1/ Here’s a The Crying of Lot 49 🧵 I’m FRANKly stoked to share—this time, we’re unpacking my argument that Pynchon encoded Frank Zappa & his military chemist father Francis Zappa into the text, which gels w/ his subtextual mapping of the military-Mafia-MK-Ultra-music complex: 
2/ Most Pynchon-heads agree that TP frequently uses half names to make multiple, interlocking references. Zapf’s Used Books is a prime example of this. The surface level reference is Hermann Zapf, a German typographer & calligrapher (created Optima, Palatino, & Zapfino).
3/ This reference coheres w/ the Operation Paperclip undercurrent of CoL49, as Zapf was enlisted by the Third Reich during WWII & served in the First Army’s cartography unit in Bordeaux. After the war, Zapf sought biz. opportunities in the US, lecturing on computer typography…
4/…at Harvard in ‘64—a possible explanation for Pynchon’s familiarity. Alternatively, TP may have heard of Zapf via his trademark fonts or the fact the Pierpont Morgan Library commissioned him to calligraph the U.N. Preamble in ‘60 (Morgan fam are a major part of CoL49 subtext).
5/ Also, have to point out that Zapf first became interested in typography while creating ciphers as a kid 👀 ; couple this w/ his Nazi cartography work, and perhaps Pynchon knows something about Zapf we don’t (like something Angleton + Vessel Affair related?)...
6/ I don’t think Zapf’s Used Books is just a Hermann reference, tho. Think about it—Zapf is the first three letters of Frank Zappa’s last name followed by the first of his first. Zapf = F. Zap = Frank(cis) Zappa. That probly sounds insane, but trust me, we’re just getting started
7/ Take Zappa’s Dad’s career as a military chemist & mathematician. Zappa spent his early childhood at the Edgewood Arsenal & accompanying Edgewood School. He grew up playing w/ the gas masks & hammering liquid mercury that his Dad brought home w/ toy mallets.
8/ From ‘48 - ‘75, various US Army Chemical Corps researchers, technicians, & 8 Operation Paperclip Nazi doctors conducted classified human subject experiments on over 7000 military personnel & 1000 civilians involving chemical warfare agents & psychoactive compounds.
9/ Altho it’s impossible to know for certain as Papa Zappa’s work was classified, there’s a high chance he worked directly on these projects, especially in the early stages (‘48 - ‘51)—research that grew increasingly invested in discovering psychoactive compounds that would…
10/…render the traditional field of battle obsolete. The Edgewood Arsenal research tested over 250 different “midspectrum incapacitants” on humans, including mustard gas, sarin, CS, benzodiazepines, THC, PCP, MDMA, & LSD—a % even studying lethality. Pynchon’s allusion…
11/…to Edgewood calls back to the “MasSUSchusetts” series, too, as the ongoing research was directly inspired by a Harvard anesthesiologist named Henry K. Beecher. Herny—a German-American btw—conducted top secret mescaline studies…
12/…at CIA & Project BLUEBIRD interrogation center Camp King in Germany in the years following the war. He “exchanged ideas” w/ Nazi Dr. Walter Schreiber & was frequently tasked w/ evaluating the results of Nazi Concentration Camp studies. He accidentally killed a US psych…
13/…ward patient w/ an injected dose of mescaline at NY State in the 1950s. Remember how Dr. Hilarius’s clinical study is also studying the effects of mescaline on Californian housewives? Beecher’s research convinced the DoD that psychochemicals are the more “humane” option.
14/ People like Gen. William Creasy began to publicly proclaim psychochemicals as the future of warfare in the late ‘50s. We’re going to do a more in-depth dive into Edgewood Arsenal in the pod, but I still have to convince you that Zapf = Zappa.
15/ How might Pynchon have heard of Frank Zappa’s Dad? A few possibilities: as mentioned Francis Zappa was a military chemist & mathematician—Pynchon applied to UC Berkeley’s grad math program & was denied in mid-60s, same time Francis lived in CA.
16/ In the early 60s, TP was living & working as a technical writer for Boeing in Seattle, so it’s highly possible he heard of Francis thru the military-industrial grapevine. Francis worked on the Atlas Missile Project in San Diego in the 1950s, building the very first ICBMs.
17/ The above hints at possible US chem warheads—Pynchon could have heard about this work any # of ways. Finally, from a strictly military perspective, Zappa taught at the Navy Postgrad School in Monterey for a few years; Pynchon served as an electrician/ engineer in the USN.
18/ Pynchon attended boot camp in Bainbridge, MD, albeit not when the Zappas were living in MD. But to solidify this reference, we gotta mention another: the stamp collector Genghis Cohen. Like Zapf, I believe Cohen is another multivalent reference—this time Herb & Mickey Cohen.
19/ On surface level, Genghis Cohen = Mickey Cohen makes the most sense, as Mickey Cohen was basically the Sunset Strip Kingpin w/ Mafia & Vegas connections goin way back. He started as a boxer & spent Prohibition enforcing for the Chicago Outfit/ Capone’s bro.
20/ In the 30s, Meyer Lansky sent him to Vegas to run the sportsbook at Flamingo. By Pynchon’s time in Manhattan Beach, he had been in & out of Alcatraz & was running shit on the Strip. Herb Cohen, meanwhile, was a fellow NYer (like Pynchon), a Jew from the Bronx.
21/ Herb was a Marine before he got into the nightlife & music business in LA, running folk clubs like the Unicorn & Cosmo Alley. As McGowan points out in “Weird Scenes”, he was curiously in the Congo around the time of Lumumba’s downfall—Cohen claimed he was running guns.
22/ Herb Cohen began managing a little known proto-prog act called The Mothers of Invention sometime in ‘64/5, helping them to book gigs in LA. Btw, guess what 2 seminal works of art were both released in June of ‘66? Yep, CoL49 & “Freak Out!” came out mere days apart.
23/ Knowing Pynchon to be an encyclopedic consumer of pop culture, it’s undeniable he was tuned into The Mothers rapid rise in the nascent Laurel Canyon scene—the parallels of TP & Zappa’s respective ascents from 64 - 66 is uncanny. Cohen also managed Odetta, Alice Cooper, etc.
24/ TP was clued into the bicoastal folk scene b4 he ever moved to Manhattan Beach, as his best bud Richard Fariña was a regular at the White Horse Tavern & part of NYC’s Greenwich set. Patrons included Bob Dylan, Baldwin, Hunter S. Thompson, & Jim Morrison (son of Admiral 👀)
25/ You’ve also got Pynchon's essay on the Watts Riots, published in The New York Times; Frank Zappa wrote a song about the riots for “Freak Out!”, as well. CoL49’s main musical act The Paranoids seem more than a lil Zappa-coded—what do paranoiacs do? Freak out.
26/ This only scratches the surface—there's plenty more re: biographical overlap b/w TP, Richard Fariña, & Herb Cohen, as well as a detailed breakdown of Pynchon's military-Mafia-music complex references in ParaPower Mapping —"Comparative Paranoid Analysis (Pt. II)". Check it!
27/ Huh. Account was 🔒 momentarily for "sus activity" for the very first time. 📎-posting Rite of Passage!
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