View source for ATD 644-677

You do not have permission to edit this page, for the following reason:
The action you have requested is limited to users in the group: Users.
You can view and copy the source of this page:
:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>'''<p><br>



==Page 644==

'''Union Depot'''<br>
El Paso's Union Depot Passenger Station was built in 1905. The Depot was the first passenger train station to be built in the United States specifically for international railway traffic. It is located at San Francisco Ave downtown El Paso vey close to the US-Mexico border. There is a rumor around in El Paso that Pancho Villa used the Depot's bell tower as a lookout for the attack of Juárez during the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920). The Depot now is listed in the National Register of Historic Commission.

'''El Paso'''<br>
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Paso,_Texas El Paso], the sixth largest city in Texas, is located at the western tip of Texas. It is the second largest city along the Mexican border. And lies across the Rio Grande is Juáres, Mexico, the other half of the bi-national metropolitan area.

'''Chamizal'''<br>
It was a disputed parcel of land between El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. The dispute was caused by the differences between the bed of the Rio Grande as surveyed in 1852 and the present channel of the river. The river shifted south continually between 1852 and 1868 with the most radical shift in 1864. As a result, the newly exposed land, about 600 acres, came to be known in Spanish as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamizal El Chamizal], from ''chamiza'', the name of a species of wild cane or reed. The final resolution of the dispute came about only in 1963.

'''E.B. Soltera'''<br>
''Soltera'' is Spanish: spinster. Estrella Briggs, Unmarried.

'''Regeneration Equipment'''<br>
In chemical technology "regeneration" means taking a spent product out of the system and cleaning it up for reuse.

'''whiteness'''<br>
stressed motif. Cf. alabaster temples at the Columbian Exposition.Cf. whiteness in GR.

==Page 645==

'''E.P.T.'''<br>
El Paso, Texas.

==Page 646==

'''Sakes'''<br>
For heaven's sakes.

'''Geronimo'''<br>
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geronimo Geronimo] (1829-1909) was a prominent Native American leader of the Chiricahua Apache who fought against the encroachment of the United States on his tribal lands and perople for over 25 years.

'''Willow and Holt'''<br>
Willow: Stray's sister (pp. 361 & 367), Holt: Willow's husband (p. 367)

==Page 647==

'''''For really it was the sidekick who presented the problem.  Restless type. Fair hair, hat back on his head so the big brim sort of haloed his face, shiny eyes and low-set, pointed ears like an elf's...'''''<br>

Billy the Kid?

'''Daisy, Daisy'''<br>
"Daisy Bell" is a popular song whose lyrics ("Daisy, Daisy, Give me your answer do...I'm half crazy, all for the love of you..." as well as the line "...a bicycle built for two") are considerably better known than the song's actual title.
"Daisy Bell" was composed by Harry Dacre in 1892. As David Ewen writes in American Popular Songs: "When Dacre, an English popular composer, first came to the United States, he brought with him a bicycle, for which he was charged duty. His friend (the songwriter William Jerome) remarked lightly: 'It's lucky you didn't bring a bicycle built for two, otherwise you'd have to pay double duty.' Dacre was so taken with the phrase 'bicycle built for two' that he decided to use it in a song. That song, Daisy Bell, first became successful in a London music hall, in a performance by Kate Lawrence. Tony Pastor was the first one to sing it in the United States. Its success in America began when Jennie Lindsay brought down the house with it at the Atlantic Gardens on the Bowery early in 1892."   Wikipedia....see this for memorable occasions of its use.   
It was evidently sung at the OK Corral gunfight, if TRP says so but I have not substantiated this yet.

:Pynchon did not say Doc Holliday sang "Daisy, Daisy" before or during the Gunfight. But Doc Holliday, in his "rejoinder to Frank McLaury", did use the 1880s' slang phrase "daisy" — according to some accounts.  After the Gunfight people then, claimed by Pynchon, used the song "Daisy, Daisy" as a "sort of telegraphic code . . . for Boot Hill" (graveyard, see page 648).<br>

More popularly, sung by HAL, the failing shipboard computer, as it is disabled in Stanley Kubrick's film ''2001, A Space Odyssey.''

