Austin Meakim’s Reviews > Gravity’s Rainbow > Status Update

Ghislaine drops away, back down the beach, to pick up prim Bloat. Katje squeezes Slothrop’s arm and tells him just what he wants to hear about now: “Perhaps, after all, we were meant to meet.."

“Little Tyrone,” she whispers suddenly, taking his arm with a big phony smile for the others. Little? He’s twice her size. “Please—be very careful. . . .”That’s all. He has Katje by the other hand, two imps, contrary, either side.

Dimples appear next to her mouth. “Did you know all the time about the octopus? I thought so because it was so like a dance—all of you.”
“No. Honestly, I didn’t. You mean you thought it was just a practical joke or something?”

Slothrop, who believes that women, like Martians, have antennas men do not, keeps an eye on her. She looks over only once, and her eyes grow wide and cryptic. He’d swear she knows something.
(Ghislaine, Bloats girl for the day)

Pale lines of force whir in the sea air . . . pacts sworn to in rooms since shelled back to their plan views, not quite by accident of war, suggest themselves. Oh, that was no “found” crab, Ace—no random octopus or girl, uh-uh. Structure and detail come later, but the conniving around him now he feels instantly, in his heart.

So it is here, grouped on the beach with strangers, that voices begin to take on a touch of metal, each-word a hard-edged clap, and the light, though as bright as before, is less able to illuminate .. . it’s a Puritan reflex of seeking other orders behind the visible, also known as paranoia, filtering in.

“Why not? You had that crab. Saaay—where’d you get that crab?” at
“Found it,” replies Bloat with a straight face. Slothrop stares this bird but can’t get eye contact. What th’ fuck’s going on?
“I better have some of that wine,” Slothrop reckons. He drinks out of the bottle.

In their brief time together Slothrop forms the impression that this octopus is not in good mental health, though where’s his basis for comparing?

“Slothrop!” Here’s Bloat ten feet away offering him a large crab.
“What th’ fuck

who was to know that among her last things would be vulgar-faced hula girls, ukuleles, and surfriders all in comic-book colors . . . oh God God please, the bottle thudding again and again wetly into, octopus flesh, no fucking use, the octopus gazes at Slothrop, triumphant, while he, in the presence of certain death, can’t quit staring at her hand,