Secret Services & Gravity's Rainbow: The Author

One of the greatest mistery about the Gravity's Rainbow book is infact the Author itself...We know his name, and few biographical information but his face is a real mistery. Only a few photos of him are known to exist, nearly all from his high school and college days, and his whereabouts have often remained undisclosed. Pynchon's personal absence from mass media is one of the notable features of his life, and it has generated many rumors and apocryphal anecdotes, like its behaviour has been considered as both marketing and writing strategy.

According to the first one, all the secrecy will make the audience even more curious about him, creating a legend, a mysterious halo around the Glen Cove writer. This thory is supported by his appereance in two Simpson episode, pictured with a bag on his head but dubbed with the author real voice.

(terrible definition but it is the only one that I've found)

Here's your quote: "Thomas Pynchon loved this book. Almost as much as he loves cameras!" (Angrily Shouted)

The second one, on the other hand, affirme that Pynchon choice of not appearing on mass medias, not releasing photos and interviews is due to the fact that he wants to comunicate with his readers only through his works, books and introductions, avoiding to influence their vision them. Evidences in agreement with this second theory are the numerous lines and references to critical discussion about his fiction.

Now is up to you to choose which opinion you agree with!!

Sources

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pynchon

http://pynchonwiki.com/

http://www.thomaspynchon.com/

Entire Collection of Chipher and Other

As it is well known secret services are a very well diffused practise, especially useful during war, or more generally in periods of international tension.. In the link below you can find an interesting collection of photos of devices used by various agencies in the world during the 20th century, such as chiper machines, spy equipement, radio, telegraph machines etc...

http://ciphermachines.com/photos/index.php




The argument of this post is related to the ones contained in Secret Services & Spy Sets, Secret Services & Patents: The Enigma Machine, Secret Services & The Enigma Machine, Secret Services & Radio, Secret Services & Cracking Enigma: The Bombe, Secret Services & Bombe 2.0, Telegraph & Morse Code, Minicameras 2.0 and in Minicameras...micro optics at the service of the spies

The Art in the Agency

Few paintings, by James Hart Dyke, from Art Exhibition about SIS entitled "A Year with the MI6" is held in the Mount Street Gallery in London

Battersea Power Station

Street scene in Kabul

The HQ

Entrance Hall

Waiting in the hotel room

Contrasts

Going for a meeting

Early orning view over Kabul

Line Drawing

Station

Mansfield CUMMING (1st SIS Chief)

The argument of this post is related to the ones contained in Maps & Secret Services and in SIS, aka MI6...A little bit of History.

Source:
https://www.sis.gov.uk/our-history/centenary/a-year-with-mi6-art-exhibition.html

SIS, aka MI6...A little bit of History

As I've already said in the post Secrecy...Pro & Con cryptography departements have a story that dates back in ancient times...but if it's of proprer organizations, meaning agency, that we're talking about, the're first appereance is way more tardive....In particular, in the case of the SIS, the foundation year, as reported by the agency itself, is the 1909 with the Name of Secret Services Bureau, as a response to the continuous and threatening expansion of the German military and naval army, but its exhistance hadn't been revealed until the 1994 even if rumors were already spread by the publication of the literary succes of the James Bond Series by Ian Flemming.

Actually there were already multiples sign of activity since the late 15th century, at the time of  Tudors: there were infact powerful names like Cromwelles, which was intercecting messages in the country and abroad for Henry VIII, and Sir Francis Walsingham, Private Secretary for Elizabeth I, which discovered the conspiracy against the Queen directed by Mary the queen of Scots...
(further description about this episode can be found in the first chapter of The Code book, by Simon Singh)


The SIS is a the military inteligence section 6 (MI6), and it is divided its self in braches in which  the S.O.E. (Special Operations Executive) was included and that still includes the G.C.H.Q, the unit responsible for Signal Inteligence (SIGINT) and information insurance, and the G.C.&C.S., the code-breacking division creating during the WWII.

If you want to discover all the incredible men who took the lead of this incredible department:
https://www.sis.gov.uk/our-history/previous-chiefs.html

It is possible to find more information about the Historical Events affected by the work of the SIS checking the two links below:
https://www.sis.gov.uk/our-history.html
http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=3683
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Intelligence_Service

Or in alternative in the book
MI6: The history of the Secret Inteligence Service from 1909-1949, by Prof. Keith JEFFERY,  [click on the title for a preview]

The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS)...Books' Point of View

Following a list of quotes from both books but all regarding the same argument: the SIS organization, also known as S.O.E., or MI6 or The Firm (just in Pynchon's book)...Enjoy...