==Page 648==
'''at the O.K. Corral'''<br>
It refers to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gunfight_at_the_O.K._Corral The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral]. The 30-second event occurred on October 26, 1881, in a vacant lot, behind the corral in Tombstone, AZ. It was Wyatt Earp, Morgan Earp, Virgil Earp and Doc Holliday fought against Frank McLaury, Tom McLaury, Ike Clanton, Billy Clanton, Billy Claiborne and Wes Fuller. Frank and Tom McLaury and Billy Clanton were killed while Morgan Earp, Virgil Earp and Holliday were wounded. The gunfight supposed to be between law-and-order and open banditry and rustling in frontier towns of the Old West. The Gunfight has been the subject of many many books, movies, songs, . . . etc.

'''Boot Hill'''<br>
It is the name for any number of cemeteries, chiefly in th American West. During the 19th century it was a common name for the burial grounds of gunfighters or those who "died with their boots on" (ie. violently). Also, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boot_Hill Boot Hill] graves were made for people who died in a strange town without assets for a funeral. 
The most famous Boot Hill graveyard of the Old West is, of course, in Tombstone, AZ. Buired at the site are various victims of violence and desease in Tombstone's early years, including those from the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Boot Hill was also the destination for bad-men and those lynched or legally hanged in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tombstone%2C_Arizona Tombstone, AZ].

==Page 649==
'''Rosie's Cantina'''<br>
As found in Marty Robbins's 1959 hit song "El Paso" (a song frequently covered by the Grateful Dead). When the exiled narrator attempts to return to the cantina, he sees to his right "five mounted cowboys/Off to my left ride a dozen or more."

...Night-time would find me in Rosa's cantina;
Music would play and Felina would whirl.

The rest of the lyrics: [http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/robbins-marty/el-paso-11889.html El Paso].

'''L.&O.L.'''<br>
Law and Order League Cf page 644.

'''light draining away'''<br>
cf. p.198: "He watched the light over the ranges slowly draining away", as Webb dies.

==Page 650==

'''ocotillo'''<br>
[http://weather.nmsu.edu/AbqPlantList/dshrub/Ocotillo.htm Ocotillo] is a drought-deciduous shrub. It can have anywhere from 6 to 100 wand like branches that grow from the root crown with a stem anywhere from 9 to 30 feet tall.

'''Rock Springs'''<br>
Wyoming town, center of the Wyoming oil boom of the late 1970s, early 1980s, known then as a wide open town.

'''Ladies' Friend'''<br>
???

'''Creede'''<br>
Central Colorado town, like Telluride once a mining town, now a ski resort.

==Page 651==

'''Dixies and Fans and Mignonettes'''<br>
???

==Page 652==

'''Karawankenbahn . . . Tauern . . . Wochein'''<br>
A series of tunnels constructed as part of [http://historicaltextarchive.com/books.php?op=viewbook&bookid=2&cid=13 a huge Austrian public works project] in the first years of the 20th century. They are named for ranges of mountains and hills they pass through. The objective was to develop rail transport to the port of Trieste. It's possible the Wochein tunnel is now in Italy under another name.<br>

''Karawankenbahn'' means Karawanken Railway in German.<br>
Between 1867-1918 Trieste (Cf [[ATD_489-524#Page_516|page 516:Trieste]]) was part of Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was Austria's first seaport and the principal outlet for the ocean trade of the monarchy. But it did not have adequate railway communication with Austria's interior. To give a great impetus to the trade of Trieste in particular and to the over-sea trade of Austria in general, it was decided in 1901 to build the Karawanken Railway connecting Trieste and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klagenfurt Klagenfurt], the capital of the federal state of Carinthia in Austria. The railway was built over and through the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karavanke Karawanken] mountain, the Europe's longest (70-mile long) mountain range on the border between current Slovenia and Austria. The ''Karawanken Tunnel'' was opened on October 1, 1906; it is the fourth longest railway tunnel in Austria with a length of over 4.8 miles (7,976 m). (For a  [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Karawankentunnel_construction_train.jpg Karawanken Tunnel construction picture]).<br>

At the same time (1901-1909) another railway, ''Tauernbahn'' (Tauern Railway) over and through the Tauern mountain was built between Schwarzach-St.Veit (in the province of Salzburg) and Spittal an de Drau (in Carinthia). It can reach Trieste by connection through Karawanken and Wochein tunnels.<br>[http://aeiou.iicm.tugraz.at/aeiou.encyclop.t/t105381.htm;internal&action=_setlanguage.action?LANGUAGE=en Tauern Railway] passes underneath the Hohe Tauern Mountain Range through the 5-mile long ''Tauern Tunnel'' which was opened on July 7, 1909.

