Thomas Pynchon Wiki - User contributions [en]

User:Adrianboyd

2008-01-22T23:13:25Z

Adrianboyd:

'''Against the Day''' is an introspective stream-of-consciousness where characters fluctuate with the objective mind of the reader so that every plot in the story is recreated accordingly with the subconscious psyche of the author. It’s multifaceted ‘dreamlike~architectural’ narrative will elevate the individual’s sensorial experience during the monumental span of reading the novel while achieving oneness within a unified cosmic field. '''(Me)'''

'''Hello everybody''', I am Adrian Boyd from [http://www.SexAntToysWiki.com Sex Ant Toys] and a big fan of Against The Day. Still hanging around the first hundred pages of the book and it is now 12:11AM according to my PowerBook G4 on September 21, 2007. Yeap, I believe I have crashed into Thomas Pynchon several times in New York around Washington Square Park and actually made conversation with him, maybe it was the other way around. Where exactly? I can't recall (maybe Thompson St North) Anyways... I am so grateful of being alive at the same time he is alive and experiencing his latest work at hand in this right moment of time. We don't get Bitches Brew here now or often... well... maybe when John Zorn performed his Second Book with Electric Masada at Tonic. Cheers to that and I truly believe AGAINST THE DAY is in FACT the BIGGEST ACCOMPLISHMENT in WORLD LITERATURE. HE IS. (12:37AM) ~ '''V.Rayuela8½Contempt (∞)'''

- Notes:

'''September 22, 2007 (8:04PM)''' 
It has come to my attention the difficulty of accepting the fact of not understanding the Franz Ferdinand pages of the book (ATD45) regardless of how good is the band or how such insignificant event led the world to commence a war to end all wars. Ironic, isn't it?

'''September 25, 2007 (2:06AM)''' 
Money is the basis of our own existence not the miracle itself. Let's ring on life and crush the system away!

'''October 29, 2007 (2:06AM)''' 
Ok... the book was put away for a freaking month...
now I am back... shit... hope it wont interfere with my sleep
havent slept in 2 day now...
been going back and forth, 7 or 8 books on hand;
working on music... writing articles...
switching like a mother
refreshing my mind on every art movement since dada
expecting a baby soon
peace I hope)(
of mind-π-
pay for rent¥
go back where I started)(
nothing...F.Every single one of them

'''January 22, 2008 (6:11PM)''' 
[[User:Adrianv]] --- New User Page (Change of name from Boyd to Voyd - - sounds better)

Template:Pynchon Bio

2007-12-07T06:46:52Z

Adrianboyd: /* Themes and influence */

[[image:pynchon-simpsons.jpg|right]]'''Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr.''' (born May 8, 1937) is an American writer based in New York City. He is noted for his dense and complex works of fiction. Hailing from Long Island, Pynchon spent two years in the United States Navy and earned an English degree from Cornell University. After publishing several short stories in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he began composing the novels for which he is best known today: ''[http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ V.]'' (1963), ''[http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ The Crying of Lot 49]'' (1966), ''[http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Gravity's Rainbow]'' (1973), ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vineland Vineland]'' (1990), ''[http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Mason & Dixon]'' (1997), and ''[http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Against the Day]'' (2006).

Pynchon is regarded by many readers and critics as one of the finest contemporary authors. He is a MacArthur Fellow and a recipient of the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Both his fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, styles and themes, including (but not limited to) the fields of history, science and mathematics. Pynchon is also known for his avoidance of personal publicity: very few photographs of him have ever been published, and rumors about his location and identity have been circulated since the 1960s.

==Biography==
Thomas Pynchon was born in 1937 in Glen Cove, Long Island, New York, one of three children of Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Sr. (1907-1995) and Katherine Frances Bennett (1909-1996). His earliest American ancestor, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Pynchon William Pynchon], emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony]] with the Winthrop Fleet in 1630, and thereafter a long line of Pynchon descendants found wealth and repute on American soil. Pynchon's family background and aspects of his ancestry have provided source material for his fictions, particularly in the Slothrop family histories related in "The Secret Integration" (1964) and ''[http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Gravity's Rainbow]''.

