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One general note concerning Argentinian political history: I'm pretty ignorant on this subject, and would appreciate if anyone reading along is better acquainted with it, and has info they think is relevant, hearing about it. Whatever I do know in this regard comes from V. S. Naipaul's excellent essay, "The Return of Eva Peron" -- if you're interested in finding out about that, check out my note on it at http://www.readin.com/books/evaperon.

p. 383 "tristes and milongas": Argentine folk song styles

p. 383 "El laberinto de tu incertidumbre/ Me trama con la disquietante luna": Weisenburger's translation, which I got from Heikki's essay on "The Feathery Rilke Mustaches", is "The labyrinth of your uncertainty/ Detains me with the disquieting moon"; he says the lines are not from a real poem by Borges.

p. 383 "El Ñato" -- translation? "caña" -- my friend Jim tells me the best translation, when this word is used by itself, is "a tall cold glass of beer". "Beláustegui" -- I can't figure out how this name should be pronounced, so I trip over it when I'm reading. Could someone post the proper pronunciation?

p. 384 "Bremerhaven": A port in northern Germany, at the mouth of the Weser.

p. 384 "Ibargüengoitia": again, I'm not clear on pronunciation here. I was having a hard time, too, figuring out just who this was; but thanks to the diligence of Khachig Tölölyan, Clay Leighton, and Bernard Duyfhuizen in compiling an index to Gravity's Rainbow (available from Pynchon Notes), I know that it is the contact Slothrop met in Zürich.

p. 384 "harmonica factory": oh boy!

p. 385 "Caligari gloves": is there a connection here to Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari? I am told Siegfried Kracauer's book From Caligari to Hitler is an excellent resource for understanding German cinema -- however it went right over my head.

p. 385 "Bob Steele": an actor in Westerns. for a list of his films you can look at http://us.imdb.com/Name?Steele,+Bob+(I).

p. 385 "Edouard Sanktwölke": his name means "sacred clouds". The funny hyphenation in the Penguin edition kept me, at first, from seeing this.

p. 386 "'Haven't you got a kis for the Gaucho Bakunin?'/ 'You look more like a Gaucho Marx...'": This is a really well-done jump between tenses; moving from pre- to post-von Göll.

p. 386 "Martin Fierro": any of those hypothetical Argentine history experts I appealed to above wanna lay some analysis on us? The complete text (in Spanish, natch) is online at http://www.interserver.com.ar/host/raggio/egmf.htm.

p. 386 "I Promessi Sposi": an opera by Alessandro Manzoni; title in English is "The Betrothed". My appeal here is to scholars of the Italian 19th century. The essay "Donna Prassede e il massacro di Waco" by Marcello Gardani, which I can't understand because it's in Italian, see, looks rilly interesting; it purports to explore the parallels between "I Promessi Sposi" and the killings in Waco. You can read it at http://www.christusrex.org/www1/gardani/waco.htm.

p. 388 "wipes": I am assuming this is some kind of film terminology.

p. 388 "Lüderitzbucht": a port in Namibia -- presumably when the continents had not separated, the east coast of Argentina would be snuggled up against the west coast of Namibia. Rio de la Plata is the river separating Argentina from Uruguay.

p. 388 "Lüneberg heath": near Bremerhaven.

p. 388 What mania inspires Beláustegui to fire the torpedo at a passing ship? Or is it an accidental firing?