''Wochein'', the old German name, is now [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohinj ''Bohinj''] in Slovenia. It is an alpine valley and a municipality in the north-west of Slovenia, in the Julian Alps. The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohinj_railway Bohinj Railway] is a railway in Slovenia extending into Trieste, Italy (both were parts of Austria-Hungary before 1918). It was built in 1904 with a 3.8-mile long ''Bohinj (Wochein) Tunnel'' under the 5,00-ft tall Koblas Mountain.

'''Brigue'''<br>
French name for the Swiss city of Brig, a historic town with 5,000 inhabitants. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brig,_Switzerland Brigue] is located close to the Swiss-Italian borders. The language used in every day transactions is a uique German dialect.

'''Domodossola'''<br>
An Italian city located at the foot of the Italian Alps, a minor passenger-rail hub. Its strategic location accommodates Swiss rail passengers, acting as an international stopping-point between Locarno (a Swiss city of Italian language) and Brig (a Swiss city of German language) through the Simplon Pass. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domodossola Domodossola]].

'''two parallel galleries'''<br>
The description of the Simplon tunnel project seems to be close to the facts. The Simplon tunnel consists of two parallel tubes, the first of which was opened in 1905, the second not until 1921. The second gallery this passage refers to was built alongside the first tube in order to supply the workers with fresh air. It was later extended.<br>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplon_Pass The Simplon Tunnel] is a 12.3-mile long railway tunnel consisting of two separate single-track tunnels completed 16 years apart — the first one opened on June 1, 1906 and the second one October 16, 1922. For half a century it was the world longest railway tunnel. It was planned by Alfred Brandt of the Hamburg firm of Brandt & Brandau, and its construction began in 1898. It was a tremendous feat of engineering in almost impossibly difficult conditions. It seems that Pynchon in describing the tunnel work followed closely  [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1905simplon.html How the Swiss Built the Greatest Tunnel in the World].

==Page 653==

'''Brandt drills'''<br>
Brandt & Brandau were Hamburg engineers responsible for the tunnel project. Possibly also an allusion to Adolf Brand (1874-1945), German homosexual activist and anarchist [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Brand Wikipedia article.]. "Brand" is also a German word for fire or combustion.
 
'''Kanuni Lekë Dukagjinit'''<br>
should be "Kanuni i Lekë Dukagjinit". "Kanuni" is Albanian for "code".<br>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanuni_i_Lek%C3%AB_Dukagjinit Kanuni i Lekë  Dukagjinit], ''The Code of Lekë Dukagjini'', is a set of laws developed by an Albanian prince, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lek%C3%AB_Dukagjini Lekë Dukagjini] (1410-1481), who fought against the Ottoman Empire. These laws were used mostly in northern Albania and Kosovo from the 15th century until the 20th century and were revived recently after the fall of the communist regime in the early 1990s. Some of the most infamous rules specified how murder was supposed to be handled (resembled the Italian ''vendetta'') and it often led to blood feuds that lasted until all the men of the involved families were killed.

'''League of Prizren'''<br>
Aimed for Albanian unity and autonomy; 1878; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Prizren Wikipedia article.]

==Page 654==

'''''Jetokam, jetokam!'''''<br>
???

'''Më fal'''<br>
Sorry (Albanian).

'''many superstitions inside this mountain'''<br>
Tunnelers and miners were among the most superstitious trades. Small wonder.


'''history. They suffered from it...survive to see the day.'''<br>
Title thematic.To see the day History [Time] ended?

==Page 655==

'''''non è vero?'''''<br>
It's not true?

'''Tatzelwurm'''<br>
A/k/a Swiss dragon.  A mythical creature or cryptid, depending on who you believe.  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatzelwurm Wikipedia entry]; [http://www.newanimal.org/tatzel.htm Cryptid zoo website.]

'''[S]ometimes a Tatzelwurm is only a Tatzelwurm.'''<br>
Echoing the comment attributed to Freud, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar", the cigar-loving alienist who would have been on the faculty of the University of Vienna at this time.

