Difference between revisions of "ATD 748-767"

Revision as of 21:05, 27 February 2007

Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.

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Page 749

Crotona
Cf page 633: Crotona in Magna Grecia. or page 706: Crotona.

Or Croton. One of the most flourishing cities of Magna Graecia. According to Herodotus (3.131), the physicians of Croton were considered the foremost among the Greeks. Pythagoras founded his school, the Pythagoreans, at Croton circa 530 BC Crotona.

Professor McTaggart
Cf page 239: McTaggart.

combination-room
in the University of Cambrdige, England, a room into which the fellows withdraw after dinner, for wine, dessert, and conversation.

a Nietzschean
A follower of German philosopher Nietzsche's belief that Christianity's emphasis on the afterlife makes its believers less able to cope with earthly life.
Well, there is a lot more that could be being referred to here in calling someone a Nietzschean.

Page 750

Ringpungpa
In the 15th century, Namka Gyantsan, an aristocrat, usurped the post of Dzongpon (magistrate) of Rinpung county and changed it to a hereditary position. Called Ringpungpa in Tibetan historical books, the family gradually grew stronger and more powerful, establishing a separatist rule in Ringpung County whose influence extended into the internal section of the Phaddru regime [1]. The "scholar" referred to would have to be a descendent of this powerful family. Again the spiritual and temporal powers are intertwined. TRP is fond of usurpation; cf. the Tristero in Lot 49.

Insh'allah
any meaning?

Page 751

Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital of Romania. It is located in the southeast of the country, and an industrial and commercial center of Romania.

Constantza
Constanţa, Romanian port on Black Sea.

Batumi
Batumi is a Black Sea port city in southwest Georgia. It is located about 12 mile from the Turkish border in a subtropical zone, rich in citrus fruit and tea.

dukhans
Inns.

Baku
Cf page 168: Baku. This is the fifth time Baku was mentioned; previously page 168, page 441, page 631 and page 639. But this is the first time Baku itself was being described.

Caspian Sea
Caspian Sea is a saltwater lake in southeastern Europe and southwestern Asia, the largest inland body of water in the world. It is bordered on the west by Azerbaijan and Russia, on the northeast and east by Kazakhstan, on the east by Turkmenistan, and on the south by Iran. In the 1960s and 1970s the level of Caspian Sea fell substantially, partly due to irrigation usage of the water. In 1980s its level began rising again at a rate of about 6 to 8 inches annually. The Caspian Sea has no outlet, but it is linked to the Baltic Sea, the White Sea, and the Black Sea by an extensive network of inland waterways, chief of which is the Volga River.

Bnito oil tankers
In 1870s-80s Nobels Brothers (Cf page 444: Nobel brothers) dominated distribution of oil within the Russian Empire. The Rothschilds decided to take on the Nobels and in 1886 founded their own oil company: BNITO. To break the Nobels' monopoly on distribution of oil, The Bnito Co. won a contract to transport Bnito oil east of the Suez Canal and developed the tanker, a ship specifically designed to carry oil in storage tanks built into the hull as opposed to just placing barrels of oils in the hold. (Some historians said the exploitations of Baku's oil were how did the Nobel Brothers afford a peace prize and Rothschilds acquire their bank.)

Krasnovodsk
Krasnovodsk is a city in Turkmenistan on the Krasnovodsk Gulf of the Caspian Sea. As the terminus of the Trans-Caspian Railroad, it is an important transportation center. In 1993 it was renamed by the president-for-life Niyazov, after his self-proclaimed tilte, Türkmenbasy, Leader of all Turkmen.

Trans-Caspian Railroad
Trans Caspian Railroad, also called the Central Asiatic Railroad, built by the Russians in the 19th cnetury, follows the path of the Silk Road through much of western Central Asia. It starts at the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea at Krasnovodsk and heads southeast, along the edge of the Karakum Desert.

Qara Qum
Now more often spelled Kara Kum, a desert between Caspian Sea and Amu Darya River with the Aral Sea to the north. Karakum Desert occupies about 80% of the area of Turkmenistan with an average of one person per 2.5 sq miles. It has significant oil and natural gas deposits, and is crossed by the Trans-Caspian railroad.

railroad-metaphysics
Notice how 'consciousness is a part of this description. And reflect on what Pynchon thinks of railroads, therefore of the phenomenology of 'railroad metaphysics'.