===Childhood and education===
Pynchon attended Oyster Bay High School, where he was awarded "student of the year" and contributed short fictional pieces to his school newspaper: "Voice of the Hamster",<ref>[http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_hamster.html "Voice of the Hamster"]</ref> "The Boys",<ref>[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_boys.html "The Boys"]</ref> and "Ye Legend of Sir Stupid and the Purple Knight".<ref>[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_knight.html "Ye Legend of Sir Stupid and the Purple"]</ref> These works featured many of the themes and literary devices he would use throughout his career: silly names, rampant drug use, and paranoia. After graduating in 1953 at the age of 16, he studied engineering physics at Cornell University, but left at the end of his second year to serve in the U.S. Navy. In 1957, Pynchon returned to Cornell to pursue a degree in English. His first published story, "The Small Rain", appeared in the ''Cornell Writer'' in May 1959, and narrates an actual experience of a friend who had served in the army; subsequently, however, episodes and characters throughout Pynchon's fiction draw freely upon his own experiences in the navy.

While at Cornell, Pynchon became a friend of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Fariña Richard Fariña], and both briefly led what Pynchon has called a "micro-cult" around Oakley Hall's 1958 novel ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warlock_(novel) Warlock]''. (He later reminisced about his college days in the introduction he wrote in 1983 for Fariña's novel ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Been_Down_So_Long_It_Looks_Like_Up_to_Me Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me],'' first published in 1966.) Pynchon also reportedly attended lectures given by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Nabokov Vladimir Nabokov], who then taught literature at Cornell. While Nabokov later said that he had no memory of Pynchon (although Nabokov's wife, Vera, who graded her husband's class papers, commented that she remembered his distinctive handwriting; his later handwriting appears unexceptional), other teachers at Cornell, like the novelist James McConkey, recall him as being a gifted and exceptional student. In 1958, Pynchon and Cornell classmate Kirkpatrick Sale wrote part or all of a science-fiction musical, ''Minstral Island'', which portrayed a dystopian future in which IBM rules the world. [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/paper_gibbs.html] Pynchon received his BA in June 1959.

===''V.''===
After leaving Cornell, Pynchon began to work on his first novel. From February 1960 to September 1962, he was employed as a technical writer at Boeing in Seattle, where he compiled safety articles for the ''Bomarc Service News,''<ref>Wisnicki 2000-1</ref> a support newsletter for the BOMARC surface-to-air missile deployed by the U.S. Air Force. Pynchon's experiences at Boeing inspired his depictions of the "[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoyodyne Yoyodyne]" corporation in ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V. V.]'' and ''[http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ The Crying of Lot 49],'' and both his background in physics and the technical journalism he undertook at Boeing provided much raw material for ''[http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Gravity's Rainbow].'' When it was published in 1963, Pynchon's novel ''V.'' won a William Faulkner Foundation Award for best first novel of the year.

After resigning from Boeing, Pynchon spent time in New York and Mexico before moving to California, where he was reportedly based for much of the 1960s and early 1970s, most notably in an apartment in Manhattan Beach, in Southern California.<ref>Frost 2003</ref> Pynchon during this period embraced the lifestyle and values of the hippie counterculture, which he would later make use of in his 1990 novel ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vineland Vineland].''<ref>Gordon 1994</ref> In 1964, his application to study mathematics as a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, was turned down.<ref name="royster2005">Royster 2005</ref> In 1966, he wrote a first-hand report on the aftermath and legacy of the Watts riots in Los Angeles. Entitled "A Journey Into the Mind of Watts," the article was published in the ''New York Times Magazine.''<ref>Pynchon 1966</ref>

From the mid-1960s Pynchon has also regularly provided blurbs and introductions for a wide range of novels and non-fiction works. One of the first of these pieces was a brief review of Hall's ''Warlock'' which appeared, along with comments by seven other writers on "neglected books", as part of a feature entitled "A Gift of Books" in the December 1965 issue of ''Holiday.''