==Page 656==
'''favogn'''<br>
Also known as a ''föhn,'' a dry wind blowing up the lee side of the Alps.

'''balneomaniacs'''<br>
People avid for mineral baths and spas like those at . . .

'''Baden-Baden . . . Wagga Wagga'''<br>
In Germany and New South Wales (Australia) respectively.
Names, of course, which suggest bilocation.

'''Moazagotl clouds'''<br>
A persistent cloud formation associated with the föhn. [http://amsglossary.allenpress.com/glossary/search?id=moazagotl1 Technical definition.]

'''Ruperta Chirpingdon-Groin'''<br>
Great alliterative last name given her effect on men.

==Page 657==

'''''Macchè, gioia mia'''''<br>
Italian: No way, my joy!

'''''troglodita'''''<br>
Spanish: brute, pig. ?

'''''Càlmati'''''<br>
Italian: Take it easy.

'''''Tutto va bene. Un amico di pochi anni fa'''''<br>
Italian: It's all right. A friend from years ago.

'''Ambroid'''<br>
Synthetic amber used for costume jewelry.

'''''Tesoro'''''<br>
Italian: treasure.

:Honey

==Page 658==

'''Petite Roquette'''<br>
A Paris prison later used as a reformatory for boys.

'''Tatzelwurm'''<br>
Cryptozoologists also use the term "Swiss dragon" for this mythical Alpine beast. Its habitation is not said to be limited to mines and tunnels. Cf [[ATD_644-677#Page 655|page 655:Tatzelwurm]] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatzelwurm Mostly uninformative Wikipedia entry.]

'''''Ndih'me! . . . Nxito!'''''<br>
???

'''a scream'''<br>
again that Pynchonian expression of horror as elsewhere in ATD, such as
in the 'inner sands' scenes and GR, of course.

'''''spital'''''<br>
Various languages: hospital, infirmary.

==Page 659==

'''''bien sûr'''''<br>
French: certainly. Here "Of ''course'' you did."

:"''Of course'' it did."

'''showered again, unlocked his private pulley-rope, lowered his clothes . . . hung his wet working gear on the hook, raised it again and padlocked the rope'''<br>
from [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1905simplon.html How the Swiss Built the Greatest Tunnel in the World]:<br>
:"At the top of the building steampipes were fixed, and each man was entitled to his own private rope and padlock; this rope passes over a pulley in the roof, and has a hook at the end to which he can attach his day clothes, . . . and pulling them up by the cord and padlocking it he secures the safety of his belongings.  On returning from his work he . . . has his bath, lowers his clothes, and, hanging his wet mining dress on the hook, raises it to the roof. Here it hangs until he again returns to work, when he finds his clothes dry and warm."

'''Domodossola'''<br>
Cf [[ATD_644-677#Page 652|page 652:Domodossola]].

'''didn't look back'''<br>
Sodom & Gomorrah motif.

'''They had been good friends, that crew'''<br>
A number of homoerotic allusions in the preceding passages.

'''St.-Gotthard'''<br>
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Rail_Tunnel Gotthard Railway Tunnel] is a 9-mile long tunnel in Switzerland opened in 1882. The tunnel is part of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthardbahn Gotthardbahn] Gotthard Railway connecting Lucerne through the Alps to Cjiasso on the Swiss-Italian border.

==Page 660==

==Page 661==

'''Intra'''<br>
Now Verbania, on the shore of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Maggiore Lago Maggiore], Piedmont, in northwest Italy.

'''tramontana'''<br>
another reference to a wind.

'''Wilhelm Weber'''<br>
Cf [[ATD_588-614#Page_594|page 594:Wilhelm Weber]] (1804-1891), German Physicist.

'''Baron von Waltershausen'''<br>
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Sartorius_von_Waltershausen Baron Wolfgang von Waltershausen] (1809-1876), a German geologist. He was Friedrich Gauss's close friend and biographer.

'''Riemann knew he was dying'''<br>
Riemann died of tuberculosis, July 20, 1866.

'''the Seven Weeks' War'''<br>
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austro-Prussian_War The Austro-Prussia War] (June 15 — August 23, 1866). Cf [[ATD_588-614#Page 594|page 594:Göttingen . . . war with Prussia]].

