Paperware to Vaporware, The Nativity of Tyrone Slothrop
– 5 –
Feeling absolutely convinced of the date, August 31, 1918, I proceeded to calculate the time of birth until reaching a time which corresponded to a clear twelfth-house solar position, the house positions of the other planets, and the relocation to London, Berlin, etc. Amazingly, as if Pynchon himself were scanning the Ephemeris, this only took a few minutes before 7:15 a.m. EWT proved itself to be the most feasible – if not the exact – time of his birth. No matter how fictitious a figure he might have been, all astrological positions suit the profile, family history, and the biography of Tyrone Slothrop as I understand his destiny and externalization. I may be wrong, but professionally I am fully content with August 31, 1918 at 7:15 a.m. EWT in Mingeborough, MA., USA as being the nativity of Tyrone Slothrop.
Before going on with the delineation of the nativity, allow me to convey some personal statements, remarks, and notes regarding my comparative examination of the years in question in order to determine a conclusive date of birth for Tyrone Slothrop (many of you are probably wondering what happened to the year 1919). Please excuse certain necessary repetitions.
Perhaps being an ex-delegate from the Committee of Idiopathic Archetypes, and a sucker for that pushing 30 line [463], my first thought was a Virgo from 1915. As if wanting to make matters too easy for me, I immediately noticed in the ephemeris an incredibly suitable chart for September 4, 1915, 6:51 a.m. EST: The Fool, Rocketman, Schwarzvater, avuncular Pig, the Hanged Man upside down etc.; they were all present in this chart. But no, it had to be discarded – too early to be an Infant in 1920 or a Harvard boy in 1939. Nice try, Tom – with that pushing 30 I mean . . . but it is a common colloquialism in the US to say “pushing” after passing the age of 25 (or 35, 45, 55 etc.).
The second conclusion, September 8, 1919, 7:17 a.m. EWT, was even more difficult to discard – took me over two weeks to shred it. Oh, was it ever a remarkable chart: a bizarre Rocketman syndrome along the royalty/anarchy axis with willing women everywhere, in its overview the unusual sea-saw figure (the main astrological binary figure), Schwarzvater somewhat weakened but Übervater Laszlo Jamf looming hauntingly behind the scenes, drugs/jazz/movies/nature as a keynote, yet still the useless Hanged Man, Fool Tarot. In this chart Venus was also in the Twelfth House, retrograde in Virgo, a position which occurs only every eighth year, fully explaining his amorous ambiguities and inner search for grace!
What finally caused me to put this chart aside were two major statements in Gravity’s Rainbow – the Roseland Ballroom scene in 1939, where, unless illegally, Slothrop could not have been vomiting beer in the Men’s Room as the drinking age in the US is 21, and in August 1945 those past Slothrops, ten thousand of them. Translated into time, ten thousand Slothrops equals 27 years, 4 months and 16 days! Counting backwards from August 1945, “say averaging one a day,” this would place his birthday around the Spring Equinox of 1918!! However, from his father’s statement [699], we are told Tyrone is a double Virgo and from the narrative that Wernher von Braun and Dr. Livingstone were born around this point – each on their own side of the Equinox, as a matter of fact. So I found myself caught up in just another one of those conjectural chronological confusions so typical in the wor ks of Thomas Pynchon, and this intriguingly fascinating chart ended up in the wastepaper basket.
After months of trail and error, comparing charts to dates, going through the process of elimination, and seriously hoping to avoid “the-mediocrity-in-the-lives-of-his-chroniclers‘” prophecy of Slothrop’s infamous Tarot [738], I have come to a professional astrological conclusion that Tyrone Slothrop was born on Saturday (the day of Destiny ), August 31, 1918, 7:15 a.m. EWT in Mingeborough, Berkshire County, MA., USA. The following diagram is the horoscope for this date, time, and place of birth displaying the ten planets in the twelve zodiacal signs, the twelve terrestrial houses, and the mutual aspects between them. Because of three unusual stelliums (a clustering of planets within only a few degrees of a given zodiacal sign) and considering graphic æsthetics, I have only drawn the major aspects as one line between the signs [houses] and planets – where, as between Virgo and Cancer, there are actually six lines.
Tyrone Slothrop
31 August 1918, 7:15 a.m. EWT
Mingeborough, Ma, USA, [42N31, 73W12]
