Difference between revisions of "ATD 296-317"

Revision as of 18:17, 10 May 2007

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

Page 296

Rodgers Brothers
???

Mescalero
Mescalero is a native American tribe of Southern Athabaskan heritage currently living in southcentral New Mexico. Wikipedia.

Timken springs
Henry Timken was a carriage maker who held three patents for carriage springs in the 1890’s. He founded his company, The Timken Roller Bearing Axle Company, in St. Louis in 1899. He also invented the tapered roller bearings which bear his name and were used in the hubs of carriages and automobiles. The company still exists and Timken roller bearing are used today in a number if diverse industries including spacecraft. Oddly enough (maybe not so odd considering Pynchon), the modern day Timken company created for the Bosch Group (See the note above for “Hieronymous wheel” on page 292) a process to produce a high alloy steel that could easily be machined to make trucks parts.

Basin
???

Page 297

Pandora works
Mine and works between Tomboy and Telluride. See the Telluride Places of Interest

adit
A horizontal entrance to an underground mine. Wikipedia

tommyknockers
Mythical mine dwellers, originally part of European legend, introduced to America by European miners. The name "tommyknockers" comes from Cornish mining lore. According to legend the tommyknockers are underground spirits who guard the earth's ores, especially gold and silver. Tommyknockers were known for mischief, pranks, jokes, and being highly spirited. "Knockers" comes from knocking sounds heard in mines that were attributed to their antics. They are tiny characters who dress like little miners and perform many mining duties while underground working alongside miners. BLM Website

Page 298

duendes
Spanish for goblins, trolls or leprechauns, http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duende.

powder monkey
Historically, a sailor whose job it was to keep gun crews supplied with gunpowder and shot during battle. More generally, one who carries or sets explosives, as Dally does here.

Page 299

matte-surface
Not shiny.

"...Sunday-morning voice..."
Perhaps a sermonizing, righteous preacher-like voice, although the context suggests whispering, as in church.

Buck Wells
Bulkley Wells, a historical figure, was a mine manager and cavalry commander at Telluride, previously mentioned on p. 179.

Page 300

"somethin tattooed on my head"
Cf. Queequeg's tattoos in Moby-Dick, Ch. 3 and passim.

fragment of time
Sparks move faster than shutter.

collodion
Toxic chemical used both in early photography and explosives manufacturing. Wikipedia

Page 301

squareheads
Scandinavians, especially Swedes, are sometimes referred to as squareheads. In HBO's Deadwood, for example, the orphaned girl Sophia (whose Scandinavian family migrated from Minnesota) is the squarehead girl.

"just tie the reins . . . their way back"
Cf. p. 294, "rented horses had already been skillfully unhitching themselves and proceding back to the corral."

Page 302

ghost bison
The American Buffalo was nearly hunted to extinction in the 19th century. Wikipedia

Gallows Frame Saloon
The Gallows Frame is the structural frame, usually made of steel or timber, at the top of an underground mine shaft. These frames hold the hoisting equipment which raise and lower equipment and miners into the underground mine.

fathom miners
Miners paid by the "fathom" of ore extracted. Useful background on mining practices. A fathom was a block of ore 6 feet high by 6 feet deep by the width of the vein being worked.

remittance men
Black sheep paid regularly by families to stay away.

Page 303

Circassian walnut
A swirled hardwood popular in woodworking, in this case used as a synecdoche to refer to a bar (the bar is made of Circassian walnut; incidentally, Yashmeen was a Circassian slave). Named for a region in the northern Caucasus Mountains from which the tree originates.

Charlie Fong Ding
Seems like a made-up comic Chinese name by TRP.

congress... congregation
Two vs more-than-two at a time

California Peg
The "sous-maitresse," or teacher's aid, at the Silver Orchid brothel.

Grundyesque
Prudish; after Mrs. Grundy, a character in Thomas Morton's Speed the Plow, (1798)([1]). See page 400 on "Mrs. Grundy"

Popcorn Alley
Street of (now historic) brothels in Telluride.

a range of useful information.
Range again, as spectrum.

hurdy girl
A professional dancing girl.

Page 304

civil war and White Terror
The Finnish Civil War lasted from January-May 1918 and was fought between the conservative White and revolutionary Red factions of the army. After the Whites emerged victorious, they rounded up Red elements in prison camps where many died, hence the White Terror. Wikipedia.

"Love", whatever that turned out to be, would occupy a whole different piece of range. conveys a whole new meaning to the word 'range'?...not just land but something like 'range of emotions"? 'Piece of range' as in a spectrum? Light exists in a spectrum. Cf. 'Light over the ranges' indeed.

Page 305

"The Shooting of Dan McGrew"
1907 poem by Canadian poet Robert Service, so anachronistic here. etext

ruffled doves
A/k/a "soiled doves," a Western term for prostitutes.

Stephen Emmens
American chemist and mining engineer, inventor of the explosive Emmensite, who believed an intermediate substance he called "argentaurum" was transmutable into silver or gold; he claimed to have discovered a process by which the gold content of silver could be thus enriched. He carried out his experiments from 1895 to 1897, and saw them made public in 1899. The details of the process, as far as they are known, are as Pynchon describes them. Attempts to enlist emminent scientists to verify Emmens' apparent alchemy included an offer to Nicola Tesla (He refused). [2].

"argentaurum"
Substance claimed by Dr. Stephen Emmens to be intermediate beteween silver and gold, and through which, as an intermediate step, each could be transmuted to the other.[3].

nymph's mirror
Speculation: The "mirror" available to nymphs was any still surface of water, so thin as the surface of water.