'''Cassel'''<br>
Now spells [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kassel Kassel], a city in Hessen, Germany. It is about 25 miles southwest of Göttingen.

'''Hannover'''<br>
German name of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanover Hanover], a major city  of northern Germany. It is the capital of the federal state of Lower Sxony where Göttingen, about 50 miles south, is also located.

'''Langensalza'''<br>
Since 1956, called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Langensalza Bad Langensalza], a city about 45 miles southeast of Göttingen, in Thuringia, Germany. It was a site of the 1866 Second Battle of Langensalza between Prussia and Hanover during the Seven Weeks' War.

'''Veneto'''<br>
The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veneto Veneto region], one of the twenty regions of Italy, is in northeastern Italy by the Adriatic Sea. It consists of seven provinces. One of them is Verona, home to Romeo and Juliet; another one is Venezia, home of Venice.

'''Custozza'''<br>
Also spells Custoza. A village of northeastern Italy in the province of Verona. It was the site of the Battle of Custozza of June 24, 1866, between Austria and Italy resulted in an Austria's victory.

'''Deep Germany'''<br>
"the folk-dream behind the Black Forest", and so on to p. 662

'''Black Forest'''<br>
A wooded mountain range in Baden-Württemberg, southwestern Germany. It is bordered by the Rhine valley to the west and south. It also has the source of the river Danube. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Forest The Black Forest] is part of the continental divide between the Atlantic Ocean watershed and the Black Sea watershed.

==Page 662==

'''elves'''<br>
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elf Elves] are mythical creatures of Germanic mythology and Germanic paganism which still survive in northern European folklore. Elves are often pictured as youthful-seeming men and women of great beauty living in forests and other natural places, underground, or in wells and springs. They have been portrayed to be long-lived or immortal and they have magical powers attributed to them.

'''shadows with undulating tails and moving wings'''<br>
shadow of Satan image?. Cf. p. 211

'''the Haupt-Bahnhof in Frankfurt'''<br>
the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_Hauptbahnhof Central Railway Station] in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt Frankfurt]. Regarding passenger volume alone, it is the second largest station outside Japan.

'''Orient Express'''<br>
Cf [[ATD_557-587#Page_567|page 567: the Orient Express]].

'''collapse of the Campanile in Venice'''<br>
Bell-tower on St. Mark's Basilica. The campanile reached its present form in 1514. As it stands today, however, the tower is a reconstruction, completed in 1912 after the collapse of 1902. Cf [[ATD_243-272#Page 256|page 256:the tower collapses]], [[ATD_243-272#Page 259|page 259:dov'era com'era]], and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mark's_Campanile St. Mark's Campanile].

'''roof of the Charing Cross Station'''<br>
A major railway station in London. The elegant original roof structure collapsed on 5 December 1905. By great fortune, only six lives were lost (two workmen on the roof, a bookstall vendor and three passers-by in the street, where most of the girders fell). It was rebuilt two years later.<br>  Cf [[ATD_557-587# Page 577|page 577:Charing Cross]] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charing_Cross_railway_station Charing Cross Station].<br>

So it is now 1906 in this chapter.

'''the revenge of Deep Germany'''<br>
We have seen an earlier [[ATD 615-643#Page 632|reference]] to deeper Germany, to the pre-Christian, pre-rational Germany, here supposed to be avenging itself upon the mechanised, rational order that has supplanted it.

This pre-Christian Germany was the mythical Golden Age Naziism sought to draw upon and revive.

==Page 663==

'''''stranniki'''''<br>
Dissenters from the Russian Orthodox Church; a sect of Old Believers who rejected the Orthodox priesthood and sacraments.<br>
''stranniki'' means wanderers.

'''''podpol'niki,'' underground men'''<br>
The Russian word does mean that, but the present use is especially interesting because they are ''pod pole,'' under the floor.<br>
Perhaps also an allusion to that religious Russian, Dostoevsky and his
"Notes from Underground".

'''"not the day we knew"'''<br>
Thematic re day.

'''"extralogical...mathematical work"'''<br>
math work is beyond logic, mystical-like.

'''smooth-enough World-Line'''<br>
linear History, not the ATD 'line', with a verbal pairing to 'World-Island', that Pynchonian way of naming the Earth.

