When the blackout comes, Nick thinks about all the people that are trapped in elevators and on subways. Page 635: "The always seeping suspicion, paralysis, the thing implicit in the push-button city, that it will stop cold, leaving us helpless in the rat-eye dark, and then we begin to wonder, as I did, how the whole thing works anyways."

The idea of a "push-button city" made me think about the way that during the Cold War the danger was that a single button could launch mass destruction. The black out is a short term pause for the city, but in New York City, the city that never sleeps, it seems like it would have been sort of a scary omen.

on page 338, when Sims and Nick are butting heads with each other, the text reads, "Pain is just another form of information." I think this is a really interesting way of thinking of human connections. For example, Nick keeps saying that he and his wife never fight, and he seems really messed up about it. It seems like he's trying to say that it takes a lot of love to hate or harm someone, because you have to care enough to hurt them.

Also on page 303, while Nick is watching Sims use a modern keycard, he says, "We walked along hallway mazes fitted with electronic gates that Sims opened by inserting a keycard in a lockset.

There's a lot of commentary in this book about what is and it not "normal." It seems like everyone has this idea that normal is a husband, a wife, kids, jobs, etc. Nick judges the swingers. Sister Edgar judges Ismael for being gay. The Texas Highway Killer, when calling in to talk to SueAnn says, on page 218, "I saw the interview you did where you stated you'd like to keep your career, you know, ongoing while you hopefully raise a family and I feel like this is a thing whereby the superstation has the responsibility to keep the position open, okay, because an individual should not be penalized for lifestyle type choices." When I first read this I imagined that the Texas Highway Killer was gay, but of course we found out that he lives with his sick parents, with no wife.

This is not that important I just thought this was really cute and an accurate way to describe the super powers of a mother.
Page 139: "He runs his fingers over the inside edge of the bowl, feeling the sort of spatter of whirled material, the bubbly pinpoint warps. His mother tells him to wash his hands. She is not looking at him but knows the state of his hands fromt he position of the sun and moon. He must be walking dirt. Walking talking filthman from the planet Dirt."

On page 20, Cotter notices that thepeanut boy is black like him, and he starts to feel nervous. "The guy is making him visible, shaming him in his prowler's den. Isn't it strange how their common color jumps the space between them? Nobody saw Cotter until the vendor appeared, black rays phasing from his hands." I thought it was interesting that Cotter felt that his identity was linked to the other black boy's and that who he was in the eyes of the others was dependent on the peanut vendor. I think that when he says "their common color jumps the space between them," he is accurately descri

On page 32 Delillo describes one man's haphazard idea to tape Russ' account of the game, which turned out to be the only recording there was. It's interesting to think that these little impulses can take on huge significance. It reminded me of the two men who were doing a documentary on NY firefighters around the time of September 11 and consequently were able to tape footage of the firefighters going into the towers. I like this idea of individuals being in control of history, rather than historians just waiting to write down the next big event.

On page 71 Klara says, in regards to the desert, "So we use this place to test our weapons. It's only logical of course. And it enables us to show our mastery. The desert bears the visible signs of all the detonations we set off. All the craters and warning signs and no-go areas and burial markers, the sites where debris is buried." The technological society that she's speaking about reminds me a lot of Gravity's Rainbow and the intense power that people felt from the rocket. Even though the desert has a strong sense of nature about it, there is power in knowing that we can destroy and c

One thing I've been wondering about is why most of the characters have multiple names. Traditionally, an author will introduce a character using both first and last names, and then use just one throughout the novel, usually the last name. Pynchon instead uses many names for each character. Slopthrop, Tyrone, Rocketman, Raketenmensch, etc. Greta, Margherita, Mrs. Erddman. Enzian, Oberst, (that name that starts with an n that I cannot remember). At the end of the novel there is a lot of commentary about the fragmentation of Slothrop. On page 752 it says, "He is being broken down instead, and scattered.

I've been noticing a lot about opposites in the book and I think it's interesting how it often relates to male and female itneractions.
On page 409,
"...he [Mondaugen] seemed to look at fuel and oxidizer as paired opposites, male and female principles uniting in the mystical egg of the combustion chamber: creation and destruction, fire and water, chemical plus and chemical minus--."
"Valency," Pokler protested, "a condition of the outer shells, that's all."

Then on page 572 Andreas explains the importance of the mandala to Slothrop. It's a long paragraph so I won't type it all out, but basically there are two types of the letters on the mandala, male and female letters representing different directions. This came from the way that in their tribal villages, women and men lived on opposite sides of the village. The female letters represent fertilization, birth, breath, and soul, while the male letter represent activities, fire, preparation, and building, It says, "Each opposite pair of vanes worked together, and amoved in opposite senses. Opposites together."

I still don't understand what the Imipolex G is and what it's connection is to Slothrop's life. In the companion (page 147) it says that Slothrop is piecing together the information he knows abotu this plastic, the rocket, and his conditioning as a child... I'm not sure I'm piecing it together. Anyone got any ideas?