I spent several hours this past week coaching traders at my prop firm. And something caught my attention…
Every single one of these traders needed help with the same thing.
It has to do with what I call the “reverse” gambler’s fallacy. And it’s something many traders struggle with.
Today, I’ll show you how to get this common obstacle under control… and start earning more consistent returns year after year…
What Most New Traders Get Wrong
The obstacle I’m talking about is trading psychology. It’s a very broad term used to describe the emotional side of trading.
Almost all new traders believe the most important part of trading is being able to analyze markets like a pro.
On the surface, this logic makes sense. After all, if you can reliably forecast which direction to take on a trade, the money should take care of itself… right?
What these novices don’t yet understand is that something special happens the moment you commit your money to a trade…
You start feeling things.
Whether it’s fear, excitement, anxiety, or a mix of all three, no one is immune to these emotions. And they can wreak havoc on even the best planned trades.
You may be able to call the direction, the timing, and the target price to perfection… But it can all be for nothing if you are unable to stick to your trade plan.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen traders plan out a great trade… But then ended up somehow losing money, or not being in the market when the move they’d forecast played out.
So how do you beat your emotions to become a better, more consistent trader? It comes down to the three key parts of trading. Let me explain…
The Three-Legged Stool of Trading
I think of trading as a three-legged stool.
Your methodology/strategy for picking trades is the first leg. Your risk- and trade-management strategy is the second leg. And the third leg is your trading psychology.
In my experience, most traders focus on the first leg (strategy and methodology), and they neglect the other two legs. But the stool needs all three legs to stand on its own.
Over the years, I’ve honed my own proprietary method to develop well-rounded traders. Here’s what I’ve learned…
The first fundamental building block of a profitable trader is to establish a proven strategy/methodology you can use to identify good trades. In my experience, everything follows from this foundation.
How you manage your risk and your trades should be determined by the strategies you employ. Your trading psychology likewise will be influenced by your approach to risk and trade management.
I’ve seen other trading instructors assign arbitrary percentage values to the three legs of the trading stool. Usually these values are divided up like this: 30% to the level of importance on the analytical strategy, 30% to risk and trade management, and 40% to trading psychology.
But I don’t believe that any one leg is more important than the other. And yet I’ve found that, more often than not, traders neglect risk/trade management and psychology.
So how do you stop neglecting these two important areas to become a more well-rounded trader? That’s where our reverse gambler’s fallacy comes in…
Time to Ditch the Casino Mentality
There is one block that seems to stop traders from progressing to working on the other two legs.
That is, they don’t know how to flip the switch from thinking about their trades as individual trades in a vacuum… to thinking about them as a collection that relies on a statistical edge to net a profit.
Most traders run into this problem at some point in their careers. And if you’re frustrated with your trading right now, chances are you may be struggling with this, too.
It’s known as the casino mentality. And it’s the same mindset that amateur gamblers will take with them into Caesars Palace or the Bellagio.
It doesn’t matter if they’re seated at the blackjack table or standing over the roulette wheel. Most gamblers believe that the hand or spin they are about to play is the opportunity to hit a winner.
After all, if the roulette wheel has landed four black spins in a row, the next one surely must be red, right?
In reality, the chances of the roulette ball landing on black or red is even, at about 47.4% each. This means each spin is independent of the last.
This is also known as the gambler’s fallacy. What’s interesting is that I’ve observed a kind of reverse gambler’s fallacy from many traders…
This occurs when a trader, who does in fact have a statistically proven strategy, goes on a losing streak… And then instead of continuing to trust their strategy, they abandon it altogether.
How to Avoid the “Reverse” Gambler’s Fallacy
I saw this logical fallacy in effect this past week during one of my coaching calls.
The trader I was coaching had recently taken a technical setup that simply did not work. He was convinced he had done something wrong and wanted my help in improving his analysis.
But his analysis was great.
He didn’t do anything wrong in identifying the setup, which was textbook in nature. But the setup looked so good that, when it resulted in a loss, the trader was convinced that he was the problem… That he did something wrong.
The lesson I imparted to him, which I now want to pass on to you, is this very simple truth…
Nobody, and I mean nobody, ever takes a trade thinking it is going to be a loser. Every single trade you take will be because you thought it would make you money.
Despite this feeling of confidence, out of 100 trades, you’d be lucky to win 50% of them.
That’s why a great trader is not defined by what percentage of their trades end up as winners or losers. A great trader is defined by whether or not they are net profitable after taking 100 trades.
If you win roughly as many trades as you lose, but your winners make you 2x or 3x the amount of money you give back on your losers, you will end up with a nice profit at the end of the year.
Remember, nobody ever takes a trade thinking it is not going to work out. This is why it is absolutely crucial to abandon the idea of thinking about your trades as individual trades.
Instead, start taking a more data-driven, statistical approach to your trading. What do I mean by that?
Keeping a longer-term perspective on your trading is the key to longevity in this business. What your numbers look like over the next 100, 200, or 300 trades is far more relevant and important than losing your cool because you lost a handful of trades in a row.
Of course, to be able to make it to 300 trades, you must have a rock-solid risk management plan in place.
I don’t see gamblers at the casino take a professional approach very often. It’s rare to see someone bet small and stick to the odds on every play. It’s far more common for gamblers to be all over the place with the size of their bets.
They may start off betting small, but after winning a couple of hands of blackjack, they get overconfident and take an outsized bet. Sure enough, on that next hand they go bust while the house just happens to hit blackjack.
This is how casinos make money from gamblers. And it’s how the market parts amateur traders from their capital.
No doubt, it takes a lot of hard work and discipline to make the transition from amateur to professional. But, I promise you, the rewards make it all worthwhile. Until next time.
Regards,
submitted by Well, I was gonna save reposting this story until Independence Day, but then I re-read it. NOT a post I'd want to read on the 4th of July - kind of a bummer. Kind of an
anti-4th post. Put it as far from the 4th as you can. Pearl Harbor Day - there you go. This story
is about what it's like to be unexpectedly thrown into the deep end of war - it's longer than I thought it would be, unanticipated, and I'm not sure it makes that much sense.
Here we go:
Preface:
Carrying the Colors I used to live in a small town in western Colorado that did the best, most wholesome Fourth of July you ever saw - hometown parade through Main Street, Huck Finn fishing contests for the kids, firehose fights between volunteer-firefighter teams at noon in the center of town, fireworks display off the mountainside as soon as it got dark. Lots of picnics and hot dogs and hamburgers. Lots of drinking.
Everyone in town participated. I did as little as I could, bailed as early as I could, got the kids off to some neighbor’s celebration as soon as I could, and headed for a bolt-hole. I couldn’t watch the parade without getting physically ill. I really had no idea why. I just wasn’t ready to see that. I felt like I shouldn’t be there, that I shouldn’t be a part of this. Not yet. Not ever, maybe.
Once upon a time, military units used to carry the colors into battle - a big flag, a perfect target. Color-bearer was a dangerous honor in all wars before WWI. Can you imagine how the Color-bearers who survived the Revolutionary and Civil Wars felt about the flag? I can’t. Yet these are the patriots who gave us our modern 4th of July celebrations.
So what the fuck was wrong with me?
I was unhappy to be such a wet blanket at what was clearly a wholesome and fun day in the tradition established by the brave and patriotic men who soldiered before me. I wondered if I should feel unpatriotic. Be clear - I did not feel unpatriotic. I still don’t. I just wondered if I should feel that way. It was disturbing.
Nowadays, we all carry the Colors to far off lands. And when we come back, we feel disconnected from people flying the same flag on Memorial Day, Veterans Day, the 4th of July. Maybe it’s the car salesmen. Maybe it’s the relentless hagiographic depictions of patriotic themes sponsored by Boeing. Maybe we just need a little space. We need to pause. We need to find our way back from all of that flag carrying.
The Jews have the right idea: A Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur - a day of accounting. Not a settlement of accounts, just a yearly balancing of the karma books: what was taken from you, what you took, what you owe, what is owed to you, what you must repay, what repayment you should demand and, lastly, what debts or receipts cannot be accounted for and must be written off the books. No matter how painful that is.
Make it a national holiday - Accounting Day. Put it between Memorial Day, when we honor the dead, and Veterans Day, when the living are honored. For sure, put it within yelling distance of the 4th of July. Every year they spring the 4th of July on us in the middle of Summer, no time to prep, no time to clean the blood off, no time to get comfortable with our exuberant and in-yer-face celebration of who we are and what we stand for.
