklin|Benjamin Franklin]] in 1761. His "armonica" consisted of hemispherical glasses suspended on atreadle-operated spindle, overlapping so that only their rims were visible. A trough of water beneath the glasses moistened them as they rotated through it. It spanned four octaves. Mozart composed ''Adagio und Rondo'' K 617 and ''Adagio für Harmonika'' K 356 for the instrument. Beethoven also composed for it, as well as others; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_harmonica Wikipedia entry]

'''Glaucon''' 
282

'''Glaur''' 
229; lowland Scots for mud. "A fool with his eyes in the glaur" is a Pynchonian way of saying "A man of little foresight."

'''Gloucester''' 
503; City and borough of southwest-central England on the
Severn River west-northwest of London. On the site of the Roman city
Glevum, it was the Saxon capital of Mercia and is today a market town and
industrial center.

'''Gloucestershire, Holy Wells of''' 
725

'''Glowing Indian''' 
496

'''Gluck''' 
272

'''Gnosis''' 
560;

'''Goblin''' 
228; the landlord's dog

'''G-d''' 
42; 94; ocean, 123; 134; 137; 138; 164; 190; 220; 229; 344; 356; 357; 361; 422; 429; Heaven and Hell, 482; ''Eyeh asher Eyeh'' ("I am what I am") 486; and Moses, 486; disengagement, 486-87 (Deism is the belief that God created the world then disengaged completely from it, exerting no influence on what followed.); 588; 592; 594; "invisible-Handed" 627; 632; 651; 661-62; 675; 680; 708; 721; of the Hollow-Earthers, 740; 747

'''Golden Valley''' 
207

<div id="golem"></div>'''Golems''' 
481; This image endowed with life, in Jewish folklore, in the 16th century acquired the character of protector of the Jews in time of persecution, but also had a frightening aspect. The most famous is the golem created by 16th century rabbi [[R#rabbi|Judah Löw ben Bezulel of Prague]]; "Jewish Automaton" 485; 684; 711; [http://www.nyu.edu/pages/linguistics/courses/v610051/gelmanr/ling.html Automata Web Site]

'''Goniolatry''' 
587; "Worship of Angles"

'''Gonzago, Mr.''' 
728; room-steward for N. Maskelyne; "Gonzago" is the name of the murdered king in the play-within-a-play in Shakespeare's ''Hamlet''.

'''Gothick''' 
209; The first Gothick fiction began to show up in the mid-18th century, countering 18th-century "rationalism" with stories of mystery, horror and wonder; the common elements in these stories were madness, revenge, outrage, and the supernatural; slavery as a "Gothick Pursuit" 275; 290; 346; 359; 680; 745

'''gowks''' 
239; a fool; a half-witted or awkward person; 244

'''Grail''' 
634

'''''l'Grande''''' 
33; the French ship that attacks the ''Seahorse''; 247; 688

'''Grandam''' 
230

'''Grant, Captain''' 
49; succeeded Captain Smith on the ''Seahorse''; 51; 85

'''Gravity''' 
220; local, 249

'''Graziana''' 
260; pizza-pie tosser in Philadelphia

'''Great Chain of Being''' 
''See'' [[C#chain|Chain of Being, Great]]

'''Great Warrior Path''' 
646; Want the fat? [[Great Warrior Path|Here's the skinny...]]

'''Green''' 
722; a subversive colour

'''Green Pip''' 
369

'''Greenwich''' 
331; in London, site of first English observatory, set up in 1676. Greenwich is on the south bank of the Thames, about a mile east of the city center. Greenwich faces the Isle of Dogs on the north bank, a long peninsula bounded on three sides by a meander of the river.

'''Gregorians''' 
97; James Gregory (1638-75) was a Scottish mathematician who, in 1661, invented the Gregorian reflecting telescope; Gregorian reflector, 98

'''Grenville Ministry''' 
277; George Grenville (1712-70) became British prime minister in 1763. The prosecution of [[W#wilkes|Wilkes]] and the passage of the [s.html#stamp">Stamp Act</A> took place during his ministry. He resigned in 1765.

