Episode 3 of Beyond The Zero is set on December 18, 1944 in London, England at the headquarters of ACHTUNG, situated near Grosvenor Square."1
Teddy Bloat despairs over the content of his lunch ("a soggy banana sandwich"2) whilst wending his way towards the headquarters of the Allied Clearing House, Technical Units, Northern Germany (ACHTUNG), located just off Grosvenor Square. This is an office where, we are told, "a million bureaucrats are diligently plotting death and some of them even know it."2 Inside ACHTUNG, Bloat looks in on the office of an old university friend, Lt. Oliver ("Tantivy") Mucker-Maffick, an office that is shared by a certain Tyrone Slothrop, an employee of ACHTUNG who visits the crash sites of V-2 rocket bombs. Slothrop's desk, in contrast to Tantivy's, is a complete mess that "hasn't been cleaned down to the original wood surface since 1942."3 The desk is covered in a vast array of junk, including a copy of the News of the World, of which we are told that "Slothrop's a faithful reader."3
Bloat proceeds to photograph the office, the reader learning that he has been employed to spy on Slothrop, paying particular attention to a map of London that has been pinned to the wall. Tacked to the map are different coloured stars, each with a label bearing the name of a girl, the implication being that this is a map of Slothrops sexual conquests. Bloat speculates whether the colours are random, whether the girls listed at each site actually exist and what Slothrop's motivation is for creating such a map.
Having photographed the map and office, Bloat leaves the building and heads for the public house known as the "Snipe and Shaft" for a drink with Tantivy.
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references
- ^Weisenburger, Steven, A Gravity's Rainbow Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's Novel (Second Edition) (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 2006), p. 27
- ^ [1][2] Pynchon, Thomas, Gravity's Rainbow (London: Vintage, 2000), p. 17
- ^ [1][2] Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, p. 18
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