===''The Crying of Lot 49''===

In April 1964, Pynchon wrote to his agent, Candida Donadio, that he was facing a creative crisis, with four novels in progress, and that "If they come out on paper anything like they are inside my head then it will be the literary event of the millennium."<ref>Gussow 1998</ref> In December 1965, Pynchon politely turned down an offer to teach literature at Bennington College, writing that he had resolved, two or three years earlier, to write three novels at once.<ref>McLemee 2006</ref> Pynchon called the decision "a moment of temporary insanity," but noted that he was "too stubborn to let any of them go, let alone all of them."

Pynchon's second novel, ''[http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ The Crying of Lot 49],'' was published a few months later in 1966. Whether it was one of the three or four novels Pynchon had in progress is unknown, but in a 1965 letter to Donadio, Pynchon had written that he was in the middle of writing a book that he called a "potboiler." When the book grew to 155 pages, he called it, "a short story, but with gland trouble," and hoped that Donadio "can unload it on some poor sucker." This would suggest that ''Crying of Lot 49'' was ''not'' one of the four novels Pynchon was writing as of 1964, but no answer is certain.

''The Crying of Lot 49'' won the Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Foundation Award shortly after publication. Although more concise and linear in its structure than Pynchon's other novels, its labyrinthine plot features an ancient, underground mail service known as "The Tristero" or "Trystero," a parody of a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/revenge_play Jacobean revenge drama] entitled "The Courier's Tragedy," and a corporate conspiracy involving the bones of World War II American GIs being used as charcoal cigarette filters. It proposes a series of seemingly incredible interconnections between these and other similarly bizarre revelations that confront the novel's protagonist, Oedipa Maas. Like ''V,'' the novel contains a wealth of references to science and technology and to obscure historical events, and both books dwell upon the detritus of American society and culture. ''The Crying of Lot 49'' also continues Pynchon's habit of composing parodic song lyrics and punning names, and referencing aspects of popular culture within his prose narrative. In particular, it incorporates several allusions to the Beatles and Nabokov's ''Lolita.''

In 1968, Pynchon was one of 447 signatories to the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest." Full-page advertisements in ''The New York Post'' and ''The New York Review of Books'' listed the names of those who had pledged not to pay "the proposed 10% income tax surcharge or any war-designated tax increase," and stated their belief "that American involvement in Vietnam is morally wrong".<ref>''New York Review of Books'' 1968:9</ref>

===''Gravity's Rainbow'' and Pynchon's rise to prominence===
Pynchon's most celebrated novel is his third, ''[http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Gravity's Rainbow]'', published in 1973. An intricate and allusive fiction which combines and elaborates on many of the themes of his earlier work, including preterition, paranoia, racism, colonialism, conspiracy, synchronicity, and [[entropy]], the novel has spawned a wealth of commentary and critical material, including two reader's guides,<ref>Fowler 1980; Weisenburger 1988</ref> books and scholarly articles, on-line concordances and discussions,<ref>[http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/ Pynchon HyperArts]</ref> and art works, and is regarded as one of the archetypal texts of American literary postmodernism. The major portion of ''Gravity's Rainbow'' takes place in London and Europe in the final months of the Second World War and the weeks immediately following VE Day, and is narrated for the most part from within the historical moment in which it is set. In this way, Pynchon's text enacts a type of dramatic irony whereby neither the characters nor the various narrative voices are aware of specific historical circumstances, such as the Holocaust, which are, however, very much to the forefront of the reader's understanding of this time in history. Such an approach generates dynamic tension and moments of acute self-consciousness, as both reader and author seem drawn ever deeper into the "plot", in various senses of that term. Encyclopedic in scope, the novel also displays enormous erudition in its treatment of an array of material drawn from the fields of psychology, chemistry, mathematics, history, religion, music, literature and film. Perhaps appropriately for a book so suffused with engineering knowledge, Pynchon reportedly wrote the first draft of ''Gravity's Rainbow'' in longhand on engineer's graph paper, in California and Mexico City.