Pirate Prentice is a strange talent for—well, for getting inside the fantasies of others: being able, actually, to take over the burden of managing them, in this case those of an exiled Rumanian royalist who may prove needed in the very near future. It is a gift the Firm has found uncommonly useful: at this time mentally healthy leaders and other historical figures are indispensable. What better way to cup and bleed them of excess anxiety than to get someone to take over the running of their exhausting little daydreams for them ... to live in the tame green lights of their tropical refuges, in the breezes through their cabanas, to drink their tall drinks, changing your seat to face the entrances of their public places, not letting their innocence suffer any more than it already has ... to get their erections for them, at the oncome of thoughts the doctors feel are inappropriate


So of course when Pirate makes the mistake of verifying the fantasy with Loaf, it's not very long at all before higher echelons know about it too. Into the dossier it goes, and eventually the Firm, in Their tireless search for negotiable skills, will summon him under Whitehall, to observe him in his trances across the blue baize fields and the terrible paper gaming, his eyes rolled back into his head reading old, glyptic old graffiti on his own sockets. . . .
The first few times nothing clicked. The fantasies were O.K. but belonged to nobody important. But the Firm is patient, committed to the Long Run as They are.


Novi Pazar, anyhow, was still a croix mystique on the palm of Europe, and EO. finally decided to go to the Firm for help. The Firm knew just the man.


Early in 1939, he was discovered mysteriously suffocated in a bathtub full of tapioca pudding, at the home of a Certain Viscountess. Some have seen in this the hand of the Firm.


It's as useful to him as he is to the Firm—who, it is well known, will use anyone, traitors, murderers, perverts, Negroes, even women, to get what They want. They may not've been that sure of Pirate's usefulness at first, but later, as it developed, They were to grow very sure, indeed.


His best guess is that Mexico only now and then supports the Firm's latest mania, known as Operation Black Wing, in a statistical way—analyzing what foreign-morale data may come in, for instance— but someplace out at the fringes of the enterprise, as indeed Pirate finds himself here tonight, acting as go-between for Mexico and his own roommate Teddy Bloat.


There's now been no word of Slothrop for nearly a month, since the fumbling asses in military intelligence lost him in Zurich. Pointsman is a bit browned-off with the Firm. His clever strategy appears to've failed


No  one has ever left the Firm alive, no one in history—and no one ever will.

The Firm know perfectly well that you've come here. They'll expect a full report from you now. Either voluntary or some other way.

They will not understand, the gently bred maniacs of S.O.E. ah very good, Captain rattling sitreps, shuffling boots, echoes off of Government eyeglasses jolly good and why not do it actually for us sometime at the Club. . . . Pirate wants Their trust, the good-whisky-and-cured-Latakia scent of Their rough love.

Well: he guesses They have euchred Mexico into some such Byzantine exercise, probably to do with the Americans.

Like every young man growing up in England, he was conditioned to get a hardon in the presence of certain fetishes, and then conditioned to feel shame about his new reflexes. Could there be, somewhere, a dossier, could They (They?) somehow have managed to monitor everything he saw and read since puberty . . . how else would They know?

Everybody was waiting around for a Captain Prentice from S.O.E. (those
prickly bastards take their time about everything), who does presently show up. Slothrop
gets a glimpse— windburned face, big mean mother. Prentice takes the cylinder, drives
away, and that's that.

Pirate Prentice of the S.O.E. came back with the first hard intelligence that
there were indeed in Germany real Africans, Hereros, ex-colonials from South-West
Africa, somehow active in the secret-weapons program

Squalidozzi did show up again though, in Bremerhaven. He had just been chased
across what was left of Germany by British Military Intelligence, with no idea why.


For some reason now, she who never laughs has become the top surface of a deep,
rising balloon of laughter. Later as she's about to go to sleep, she will also whisper,
"Laughing," laughing again.
He will want to say, "Oh, They let you," but then again maybe They don't. But the Katje
he's talking to is already gone, and presently his own eyes have closed.

[Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas PYNCHON, ]


Also there, to Lloyd’s surprise, was Major Lowther, who had been in charge of the intelligence
course at Tŷ Gwyn, and had been snootily disapproving – or perhaps just envious – of Lloyd’s
friendship with Daisy. 
Lloyd knew that Lowthie had been posted to the British Embassy in Madrid, and guessed he
worked for MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, but he would not have expected to see him this far from the capital.

[Winter of the World, Ken FOLLET]


The argument of this post is related to the ones contained in Maps & Secret Services, The Art in the Agency and in SIS, aka MI6...A little bit of History.

If it was...