Page 752

The effect of rotating ninety degrees from a moving timeline, as expected, was delivery into a space containing imaginary axes...
The moving train is described by a tensor, its path a vector in three dimensions plus the time dimension. Looking out from it, i.e. at ninety degrees to its direction of travel, may involve axes with complex number coordinates. In other words, looking out of a train moving through unknown territory involves one in acts of imagination, trying to fathom the lives lived in the territory one is passing through, here a very strange one for Kit (consultation of the Times Atlas shows the railroad's route is described precisely, between desert and irrigated fields, and on to the terminus), or perhaps alternate histories generated by leaving the train at any point.

Merv
Merv is a city in Turkmenistan. It was a major oasis-city in Central Asia on the historical Silk Road. The site of ancient Merv had been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

barkhan
traveling crescent-shaped sand dune.

footplate man
Railroad crewman, one involved in the running or maintenance of the locomotive (the control cabin surface of a steam locomotive is called the footplate).

deadheading
A crew member riding as a passenger, not actively participating in the running of the vehicle, is said to be "deadheading"; the term is still used in railroading and on the airlines. Similarly, a nonworking locomotive being towed as part of a train is a "deadhead". (Unavoidable allusion, perhaps, to the non-working followers of the Grateful Dead, as well).

Samarkand
Samarkand is a city in Uzbekistan on the Trans-Caspian Railroad. It is one of the oldest existing cities in the world and the oldest of Central Asia. At its greatest period it had great silk and iron industries and was the meeting point of merchants' caravans from India, Persia, and China. It still is a major cotton and silk center.

Namaz Premulkoff
???

Page 753

Charjui
A city of 25,000, bordering with Uzbekistan, in Turkmenistan.

Amu-Darya . . . the Oxus
Cf page 439: the Oxus.

Bukhara
Bukhara lies west of Samarkand and is one of the most ancient cities of Uzbekistan. The name of Bukhara originates from the word vihara which means "monastery" in Sanskrit. The city was once a large commerical center on the Silk Road and a center of learning renowned throughout the Islamic world. It still has 350 mosques and 100 religious colleges.

Kagan
Kagan City, ten miles outside Bukhara, Uzbekistan.

Khokand
Khokand is a city in eastern Uzbekistan at the southwestern edge of the Fergana Valley. It is about 140 miles souteast of Tashkent. It is on the crossroads of the ancient trade routes.

Andizhan
Andizhan is the fourth-largest city in Uzbekistan. It is located in the east of the country in the Fergana Valley near the border with Kyrgyzstan.

Osh
Osh is an ancient city in the Fergana Valley of southern Kyrgyzstan. Osh is the second largest city in Kyrgyzstan and is often referred to as the "capital of the south".

Kashgar
Cf page 630: Kashgar.

the Taklamakan
Cf page 444: Taklamakan.

Stanley and Livingstone
David Livingstone (1813-1873) was a Scottish missionary and explorer in central Aftica. He was the first European to see Victoria Falls, which he named. He is perhaps best remembered because of his meeting with Henry Stanley (1841-1904), a jounalist and explorer, which gave rise to the popular quotation, Dr. Livingstaone, I presume?. Late in his life Livingstone completely lost contact with the outside world for six years, and Stanley was sent by New York Herald in 1869 to find him as a publicity stunt. Stanley found Livingstone on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in November 10, 1871 with the now famous tongue-in-cheek greeting (Livingstone was the only white man within hundreds of miles). In 1939, a popular film called Stanley and Livingstone was released with Spencer Tracy as Stanley.

Page 754

Prokladka
The name is a common Russian word with two meanings: construction and gasket. Female hygienic pads (with or without wings) are also referred to as prokladkas

Kalinka
"My Little Snowball Tree", Russian folk song, popularized by Red Army Chorus.

Ochi Chorniya
Stereotypical Russian ballad, "Dark Eyes." The second word is actually Chorniye. (It's spelled so now, but before 1917 it was chorniya or chornyya.)

E. N. Molokhovets
The book (Podarok molodym khozyaykam, Kursk: 1861) and the author are real. Elena Burman married city architect Frants Frantsevich Molokhovets, whose name is not Russian but suggests a Germanized Polish noble family (Franz Molochowiec). The etymology is not clear.

Orloff
Also known as Oryol or Orel Trotter, a breed developed in the 19th century.

the Tian Shan
The Tian Shan (Chinese words for "Celestial Mountains") is the mountain range, west of the Taklamakan Desert, running some 1,700 miles eastward from Tashkent into China. The mountain range is part of the Himalayan orogenic belt. The highest peak in the Tian Shan is Jengish chokusu (24,400 ft) and the second highest Khan Tengri (23,100 ft).

