Difference between revisions of "ATD 429-459"

Revision as of 12:18, 8 January 2007

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

Page 431

metaphorical way and lateral resurrection
Cf. p. 418, where metaphor and lateral are also used in quick succession.

"Turkish Corner"
???

Bactrian
Camel. Even-toed ungulate, two-humped (twin-peaked) as compared with the one-humped dromedary.

Cameling
Seems to mean riding on a camel, contextually.

light might be a secret determinant of history
???

Page 432

fatal word
"Wife".

Gamomania
"Gamos" is greek for "marriage," and mania means "mania" or "madness."

H.M.S.F.
His Majesty's Subdesertine Frigate (p425).

Balaam's ass
refers to Num. 22:21-34 - Balaam rides out with the princes of Moab, but the Lord sends an angel to prevent him. Balaam does not see the angel but his ass does and will not go further. Balaam smites the ass three times, to no avail, until "the Lord opened the mouth of the ass, and she said to Balaam: What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times?" Balaam's ass and the serpent (in the Garden of Eden) are the only speaking animals in the bible.

reported... Polo
???

Page 433

polygamy
Cf. Lake's conversion to (de facto) polyandry in Colorado Springs, p. 268. In both cases aquifers are the scene of the activity.

pan-spectral fields
Well, pan means universal. As in panorama, Pan-Am.

"Euphrates" poplars
???

aryq
???

B.I.N.
Biometric Institute of Neuropathy, see p. 432.

seventeen-syllable
Haiku - japanese poems consisting of 17 syllables, classically arranged in three lines of 5 - 7 - 5 syllables each

Page 434

Eta/Nu Transformators
???

pari passu
on an equal footing

Page 435

Gurkhas
Nepalese forces that have fought alongside British troops.

German professors
Likely a double allusion, first to Professor Werfner of Göttingen, referenced on p. 226, and also to Heinrich Schliemann, the German treasure hunter (not actually a professor) who first established the true historical location of Troy, the site of the Trojan War. His accomplishments are sadly underscored by his extremely amateurish excavation technique which destroyed as much as it extracted from the site.

General Forrest
Nathan Bedford Forrest, rebel leader in U.S. Civil War. Although he pioneered high-mobility tactics, he may never have uttered the famous quotation; see Wikipedia entry.

archiepiscopal
Pertaining to an archbishop.

Fabergé
Russian jewelers. Wikipedia entry.

"appealing though they be or, shall I say, as they are"
Captain Toadflax's corrects his grammatical mistake, an error that is partially obscured by the inverted construction he employs. If one straightens out his words into a more conventional form, e.g., "though they [secular pleasures] be appealing," the error is clearer: they, the third person plural pronoun, requires are as a verb, i.e. pleasures are rather than pleasures be. The OED lists many examples of be taking the place of are in similar contexts, but notes that this usage is either dialectal or archaic.

Why Toadflax commits this error is less clear than what the error itself is. One possibility is that Pynchon is making an allusion to Captains Bildad and Peleg of Moby-Dick, who speak in an archaic vernacular typical of New England Puritans. The

For more information, see the OED, "be, v.," sub-entry, A.I.h.¶.

subarenaceous
Below or beneath the sand (sub) + (arenaceous).

Page 436

limen
threshold

transmundane
literally: beyond the mundane, beyond the world

lamaseries
???

Torriform Inclusion
A made-up condition from Torus==Arch.: a large convex molding, semicircular in cross section, located at the base of a classical column? From the American Heritage Dictionary. St. Cosmo has just seen, he thinks, a "watchtower". 'Watchtower'-Cf. the name of the magazine (and building in Brooklyn) that the Jehovah's Witnesses use. 'distinguishing man-made from God-made'...

Urban terrain
(But only cities unwisely built on sand.)

Stilton Gaspereaux
???

Sven Hedin
???

Aurel Stein
Sir Marc Aurel Stein. Hungarian-born explorer later knighted as a British citizen. Credited with the discovery, and arguably the exploitation, of the Mogao Grottoes in China. A rock-carved repository of ancient Buddhist texts and murals, the grottoes are known collectively as 'The Cave of a Thousand Buddhas' and protected a copy of the Mahayana Diamond sutra, acknowledged as the oldest book in existence. Wikipedia entry.

first known maps
???

Page 437

Nernst lamps
???

range-finder
Cf. 'range', passim

level of encryption
(Cf Heisenberg?)Does not seem to allude to Heisenberg and his Uncertainty Principle so much as buried layers of meaning that can hide to invisibility.

Mount Kailash
???

polarize light... in time
Thematic.

Manichaeans
A gnostic sect that followed the third century Persian prophet Mani. Their main theological belief was in a stark divide between Good and Evil.