'''Grey Hound, The''' 
242; one of Dixon's favoured pubs

'''Grincheuse, Sister''' 
519; a Jesuit; The French verb "grincer" is used most often in the phrase "grincer les dents" to grind one's teeth; it can also mean to grit the teeth, as in pain; another meaning is to produce an acute, prolonged, disagreeable sound. "Grincheuse" came into usage in 1844, according to Petit Robert, as a person "d'humeur maussade et reveche" ill-humored, crude.

'''Grodt''' 
360; owns farm next to Redzingers

<div id="grub"></div>'''Grub-Street''' 
110; street in London, later Milton Street, Moorgate, where many poor and struggling authors lived; it came to symbolize impoverished writers and literary hacks. [j.html#sjohnson">Dr. Samuel Johnson</a> joined the ranks of "Grub Street" in 1737, when he moved to London to ply his trade as a freelance writer; 17

'''''Guarda-Costa''''' 
177; Italian: "Coast Guard"

'''Gyllenborg''' 
272

'''Gyllenstjerna, Count Johan Greve (1636-80)''' 
272; Swede who was chief advisor to Charles XI. Advocated a strong royal authority and opposition to the nobles of the Council of the Realm.

'''Gyrfalcons''' 
513; The largest falcon in the world, found in arctic and subarctic regions around the world

===References===

{{MD Alpha Nav}}

Chapter 18: 183-189

2007-06-15T08:20:06Z

Gorodish:

==Page 183==

'''Ploughman's Lunch''' 
A ploughman's lunch is a cold snack or meal, comprising at a minimum a thick piece of cheese (usually Cheddar, Stilton, or other local cheese), pickle (often Branston Pickle, sometimes piccalilli and/or pickled onions), crusty bap or chunk of bread, and butter.
It is often accompanied by a green salad; other common additions are half an apple, celery, pâté, sliced hard-cooked egg or beetroot.
It is a common menu item in English pubs, often shortened when ordering to 'a ploughman's.'
The familiarity of the ploughman's lunch has led catering companies to describe a sandwich containing Cheddar, pickle and salad as a 'ploughman's sandwich.'
The authentic ploughman's lunch consisted of stale bread or a crusty loaf, and an English Cheddar or Stilton, and some variety of pickle. An apple would be included with the lunch to take away the spicy taste of the pickle and to provide a sweet finish, perhaps to be complemented by cider. Ideally, the apple would be of the same variety as that the cider was made from.

Much doubt has been cast on the authenticity of the ploughman's lunch, not least by the 1983 film of that name starring Jonathan Pryce (scripted by Ian McEwan) in which it is claimed that the ploughman's was the invention of an advertising company in the 1950s that was trying to boost the habit of buying meals in British pubs.
The question is: did the ploughman's exist (albeit without that name) before the ad agency, or was it all a fiction that drew on the other fiction of Merrie England? Just the sort of postmodern conundrum you can rely on Pynchon to serve up.

'''Staindrop''' 
Staindrop is an attractive village near Raby Castle, former stronghold of the Nevills, and has always been associated with the Lords of Raby.

'''devoirs''' 
expressions of respect: expressions or acts of courtesy and respect

'''Rockingham Whigs''' 
After a decade of factional chaos,.., a new system emerged, with two separate opposition groups. The Rockingham Whigs claimed the mantle of "Old Whigs," as the purported successors of the party of the Pelhams and the great Whig families. With such noted intellectuals as Edmund Burke behind them, the Rockingham Whigs laid out a philosophy which for the first time extolled the virtues of faction, or at least their faction. Wikipedia '''[Please do linking for a Wikipedia reference -- not enough linking! Thanks.]'''

==Page 184==

'''Cock Lane Ghost'''

'''[This is *way* too long for an annotation entry. Please begin the info here and then create an article and a link to it. You can have the full article. Thanks.]'''

Adjacent to London's Smithfield market and only a few minutes' walk from St Paul's Cathedral, is a short alleyway known as Cock Lane. The tall buildings and narrowness of this road give it a dark, foreboding presence and help to retain a sense of its origins as a medieval red-light district. It was this environment that, in January 1762, gave rise to an extraordinary scandal that engulfed all London. 
The legitimacy of the hauntings is fiercly disputed to this day.

At the centre of the story is William Kent, a young man from Norfolk who managed to impregnate two daughters from the same wealthy family. The first, Elizabeth Lynes, he married, but she died in childbirth; a few months later, William eloped to London with his dead wife's sister, Fanny Lynes. Here William and Fanny lodged in Cock Lane at the house of a clerk named Richard Parsons. Fanny soon died, supposedly of smallpox and William found that he had made an enemy of both her family and Mr Parsons, whom he had sued for a debt.