It would be nice to have all that stuff sorted out before the 4th. I’m working on it. After nearly 50 years, I'm doing well. Coming right along. I'm up to the 3rd of July. This is a story about a horrible day that makes me laugh. I’m a slow study, and it took me decades to see my personal Day of Atonement for what it was. Y’see, I had the day all in the wrong order. Everything that follows happened on one day. But I needed to put the ending first, then the beginning, and end with the middle of the day. Then it works. Then there is some resolution. The books seem to balance - almost. Even so, it’s a work-in-progress. Bear with me through the rough parts.
This is a story about patriotism too, how it changed for me when I carried the colors.
Part 1 (Late Evening): An American Girl Background music : [Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. It’s okay to associate this song with Silence of the Lambs.
I did.] I dated a gorgeous girl in 1966, my senior year in high school. She saw me on Friday, and her real, Jewish boyfriend on Saturday. It wasn’t anything serious. I was just getting over a long, difficult lesson in don’t-date-crazy-girls, and she was kinda bored with the appropriate boy.
I worried her parents - I was just the kind of
shaygetz that might derail her destiny to be upper-middle-class, respectable and Jewish, in that order of priority. They shouldn’t have worried. She was just as fixated as they were on her future as appropriate wife and helpmeet to some professional
macher in an upscale neighborhood in a two-career family.
But she was
very smart, and I kept talking endlessly about things she hadn’t thought about, and she liked listening. So that was it. Friday night, she’d slum a little among the wild Irish
goyim. Fine by me. She was smart, and nice to look at, too - leggy and built, ice-blue eyes and black hair, all in a Veronica Lodge, for-display-only kind of package.
So no complications. Which was okay with me. I tried to kiss her goodnight on the first date, and I was told that one doesn’t kiss until the fifth date. She kept count. On our fifth date, she told me I could kiss her goodnight, pursed her lips tight together, tilted her head to one side and closed her eyes. I couldn’t believe it.
I made a fist, knocked gently on her forehead and said softly, “Anybody home?” That may have been the first (and possibly only) time she really looked at me. I think she was a little hurt. Maybe. Mostly she was annoyed I had gone offscript.
I said, “We don’t have to do this. I’m fine. Let me know when you’re ready.” She gave me an odd look, and nodded. The kissing never came up again. Just kept on the way we were up until graduation.
We parted company after high school, but we kept in touch. I went into the Army, she went to the Ivy League. She used her friendship with me as a 60s credential. She was on the path to prosperity and status as a matter of choice. I was the evidence that she could break out - if she wanted to.
When I went to OCS, she wore me like a funky beret in her dorm at Smith College. She was in contact with the
other side, the pro-war side, the non-ivy league people who didn’t understand that war was unhealthy for children and other living things! She, of course, was dating another nice, Jewish boy, a cadet at the USAFA, who was unlikely to be sent to Vietnam. Her life was proceeding in an orderly manner.
Mine was more disorderly. Come late 1967, I was on my way to Vietnam. I was cutting ties to various girls. I kept a couple to write to - I knew I’d be lonely and bored and vulnerable to any lady who would write me a letter. So I pared back my correspondence. I kept the Smith lady. I had a nice picture of her, I could fall desperately in love with her, and I doubt if she would notice. Perfect. Just mail from a gorgeous, smart, narcissistic lady - a connection to the “real world” back home, a little piece of the American Dream checking in at mail call. No complications, just like always.
So the letters came, newsy stuff: her time at Smith, the whole rich-but-hip scene, the weekend in Colorado Springs where she apparently lost her virginity, not so much to the cadet, but to the new freedom for American girls that came in the 60s.
My letters back were labored. Too much to tell really. No way she could understand. She was reading my letters to her roommates. I was a credential: “
I know this guy! He’s right in the middle of it!”
Right in the middle of it. Yep. I was an artillery forward observer at a Vietnamese Army (ARVN) firebase on a hilltop that looked over the mountain foothills onto the plains and rice paddies that bordered the South China Sea. I had a bird’s-eye view the explosion of the Camp Evans ammo dump in I Corps on May 19, 1968.
I even reported it from my perch on our mountain-top firebase as I peered into the twilight east of me: “Birth Control 23 (my battery Fire Direction Center at Evans), Hardhammer 28 (me). I’ve got a large explosion at one six hundred mils maybe 2 clicks... make that 4 clicks... no wait maybe 8 clicks... um, 23, you okay?”
I finally unkeyed my set long enough for “23, WE KNOW! Out!” Would be funnier if four guys hadn’t been vaporized in the continuing explosions throwing up an illumination-round halo around the entire base for a couple of hours.
About a month and half later, I was working with same ARVN MACV team (a team of three American officers and NCOs who were "advising" the South Vietnamese officers) and a battalion of 1st Division ARVNs northwest of Huế along the Perfume River. We were stationed on two little cone-shaped hills (volcanic) north of the river. It was a big deal then to get ARVN units airmobile, so we were being airlifted out for two to five day sweeps of the jungle mountains west of Huế.
We were out on one of these sweeps, in deep jungle, but not too far in, aaaand nobody could give us a ride home. Have to walk out. So we saddled up. We broke out of the mountain jungle and into foothills with really thick bamboo on ‘em. Was exhausting cutting our way through, but we were out of the deep bush and could see home from there, so press on.
Wouldn’t you know it, right where we didn’t expect to find them, we stumbled on about a company of North Vietnamese Army (NVA) making their way back into the jungle.
I won’t go into detail about the ensuing firefight; it was a blind encounter, and it was confusing. First thing, the NVA mortars walked rounds right through our battalion CP, and killed the Recon Sergeant of my artillery Forward Observer Team. Then it kind of broke off - a quick, sharp little scrap. One dead, several ARVN wounded. NVA left blood trails. It was busy, dusty and hot cutting an LZ, evacuating wounded and my sergeant. Then we divvied up his kit, rucked up and hit the trail.
After a long, grueling hike in, I remember wondering if I had the energy to climb up to the MACV bunker on top of our little hill outside of Huế. It turned out that I could do that. At the top, I discovered that someone had collected our mail. Oh good.
I flopped down on the dirt in my blood-spattered jungle fatigues, and I opened this perfumed purple envelope with big loopy handwriting in lavender ink. It was from my high school non-girlfriend at Smith College. The letter was maybe six pages long on nice paper same color as the envelope, same loopy handwriting, same lavender ink, same nice girl-smell.
I couldn’t read it. I don’t mean I didn’t feel like reading it. I couldn’t. I couldn’t make the words come out right in my head. This girl was an Ivy League coed - she knew how to write. I knew she was probably writing about her boyfriend at the USAFA, how worried she was that he’d be sent to Vietnam, wedding plans, blah blah blah. I knew there was nothing traumatic or upsetting in that letter, just mundane chatter to a backup guy she was confident was desperately in love with her. Meh. She was right about that, in a way.
BUT I COULD NOT READ IT! What the hell? I got frustrated. I actually got out a pen and tried to diagram the first sentence. Remember that from high school? I drew a line under everything from the first capital letter to the period. Then I drew a vertical line between what I guessed was the Subject and the Predicate. Then got really frustrated and angry because I’m in fuckin’ Vietnam covered with my friend’s blood, and I’m diagraming sentences!
Light was fading anyway. I put the letter aside and bagged out right where I was. I thought I was going crazy. Couldn’t make sense of anything.
I woke around midnight to the noise of what sounded like WWI going on north of me. I low-crawled to the radio. North over by Camp Evans, I could see illumination rounds, red tracers shooting up into the sky, hear lots of explosions. Oh shit. Here we go again...
Found the radio handset, “Control 23, Hardhammer 28. Are you under attack?”
The answer came immediately, “23, that’s a negative. Are you flash? [in contact]”
“28, negative. Whisky tango foxtrot your location then?”
“23, nuthin’. Wait... Oh that? Happy 4th of July, Two-eight!”
Oh yeah. Right. My brain was still stuck on “stall.” Wouldn’t stay up to watch the show. More explosions. Can’t deal with that right now. Sorry. Going back to sleep. And I did.
I regained most of my sanity by morning. I never read that letter, or any of the other letters she sent afterward. Freaked me out. Something had happened. I couldn’t hear her any more. The meaning of her - and everything I remembered of home - had changed. A bridge had burned - I couldn’t go back that way. Not sure I could go back at all.
Part 2 (That Morning): Last Words Background music : [Steve Miller Band] When I got back from Vietnam, I went directly to a dorm room at Colorado University. No ipods, no radio, no stereo. I drifted into the music-listening booths at Norlin Library. Stevie Miller’s "Space Cowboy" was left on the turntable one day, and found myself listening to it over and over. I liked the anger of it. I kept singing along, “I see the show downs, slow downs, lost and found, turn arounds, the boys in the military shirts. I keep my eyes on the prize, on the long fallen skies, and I don't let my friends get hurt...”