''Gravity's Rainbow'' was a joint winner of the 1974 National Book Award for Fiction, along with Isaac Bashevis Singer's ''A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories''. In the same year, the fiction jury unanimously recommended ''Gravity's Rainbow'' for the Pulitzer Prize; however, the Pulitzer board vetoed the jury's recommendation, describing the novel as "unreadable", "turgid", "overwritten", and in parts "obscene", and no prize was awarded.<ref>Kihss 1974</ref> In 1975, Pynchon declined the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

===Post-''Gravity's Rainbow''===
A collection of Pynchon's early short stories, entitled ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Learner Slow Learner]]'', was published in 1984, with a lengthy autobiography|autobiographical introduction. In October of the same year, an article entitled "Is It O.K. to Be a Luddite?" was published in the ''New York Times Book Review''. In April 1988, Pynchon contributed an extensive review of Gabriel García Marquéz's novel, ''Love in the Time of Cholera'', to the ''New York Times'', under the title "The Heart's Eternal Vow". Another article, entitled "Nearer, My Couch, to Thee", was published in June 1993 in the ''New York Times Book Review'', as one in a series of articles in which various writers reflected on each of the Seven Deadly Sins. Pynchon's subject was "Sloth".

===''Vineland''===
Pynchon's fourth novel, ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vineland Vineland]'', was published in 1990. The novel is set in California in the 1980s and 1960s, and describes the relationship between an FBI COINTELPRO agent and a female radical filmmaker. Its strong socio-political undercurrents detail the constant battle between authoritarianism and communalism, and the nexus between resistance and complicity, but with a typically Pynchonian sense of humor.

In 1988, he received a MacArthur Fellowship and, since the early 1990s at least, many observers have mentioned Pynchon as a Nobel Prize contender.<ref>See, for example, Grimes 1993, CNN Book News 1999, Ervin 2000</ref> Renowned American literary critic Harold Bloom has named him as one of the four major American novelists of his time, along with Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, and Cormac McCarthy.

===''Mason & Dixon''===
Pynchon's fifth novel, ''[http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Mason & Dixon]'', was published in 1997. Pynchon began writing it as early as January 1975.<ref>Gussow</ref> The meticulously-researched novel is a sprawling saga recounting the lives and careers of the English astronomer, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Mason Charles Mason], and his partner, the surveyor [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah_Dixon Jeremiah Dixon], and the birth of the American Republic. While it received some negative reviews, the great majority of commentators acknowledged it as a welcome return to form, and some, including Bloom, have called it Pynchon's greatest work to date.

After the publication of ''Mason & Dixon'', a user by the online name of "Martin Scribler" posted a handful of messages on the Pynchon-L mailing list denouncing many members of that group as "dunces all" for discussing their own neuroses over actual literary discussion. Due to the high quality of Martin Scriblers' posts, their message, and the historical significance of his name (alluding to an 18th-century satire of pretentious erudition), many have speculated that Pynchon himself wrote these posts.

===''Against the Day''===

A variety of rumors pertaining to the subject matter of Pynchon's next book have circulated over a number of years. Most specific of these were comments made by the former German minister of culture, Michael Naumann, who stated that he assisted Pynchon in his research about "a Russian mathematician [who] studied for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hilbert David Hilbert] in Göttingen", and that the new novel would trace the life and loves of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofia_Kovalevskaya Sofia Kovalevskaya].

In July 2006, a new untitled novel by Pynchon was announced along with a synopsis written by Pynchon himself, which appeared on Amazon.com, stating that the novel's action takes place between the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition 1893 Chicago World's Fair] and the time immediately following World War I. "With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead," Pynchon writes in his Book Description, "it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred." He promises cameos by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla Nikola Tesla], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bela_Lugosi Bela Lugosi] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groucho_Marx Groucho Marx], as well as "stupid songs" and "strange sexual practices". Subsequently, the title of the new book was reported as ''Against the Day'' and a Penguin spokesperson confirmed that the synopsis was Pynchon's.<ref>Patterson 2006b; Italie 2006</ref>

''Against the Day'' was released November 21, 2006 and is 1,085 pages long in the first edition hardcover. The book was given almost no promotion by Penguin and professional book reviewers were given little time in advance to review the book, presumably in accord with Pynchon's wishes. An edited version of Pynchon's synopsis was used as the jacket flap copy and Kovalevskaya does appear, although as only one of over a hundred characters.