Schieferspath
Has nothing to do with paths; spath is German for spar. Schiefer indicates it is a foliated mineral. So: foliated spar, i.e., a spar that cleaves readily into sheets. "[S]ome of the visiting labor" may come from a place where calcite is mined under this name.

superstitious Scotchman
Holding the nine of diamonds, "the curse of Scotland," he doesn't bet his hand but loses the specimen.

Page 306

grown brighter
It's drawing light from a non-material source, from a parallel world, which adds to the light already present?

gold... silver
Any role of Iceland Spar and double-refracted light in the Emmens process of transmutation is Pynchon's invention.

rhomboid
A parallelogram with unequal adjacent sides and oblique angles. Wikipedia

Veta Madre
The "Mother Lode" of Mexico [4] in Guanajuato.

frijoles
Mexican beans.

what'll there be then to crucify mankind on a cross of?
Near-quotation from William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech, arguably the most famous American political speech ever, of the last sentence, "You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."

Page 307

Lyman Gage
Banker, and Secretary of the Treasury under McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, 1897-1902. In 1900 he ensured passage of the Gold Standard Act, which repealed bimatalism and had tremendous effects on the mining industry, and the economy in general, leading eventually to the foundation of the Federal Reserve System to regulate the currency in the wake of the resulting instability [5]. Just incidentally, Gage had been President of the Board of Directors of the Columbian Exposition.

like a kettle coming to a boil
Chaos theory originated from a range of observations like this (organised cells in boiling water).

stopes
Stopes are the steplike excavation working areas of a mine. Stope or Stopes.

Doc Turnstone
A young doctor who unsuccessfully courted Lake, introduced p. 262.

Charles Bonnet Syndrome
Named after the Swiss philosopher and naturalist, Charles Bonnet (1720-1793), who first described a syndrome in which visually-impaired people see vivid, complex images that aren't real. CBS is thought to result from visual deprivation, and commonly occurs in sufferers of macular degeneration and other impairments of the eyes. Importantly, CBS does not (clinically, cannot) result from any type of psychosis or dementia. Thus, those who experience CBS are otherwise "normal" people.

Remarkably, CBS is characterized often by bizarre and grotesque images: ghosts, elves, sprites, cartoon-like figures, disembodies faces, magical landscapes. According to Cliff Pickover, author of Sex, Drugs, Einstein, and Elves (Smart Publications, 2005), "people affflicted with certain eye diseases give similar reports of beings from parallel universes." Royal National Institute of the Blind Dr. Cliff Pickover Comments Wikipedia Wikipedia entry on Bonnet

Puckpool's Adventures in Neuropathy
Seems to be invented by Pynchon.

Page 308

macular degeneration
Degeneration of the macula, the part of the retina responsible for the sharp, central vision needed to read or drive. A leading cause of vision loss and blindness in people aged 65 and older.

Page 309

Old Gideon
??? (Answer:) Bourbon, mentioned on page 40 and in the index.

A.T. Still
(1828-1917), "Father of American Osteopathic Medicine." The Wikipedia entry also identifies the American School of Osteopathy in Kirksville, Missouri.

Page 310

Jefe
Spanish: chief, boss.

Gracias a Dios!
Spanish: thank God!

Page 311

mind-poisoning vetches
The vetches are weak-stemmed, semi-vining plants. See Vetches.

Edgar Hadley
Telluride Historical Museum.

blood diverted from its return
Accurate but odd?

Trout Lake
Trout Lake is located between Rico and Ophir, west of Silverton, CO, at an elevation of 9802 ft. For further information and photos see Trout Lake.

Page 313

Busted Flush
The name of the boat that Travis McGee, the hero of 21 mysteries written by John D. McDonald, lives on. (Wikipedia) He named the boat for the poker hand he had that won it for him.

tridigital
Three fingers (measure of liquor).

packer's knife
A meat packing knife, similar to a boning knife. Generally a long, thin, somewhat flexible blade. (Not unlike a filet knife in that respect.)

Page 314

Dutch Waltz
A simple dance for beginning figure skaters. From wikipedia: "...in the United States, the first dance learned by most skaters is the Dutch Waltz, which features only forward skating in a side-by-side hold, skated to music with a very slow waltz tempo."

centrifugal
Pulling away from center.

Page 315

Railbird Saloon
A "railbird" is a spectator who hangs on or over the boundary rail at a racetrack, presumably a horseplayer. Not sure if that is any help here.

Gastón Villa
A pun on British football club Aston Villa?

cholo balls
Seems to be referring to decorative ornaments hanging on a mariachi style sombrero as the decorations often portrayed in the vehicles of Mexican-American "Cholos" (gangsters/low riders).

charro
A Mexican cowboy.

Galandronome
A type of bassoon developed by French instrument maker Galander in the mid-19th century.

Battle of Puebla
Mexican victory over French forces, May 5, 1862, commemorated in Latino communities as cinco de mayo.

Page 316

Rio Bravo
Perhaps a nod to one of the greatest movie westerns, Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo? Wikipedia

Ophir road
Presumably the road to the town of Ophir, South of Telluride, named for the biblical souce of the treasure of Solomon's Fleet [6]. Perhaps one of Pynchon's contrasts: Telluride, named rationally for its ore deposits; Ophir a name from the pre-rational and mythic. Yes, and Telluride's 'rationality': "to Hell You Ride" [ADT]

Page 317

backward departure
No way to turn engine?

Right; see annotation to page 265.

abrazos
Spanish for "embrace"; "hugs".

Annotation Index