Novi Pazar
Novi Pazar is a small district in Serbia that shot to international prominence when it was declared a "corpus seperatum" named the Sanjak of Novi Pazar in 1878. Until 1908 it was controlled by Austria-Hungary before being returned to the Ottoman Empire. In the First Balkan War it was lost to Serbia.
Novi Pazar is the subject of the fourth song in Gravity's Rainbow:
"Nobody knows-where, it is-on-the-map,
Who'd ever think-it, could start-such-a-flap?
Each Montenegran, and Serbian too,
Waitin' for some-thing, right outa the blue - oh honey
Pack up my Glad-stone, 'n' brush off my suit,
And then light me up my bigfat, cigar-
If ya want my address, it's
That O-ri-ent Express,
to the san-jak of No-vi Pa-zar!1
This song occurs inside the fantasy of Lord Blatherard Osmo whose pharynx is blocked by the hideous 'lymphatic monster', the Adenoid.1. Directly after the song a 'chorus line of quite nubile young women naughtily attired in Busbies and jackboots' enter, characterising the digressive narrative style employed at this point and, perhaps, throughout the entire novel to indicate a disrupted thought process; in this case by sexuality.2
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part and episode listing
Beyond the Zero: [2]
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page numbers
14
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references
- ^ [1][2] Pynchon, Thomas, Gravity's Rainbow (London: Vintage, 2000), p. 14
- ^Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, p. 15
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