However, the rivalry was only about to get deeper. The Parsons claimed to have been awoken by knocking and scratching in the night, and they could not find a tangible logical source for the knocking or scratching. Then, as further mysterious event occurred, they (according to the Parsons) summoned the courage to begin communicating with the ghost using Yes/No questions and a system of knocking for the answer (once for yes, two for no, or vice-versa, the accounts contradict themselves to an extent) and thus supposedly determined that they were communicating with the ghost of Fanny Lynes, who claimed that she died not of smallpox, as her husband claimed, but of arsenic poisoning in a premeditated murder by her husband, William Kent.

The Parsons soon gained the support of a few people, including a doctor and a priest, who worked to spread the word of the supposed haunting.

Londoners loved nothing more than a good sex and murder scandal and within days the Cock Lane ghost was headline news. Hundreds of people came to Cock Lane to listen to the ghost knock out its messages against William Kent. Events moved from the strange to the bizarre, with the fledgling Methodist movement – one of whose supporters heavily promoted the ghost – being dragged into the scandal. This further convinced Londoners of its reality and led to calls for William Kent to be hanged. The London authorities (including the Lord Mayor) dithered over the issue, creating a volatile atmosphere.

Eventually William Kent's cause was adopted by a group of "learned" people which included Samuel Johnson, Horace Walpole and Oliver Goldsmith. They suspected that Richard Parsons was using his eleven-year-old daughter Betty to create the ghost and so got the Lord Mayor's permission to put her through a series of tests.

The "tests" used by these "learned" people left much to be desired. Even those who today deny the ghost's legitimacy admit that the committee acted very irrationally and unjustly.

The Committee refused to accept any possibility, no matter how seemingly strange, that the hauntings were legit and that anybody but the Parsons were guilty of it.

The first "test" composed of having a maid sleep with Betty in such a fashion that the maid bound Betty tightly to herself using her arms and legs. The knockings continued that night. The next night they bound Betty with chains as she slept. There was no knocking that night.

Thus the committee decided that Betty had to be responsible and that she had managed to slip out of maid's tight hold without rousing her and continue knocking.

However, the last "test" is agreed by all to have been unbelievably unfair and unjust. The Committee members discreetly drilled a peephole into Betty's door and then informed her that if there was no knocking that night, her entire family would be arrested and severely punished. They left her unbound. During the night the sentries at the peephole saw Betty get up and create the knocking.

The main point of debate is what motivated Betty to create the knocking that night. Those denying the existence of the ghost claim she had done it all along, and those supporting the legitimacy of the hauntings claim that she was scared for her family and what the Committee would do if there was no knocking, and thus did the only thing she could to insure that there was knocking that night: by doing it herself.

However, both sides agree about what happened next. Thus, the entire family was arrested anyway.

In July 1762 the main Pro-Parsonists (including Richard Parsons, his wife, several neighbours, a priest and a newspaper editor) were brought before the King's Bench and given lengthy prison terms and/or large fines. Richard Parsons went down for five years and was sentenced to stand at the pillory three times: on each occasion the crowd did not throw rotten fruit but instead handed him a substantial sum of money.

The story of the Cock Lane ghost became a national legend that was told to frighten children as well as being a cautionary tale. Charles Dickens alludes to it several times as do several other Victorian authors. The tale's popularity began to wane in the early twentieth century when it was superseded by some of the more spectacular supernatural stories coming out of the Spiritualist movement.

One of the more important and highly-debated points on the legitimacy of the Cock Lane Ghost happened almost a centuary after the sentences were levied against the Parsonists. In the Mid 1800s, searchers discovered the body of whom it is widely believed is Fanny Lynes. There was no sign of the Smallpox on the body, that her husband William Kent claimed she died of. However, her face was almost perfectly preserved, a defining feature on the corpses of those who died through arsenic overdose/poisoning, which was the method the Parsons said the supposed ghost claimed she had been murdered by William Kent.

