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].