There has been no consensus among professional book reviewers, although many agree that it is by turns brilliant and exhausting ([http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_Reviews Complete Reviews]). An [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page ''Against the Day'' wiki] was launched on the same day the novel was published to help readers keep track of the numerous characters, events and themes.

==Themes and influence==
Along with its emphasis on loftier themes such as racism, imperialism and religion, and its cognizance and appropriation of many elements of traditional high culture and literary form, Pynchon's work also demonstrates a strong affinity with the practitioners and artifacts of low culture, including comic books and animated cartoons, pulp fiction, popular films, television programs, cookery, urban myths, conspiracy theories, and folk art. This blurring of the conventional boundary between "High" and "low" culture, sometimes interpreted as a "deconstruction", is seen as one of the defining characteristics of postmodernism.

In particular, Pynchon has revealed himself in his fiction and non-fiction as an aficionado of popular music. Song lyrics and mock musical numbers appear in each of his novels, and, in his autobiographical introduction to the ''Slow Learner'' collection of early stories, he reveals a fondness for both jazz and rock and roll. The character McClintic Sphere in ''V.'' is a fictional composite of master jazz musicians such as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornette_Coleman Ornette Coleman], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Parker Charlie Parker] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk Thelonious Monk]. In ''The Crying of Lot 49'', the lead singer of "The Paranoids" sports "a [[The Beatles|Beatle]] haircut" and sings with an English accent. In the closing pages of ''Gravity's Rainbow'', there is an apocryphal report that [[Tyrone Slothrop]], the novel's protagonist, played kazoo and harmonica as a guest musician on a record released by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fool_(band) The Fool] in the 1960s (having magically recovered the latter instrument, his "harp", in a German stream in 1945, after losing it down the toilet in 1939 at the Roseland Ballroom in Roxbury, Massachusetts, to the strains of the jazz standard "Cherokee", upon which tune Charlie Parker was simultaneously inventing bebop in New York, as Pynchon describes). In ''Vineland'', both Zoyd Wheeler and Isaiah Two Four are also musicians: Zoyd played keyboards in a '60s surf band called "The Corvairs", while Isaiah played in a punk band called "Billy Barf and the Vomitones". In ''Mason & Dixon'', one of the characters plays on the "Clavier" the varsity drinking song which will later become "The Star-Spangled Banner".

In his ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Learner Slow Learner]'' introduction, Pynchon acknowledges a debt to the anarchic bandleader Spike Jones, and in 1994, he penned a 3000-word set of liner notes for the album ''Spiked!'', a collection of Jones's recordings released on the short-lived BMG Catalyst label. Pynchon also wrote the liner notes for ''Nobody's Cool'', the second album of indie rock band Lotion, in which he states that "rock and roll remains one of the last honorable callings, and a working band is a miracle of everyday life. Which is basically what these guys do." He is also known to be a fan of Roky Erickson.

