Status Updates From Gravity’s Rainbow

This has come up a few times, but what language are they speaking? Does everyone in this book speak English? In the Zone, are they all speaking German and Pynchon is translating? It seems unlikely that a random Russian soldier they run into deep in Germany would just automatically speak English.

Holy-Center-Approaching — HCE, Finnegans Wake ref

Have only recently reached a point where I’m beginning to grasp this, but what an indictment of the ugly origins of the postwar (and in-war) military-industrial complex and its various transnational apparatuses. I’m thankful that Pynchon gives us the looney tunes episodes and the weird false flag sex stuff to fill in the troughs between the utter horror of war at every imagined level. yeesh