Paperware to Vaporware, The Nativity of Tyrone Slothrop

– 3 –

I hope you have all done your homework on this – at least those of you who are interested in sharing the cosmic implications of my conclusions, because I will now disclose the results of my research, investigation, and cross-examination of the various double Virgo combinations. This was no easy task, believe me, and my two first deductions, unfortunately, each for reasons of their own, had to be discarded. But take a look at these charts also (you too, Thomas, if you ever happen to be reading these lines) and tell me what you think. I’d really appreciate it.

Astrologically we are definitely informed that Slothrop is a double Virgo [699] and pushing thirty in the summer of 1945 [463]. Give or take one day on either side due to leap years and time zones, the astrological sign of Virgo extends between August 23 - September 23. Pushing thirty in the summer of 1945 suggests a year of birth between earliest in 1915 and latest in 1919. A twelfth-house double Virgo indicates a birth time shortly after sunrise: at this time of year most convincingly between 7-7:45 a.m. for a distinct twelfth-house solar position – the Sun must be clearly and irreproachably placed in the Twelfth House. These initial technical deductions give us five possible years of birth (1915-1919) to analyze, compare, and ultimately confirm with the family tradition, characteristic traits, and given/known events in the life span of Tyrone Slothrop.

There are various ways of doing this – my preferred method is by process of elimination. The first clue is the conditioning of Infant Tyrone in 1920 [84]. How old is an infant and at what age does an infant become a toddler? Being neither a pediatrician nor a child psychologist, nevertheless, my qualified assumption would be between six months and two years. If we now compare young Tyrone being swung around upside down by his feet in 1924-25 [285] we must ask ourselves how this age fits to Infant Tyrone. If an infant is between six months and two years in 1920, than a young boy would be between five and seven years old in 1924-25. Even a young boy is usually to heavy to be swung around by his feet after the age of seven – try it yourself and see how long you last!

The next chronological clue is young Tyrone visiting his aunt and uncle in April 1931 and hearing the footsteps of his big and little cousins. Tyrone is still young in this episode, has older and younger cousins, but is not called a teenager, thus suggesting an age under thirteen. According to the first two deductions, and being born in the Autumn, this would put him between 11½-12½ in the Spring of 1931 which points to a year of birth in either in 1918 or 1919 – thereby eliminating the years 1915, 1916, and 1917 as chronologically plausible years of his birth. This process of elimination of these three years is further accentuated by the following two statements: “growing up in the thirties not knowing quite what to think of the family witch” [330], and his father/son fatal complex as a “typical American teenager” in the thirties [674]. If Tyrone were born in 1915, 1916, or 1917 he would already be 20, a “twen,” by 1935, 1936, or 1937 and Pynchon himself put the word “thirties” in italics. From the first three conclusions concerning his age, I understand growing up and as a teenager in the thirties to mean between 1932-1938.

This conclusion and logical assumption still leaves us either with the year 1918 or 1919 as the year of Slothrop’s birth. The next direct clue is the Autumn of 1939 when Harvard boy Tyrone is vomiting beer in the men’s room at the Roseland Ballroom with both classmate JFK and shoeshine boy Malcolm X present [63, 688]. JFK was born May 29, 1917 and Malcolm X on May 19, 1925. The legal drinking age in Massachusetts at that time was 21 thus pointing to a birth in 1918 (Tyrone would have just recently turned 21, celebrating his adult drinking freedom in the Jazz club), but not excluding 1919. However, if he were born in 1919 this would make him two years younger than classmate JFK – highly inconceivable, and even one year younger gives ground for certain afterthoughts. On the other hand, a birth in 1917 would make him a toddler in 1920, a heavy 7½ year old in 1925 and a teenager in 1931.

The bulk of Slothrop’s phenomenal experiences, intensive odyssey, fatal self-recognition, mythological dispersal, and transformative externalization into the minds of most present-day readers (that’s why I’m undertaking this task!) takes place between September 1944 when the first V2 bombs strike London and the Autumn of 1945 where he is “dying a weird death,” becomes fragmented in the Zone, present at his time’s assembly, denied by his own likes yet leaves innumerable offshoots of his original scattering [738-42]. The primary clue to these events and developments, which can be astrologically verified or rejected by projecting a progressive horoscope for given dates from 1918 and 1919 to 1944-45, is those “past Slothrops, say averaging one a day, ten thousand of them . . . ” [624].

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Links zu Douglas Kløvedal Lannark:

Douglas Kløvedal Lannark: MASON & DIXON: An Astrological Review — on this server.

Douglas Kløvedal Lannark: Hand–drawn Chart of Tyrone Slothrop — on this server.

Douglas Kløvedal Lannark: Venus Rules — Love — on this server.

The Fifth Gate – A documentary by Bente Milton: “Douglas Lannark is an acclaimed astrologer and expert in the various calendar systems used around the world.”

Douglas Kløvedal Lannark: Wann beginnt das neue Jahrtausend ? Kalender und Zeitrechnung – Meridian, 21.Jhg. 1999 / Heft 6.

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