Abstract

One of the many obscure passages in part 4 of Gravity's Rainbow mentions an unnamed "spokesman for the Counterforce" who confesses "in an interview with the Wall Street Journal" (738) how he "tasted [his] first blood" (739) in a complex tunnel system. In his attempt to explain this reference, Terry Reilly has identified the interviewee as speaking from the perspective of a sixteenth-century Catholic soldier engaged in the bloody liberation of the city of Münster from the Anabaptist occupation (Reilly 723). Reilly's detailed analysis dismisses, however, various more contemporary clues in the passage, such as the railway lines running through the tunnels and, of course, the Wall Street Journal; likewise, he does not elaborate on the allusions to Christianity or to the final assembly of Rocket 00001. Taking a cue from precisely these latter hints, one may equally well assume that the blood-drinking spokesman is a member of the Schwarzkommando.

How to Cite:

Arich-Gerz, B. & Herman, L., (2008) “Encountering the Other at Home: Representations of Dora in Pynchon and Mirbach”, Pynchon Notes , 122-135. doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/pn.31