Welp, too late for
that.
This is the seed story for this whole post. I had been trying to write it for decades. It was important to me. The soldier who died deserved to have his story told first. I owed him that.
The problem was that I needed to tell it well, and I couldn’t get everything in. So much stuff going on in my head during this story. I was determined to jam it all in there.
The solution was, it turns out, just write down what happened. That never occurred to me. Instead, reddit poked at me when I wasn’t ready - some random post on AskReddit - "For those who have had someone die in their arms, what were your final words to them and what were their last ones?"
The first thing that came to mind was: “Is Newingham okay?”
Those were the last words I heard from Sergeant Clark.
Dial the timeline backward a couple of months: I was having a tough time keeping a recon sergeant. Nothing serious, just bad luck. One got a small piece of shrapnel. The battery sent out another one, and he got some kind of bad fever. The next one had volunteered because the battery was boring. He lasted a week. Then he sprained his ankle hopping out of a helicopter, and rode that medivac all the way back to the battery where he decided it wasn’t as boring as he thought.
This was 1968, I Corps, Vietnam, north of Huế, south of the DMZ. I was an artillery Forward Observer working with the ARVN 1st Division as they try to become airmobile jungle fighters. I was a 2nd LT, about 20 years old. I was supposed to have a Recon Sergeant and a radio operator in my Forward Observer Team, and I had neither of those things.
Early June, my ARVNs were taking a break, so I headed up to my battery at Quang Tri. Word had gotten around about me. My OCS buddy,
Killer Joe , who had taken to living in the Fire Direction Control bunker, told me that just the rumor of my approach had sent sergeant E5s scrambling for invisibility. I was bad luck.
I didn’t care. I could carry my own radio. Wasn’t sure what a Recon Sergeant even does - never had one long enough to find out. I was looking for mail, shower and chow, in that order.
But no. I was haled to battery HQ by a runner. In the HQ tent I found the battery commander, an overweight National Guard Captain yelling at a buck sergeant. “You
will go on this assignment or you
will face a court martial!” The Sergeant was leaning against a tent pole. “I’ll think about it,” he said. Then he turned and walked out.
My turn. The Captain said to me, “Lieutenant, I want you to straighten that young man out.”
Uh, right. “How old is he, Sir?”
The Captain riffled through some papers. “He’s twenty-five. Is that a problem?” Well yuh. But I didn’t say anything. “This is his second tour, and he’s got a serious attitude problem! I want you to take him in hand. He is your new Recon Sergeant.”
Yeah, I’m twenty, boss. I’ve been in country barely four months. Don’t think this is a good fit.
I didn’t say that. I said, “Yes Sir.” Then I saluted and made a beeline for my jeep. Maybe I could get out of here before anyone noticed. Screw the shower and chow. I already got my mail.
Too late. A tall, lanky, blond sergeant plopped himself in my passenger side. It was the Captain’s problem child. Rats. “I guess I’m with you,” he said. He had packed a ruck. Huh. “What’s your name? I’m Chuck.”
“I’m Lieutenant AnathemaMaranatha.”
“Naw man. What’s your
name?”
“My parents call me Rick. You can call me Sir or Lieutenant or El Tee or Two-eight [my radio call-sign].”
“Fuck. Really? Okay then. You can call me Sergeant or Sergeant Clark.”
I was good with that. I decided I wanted that shower after all.
And then off we went. We spent a good deal of time together in the deep bush. You can’t maintain the officeenlisted separation under those conditions, but Clark seemed to like the idea of it. I don’t know how to account for the turnabout, but he decided he wanted to be a part of the team. I found out what a Recon Sergeant was for. Clark knew some artillery, and he picked up on the art of fire adjustment with little effort. We were a good team, and he covered my back when I needed it.
It’s hard to explain how these things work. You can get to a point of complete trust without even liking each other. I couldn’t tell you today if I liked Clark. But he could have my last pair of dry socks, no questions asked. I don’t think there is a higher level of trust between soldiers. Maybe you had to be there.
Weeks later, we were suddenly sent a radio operator, Private Newingham. He was also a tall, skinny kid, but had no attitude at all that I can remember. I still crack up from overhearing Clark instruct him in the niceties: “That’s the Lieutenant. His first name is Rick. You don’t
ever call him that. He is Lieutenant, or El Tee, or Two-eight. I’m Clark. You will call me Sergeant Clark or Sergeant or Sarge. Got it?”
Damn. Say what?
Newingham was only with us for one operation. On the second one - this one - he had to be lifted out off the PZ due to a high fever. Clark had been kind of mother-henning our FNG - Newingham wasn't used to the jungle. Clark had been teaching him. Clark worked pretty hard at it. Was impressive. Both of them were becoming better soldiers.
Clark carried the radio, and I carried a lot of his stuff. When we found out we weren’t getting a ride back to basecamp on the second day, we rode shank’s mare back towards home. We kept going downhill until we emerged from the mountain jungle into the foothills covered with thick bamboo outside of Huế. Then we bumped into about a company of North Vietnamese Army.
It happened fast. First thing I knew there was firing, then a shout of “
Súng côi!” [Mortars!], and then mortar incoming started walking toward our position. I had my rifle apart for some reason. I sort of threw all the pieces in the air, and slammed it all together. I rolled over backward into a shallow crater and landed right on top of Clark. The mortar explosions were getting closer, so I told him to hunker down ferchristsakes, and he told me my boot was on his ear.
Then mortars. They came through, and then they were gone. I got up to get to our radio so I could call in artillery fire, and Clark said, “Lieutenant, I’m hit.”
I said, “No way you’re hit. I was on top of you.”
But he was hit. In the head and neck. Bleeding in bursts. A couple of ARVN medics came over. I was trying to make the bleeding stop, but there was too much of it. Clark looked at me and said, “Is Newingham okay?” I said, “Yes, he’s fine. He’s back at base by now.”
Those were the last words he said. I think he died before the medivac came in. I don’t know. I had to shoot artillery. They were yelling at me while I was trying to help him.
The
Thiêu tá, the Battalion Commander, was moving out to the point of contact. He was the one who dispatched his medics and two MACV guys to tend to Clark. A couple of ARVN officers pulled me to my feet, wiped me off and had me clean my hands with dirt and canteen water. I geared up, they grabbed our artillery radio ruck, and we moved off toward the noise of battle.
This was hard to write. I don’t even know why I wrote this for some random reddit question. I had to fire the artillery. By the time I got back to the LZ they cut in the bamboo, Clark was gone, and the MACV team was finishing up evacuation of the ARVN wounded.
So there it is. I lost a man I was duty-bound to keep alive. I lost a man who trusted me, who protected me and expected me to protect him. I did not break faith with him. He would not think that, if he could still think about things. I know that.
But there was a massive failure that belongs to no one else but me. Some shrapnel-god used his boarding-house-reach to put his elbow in my eye while snatching the life of a man who was my responsibility - as if duty, honor, country, faithfulness, command, trust mattered not a whit, meant nothing. Not a whit. Got that, soldier?
I’m sitting here staring at the keyboard. Still pretty mad. Nothing left to say.
Addendum Part 3 (Afternoon): Charlie and the Kid Background music : Talking Heads, "Slippery People". Paint David Byrne blue. I think he’s my chariot driver. Lyrics are in the "comments" section. It’s funny how I was prepped for this story. It started when I was reaching puberty. The only erotica I could find was a volume of The Book of Knowledge that had an article on the ancient Minoan Civilization on Crete which featured illustrations of Minoan ladies in their topless tops. I also read - during rest periods - about the Minoan ritual of the Bull Dancers.
Rituals aren’t for the benefit of the gods; Gods, large or small, don’t need our ceremonies. Rituals lift the watchers out of their ordinary lives, make them mindful of the underlying meaning of things. Blood rites, like gladiatorial contests, were especially meaningful because they combine real life and death with a deeper meaning of one’s own life. Up until recently, blood rites were a very popular religious ritual.
The Bull Dance was one of those blood rites. Acrobats, male and female, would vault over the horns of a huge, angry Auroch bull. The fate of the dancers was the fate of all. The will of the gods could be seen by the will of the sacred Auroch and the skill and luck of the dancers.
Clark hadn’t had any luck, and I had lost a man. The only rituals I had were from the movies: Your buddy is hit. In a lingering close-up as the music swells, he tells you to carry on, don’t weep for him, tell Miss Molly he loved her best. Then his eyes close, and the music crescendos, I stand up and vow to get the dirty, bushwhacking bastards who did this if it takes the rest of my life.
My rituals sucked. I had nuthin’. All I could do is pack everything up until later. Let’s get down the hill. I was sort of numb, on purpose. Not that I wouldn’t mind the opportunity to drop a couple of battery volleys of HE Quick on the next NVA son of a bitch I ran across. I was thinking about that a little bit, too. But mostly nothing.