==Page 664==

'''Sanatorium Böpfli-Spazzoletta'''<br>
Allusion to the Davos tuberculosis sanatorium of Thomas Mann's ''The Magic Mountain'', which was indeed the anteroom of death for its protagonist, Hans Castorp, who goes on to be "cured" to serve in World War I, a personification of the death of Europe. It is not clear whether Castorp dies in the war, at the end of the novel he rather disintegrates, a bit like Tyrone Slothrop in ''Gravity's Rainbow''.
Note that, at the sanatorium, Castorp falls in love with a Russian named Madame Chauchat, to whom Yashmeen's presence here may allude.
Alchemy is also a leitmotif of ''The Magic Mountain'', with the sanatorium as an enclosed system in which something is turned to gold (Castorp's enlightenment).<br>
I might be wrong, but I've found no evidence that a "Sanatorium Böpfli-Spazoletta" ever existed. The name is a compound of a (mock?) Swiss-German word and an Italian-sounding one and thus recalls the Simplon passage.

'''anterooms of death'''<br>
The metaphor repeated from page 526, now possibly with a different meaning.

'''Borsalino'''<br>
A fedoras made by Italy's famed [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borsalino Borsalino] Company.

==Page 665==

'''Glenwood Springs'''<br>
Colorado town, then as now site of a famous inn and hot springs, hydrotherapy center and spa, located on the main line of the Denver & Rio Grand Western Railroad. Until the early 1980s, a popular excursion was an overnight trip from Denver along the upper Colorado River through Glenwood Canyon to the venerable hotel/baths on the D&RG's venerable rolling stock, the last privately operated passenger train in the U.S. The route is now operated by Amtrak, but the canyon has been ruined by the completion of I-70 through it. Pynchon's sinister railroad of the 1800s has been superseded, has become in its turn a nostalgic retreat from a newer modernity. For Kit, in his eastward trip from home, Glenwood Springs would have been the last large stop before Denver.

'''tunnel Italian'''<br>
The pidgin Reef learned in the tunnels.

'''St.-Gotthard Tunnel'''<br>
Cf [[ATD_644-677#Page 659|page 659:St.-Gotthard]].

'''Bellinzona'''<br>
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellinzona Bellinzona] is the capital city of the canton Ticino, Switzerland.  The city is famous for its three castles — Castelgrande, Montebello and Sasso Corbaro, now part of the UNESCO world heritage.

'''repeated figure being played on an alpenhorn'''<br>
Ri-i-co-la! The Swiss call the instrument alphorn or alpenhorn.

'''Mouffette'''<br>
French: Skunk.

'''Papillon'''<br>
French: Butterfly.

==Page 666==
'''Reader, she bit him.'''<br>
Reef has failed, both literally and figuratively, to screw the pooch. (and, of course, a parody of the opening sentence of the final chapter of "Jane Eyre")

==Page 667==

'''skeezicks'''<br>
Affectionate term for a man. The foundling Skeezix was the protagonist of the comic strip "Gasoline Alley."

'''''vint'''''<br>
A real game. Which Reef here pretends not to understand, a classic card-sharp gambit.

'''''avantyuristka'''''<br>
Unfortunate placement of the hyphen makes it look as if it's ''avant-'' something, but it's a single Russian word, авантюристка, meaning "adventuress."

==Page 668==

'''reticule'''<br>
Lady's handbag, especially one made by netting or tatting.

'''''Ite, missa est'''''<br>
Last words of the Latin mass: Go, you are sent.

==Page 669==

'''Pinks'''<br>
Pinkerton agents.

==Page 670==

'''glowing giant amœbas that leave sticky residues'''<br>
A recent book, ''Spook,'' by Mary Roach, tells how 19th-century mediums prepared these cheesecloth apparitions and secreted them in their vaginas.

==Page 671==

'''''Bozhe moi!'''''<br>
Russian: My God.

'''bunco man'''<br>
The original bunco was a dishonest gambling game played with dice. Eventually the word evolved the sense 'the playing of a bunco game', and hence 'swindling or fraud of any sort'. From Spanish, Banco, a card game like monte. First recorded usage in 1870's, when it became popular quickly.

'''speakin as an old bunco man . .  . it was him talkin'''<br>
Reef displaying the kind of skepticism that would eventually explode the whole spiritualist enterprise.

