Difference between revisions of "Chapter 4"

Revision as of 21:37, 27 July 2009

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

Page numbers refer to editions with 369 pages, where the story begins on page 1. Not sure if there are other editions with variant pagination. Please let us know otherwise.

Page 50

Hughes Company property

"Hughes Aircraft Company was a major aerospace and defense company founded by Howard Hughes. The group was based in Culver City, California. . . "

" . . . In 1948 Hughes created a new division of the company, the Aerospace Group. Two Hughes engineers, Simon Ramo and Dean Wooldridge, had new ideas on the packaging of electronics to make complete fire control systems. . . "

" . . .Ramo and Wooldridge, having failed to reach an agreement with Howard Hughes regarding management problems, resigned in September 1953. They founded the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation, later to join Thompson Products to form TRW, another aerospace company and a major competitor to Hughes Aircraft."Wikipedia

Page 51

KQAS

In "Vineland", while hassling dopers in Gordita Beach, Hector Zuniga's radio dial was always tuned to KQAS.

" . . .I really want to tell you, man, about my car radio?" He moved closer to Mucho, who'd already read and filed Hector's story by now, and would presently begin to edge away. "Which is kin' of unique 'causs it only gits this one station? KQAS! Kick-Ass 460 on th' AM dial!

460 megahertz is the police band.

Ondas Nudosas

Spanish—"Gnarly Waves."

Page 52

Fritz Drybeam
How much do you want to bet that ol' Fritz has CIA connections?
Truth serum. Same kind the CIA uses
Pynchon's "California Trilogy"—The Crying of Lot 49, Vineland & Inherent Vice—all cite the CIA in the context of drugs. The Crying of Lot 49 does so covertly—note Dr. Hilarius "Die Brucke":

"We still need a hundred-and-fourth for the bridge." Chuckled aridly. The bridge, die Brucke, being his pet name for the experiment he was helping the community hospital run on effects of LSD-25, mescaline, psilocybin, and related drugs on a large sample of surburban housewives. The bridge inward. "When can you let us fit you into our schedule."

Dr. Hilarius "Bridge" points to CIA's drug research programs. In 1964, the CIA's MK-ULTRA program was renamed MK-SEARCH.

Early efforts focused on LSD, which later came to dominate many of MK-ULTRA's programs. Experiments included administering LSD to CIA employees, military personnel, doctors, other government agents, prostitutes, mentally ill patients, and members of the general public in order to study their reactions. . .

. . .Historians have asserted that creating a "Manchurian Candidate" subject through "mind control" techniques was a goal of MK-ULTRA and related CIA projects Wikipedia

In Vineland the reference is overt:

". . .notice how cheap coke has been since '81? However in the world do you account for that?"

"Roy! Is you're sayin' the President himself is duked into some deal? Quit foolin'! Next you'll be tellin' me George Bush."

Roy kept a prop Bible on his desk, useful when he needed to get along with the born-agains in the Agency. He opened it and pretended to read. "Harken unto me, read thou my lips, for verily I say that wheresoever the CIA putteth in its meathooks upon the world, there also are to be found those substances which God may have created but the U.S. Code hath decided to control. Get me? Now old Bush used to be head of CIA, so you figure it out."

Vineland, pages 353/354

Page 53

ARPAnet

"It's a network of computers, Doc. all connected by phone lines. UCLA, Isla Vista, Stanford. Say there's a file they have up there and you don't, they'll send it right along at fifty thousand characters per second."

"The ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) created by ARPA of the United States Department of Defense during the Cold War, was the world's first operational packet switching network, and the predecessor of the global Internet."Wikipedia

Page 54

ARPA
Now DARPA:

". . . created as the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in February 1958. Its creation was directly attributed to the launching of Sputnik and to U.S. realization that the Soviet Union had developed the capacity to rapidly exploit military technology. Additionally, the political and defense communities recognized the need for a high-level DoD organization to formulate and execute R&D projects that would expand the frontiers of technology beyond the immediate and specific requirements of the Military Services and their laboratories."Darpa Website

TRW

"TRW Incorporated was an American corporation involved in a number of businesses, mostly defense-related, but including automotive, aerospace and credit reporting."Wikipedia

. . .Ramo isn't telling Woolridge?

"The 1958 merger of Thompson with the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation (named after Simon Ramo and Dean Wooldridge) was named Thompson Ramo Wooldridge Inc., then shortened to TRW Inc. in 1965."Wikipedia