After that late morning firefight, we cut our way though the bamboo and broke into rice paddy country. Vietnamese soldiers always traveled along the paddy dikes - they lived there, and there is no sense in tromping all over the food. We were strung out along several paddy dikes.
It was hot. Did I mention it was hot in the other episodes? If not, impose hotness on them. Hot is a major part of this story. The heat just got into everything, but there’s no way to put it into the story. All you can say is “It was hot.” I wish I was a heat-eskimo and had twenty-three words for “HOT!” It was really fuckin’ hot. Also humid.
We stank. The Americans I mean. There are certain documented differences between ethnic and racial groups. One of them is sweat. Very white and very black people have more sweat glands than Asians. You stink when you’re hot and sweaty, for sure. But you also stink when you’re not. You smell like what you eat all the time. Vietnamese smelled like fish to us. I’m sure we smelled like meat. It’s only mildly noticeable usually - just a sense that these people seem odd, different from us.
But when you’re hot and covered with somebody’s dried blood - and we all were - and you’re an American, you just stink. We could smell it. Wasn’t lovely.
We stopped to rest on a paddy dike, all the Americans in a group. There was a young boy who looked about seven - which means he was about ten - standing still in the rice paddy with a large water buffalo. The local farmers stood still when soldiers passed. It was a good idea.
This water buffalo - let’s call him Charlie - was pretty close to us. I had seen water buffalo everywhere in Vietnam. Farmers used ‘em to plow the paddies. This one didn’t have a plow, but clearly he was the farmer’s John Deere, and the boy - let’s call him “the Kid” - was maybe letting him graze on the lees of harvested rice. When we saw them - more like, when they saw us - they were just standing there, keeping very still.
As I said, I had seen water buffalo before. But this was a
big one. He had large curved horns that swept back in a crescent-moon from both sides of the head. Short legs. Really wide, muscular body. I was noticing all the details about Charlie, because Charlie had raised his enormous black nostrils up in the air, and clearly he smelled something that was an offense to water buffaloism everywhere.
Charlie was making snorting sounds after each whiff of stanky-Yankee. He was stamping one of his tiny feet. I was becoming acutely aware of how fucking
big Charlie was - maybe 1500 lbs - and how close he was, and how there was exactly nothing to stop him coming over to where we were.
We were all noticing. The Gunny racked a round in his M16. I decided that might be a good idea. I was suddenly dismayed at how small M16 rounds are, how little stopping-power they have. But mostly, I was watching Charlie and the Kid.
Charlie was on the hunt. There were soldiers here and there on the paddy dike. Most of ‘em smelled like homeboys, but there was
something else there, something outrageous, something that needed to be stomped on until it stopped smelling like that. Charlie was moving his head from side to side, looking for us with his nose.
The Kid was watching us get all wary. This can’t happen! He had been entrusted with the family farming machinery. Time to lead Charlie away.
First the Kid had to get Charlie’s attention. The Kid was game. Charlie had a nose-ring. The Kid grabbed it and tried to turn Charlie around. Charlie didn’t notice. The Kid decided to get Charlie’s head down - he hung from Charlie’s nose ring with his feet off the ground. Charlie didn’t notice.
The Kid had a little switch. He started hitting Charlie on the eyes with it. Charlie blinked, but kept his head up. The Kid grabbed one horn and swung up on Charlie’s back. He grabbed one ear after another and pulled. Charlie shook his head, then took a step in our direction. Charlie’s got an olfactory azimuth now.
The Kid was frantic, swinging from horn to horn, smacking at Charlie’s eyes and nose with the switch, pulling on his ears. Charlie snorted, and took another step in our direction.
Finally the Kid vaulted over Charlie’s horns like a Minoan bull dancer, grabbed the nose ring as he came down, tucked his knees up and managed to pull Charlie’s nose down to eye level. Charlie blinked, and looked at the Kid. “Whut?” he snorted. The Kid yelled some Vietnamese at Charlie which Charlie understood - probably something like “Chow! Over there! Follow me!” Charlie was okay with that.
Yuh. Chow. Cool. Hi Kid. Where you been? The ARVNs on the paddy dike cheered. One of them told me later that they would’ve helped the Kid, but they were all farmboys too, and they knew it was a bad idea to walk up to a water buffalo who doesn’t know you, especially if he’s already pissed.
Maybe. Maybe they were just waiting to see how it turned out. Me too.
The Kid hauled on the nose ring and Charlie started to turn.
Oh yuh. The Kid. He’s nice. He has food sometimes. Whut’s that awful smell? This time the Kid was ready. He turned around, grabbed a horn and vaulted onto Charlie’s back with a thump heavy enough to get Charlie’s attention back. The Kid commenced to kick and thump and pull Charlie’s ears and yell until Charlie figured it out and broke into a trot away from us. This time all the soldiers cheered. I watched the Kid ride off into fame and glory.
Probably not. Even so, the war gods had lowered over Charlie and the Kid that day. Then they let them go. Not everyone was so lucky.
What had I seen really? Some kid in a rice paddy... can't control his water buffalo... may have to shoot the buffalo...oh wait, he got him going the other way... nice work kid.
Nothing. Just another 15 minutes in Vietnam. Maybe that’s all it was. Doesn’t feel that way. Means something to me.
At this point, I’d tell you what it all meant, but I don’t know. The doors of my perception had been roughly pried open with the life of my friend, and Charlie and the Kid came wandering through those doors. They did a perfect blood rite, a Bull Dance, turned like a wheel inside a wheel. They traveled all the way to the bottom of the Well of Me and made themselves at home.
Don’t know what to make of that. It’s a gift of some kind, I think. Took me decades to unwrap it. Not finished yet.
I do know this: The image of Charlie and the Kid in my head makes me laugh. It makes me happy. It slops over into other things both that day and afterwards. It seems to be the middle, the balance of the whole day.
I wish Clark could’ve watched Charlie and the Kid. I wish I could make you all see it the way I saw it. It was insane. Wonderful. Not a way back, but a way forward maybe. I can travel that day, from the bottom to the top, and there are people I remember fondly, with love, I guess. How is that even possible?
I like to imagine Charlie was my accountant for the Arjuna-moment of my Day of Atonement.
Now I am become Charlie, the destroyer of worlds! Wait... the Kid’s got chow! Some other day, okay? No hard feelings. See ya. Charlie feels like both the worst accountant ever, and the smartest person in this story. I think all of this mystical stuff is above my pay-grade. I’m guessing Charlie thinks so too.
Close the books out, man. You are home. This is where I’m supposed to be. This is how I’m supposed to feel. I was an American soldier. The Lord won’t mind. Write it off.
Got some help along the way. The Kid would be what?... 62 now? I wonder if he ever tells his grandkids about the crazy Americans who wanted to kill poor old Charlie the water buffalo, who wouldn’t hurt a fly, unless, y’know, you were dumb enough to piss him off. I hope he’s telling that story right now.
As for Charlie? Probably dead by now. I hope he’s somewhere as a giant Auroch, twenty-four hands at the shoulder. I hope he’s a tossing this and that bull-dancing godling here and there onto the Roulette Wheel of Everything. He’d be good at it.
Good hell, he’d be
great.
submitted by Hello everyone, I’m glad you came to hear what I have to say. This post will be long, too long maybe, but I’ve always had trouble with getting straight to the point. If you’re here just for the memes and weekly patch notes that’s fine. Thanks for stopping by and good luck on your journey. For everyone else, stick with me any you might just find a way to waste half of an hour of your life instead being productive.
Let’s start with short introduction: I play since launch and I’ve spent over 1000$ over that time. That’s it, wasn’t so bad, was it. The thing is that’s all what’s needed to somehow justify what I’m going to say below, but 1st let’s commit one of the cardinal sins of writing and establish, what this post is NOT about:
· It’s not a good bye letter. No one cares about those anyway. If you want to leave just do it without pretending like some random ppl from reddit will miss you or even notice.
· I’m not exposing anything. There’s no secret reveal at the end, no one at NM is going to lose their job because of what I’m going to say here. All the info is out there, most if all points have been stated in one post or another.
· No hard data and evidences. Sorry math folks, no charts and pivots for you to glare at. If I’m ever going to give a number here it’s going to be a rough estimate which might even be entirely wrong. No market research was performed and no accountants harmed during writing of this post.
· There’s no judgment posed on anyone. Whether you’re casual F2P or hardcore whale with spare phone grinding the game 24/7. Whether you’re meta slave with your own excel sheets and efficiency charts, having mapped your decisions 2 months ahead, or you’re just logging 3 times a week to maybe get a character that you liked in anime. Everyone is welcome here and there’s no wrong way to play this game. Of course people still trying to make kingbram work are incorrect and should purge their game data immediately.