Very relevant here in ADT: one could call their theology, BINARY.

Page 438

expanded sense... Maxwell... Hertz
???

'Perfects'
Perfects are the priests of the Cathar, a pantheistic manicheistic sect from the middle ages.

Graeco-Buddhist
???

Italo-Islamic
???

Page 439

Nuovo Rialto
Seems like Pynchon creating a "New Rialto" city under these sands as many cities take the name of an older city and add New....

From Wikipedia: Rialto is an area of the San Polo sestiere of Venice, known for its markets and for the Rialto Bridge.

The area was settled by the ninth century, when a small area in the middle of the Realtine Islands either side of the Rio Businiacus was known as the Rivoaltus. Soon, the Businiacus became known as the Grand Canal, and the district became the Rialto, referring to only the area on the left bank.

The Rialto became an important district in 1097, when Venice's market moved there, and in the following century a boat bridge was set up across the Grand Canal providing access to it. This was soon replaced by the Rialto Bridge.

Pynchon seems to love Venice so Nuovo Rialto is very ironically intended given this scene.

crystallography of the silica medium
computer-base [silicon] allusion!?

clearly a thousand years more recent than they ought ot have been That is, the Manichean shrines date from the fourteenth Century, not the fourth Century when Mani, the founder, started Manicheanism. Pynchon dating 'when it went bad' in history?

Passing of the Remarks
Sounds like a humorous reification of what gets said between sailors. Modeled after Changing of the Guard?

Steeplechase Park
???

Page 440

screaming...with blood
Screaming motif.

chong pir
???

Uyghur
Member of an ethnic group in western China. It is sometimes claimed that the Uyghurs are Indo-European in one sense or another.

skeleton rig
Concealed weapon? Seems to be a Browning, a gun..see four lines later.

andante
Literally "walking." An Italian word typically seen in notation for classical music. It denotes a moderately slow pace.

Sandman Saloon
tavern for the 'sandmen', without those great tavern names in the above-ground world. Negative associations to this saloon, it seems, unlike the usual saloons in TRP's world.

Page 441

Leonard and Lyle
resonates as Leopold and Loeb?-- two young American murderers in a famous case from early in the Century.

teke
???

Spindletop
From wikipedia: Spindletop is a salt dome oil field located in south Beaumont, Texas (approx. 30.02 -94.07) in the United States. On January 10, 1901, the well "Lucas 1" came in at Spindletop, marking the birthdate of the modern petroleum industry. At 100,000 barrels of oil a day, the gusher tripled U.S. oil production overnight, ensuring the second industrial revolution would be fueled not by wood and coal but by oil and its byproducts. Some of the companies chartered to exploit the wealth of Spindletop are some of today's largest and well known corporations such as ExxonMobil, and Texaco.

Groznyi
Grozny or Groznyy (Russian: Гро́зный; Chechen: Соьлж-ГIала, Syolzh-Ghaala) is the capital of the Chechen Republic in Russia. The city lies on the Sunzha River....As most of the residents there were Terek Cossacks, the town grew slowly until the development of Oil reserves in the early 20th century. This spiralled development of industry and petrochemical production. In addition to the oil drilled in the city itself, the city became a geographical centre of Russia's network of oil fields, and also in 1893 became part of the Transcaucasia - Russia Proper railway. From wikipedia

calyx bits
SYLLABICATION: ca·lyx PRONUNCIATION: klks, klks NOUN: Inflected forms: pl. ca·lyx·es or ca·ly·ces ( kl-sz, kl-) 1. The sepals of a flower considered as a group. 2. A cuplike structure or organ, such as one of the cuplike divisions of the pelvis or of the kidney. 3. A collecting structure in the kidney. ETYMOLOGY: Latin calyx, calyc-, from Greek kalux From The American Heritage Dictionary

adults
Chums not adults, then? No,they do not age, it seems.

assalamu alaykum
A muslim greeting.

anticline
SUFFIX: Slope: anticline. ETYMOLOGY: Back-formation from –clinal. From American Heritage Dictionary.

Page 442

equine altitude
High horse.

Veneto-Uyghur
???

2 percent... most of them
Implies at least 150 in crew.

Marco Querini
???

Terrenascondite
???

Pozzo San Vito
???

Page 443

peterman option
A 'peterman' is a slang term for a safe-blower.

Consomme Imperial
???

Timbales de Supremes de Volailles
???

Gigot Grille a la Sauce Piquante
A 'gigot' is a leg of lamb or haunch of veal. 'Sauce Piquante' is a spicy sauce.

aubergines a la Sauce Mousseline
Eggplants with mussel sauce.

Pouilly-Fuisse
A white Burgundy made from the Chardonnay grape.