Bol'shaia Igra
"The Great Game", counterpart to the Inconvenience. Cf page 123 & page 245.

Page 755

the Urals
The Urals is a mountain system in western Russia extending for over 1,240 miles from the Artic Ocean to the Caspian Sea, and traditionally regarded as the natural boundary between Europe and Asia. The mountains hold vast mineral wealth.

A.D.C. or lichnyi adiutant
Aide-de-camp or (Russian:) personal adjutant.

Klopski
Klop is a Russian word for "bug."

peculiar machines
Arcade games?

Yob tvoyu mat'
Russian, literally: Fuck your mother. Just a general expletive. (Cf page 616: Yob tvoyu mat').

zastolye
Group of people around a table. A feast.

begin to spin
To whirl like a Dervish, a member of a mystical Sufi sect that spins to induce visions ("your mind proceeding to flee in all directions at once"). The "Spin" of an electron, however, is also one of four quantum numbers (all vector quantities) specifying the electron's exact quantum state. It can be further used to calculate properties of electrons as wave functions, radiating "in all directions at once" [2].

Page 756

Poshol ty na khuy
Impolite Russian, literally "Go to the prick", meaning; "Fuck off".

The Doosra
Doosra is an Urdu word loosely meaning "second". It has become common parlance in cricket in the past few years and is used to describe a ball bowled by a finger spinner that turns in the opposite direction from his stock delivery. A lot of controversy surrounds the doosra as it is hard to bowl legally (it is much easier to throw it than to bowl it). One assumes that Pynchon was aware of all this: see the cricketing references on pp.219-242. In particular, Pynchon has already referenced the bosie: a mirror image of the doosra. More bilocations, anyone?

Pan_Turanian
Pan-Turanism is a political movement for the union of all Turanian peoples, or the collective inclusion of all Altaic peoples.

fusel oils
Fusel alcohols, also sometimes called fusel oils, or potato oil in Europe, are higher order (more than two carbons) alcohols formed by fermentation and present in cider, mead, beer, wine, and spirits to varying degrees. The term fusel is German for “bad liquor.”{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusel_oil]

Chingiz
Also transliterated as "Genghis" as in "Genghis Khan".

denshchik
Russian: batman.

Madali
???

Page 757

poisonous nutmeat
betel.

Uyghur
Member of an ethnic group in western China, sometimes described as Indo-European.

Al Mar-Fuad
Get a load of this character! He dresses in English hunting tweeds and a deerstalker cap, brandishes a shotgun, pronounces his "r"'s as w's, and says things like "Weally?" and "I am going out after some gwouse." Maybe "wabbits" are next for this Uyghur version of Elmer Fudd (Al Mar-Fuad--get it?).

Lord Salisbury
Lord Salisbury (1830-1903) was a British statesman and Prime Minister on three occasions: 1885-1886, 1886-1892 and 1895-1902. He, the first British Prime Minister of the 20th century, is seen as an icon of traditional, aristocratic conservatism.

Page 758

. . . so as to draw off the odd Russian division in the event of a European war
A possible alternative in World War II, a junction point for all kinds of alternative histories. Had Japan struck at the USSR (via Cental Asia) in concert with Germany in 1941, the Soviets could not have brought 58 divisions from Siberia to stop and eventually turn the German advance. Soviet successes in obscure border engagements in Mongolia (Battle of Nomonhan) in 1939 did much to turn Japan's military ambitions southward instead [3]. --But surely in the time context of this part of ATD the suggestion is that more Japanese involvement in Asia before WWI would have pinned down some Russian forces in August 1914 and thereafter.

Japan and Russia were on the same side in World War I.

yakitori pitches
Yakitori: grilled bird, a Japanese type of skewered chicken made from several bite-sized pieces of chicken meat, or chicken offal, skewered on a bamboo skewer and barbecued, usually over charcoal Wikipedia. A Yakitori pitch would be a kind of fast food stand. As opposed to the current worldwide McDonalds flood?

old Cavi ate the sausage at Kabul
Sir Louis Cavagnari, British envoy to Afghanistan, killed on Sept. 3, 1879, in the course of an insurrection. If "eat the sausage" is some horrible detail, I have not found an online source that specifies. --Volver 15:26, 13 January 2007 (PST)

meddling of the Powers...convergence to the Mohammedan
Exactly the situation today. More 1900/2000 parallels.