· There’s no need to argue who’s right or wrong here. I’m going to state my PoV here and I’m sure many will have different perspectives. I’m not trying to change other’s minds and I’m not looking to have mine changed. If you want to state your point please do so in comments below or in a separate post and let’s exchange ideas instead of arriving to one and only universal truth.
I hope now we’re on the same page, so let’s begin.
Why are we spending money?
So as I stated below I’ve spent some money here. “Some” is a huge understatement honestly because that’s the most I’ve ever spent on a single game ever. For me it was never about “supporting the developers”. I personally don’t believe in that statement and I think that the was majority of money goes into pockets of CEO and shareholders while actual developers are paid standard market wages. Might be wrong, but that’s beside the point. I spend money to get the “stuff”. It can be unit that’s strong, it can be a unit that simply looks cool or is unique, it can be cosmetics (even for units I don’t use, hello Diane!), it can finally be more indirect “stuff” like getting to higher league of pvp. I pay to get things I wouldn’t otherwise get or to save time grinding. I feel like that’s the most common reason to spend money in games, but I might be entirely wrong. That reason is also highlighted by the way game limits the accessibility of those things. Some units are limited, cosmetics can only be bought for $ for 2 weeks before they’re available for gems. Units have their banners weeks before they’re being added to the coin shop.
And here we’re coming to the 1st problem with spending money. There’s a lot of things that aren’t guaranteed. You may want to get the new powerful unit that’s now on the banner, but with 0.5% chance you might get it within 10 pulls, or not get it in 1000. Sure, we have some step up banners or current LV one, but those are exceptions from the norm. Every pull has the same chance of giving you desired result so there’s no reason to think that with 200 pulls you’ll get 1/200 result. Probability is cruel in that regard and in the infinite universe we’ll find equal amount of players getting every single unit within 1st 3 gem pull as the amount of players rolling since the game launched and not getting single SSR unit beside random guarantees. Of course this is exaggeration, but it’s there to illustrate the point, that ultimately the amount of money you’re going to spend doesn’t matter. The reality is, if you’re not a massive whale who has no limits, then you’re spinning the same roulette as every other player. You get more chances, but logically there’s no reason to think they will change the final outcome.
It’s gacha, that’s how it’s supposed to be
Maybe, maybe not. Remember that gacha is just one of the elements of the game we’re playing. We don’t log in just to pull the unit and then close the game until the next banner arrives. Well, maybe some of us do, what do I know, however I’d bet my broken watch and half-eaten bag of chips that most of the players do a lot more in the game itself. We play against others in arena, we compete in super bosses and other events, some mad lads might even read the story. All of this doesn’t need the gacha to function. You can also have the gacha game that has much better odds of the good outcome than 0.5% or 0.28%. Gacha can even work in a system without microtransactions, why not? I’d even argue that gacha with guaranteed “pity” result at the end is still gacha. Show me the person who plays gacha to roll and lose every time, I’ll wait (no doubt there’s someone out there, I’d like to meet you). You can still have the thrill of spinning the wheel knowing that worst case, you just have to spin in 100 more times to get what you need. It’s not like game publisher will lose something every time a player gets featured unit.
Pace we’ve been moving so far and what lies ahead
The uncertainty of getting the units is just one thing. We’re getting better and better units at a crazy pace and despite promises from developers (like those were ever meant to be fulfilled) we’re not slowing down. Not long ago we had the most hyped PvE unit in the game, Derieri, quickly followed by arguably the most hyped PvP unit in the game, LV. Now we’re getting leaks that limited holiday units are coming soon. Not 1, not 2, 6 brand new units that are getting their banner(s) and after that we won’t know if they will be obtainable in the future. For me it’s a massive slap in the face. I like collecting, even for the completing purpose alone. That’s why I got all Slime units, that’s why I pulled to get all AoT units. Now after extremely resource (aka money) draining banner we’re getting a limited one, with a ton of new units. It’s not only that, those units have limited cosmetics (even more investment) that are arguably, more important to F2P players. Cosmetic upgrades are another massive grind that will come with hell raids and people who would benefit the most from getting extra materials from raids won’t be able to do so in most cases. This is the prime example of rich get richer and poor get poorer. Despite the promises, the speed at which we’re getting through content (read new units) seems to be increasing with each week. Getting a great unit and maxing it out also isn’t good enough anymore. We can’t have players be happy with what they have for more than a week, can we? So here come pvp rules, so now even mediocre units can be top dogs for that week, coincidentally those units happen to be featured on the banner the same week. Quickly buy also the cosmetics packs because that unit will be absolute trash when they’re finally available for gems.
Ok, but we’ll finally slow down, right? We have to
I’ve lost my hopes for that. If releasing better and better units is forcing people to spend more money, why on earth would NM stop doing so? What’s the argument for giving the player-base room to breathe? Releasing patch notes just before the new unit arrives, conducting witch hunt on data-miners? Wasn’t it done purely to limit player information and increase the frequency of situations where we’re caught by surprise and face the dilemma – spend money or not get what we want and be punished by it? Uninformed players make poor decisions and those result in more money spent.
If you’ve been looking at JP server you can clearly see that their approach also changed over past months. Following global server’s lead they now have final bosses releasing together with units designed to be used for the best scores. Oh, and instead of 242 gems step up let’s put 2 units on the same one with clearly the better one being guaranteed only on the 2nd rotation. 484 gems not good enough? Let’s make it 600 with only 1 guaranteed units so unlucky few will have to chose between cool unit that everyone have waited for and final boss cheese. Superawakening? What used to be terrible is still really bad. You still need more copies to have it cheaper and I’d wager that ppl who can only pull one copy of a unit aren’t really swimming in coins. Rich get richer and poor get poorer all over again. That all not to mention more and more units being introduced with exponentially scaling ultimates. We have our taste of that with LV, more are soon to come. Powercreep is natural part of many multiplayer games, but I’ve never seen it being so disturbingly fast as it is here.
So what’s your point again?
Money that you spend in this game doesn’t give you anything, unless you spend A LOT. At least from my experience everything is so random and changes so quickly, that I don’t feel like monthly/weekly subs matter at all. I can have extra few hundred gems to pull and still end up with nothing, costumes I might buy will be for units that within few weeks get irrelevant and/or heavily countered by the new shiny toy. I could have the same results not spending a dime and have the same experience. At this point I feel like to really feel any difference I’d have to at least double my spendings, even that could be not enough if NM decides to crank up the speed even more. To me there are really 2 groups of players: whales and the rest. Doesn’t matter if you buy nothing or just some, we’re all on the same boat as category B customers.
I don’t want to tell anyone what to do with their own money, by all means spend as much as you like. For me that means not spending at all. I might be wrong and maybe pure F2P experience will be very different from what I expected, but in this game especially I absolutely don’t feel any value in the money I’m putting in. I’m not trying to start another uproar like we had with Lilia (look how great it all went in the end), nor am I recommending other people to join some sort of protest. You all have your own minds and you can make your own decisions. Whales gonna whale and “vote with your wallets” never changed anything anyway. I just wanted to write this all down to clarify my thoughts and make it easier for myself to stop spending money on this game. If this helped anyone else, more power to you. I know that those kind of thought were coming to me for some time now and I’ve been dismissing them or simply forgetting, so hopefully this post will serve as a reminder to me and maybe more people.
WOW, you really did it, you stuck till the very end!
Here I’d like to personally thank my mom who always been there for me, my PE teacher from high school for coining a cool nickname for me that stuck, that nice gentlemen at the bakery who recommended me those cheesy pastries (they’re delicious) and to you dear reader, for avoiding responsibilities and spending time here with me debating the ethically questionable state of mobile gaming. Share your own thoughts in the comments, like and subscribe and stay safe!
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submitted by Slothrop's Hawaiian Shirt by Zak Smith (2006). I just want to begin by thanking
u/Bloomsdayclock for coordinating this endeavor, for all of the previous posts thus far, and for the enthusiastic interaction and scholarship that’s been happening in the comments for each post. This group read has rekindled my love for this book and is helping me understand it in so many different ways and in such greater depth that it's honestly like I’m reading a different book at this point. Also, kudos to each previous poster for creating a coherent post! The book is complex enough on its own but once you start going down the rabbit hole, sussing out the references, reading through some of the scholarship, etc., I almost found myself paralyzed by information overload (
kinda feeling a bit like Charlie Kelly trying to figure out who “Pepe Silvia” is :) ). When this reading group started, I was like, “damn, I’m trying to read this insanely complex novel and the group posts are just as long, dense, and complex” and now I’ve gone and written some super long and dense post, too. To paraphrase either Blaise Pascal or Mark Twain (or Woodrow Wilson or apparently a rather large number of dead white guys from history): I would have written a shorter post if I’d had the time! Apologies in advance!