Graves
A white wine from the Graves district of France.

Page 444

Oasi
Plural of "oasis."

cataplexy
Sudden loss of muscle power following a strong emotional stimulus.

Nobel brothers
Robert and Ludvig Nobel, brothers of Alfred Nobel of dynamite and prize fame, co-founders of Branobel, an important early oil company that controlled a large amount of Russian output. Wikipedia entry.

shaft-alley
???

the balloon is up
British metaphor: The action has started. A phrase also used in V.

F.O.
Foreign Office

Daily Mail
London tabloid, staunch early supporters of Alolf HItler. Today specialises in stirring up hatred of immigrants and other minorities.

"Sands of Inner Asia"
Captain, now Inspector Sands, seems to be being compared for his achievements to "Lawrence of Arabia" parodistically.

Taklamakan
???

Page 445

Kashgar to Urumchi
???

fell into the hand of
Cf modern Taliban, etc.

World-Island
???

discreet summons
Eg "paging Dr Blue". It doesn't seem to me to be a phrase that needs a gloss: a discreet summons is simply what it says and made be made in any number of ways.

far wicket
A 'wicket' may simply be a gate; but in the context of a novel and the bomber at Headingley cricket ground and Fenners, the Cambrdige cricket ground, a 'wicket' is the three stumps at one end of a cricket pitch.

wog
Chiefly British. An ethnic slur used for any dark-skinned peoples. Alleged to stand for "Western Oriental Gentleman", but mainly applied to Indians, Pakistanis, Arabs, and other brown-skinned Asians. I have heard it comes from 'wily oriental gentleman'; but the Oxford English Dictionary states that the origin is uncertain and defines a 'wog' as someone especially of Arab extraction.

Vic removal
???

eating an explosive
Cf Lew's Cyclomite.

Page 446

St Martin le Grand
A street in the City of London.

Angel Street
Another street in the City which meets St Martin le Grand at right-angles.

G.P.O. West
G.P.O - General Post Office

pneumatic dispatches
An extensive 'pneumatic dispatch' system existed on London during the Victorian era, started in 1851 and carrying on at least into the 1930's. By 1886 London had 94 telegram tubes totaling 34 1/2 miles and around 4.5 million telegraph messages were carried in cylinders at around 20mph. At its height the network extended some 57 miles connecting 67 branch offices via a central sorting office. See [1] and [2] (with illustrations).

drill suits
???

chars
Charwomen. Maids, cleaners.

clicks and rests
Presumably the clicks of a telegraphic system and the rests or silences in between.

Northern Temple of Connexion
It's in the north of the City; and the phrase suggests the religious intensity of the need to connect or communicate as well as mildly satirising it.

marblework
Such buildings would have used quantities of marble; hence the image of a 'temple' above.

Bloggins
An archetypal ordinary man; an everyman figure.

allegro vivatchy
phonetic of 'allegro vivace' - a musical term for a quick tempo

Page 447

grease-paint
'Grease-paint' refers to old-fashioned stage make-up.

cylinder of gutta-percha
Pneumatic dispatches were carried in cylinders of Gutta-Percha -- an inelastic latex made from the sap of the Gutta-Percha tree -- covered in felt. See [3]. Gutta-percha crops up a number of times in ATD, possibly enough to suggest some sort of motif or connection?

Gutta percha per se is a Victorian equivalent to rubber.

its "D" box
The receiving mechanism on the end of pneumatic dispatch pipe.

"The somewhat complicated pattern of double sluice valve originally used at the central stations has been superseded by a simpler form, known as the D box, so named Despatching from the shape of its cross section. This box is of and cast iron, and is provided with a close-fitting, Receiving brass-framed, sliding lid with a glass panel. This Apparatus, lid fits air-tight, and closes the box after a carrier has been inserted into the mouth of the tube; the latter enters at one end of the box and is there bell-mouthed. A supply pipe, to which is connected a 3-way cock, is joined on to the box and allows communication at will with either the pressure or vacuum mains, so that the apparatus becomes available for either sending (by pressure) or receiving (by vacuum) a carrier. Automatic working, by which the air supply is automatically turned on on the introduction of the carrier into a tube and on closing of the D box, and is cut off when the carrier arrives, was introduced in 1909." From the 1911 Encyclopedia Brittanica entry on Pneumatic Dispatch, cited at [4]

Holborn
Holborn is between the Strand (at the northern end of Waterloo Bridge) and Bloomsbury.

Saffron Hill
is in the City, an area named Farringdon, east of Holborn.

tantum dic verbo isn't it
???

intact
(Did I miss this?)

Page 448

because I'm mad
???

half-sovereign case
A sovereign is old English money for one pound, i.e 20 shillings. A half-sovereign is ten shillings old money.