Despite evidence pointing both to Parsonist innocence and Kent's guilt and to Parsonist guilt and Kent's innocence, it is impossible as of this time to determine which side is true. Wikipedia 2006

'''Garrick, David (1717-79)''' 
British actor; Garrick and [w.html#woffington">Woffington</a> were amorously linked and lived together from 1742-45. Apparently Woffington never married and the "Mrs." was more along the lines of an honorary title. Although Garrick married in 1749 and remained so until his death there seems some evidence that he retained an attachment to Woffington (e.g. he wore the shoe buckles she gave him until his death). He was also author of the play, Florizel and Perdita, "A Dramatic Pastoral, in Three Acts."; Garrick was also a pupil of Dr. Samuel Johnson and a member of his literary club, along with James Boswell and others. Garrick Quotes; 405

'''bum-boat''' 
bumboat ( ) n. A small boat used to peddle provisions to ships anchored offshore. [Probably partial translation of Low German bumboot , ship's boat]

==Page 185==
'''Pope Joan''' 
Pope Joan is the name of a female pope who supposedly reigned for less than two years in the 850s,[1] based on a legend that circulated in the Middle Ages.[citation needed] Pope Joan is regarded by most modern historians and religion scholars as fictitious, possibly originating as an anti-papal satire, but her existence is still debated. Wikipedia

'''Piquet''' 
Piquet is a card game for two players, using a shortened pack of 32 cards which omits 2 to 6 in each suit. In ascending order, the cards rank 7, 8, 9, 10, J, Q, K, A (high). A number of French terms are traditionally used for various features of the game and these are included below. 
A game consists of a set of 6 deals called a partie, with the deal alternating. Each player is dealt 12 cards, with 8 left as a talon. A deal consists of three parts: discarding a number of cards and replacing them from the talon to try to improve the hand, declaring various features in the hand, and then playing the cards in tricks. 
Piquet is a very old game. It was well established by 1650 with similar rules to the present ones (it differed in using a 36 card pack with a 12 card talon, elder hand being allowed to change 7 cards, and a partie was ended by the first to reach 100, a variant still sometimes played). It was mentioned by Rabelais in 1535 although whether this was the same game is unclear. It has retained its popularity to the present day as one of the best and most skilful card games for two players. The rules described are those published by Cavendish in 1882.

<div id="parlour"></div>'''Parlour Game''' 
A parlour game is a group game played indoors. During the Victorian era in Great Britain and in the USA, these games were extremely popular among the upper and middle classes. They were often played in a parlour, hence the name. 
There are a variety of historic Parlour Games and Pynchon here seems to be defining this one in the subsequent lines. But one old possibly relevant version for M & D was called Consequences: Consequences is an old parlour game similar to the surrealist game exquisite corpse or Mad Libs.[1]

Each person takes a turn choosing a word for one of six questions, in this order.

:Man's name 
:Woman's name 
:Place name 
:A comment 
:Another comment 
:An outcome

Then the story is read: #1 met #2 at #3, and he said #4, she said #5, and the consequence was #6. In some versions of the game the man gets to reply to the woman, thus the consequence moves to #7. Another version includes 'the world said' at #7, which is meant to represent the response of the public to the consequence.

<div id="farces"></div>'''four-door Farces?''' 
This exact phrase is repeated in Against the Day. P. 567 "four-door farce". One of the recurring physical jokes in such plays involves sets with many doors and people coming in and out, just missing each other. A French writer,
George Feydeau, was famous for writing them at the time of ATD, which makes the possible pun on his last name--Feydeau, four-door--anachronous
in M & D but still resonant, perhaps. See a modern example, Peter Bogdanovich's What's Up Doc?, the movie.

'''Some of us are Outlaws, and some Trespassers upon the very world''' 
Pynchonian thematic....of course, Trespassers are part of the plot of ''Against The Day''.

==Page 186==
'''Morning Tussah''' 
tus·sah (tŭs'ə, tŭs'ô') also tus·sore (tŭs'ôr', -ōr')
n.
An Asian silkworm, the larva of a large saturniid moth (Antheraea paphia), that produces a coarse brownish or yellowish silk.
The silk produced by this worm or a fabric woven from it.
[Hindi tasar, from Sanskrit tasaram, shuttle (probably from the shape of its cocoon).]

==Page 187==
'''buzz-men''' 
slang for pickpockets

'''Prie-Dieux''' 
custom-built Church kneelers

'''quotinoctian''' 
occurring every night