Anyways, this post will (attempt to) cover the start of the second section of the novel,
Un Perm’ au Casino Hermann Goering. The events that transpire are zany and sinister, titillating and deeply sad. There is a mix of images both gorgeous and disgusting and much of the planning and plotting that took place at “The White Visitation” during the first section are starting to come to fruition in part deux. For each “Episode”, I will provide a general summary of the “action” and then some commentary and we’ll finish this post up with a few discussion questions. Let’s begin!
Episode 22 Summary Slothrop is on furlough/leave at a casino in Monaco (from what I’ve read...I thought it was France before, still not completely sure) that’s been renamed in honor of the big fat slob that led Hitler’s air force during the war. He’s in paradise but wakes up “...[waiting] for a sudden noise to begin his day, a first rocket” (p. 181). His friend Tantivy Mucker-Maffick and a somewhat suspicious friend of his, Teddy Bloat (“[there’s] something about the way he talks to Slothrop, patronizing? Maybe nervous…” (p. 182)), are staying down the hall. They’re talking about meeting some girls but, as the first song of the section reminds us, Englishmen can be very shy. Slothrop is happy to help his “buddies” out, but tells them not to “expect [him] to put it in for [them]” (p. 183). Classic Slothrop!
Slothrop decides to wear a hideous (or amazing, depending on your sensibilities) genuine Hawaiian shirt that he received from his brother Hogan in the Pacific. The shirt seems to emit a glow (once he steps into the sun, it “blazes into a refulgent life of its own” (!) (p. 184), so Tantivy, “friend” that he is, tries to convince Slothrop to cover it up with scratchy Savile Row coat.
The trio hit the beach and the ladies are on them already. They’ve got food and booze and are ready for a nice day on the beach. The morning seems too good even for a bit of the “early paranoia”. And then Bloat ruins everything by drawing Slothrop’s attention to the woman down the beach being attacked by “the biggest fucking octopus Slothrop has ever seen outside of the movies”. Slothrop rushes off to intervene and, left without recourse, starts trying to bash the cephalopod on the head with a wine bottle to no avail. Thankfully, Bloat
just happens to have a big, tasty crab on his person, which he tosses to Slothrop with the advice, “It’s hungry, it’ll go for the crab.
Don’t kill it, Slothrop.” Slothrop uses the crab to bait away the animal from its current prey, noticing that it does not seem to be in good mental health. He eventually tosses the crab, like a discus, into the sea, and the octopus follows. The damsel has been saved, Slothrop is championed as a brave hero and his first thought is where in the fuck did that crab come from.
The exchange:
“Tantivy smiles and flips a small salute. “Good show!” cheers Teddy Bloat. “I wouldn’t have wanted to try that myself!”
“Why not? You had that crab. Saaay-where’d you
get that crab?”
“Found it,” replies Bloat with a straight face. Slothrop stares at this bird but can’t get eye contact. What th’ fuck is going on?” (p. 187).
The damsel thanks Slothrop. Her ID bracelet identifies her as Katje Borgesius. Slothrop feels like he knows her and “...voices begin to take on a touch of metal, each word a hard-edged clap, and the light, though as bright as before, is less able to illuminate….it’s a Puritan reflex of seeking other orders behind the visible, also known as paranoia, filtering in…” (p. 188). How does Slothrop deal with this? By dividing up his present company into a dichotomy: the increasingly drunk Tantivy, “a messenger from Slothrop’s innocent, pre-octopus past” flirting with the girls and Bloat, “perfectly sober, mustache unruffled, regulation uniform [on the fucking beach!], watching [him] closely” (p. 188). And then there’s Katje, who, with her glance, makes Slothrop think she knows something (what?), asking him “Did you know all the time about the octopus? I thought so because it was so like a dance-all of you” (p. 188). Well, fuck me! Katje then tells “Little Tyrone” to be “very careful” and that “Perhaps, after all,
we were meant to meet…” (p. 189). Now
that’s a “meet cute” for ya!
Commentary/Questions - Is the casino fully owned and controlled by Them at this point (is César Flebótomo (Spanish for “sandfly”) a(n) (un)willing patsy in Their employ?). Is it the “lab” for this “phase” of the Slothrop experiment. Or is it just secured enough to ensure the results of the experiment aren’t tainted by some unforeseen variable/interference?
- Teddy Bloat seems like a purposeful pun in reference to the bureaucracy of government/intel agencies
- Tantivy Mucker-Maffick’s name is also filled with meaning
- Songs are one way that Pynchon fills his book with “the language of the preterite”, a term from Weisenburger used to describe the “slang, underworld cant, songs, games, folk-genres, and material culture” used by Pynchon to pit “open, unsanctioned, and “low” languages” against the “closed, orthodox, privileged language of a culture”. This idea is expanded on by literary critic/philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin who notes that the “heteroglossic” aspect of novels allows them to be radical, open-ended artworks filled with a variety of voices that each embody a particular time and place (his term for this idea is a “chronotope”).
- The whole episode is just soaked in paranoia, from beginning to end. Whatever Slothrop thought he thought he was feeling in Section 1 has been taken up a notch. He senses a plot but keeps playing along.
- Is “Borgesius” a tribute to J.L. Borges?
- “Little Tyrone” echoes “Baby Tyrone” from Jamf’s experiments and maybe is supposed to make us realize that while the antics in this episode could possibly be construed as a “loss” of Slothrop’s “innocence” that was actually taken from him as a baby.
Episode 23 Summary Dr. Porkyevitch (“Porky the pig”?) and “Grisha” (“[frisking] happily in his special enclosure”) stare back at the “blazing bijou” of the Casino from their ship, contemplating their future now that they may no longer be of use to Pointsman, yearning for traces of the Russia they’ve been exiled from.
To the casino: Katje is a vision in shades of green and is escorted by a two-star general and a brigadier. Is it Pudding? RHIP :) Slothrop and Tantivy in the dining room. Slothrop raises the “The Ballad of Tantivy Mucker-Maffic” to get the room singing of his friend’s drunken exploits so that he can speak to Katje who uses the cacophony to invite
him to her room
after midnight!
Slothrop then probes his buddy to see if he notices anything
funny going on. Tantivy brushes him off a bit (“there’s always, you know, an element of Slothropian paranoia to contend with…”(p. 192)) but then concedes that the bastard Bloat is receiving coded messages. Ha! And it turns out Bloat has become a bit of a different man over the last few years, something more than being “Blitz rattled”. He’s also warned Tantivy away from Katje (“I’d stay clear of that one if I were you” (p. 193)) and Tantivy feels used by Bloat (“being tolerated for as long as he can use me” (p. 193)). The encounter ends with Tantivy telling Slothrop to be careful and, should he need help, he’ll be there for him.
At midnight, Slothrop leaves for his rendezvous with Ms. Borgesius, “ascending flights of red-carpeted stairway (Welcome Mister Slothrop Welcome To Our Structure We Hope You Will Enjoy Your Visit Here)” (p. 194). Arriving, he teases her about her date at dinner and then about their slightly sinister “meet cute” while examining her closet which is absolutely filled to the brim with a variety of outfits. The “Too Soon To Know (Fox-Trot)” before they get down to it. As he is undressing her, he notices “...the moonlight only whitens her back, and there is a still a dark side, her ventral side, her face, than he can no longer see, a terrible beastlike change coming over muzzle and lower jaw, black pupils growing to cover the entire eye space till whites are gone and there’s only the red animal reflection when the light comes to strike
no telling when the light-” (p. 196). Yikes! As they fuck, she wonders if his “careful technique” is for her or “wired into the Slothropian Run-together they briefed her on”. Either way, “she will move him, she will not be mounted by a plastic shell” (p. 196-197).
Then, a slapstick fight with a seltzer bottle (planted by Them?) that has Slothrop looking for a banana cream pie to toss (classic!) after which they fall asleep, lying like two Ss. In the morning, their post-coital bliss is interrupted as Little Tyrone is rudely awakened by the sound of someone robbing his pants in the room next door. He chases after the thief, first naked, then dressed in a purple satin bedsheet. As he’s chasing, from way down the hallway, “a tiny head appears around a corner, a tiny hand comes out and gives Slothrop the tiny finger” (p. 199). Haha! He chases the thief up a tree only to have the tree cut down while he’s in it. The thief escapes and Bloat and some general find Slothrop a mess.