Polkovnik
Russian: Colonel.

Polny pizdets
Russian: a total fuckup.

Simla
Now call Shimla. It was the summer capital of the erstwhile British Raj in India. It is now the capital city of the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. Shimla, nestled in the middle Himalayas in northern India, is a favorite destination for honeymooners and tourists, particularly in summer.

Punjabi Hill States, refuge and resort of Raj officers for generations [4].

Pelitis
Peliti was a Manufacturing Confectioner and he was by appointment to Her Majesty the Queen Empress, a purveyor of cakes, chocolates etc. He started his restaurant and confectionery business in 1870 at 11 Government Place in the Dalhousie Square area of Calcutta.(At a meeting on 26-Sep-1919 the Rotary Club of Calcutta was organized thus ushering in the movement in India and indeed the mainland of Asia)[5].

the Combermere Bridge
In 1828, Lord Combermere, the British Commander-in-Chief of the Indian army, built a bridge spanning a gushing mountain stream in Simla (Shimla). See a drawing of the bridge.

Page 759

transnoctial
???

the Waziri
Formally Waziristan. It is a mountainous region of northwest Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan.

"haunted spaces of desire . . . walled in by work-demands"
is co-conscious(ness), page 760

Page 761

subaltern
A junior officer in the British army; now titled second lieutenant in most regiments.

Guri Amir
Guri Amir or Gur-e Amir is the mausoleum Tamerlane built for his family. It is a great monument of Islamic architecture.

Alexander III
Alexander III (1845-1894) was the Tsar of Russia between 1881-1894. He died in Livadia Palace, Crimea, and was buried at the Peter and Paul Fortress in St.Petersburg. He was succeeded by his eldest son Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia. Tsar Alexander's memorial is located in Irkustsk at the embankment of the Angara River.

Tamerlane
Tamerlane (1336-1405), the most influential Central Asia's military leader of the Middle Ages, restored the former Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan. During his long military career, Tamerlane engaged in an almost constant state of warfare in order to extend his borders and maintain his conquest, which reached from the Mediterranean in the west to India in the South and Russia in the North.

Craven A
"Craven A" was a blend of pipe tobacco celebrated under the name "Arcadia" by James M. Barrie, but here the name is applied to cigars.

Eurasia Irredenta
Fighters for Italian statehood in the 19th century used the slogan "Italia Irredenta": unredeemed Italy, that is, the lands still held by Habsburgs and other foreign powers. Their goal of course was to redeem it, place these areas under rule by Italians and fold them into one kingdom.

'Turania'
Turanism of page 756.

Page 762

Beerbohm Tree
Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1853-1917), noted English actor.

Page 763

P&O steamer
Pacific and Orient line, British steamship company.

might as well all be on a Cook's tour
Cook's is still in business selling package tours. What cost Auberon months of hardship and danger, groups might now visit as tourists.

Page 764

Kara Tagh
With a name meaning "black mountain" you would expect there to be more than one. Places going by this name or the similar name Karatau are dotted all over Central Asia. This one does not seem to be one of the mapped ones, lying in extreme western China.

Is it significant that Kara Tagh is the Turkish name of Montenegro?

Tunguska country
Site of the Tunguska Event, an explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya (Under Rock) Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai of Russia, at 7:17 AM on June 30, 1908. The event is sometimes referred to as the Great Siberian Explosion. It was probably caused by the airburst of an asteroid or comet 5 to 10 kilometers (3–6 mi) above the Earth's surface. The energy of the blast was later estimated to be between 10 and 20 megatons of TNT, equivalent to the most powerful nuclear bomb ever detonated by the US. However, other (frankly, crackpot) theories link it to an experiment by Nikola Tesla [6].

And when we try to return . . . [w]e may not be able to
Kit had this experience when the liner Stupendica doubled herself.

Buriat
The Buriats live in southwestern Siberia to northwestern China and Mongolia. They include Buddhists and shamanists.

Page 765

the journey itself is a conscious Being

I am contaminated beyond hope, Mushtaq
Halfcourt's predicament vis a vis Yashmeen is reminiscent of that of Edward Ashburnham, Ford Madox Ford's "Good Soldier".

In what way, may I ask?

Page 766

when you come to a fork in the road, take it
A maxim of America's foremost Yogi, the baseball player Yogi Berra.

Annotation Index