Our Professor V. Marchis proposed us a new challenge to face in building the structural base of this blog... It consist in chosing a single paint, song and movie that could fully describe our blog. Sadly for me, I haven't figured it all out yet, but for now I can present you my idea of which is picture that  in my mind correspond  to a visual transfiguration of my blog: the Gioconda by Leonardo Da Vinci

Gioconda, by Leonardo Da Vinci, Musée du Louvre, Paris

My connection might result a little bit illogical or unfounded to some of you, due to the great time and topic lapse, but I can assure you that there are few interesting links between the two elemets.

First of all they are both an incredible example of the Technique: the Gioconda painting is a demonstration of the amazing drawing and painting skills of the author Leonardo da Vinci, of his innovative genius: like the use of the sfumato, a method that consinsts in making a a subject blend in what is sorrounding it, by not drawing the outlines. The evolution lies in the presence of the atmosphere as a visual element of the painter's original perception of the reality.
On the other side secret services are the maximum expression of technology in terms of prototypes, since all new inventions pass under the army's supervision before being patented to see if they can be of military interest; in terms of security since they can boast he newest and most advanced instruments to encrypt and break codes, really usefull when it comes to understand others movement, to built an advantage in war time and prevent unpleasant situations that could put an end to a peaceful period; and in terms of organization since they control an entire system of many agents, spread all around the country taken into consideration and most probably all around the world, with different capabilities to absolve multiple functions.

Another common pecularity is given by the mistery halo that surround them: in the first case the enigma around the subject, the painter's choices about the eyes, the pose of the body, the ambiguous facial expression etc, in the other one due to the need of absolute secrecy in treating classified data like undercover agent identities and witness protection programme information.
I don't think it is wrong to think that it's just that not knowing, those secrets that concern them is the real cause of a such great media interest, like for example literary and cinematographic productions such as  The Da Vinci Code and the series of 007 by Ian Fleming.

        
 

Coded Messages

It always have been clear to any king, emperor or government that keeping important messages and information from falling into hostile hands, is essential for the nation,empire or reign sake in both peace and war periods. That's why each one of them has created cryptography departement since ancient times.

Following I present two tecniques for coding messages mentioned in Pynchon's book. Actually these two example refer more to Steganography rather then Criptography, which is a less efficient way to keeping a message secret, because the message is just hidden...once it's discovered it can be easily read by anyone. A solution to this problem could be combining the two techniques, creating multiple issue to deal with in forcing the message as in the Kryptosam example (last quote).

Code messages in a dozen Slavic tongues were being tattooed on bare upper lips over which the
operatives then grew mustaches, to be shaved off only by authorized crypto officers and
skin then grafted over the messages by the Firm's plastic surgeons .. . their lips were
palimpsests of secret flesh, scarred and unnaturally white, by which they all knew each
other.

Teddy Bloat's [...] packing inside his stylish kangaroohide musette bag and threaded
around the odd necessities— midget spy-camera, jar of mustache wax



"Kryptosam" is a proprietary form of stabilized tyrosine, developed by IG Farben as
part of a research contract with OKW. An activating agent is included which, in the
presence of some component of the seminal fluid to date [1934] unidentified, promotes
conversion of the tyrosine into melanin, or skin pigment. In the absence of seminal fluid,
the "Kryptosam" remains invisible. No other known reagent, among those available to
operatives in the field, will alter "Kryp-tosam" to visible melanin. It is suggested, in
cryptographic applications, that a proper stimulus be included with the message which
will reliably produce tumescence and ejaculation. A thorough knowledge of the
addressee's psychosexual profile would seem of invaluable aid.
—prof. dr. laszlo jamf, "Kryptosam" (advertising brochure), Agfa, Berlin, 1934

Enough sperm saved, though, to rub over the blank scrap  enclosed with the picture. Slowly then, a revelation through the nacreous film of his seed,  in Negro-brown, comes his message: put in a simple Nihilist transposition whose keywords he can almost guess.

[Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon]

The Nihilist Transposition is a real cripthography sample, where letters are turned into other using a row column transposition, following the pattern dictated by a Polybius square built on the base of a wordkey. Initially created by Russian spies it has been adopted also by the heads of the KGB

If you want to get into the Nihilist Transposition to know more or even learn how to use it for sending your secret messages go on and check these link below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilist_cipher
http://www.cryptogram.org/cdb/aca.info/aca.and.you/chap08.html#NIHITR

Further explanations about the difference between Cryptography and Steganography are given in the book  The Code Book, by Simon Singh, a book that I've already mentioned in the post Secrecy...Pro & Con