Bloat takes Slothrop to his room where, “every stitch of clothing he owns is gone, including his Hawaiian shirt. What the fuck. Groaning, he rummages in the desk. Empty. Closets empty. Leave papers, ID, everything, taken… Hogan’s shirt bothers him most of all” (p. 201). Nobody knows where Tantivy’s gone off to. Bloat gives Slothrop a uniform (“a piece of Whitehall on the Riviera” (p. 201)) which doesn’t fit but the book advises, “Live wi’ the way it feels mate, you’ll be in it for a while” (p. 201). Slothrop ponders the meaning of the architecture and design of his surrounds, but “shortly, unpleasantly so, it will come to him that everything in this room [The Himmer-Spielsaal, no less] is being used from something different. Meaning things to Them it has never meant to us. Never. Two orders of being, looking identical….but, but….” (p. 202). THE WORLD OVER THERE. Against this realization Slothrop issues the only spell he knows, a defiant “Fuck You”. Walking, rainstorm, entertainment at the casino, no one has seen the dancing girls from the drunken breakfast, Slothrop is “finding only strangers where he looks” before freaking out in the casino, then getting wet in the rain, then returning to Katje, the only place he knew to come.
Commentary - I love “The Ballad of Tantivy Mucker-Maffic” and would like to write a similar tune about the inebriated shenanigans committed by my best friend and I during college.
- The bit about Oxford and Harvard not really existing to educate was a nice touch (p. 193)
- “Snazzy” is an “Americanism” in the 40s! (p. 195).
- Slothrop ponders an impending loss of innocence (but, again, it seems like that has already happened). He has nothing and no one in a foreign country and the sensation that his life is being purposefully, possibly nefariously influenced by forces he can vaguely perceive. “It’s here that saturation hits him, it’s all this playing games, too much of it, too many games: the nasal, obsessive voice of a croupier he can’t see...is suddenly speaking out of the Forbidden Wing directly to him, and about what Slothrop has been playing against the invisible House, perhaps after all for his soul, all day - terrified, he turns, turns out into the rain again where the electric lights of the Casino, in full holocaust, are glaring off the glazed cobbles.” And then, “How did this all turn against him so fast? His friends old and new, every last bit of paper and clothing connecting him to what he’s been, have just, fucking, vanished. How can he meet this with any kind of grace?” (p. 205)
- The word “holocaust” is used quite a bit in this story
- Setting this all in the casino is a nice touch: there is the illusion of chance and luck in a casino but the house always wins.
- The juxtaposition of the comic (seltzer fight) with the tragic (Slothrop alone, trying to understand what’s happening) heightens both effects.
Episode 24 Summary They wake up with Katje calling slothrop a pig, which responds to by oinking. At breakfast, he is taking a refresher course in technical German and learning about The Rocket. His tutor, Sir Stephen Dodson-Truck (who speaks 33 languages!) aiding his understanding of German circuit schematics by way of ancient German runes. Slothrop understands immediately that Dodson-Truck is in on the plot but not sure how (“There are times when Slothrop can actually find a clutch mechanism between him and Their iron-cased engine far away up a power train whose shape and design he has to guess at, a clutch he can disengage, feeling then all his inertia of motion, his real helplessness… it is not exactly unpleasant, either. Odd thing. He is almost sure that whatever They want, it won’t mean risking his life, or even too much of his comfort. But he can’t fit any of it into a pattern, there’s no way to connect somebody like Dodson-Truck with somebody like Katje…. The real enemy’s somewhere back in that London anyways” (p. 207).
Back in the Himmler-Spielsaal: “in the twisted gilt playing-room his secret motions clarify for him, some. The odds They played here belonged to the past, the past only. Their odds were never probabilities, but frequencies
already observed. It’s the past that makes demands here. It whispers, and reaches after, and sneering disagreeably, gooses its victims.
When they choose numbers, red, black, odd, even, what did They mean it? What Wheel did They set in motion?
Back in a room, early in Slothrop’s life, a room forbidden to him now, is something very bad. Something was done to him and it may be that Katje knows what. Hasn’t he, in her “futureless look,” found some link to his own past, something that connects them closely as lovers?” (p. 208-209). “It is a curve each of them feels, unmistakably. It is the parabola.”
No more news from London or Achtung. Bloat is gone now, too. Sir Stephen and Katje with their identical Corporate Smiles to dazzle him while they rob his identity. But! “He lets it happen” (p. 210).
Slothrop is getting hardons after his rocket study sessions and then goes looking for relief with Katje. Sir Stephen appears to be timing these erections! So, Slothrop gets the smart idea to get him drunk via a drinking game and many, many people end up getting sloshed on some high class bubbly. Half the room is singing the “Vulgar Song”. Slothrop and Sir Steve get pretty hammered and start walking through a nice sunset, where Slothrop sees robed figures, hundreds of miles tall, on the horizon. Sir Stephen informs Slothrop that he’s got “potency issues” (which makes him the perfect observer for Slothrop’s sexual misadventures… “no nasty jissom getting all over their reports, you know” (p. 216)). He’s about to tell Slothrop the secret of “The Penis He Thought Was His Own”...
...but then starts waxing nostalgic about Sir Stephen’s son and his wife, Nora and her “Ideology of the Zero”. An interlude with Eventyr, Sachsa, Leni… “but where will Leni be now? Either we didn’t mean to lose her - either it was an ellipsis in our care, in what some of us even swear is our love, or someone has taken her, deliberately, for reasons being kept secret, and Sachsa’s death is part of it too” (p. 218). More on Sachsa’s death.
Then, Sir Stephen vanishes (“but not before telling Slothrop that his erections of high interest to Fitzmaurice House”). Katje is pissed that Slothy got Sir Steve drunk enough to dish on the plot. They fight and then fuck. More rocket study sessions. The rocket taking off looks like a peacock,
def pfau. Slothrop pressing for more information, Katje rebuffing, warning/advising“Oh, Slothrop… You don’t want me. What they’re after may, but
you don’t. No more than A4 wants London. But I don’t think they know...about other selves...yours or the Rocket’s. No more than you do. If you can’t understand it now, at least remember. That’s all I can do for you” (p. 224).
Then, “They go back up to her room again: cock, cunt, the Monday rain at the windows” (p. 224) (Oh, Tom, you romantic!). And finally, a bit of kazoo music, a final night together, and Katje disappears, too.
Commentary - Slothrop makes an important connection to his childhood and wonders if Katje knows about it/whether she’s with him because of it (ol’ Pynch even manages to work in the rocket, too!): “You were in London while they were coming down. I was in ‘s Gravenhage while they were going up. Between you and me is not only a rocket trajectory but also a life. You will come to understand that between the two points, in the five minutes, it lives an entire life. You haven’t even learned the data on our side of the flight profile, the visible or trackable. Beyond them there’s so much more, so much none of us know” (p. 209).
- More on the import of setting the action in the Casino: “The Forbidden Wing. Oh, the hand of a terrible croupier is that touch on the sleeves of his dreams: all his life of what has looked free or random, is discovered to’ve been under some Control, all the time, the same as a fixed roulette wheel-where only destinations are important, attention is to long-term statistics, not individuals: and where the House does, of course, keep turning a profit…” (p. 209).
- A beautiful passage: “‘Holy shit.” This is the kind of sunset you hardly see any more, a 19th-century wilderness sunset...this anachronism in primal red, in yellow purer than can be found anywhere today, a purity begging to be polluted...of course Empire took its way westward, what other way was there but into those virgin sunsets to penetrate and to foul” (p. 214). Always dualities in this book.
- “A pornography of blueprints” (p. 224). is a nice turn of phrase.
- Foreshadowing: “She has her hair combed high today in a pompadour, her fair eyebrows, plucked to wings, darkened, eyes rimmed in black, only the outboard few lashes missed and left blond.
- Connection to Nabokov: I really do think “Signs and Symbols” influenced this novel. Lines like this, “Here it is again, that identical-looking Other World - is he gonna have this to worry about, now? What th’ - lookit these trees - each long frond hanging, stuny, dizzying, in laborious dry point against the sky, each so perfectly placed…” (p. 225) remind me so much of the atmosphere in the story (itself about paranoia (“referential mania”)). This is a key excerpt from the Nabokov ditty: “In these very rare cases the patient imagines that everything happening around him is a veiled reference to his personality and existence. He excludes real people from the conspiracy - because he considers himself to be so much more intelligent than other men. Phenomenal nature shadows him wherever he goes. Clouds in the staring sky transmit to one another, by means of slow signs, incredibly detailed information regarding him. His inmost thoughts are discussed at nightfall, in manual alphabet, by darkly gesticulating trees. Pebbles or stains or sun flecks form patterns representing in some awful way messages which he must intercept. Everything is a cipher and of everything he is the theme.” Obviously this guy is, uh, slightly more clinical, but I still think the atmosphere/tone is similar between the two.