Mr. Campbell-Bannerman
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836-1908) was a Liberal MP and then Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1905 to 1908. I'm not sure when he was knighted; but he's not the only character in the novel connected with Trinity College, Cambridge.

Page 449

Clarabella
???

Audacity, Iowa
???

Page 450

DREAMTIME MOVY
Misspelling is dreamlike? Or, more possibly, the spelling hadn't yet been standardized.

log... waterfall
Cf DW Griffith?

lens-brother
(Like masonic sign?)(Also reminiscent of the lens (the K/kid/d) carries in Delaney's Dhalgren)

Powers movement
???

Geneva
???

Wilt Flambo
Flambeau = torch (French).

acetylene
When the flammable gas was used for illumination, it was often generated on the spot by dripping water onto lumps of calcium carbide.

Page 451

nitro in the film
Cellulose nitrate, also known as collodion, was the predecessor to modern photographic films. The collodion was the substratum to the chemistry that made the image.

the tip
The audience. Pynchon uses the word many times in AtD.

strange relation
Cf GR on calculus.

dark perplexity
Cf Gen X?

dilapidated
Why?

queen-of-the-prairie
???

Page 452

Sempitern
An archaic term meaning 'eternal', a poetic but appropriate name for a river? Echoing "Serpentine," the lake in London's Hyde Park.

siegecraft of Time
Cf Paris Commune siege, above.

between Cleveland and Denver
Merle's idiosyncratic choice of endpoints?

automorphic functions
???

Page 453

We thus enter the whirlwind
God is sometimes referred to this way. Often Capitalized, but here the speaker is using it literally, but Pynchon maybe metaphorically?

Lobatchevskian
of Nikolai Lobachevsky, a Russian Mathematician, known for work into non-Euclidean geometry.

Automorphic Dispensation
???

distressing regularity
Explains dilapidation?

Thorvald
Scandinavian name from the Old Norse name Þórvaldr. It combines the name "Thor" (thunder) and scandinavian word "valdr" (ruler), to create the meaning "thunder ruler" or "ruler of the tunder". Either would be apt, in this case.

The persisting storm also occurs in Mason & Dixon and in at least one of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels.

thresher dinners
Hearty communal midday meals for men taking part in harvest. Here a sacrifice to Thorvald.

Page 454

"gaff"
A deceptive feature like the rabbit-concealing false bottom in a magician's top hat.

Giant Airships of 1896 and '7
Photo and info here

Chick
First Chum to appear in non-Chums chapter?

Cleveland... trial
See p67

Somble, Strool, and Fleshway
???

'paranoia querulans'... P.Q.
A made-up noun to mean the psychological disease of constant questioning of one's paranoia?...

blasting agent
???

detonans
That which is detonated - cod latin

Page 455

"I'm just another nutty inventor"
Roswell has been discussing his plans to dynamite the Vibe Corp. which has used its power to harrass him. Throught his work, esp. Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon has dealt with themes involving the split between elect and preterite, or to use a more simplified phrase, winners and losers. Dynamite offers the small and powerless, the "long-shot opponents of the mills of Capital" referred to earlier in the page, an expression of power of their own. In this way it is like the AK-47 today which has made it far more difficult for powers, e.g. the United States in Iraq -- to exert control over populations.

Page 456

aigrette
Literally an egret or aigrette (or Lesser White Heron); hence a tuft of feathers such as an egret has and hence a spray of gems worn on the head and finally luminous rays seen emerging from the moon in solar eclipses or, to quote the OED, "at the ends of electrified bodies".

Pencil
To mathematicians, a pencil is a family of geometric objects sharing a common property, such as a collection of lines that pass through a common point. (Of course, constipated mathematicians also find pencils useful for working out logs).

equivalent of a shrug
Nice anthropomorphism.

lost mines
(Factual?)

Page 457

tourbillon
??? 'make time impervious to gravity.
Thematic to this book and GR?

patent pencils
???

zephyr gingham
???

lawn
???

pongee
???

Page 458

professors... engineers
Theory vs practice.

Latinate token of prestige
PhD, summa cum laude, etc.

current... purity
Free of noise?

Minkowski
Hermann Minkowski was a German mathematician who made useful contributions in the development of relativity, amongst other things. [5]

Three times ten... minus one seconds
Three times ten to the fifth refers to the speed of light. The square root of minus 1 Wikipedia is also known as the Imaginary Unit or i. i is sometimes also expressed as the square root of -1, as here. Complex numbers Wikipedia can be expressed as a = bi where a is the real part of the complex number and b is the imaginary part. Pynchon has left out b and created an equation where the real part is the known physical distance covered by light in a second, while the imaginary part is i, the foundation of imaginary numbers.

other expression
???

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