==Page 672==
==Page 673==
'''"I'm screamin again"'''<br>
Screamin motif in Webb's channelled memory.



==Page 674==

'''"great never-sleeping hydropathic"'''<br>
Internal and external use of water as a therapeutic treatment for all forms of disease. hydro·pathic (hdr-pathik) , hydro·pathi·cal...American Heritage Dictionary.<br>
In 1877, the estate became the property of the Craiglockhart Hydropathic Company, who set about building a hydropathic institute. Such was Craiglockhart's function until the advent of the First World War. Between 1916 and 1919 the building was used as a military psychiatric hospital for the treatment of shell-shocked officers. Wikipedia.<br>
see esp. the next paragraph.<br>

'''swamper'''<br>
One who performs general, menial duties.

'''''vis inertiæ'''''<br>
Latin: force of inertia. Not considered a "force" since Newton.

'''draining away'''<br>
once more "draining away", though for the first time not referring to light (cf. p.198, 649).

==Page 675==
'''Lee de Forest'''<br>
cf [[ATD_26-56#Page_29|page 29]]

'''As light began to steep in...'''

Like on page 566, this dream-passage seems to contain a top-down examination of Kit's progress; of his motives and awareness of complicity in the Traverse vengeance-quest against the Vibes.  Similar to Kit's earlier dream(s?), it's a thematic reduction and feels like a significant 'clue':  

<blockquote>As light began to steep in around the edges of the window blinds, Kit fell asleep again and dreamed of a bullet en route to the heart of an enemy, traveling for many years and many miles, hitting something now and then and ricocheting off at a different angle but continuing its journey as if conscious of where it must go, and he understood that this zigzagging around through four-dimensional space-time might be expressed as a vector in five dimensions.  Whatever the number of ''n'' dimensions it inhabited, an observer would need one extra, ''n'' + 1, to see it and connect the end points to make a single resultant.</blockquote> 

'''resultant'''<br>
notice this word and not 'result' in the above paragraph. 'Resultant' has math vector meanings! ...Issuing or following as a consequence or result. 1. Something that results; an outcome. 2. Mathematics A single vector that is the equivalent of a set of vectors....American Heritage Dictionary.

In addition to the broad narrative summary, there appears to be a metatextual implication here.  Regarding the reader in Pynchon's overall 'Against The Day' scheme: the novel ''n'' must be observed from an ''n'' +1 perspective (that is: dimensionally distinct) to connect end-points and weave a single result, to engage and correlate strands and twines into a coherent narrative whole.  Without an overarching consciousness there's apparent anarchy: with said consciousness there's meaning and vector.<br>

Part of which meaning I might argue is that Kit's revengeful bullet is part of the overarching 'problem' of mutual complicity, which we readers have to see.<br>

[[User:Bean|remy]] 10:52, 28 December 2006 (PST)


'''Hour of the Rat'''<br>
In Chinese astrology, the hours between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m., marking the beginning of a new day. The rat is the first of the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac, as it is said to have won the race between them.

==Page 676==

'''Constantza'''<br>
A Romania's seaport on the Black Sea.

'''Too many of us have to sit foolishly by...'''<br>
Vibe = Vibration, a wave disturbance of the aether; for most of us incoherent force driving human misery, but for the Traverse family a person, a personified malevolence on which vengenace can be wreaked.

==Page 677==

'''Buda-Pesth'''<br>
Budapest. The cities of Buda and Pest (archaic spelling Pesth) were unified in 1872; the hyphenated spelling persisted for many years.

'''Psychical Research'''<br>
The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is a non-profit organization in the United Kingdom whose purpose is to research and investigate supernatural, magical, paranormal, and occult phenomena in a scientific and unbiased manner. It was founded in 1882 by three dons of Trinity College, Cambridge, Edmund Gurney, Frederic William Henry Myers, and Henry Sidgwick, because of their interest in spiritualism. Wikipedia. <br>
Wikipedia has no Budapest connection, but it says the Society was very active in its first thirty years, the time of ATD. A history of the Society might have the Budapest sections.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}
Templates used on this page:
Return to ATD 644-677.
Retrieved from "http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_644-677"
View source for ATD 644-677

Views

Personal tools

Navigation

wikis

Search