Episode 25 Summary We begin this episode with a Pavlov lecture about the physiological symptoms of hysteria and one of Pointsman’s poems (which he never shows to anyone). Then to the “White Visitation” chaps (Pointsman, Grunton, Throwster, Groast) rumor-mongering about their future. Things are looking bleak. Pudding might cut off funding, “Slothrop’s knocked out Dodson-Truck and the girl in one day” (p. 227), and Sir Steven’s got the P.M.’s son-in-law making embarrassing inquiries. But Pointsman is calm. Very calm. In fact, “[b]y facing squarely the extinction of his program, he has gained a great bit of Wisdom: that if there is a life force operating in Nature, still there is nothing so analogous in bureaucracy. Nothing so mystical. It all comes down, as it must, to the desires of individual men. Oh, and women too, of course, bless their empty little heads. But survival depends on having strong enough desires - on knowing the System better than the other chap, and how to use it. It’s work, that’s all it is, and there’s no room for any extrahuman activities - they only weaken, effeminize the will: a man either indulges them, or fights to win, und so weiter” (p. 230). And then we find out that Pointman’s figured out how to play Pudding to keep his support (more on that in a bit…) as he’s figured out Treacle, Groast, and Throwster, how to use them and manipulate them to get what he wants. What a fucking devious guy!
Webley Silvernail sticks around after the meeting and imagines the lab animals putting on a beguine performance of a song called “Pavlovia” (right after this realization by Silvernail: “From overhead, from a German camera-angle, it occurs to Webley Silvernail, this lab here is also a maze...but who watches from above, who notes
their reponses?” (p. 229)). And it’s all song and dance for a bit but since it’s Pynchon, it’s followed by an incredible poignant/tragic moment of clarity: “They have had their moment of freedom. Webley has only been a guest start. Now it’s back to the cages and the rationalized forms of death-death in the service of the one species cursed with the knowledge that it will die…. “I would set you free, if I knew how. But it isn’t free out here. All the animals, the plants, the minerals, even other kinds of men, are being broken and reassembled every day, to preserve an elite few, who are the loudest to theorize on freedom, but the least free of all. I can’t even give you hope that it will be different someday - that They’ll come out, and forget death, and lose Their technology’s elaborate terror, and stop using every other form of life without mercy to keep what haunts men down to a tolerable level - and be like you instead, simply here, simply alive….” The guest star retires down the corridors” (p. 230). What a soliloquy. [
Tangent: almost 50 years later, how prescient is this passage?! This little monologue filled me with so many conflicting emotions: hope (because humans like Pynchon exist to dream this stuff up) and also dread because this paragraph describes a fundamental aspect and egregious flaw (or flaws) in human nature. Reading and re-reading this passage depresses me a little (hence my question about mental health below).
Now Pudding is sneaking about
the bowels of “The White Visitation”. He heads past the cells of loonies on his way to a secret rendezvous. It seems like Pointsman may have drugged him at some point to get at hidden desires. We watch as our dear old Brigadier putters from room-to-room, finding items left for him by Pointsman that mock him and describe his descent into a personal hell (for info on the symbolism,
the Weisenburger book is quite helpful).
In the final room, Pudding drops to his knees at the feet of his Domina Nocturna (with “her blond hair...tucked and pinned beneath a thick black wig”... “naked except for a long sable cape and black boots with court heels” (p. 233)). Pudding is thinking of the night they first met. He saw “her” “...through the periscope, underneath a star shell that hung in the sky, he saw her….and though he was hidden, she saw Pudding. Her face was pale, she was dressed all in black, she stood in No-man’s Land, the machine guns raked their patterns all around her, but she needed no protection. “They knew you, Mistress. They were your own.
And so were you” (p. 233).
And then he offers her a “nice” memory of a legion of Franco’s troops killing and getting killed at a massacre at Badajoz for which he is “rewarded” with her beating and then pissing and shitting in his mouth… … … …
However off-putting this may be for some (most), it does something for Pudding. He needs pain. “They have stuffed paper illusions and military euphemisms between him and this truth, this rare decency, this moment at her scrupulous feet….no it’s not guilt here, not so much as amazement - that he could have listened to so many years of ministers, scientists, doctors each with his specialized lies to tell, when she was here all the time, sure in her ownership of his failing body, his true body: undisguised by uniform, uncluttered by drugs to keep from him her communiqués of vertigo, nausea and pain. Above all, pain. The clearest poetry, the endearment of greatest worth…” (p. 234-235).
Munching down on a hot turd makes Pudding think of the horrible smells of his service during WWI: putrid mud, rot, death, “...the sovereign smell of their first meeting, and her emblem” (p. 235). After eating her shit, he jerks off (his release), in a style that Domina Nocturna has learned from watching Captain Blicero and Gottfriend (at this point, it is safe to say, Domina Nocturna is Katje. Will we ever be able to look at her the same?).
Pudding is then dismissed to “...a late-night cup of broth, routine papers to sign, a dose of penicillin that Pointsman has ordered him to take, to combat the effects of
E. Coli” (p. 236). So thoughtful, that Pointsman...
Commentary - The Silvernail hallucination/phantasmagoria seems like something straight out of “The Big Lebowski” had Jodorowsky had a bit of influence over the Coen Bros. art direction. Many of the songs in this section feel “Lebowski-esque” but this one especially so to me. Maybe its the detailed choreographic notes: “They dance in flowing skeins. The rats and mice form circles, curl their tails in and out to make chrysanthemum and sunburst patterns, eventually all form into the shape of a single giant mouse, at whole eye Silvernail poses with a smile” (p. 230).
- The Franco bit is a nice way of linking facism and death worship
- Pudding eating Domina Nocturna’s shit really, to quote an earlier passage, gave “de wrinkles in mah brain a process!”. There is so much symbolism there! Instead of ascending to heaven, Pudding heads down to hell. We have so many dualities linked in the act: between young and old, sacred and profane, pleasure and pain, pleasure through pain, WWI and WW2, man and woman, life and death, the general as a slave, even the food transformed through Katje into waste, all linked through the act of eating shit. For a moment they are linked so intimately, so delicately. No parabolas, a circle. And, of course, there’s also the diabolical Pointsman in the background, pulling the strings and manipulating to keep Pudding in line. I remember reading this for the first time and just being shocked and confused and now reading it again and finding so much meaning. That ol’ Pynchon is a devious bastard, hiding such loaded symbolism in such an obscene encounter. The Pulitzer committee had no idea what was coming for them!
So, if you’ve reached this point, congratulations and I am sorry! Here are my discussion questions. Looking forward to future posts!
Discussion Questions Both On Topic and Tangential - Why is paranoia described as a “Puritan reflex” in Episode 22?
- In Episode 23, as Slothrop peruses Katje’s extensive wardrobe, what is the significance of the line, “Aha! wait a minute, the operational scent in here is carbon tet, Jackson, and this wardrobe here’s mostly props” (p. 195)?
- In Episode 24, what’s the significance of “the watchmen of world’s edge”? Is this an intrusion of the spirit world? Is Slothrop just hallucinating?
- In Episode 24, when Peter Sachsa gets the blow to the temple from Schutzmann Jöche, why is his last thought, “How beautiful!” (p. 220)
- In Episode 25, there’s a line in the part where Pudding is sneaking around: “A voice from some cell too distant for us to locate intones:...” (p. 231). Why us here? Why the change in perspective?
- How’s this book affecting everyone’s mental health (you know, given that we’re in the end times right now)? Seriously, though, there are times when this book makes me so happy to be alive and proud of humanity and also times where it depresses the everloving shit out of me and makes me think that, as a species, we’re doomed to continue making the same mistakes, over and over again, until we end up destroying ourselves.
- In a similar vein, do you think people as prodigiously talented and brilliant as Pynchon have any responsibility to counter the evil they see in the world? Is writing books enough or should they do more (lead, teach, etc.) to fight against the awful things they are able to see before the rest of us do?
Resources - GR Wiki & Annotations - here
- Some Things That “Happen” (More or less) in “Gravity’s Rainbow” - here
- Larry Daw’s reading notes - here
- Weisenberger’s Book at the Internet Archive - here; Zak Smith’s book - here (gotta “rent”/ “borrow” both).
- Notes from a class on GR at Swathmore College - here
- How Pynchon Avoids Cultural Appropriation - here
- “History & Fiction: The Narrative Voices of Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow” (2004) by Paul A. Bové
- “A Supernatural History of Destruction; or, Thomas Pynchon’s Berlin” (2010) by Eric Bulson
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