grinder wrote:"you can't be separated unless you are originally together!" so they must have been working together during the war AND YET Paul, You never mention Beau Kitselman? Why not? I don't want to be a pest here so now I am just going to go away and take notes so I won't be flooding you with comments and questions. Whatever happened today got my full and undivided attention.
grinder is entirely right, you can't be separated from somebody unless you've been together at some point in the past.
The problem with Kitselman is that he does not really show up anywhere in the narrative until Pearl Harbor/1950, which, as grinder points out, is described in 1962 as a reunion of sorts.
There are a couple of instances like this, where characters appear later who refer to encounters in the past that are not mentioned.
Peter Wright comes to mind. He had a hand in developing those midget subs that O'Riley almost drowned in, the ones that tried to sink the Tirpitz; He was also involved with Dr. Brown in ship-degaussing research during the war (but I've got very little info on that). And it has been suggested to me that Dr. Brown spent more than a little time conferring with Wright while he was convalescing from his injuries in England. But I don't think I've mentioned Wright yet at all.
In fact, I've been surprised that nobody has caught a mention in (I think) Chapter 55, where O'Riley says he is familiar with Dr. Brown, having encountered him in England a year earlier. That (1944) visit to England is not mentioned prior to that reference, and nobody's said yet "hey, what was Brown doing in England when he was supposedly in California...???"
Y'all missed that? C'mon kids, yer slipping!
Peter Wright, btw, was a British Intelligence officer shows up later in the famous "Spy Catcher" case -- the one that prosecuted Kim Philby etal. If you've seen the Las Vegas presentation you know how that name figures in the story.
Beau Kitselman is another such case. As grinder reminds us Victoria pointed out in quoting "Hello Stupid," Brown's relationship to Kitselman predates the 1950 Pearl Harbor encounter, but the exact moment of their meeting I have not found in any of the material I've gathered so far. I've had some contact with one of Kitselman's daughters, but she was unable to shed any light, either.
There is one anecdote I'm still sitting on regarding Kitselman from earlier in WWII. Something having to do with German subs surfacing near Virginia Beach and transmitting messages that end with Kitselman's initials, "ALK." That's a whole episode I guess I'm saving that one for the rewrite.
It has occurred to me in the past few weeks that some of these characters have been left out of this "first draft, work-in-progress," and at some point I guess I'm going to have to figure out how to introduce them. I've actually contemplated writing a chapter called "People, Places, and Things" that just basically says, "oh, by the way, here are a few characters that are important to this story whose introductions have been skipped over...." I may still do that, if only to rectify the kinds of oversight that grinder identifies in this post.
Kitselman. Somewhere in the years already covered. Probably while Brown was in California at Vega Aircraft. Except that he was also in England during the same period. With Peter Wright -- who also hasn't been mentioned yet.
Hence the occasional reference to heads exploding.
--PS