In terms of literary influences and affinity, an eclectic catalogue of Pynchonian precursors has been proposed by readers and critics. Beside overt references in the novels to writers as disparate as Henry Adams, Isaac Asimov, Giorgio de Chirico, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Emily Dickinson, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jorge Luis Borges, Ishmael Reed, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Patrick O'Brian, and Umberto Eco, and to an eclectic mix of iconic religious and philosophical sources, credible comparisons with works by Rabelais, Cervantes, Laurence Sterne, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad, Thomas Mann, William Burroughs, Ralph Ellison, Patrick White, and Toni Morrison have also been made. Some commentators have detected similarities with those writers in the Modernist tradition who wrote extremely long novels dealing with large metaphysical or political issues. Examples of such works might include ''Ulysses'' by James Joyce, ''A Passage to India'' by E.M. Forster, ''The Apes of God'' by Wyndham Lewis, ''The Man Without Qualities'' by Robert Musil, or ''The Castle'' by Franz Kafka. In his "Introduction" to ''Slow Learner'', Pynchon explicitly acknowledges his debt to Beat Generation writers, and expresses his admiration for Jack Kerouac's ''On the Road'' in particular; he also reveals his familiarity with literary works by T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, Saul Bellow, Herbert Gold, Philip Roth and Norman Mailer, and non-fiction works by Helen Waddell, Norbert Wiener and Isaac Asimov. Other contemporary American authors whose fiction is often categorised alongside Pynchon's include John Hawkes, Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, Donald Barthelme, John Barth, William Gaddis, Don DeLillo, and Joseph McElroy. Younger contemporary writers who have been touted as heirs apparent to Pynchon include David Foster Wallace, William Vollmann, Richard Powers, David Mitchell, Neal Stephenson, Dave Eggers, Christopher Wunderlee, and "Tommaso Pincio" whose pseudonym is an Italian rendering of Pynchon's name.

Investigations and digressions into the realms of human sexuality, psychology, sociology, mathematics, science, and technology recur throughout Pynchon's works. One of his earliest short stories, "Low-lands" (1960), features a meditation on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg Heisenberg's] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/uncertainty_principle uncertainty principle] as a metaphor for telling stories about one's own experiences. His next published work, "Entropy" (1960), introduced [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/entropy the concept] which was to become synonymous with Pynchon's name (though Pynchon later admitted the "shallowness of [his] understanding" of the subject, and noted that choosing an abstract concept first and trying to construct a narrative around it was "a lousy way to go about writing a story"). Another early story, "Under the Rose" (1961), includes amongst its cast of characters a cyborg set anachronistically in Victorian-era Egypt (a type of writing now called steampunk). This story, significantly reworked by Pynchon, appears as Chapter 3 of ''V.'' "The Secret Integration" (1964), Pynchon's last published short story, is a sensitively-handled coming-of-age tale in which a group of young boys face the consequences of the American policy of racial integration. At one point in the story, the boys attempt to understand the new policy by way of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/antiderivative mathematical operation], the only sense of the word with which they are familiar.

''The Crying of Lot 49'' also alludes to entropy and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/communication_theory communication theory], and contains scenes and descriptions which parody or appropriate [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/calculus calculus], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno's_paradoxes Zeno's paradoxes], and the thought experiment known as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell's_demon Maxwell's demon]. At the same time, the novel also investigates homosexuality, celibacy and both medically-sanctioned and illicit psychedelic drug use. ''Gravity's Rainbow'' describes many varieties of sexual fetishism (including sado-masochism, coprophilia and a borderline case of tentacle rape), and features numerous episodes of drug use, most notably marijuana but also cocaine, naturally occurring hallucinogens, and the mushroom ''Amanita muscaria.'' ''Gravity's Rainbow'' also derives much from Pynchon's background in mathematics: at one point, the geometry of garter belts is compared with that of cathedral spires, both described as mathematical singularities. His most recent novel, ''Mason & Dixon'', explores the scientific, theological, and sociocultural foundations of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment Age of Reason] whilst also depicting the relationships between actual historical figures and fictional characters in intricate detail and, like ''Gravity's Rainbow'', is an archetypal example of the genre of historiographical metafiction.

Pynchon's work has been cited as an influence and inspiration by many writers, musicians, artists and filmmakers, including Laurie Anderson, T. Coraghessan Boyle, David Cronenberg, Don DeLillo, Paul Di Filippo, William Gibson, Max P. Häring, Elfriede Jelinek, '''Adrian Boyd or Voyd also known as Lampara''', Rick Moody, Arturo Perez-Reverte, Richard Powers, Adam Rapp, Salman Rushdie, Zak Smith, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling and the Definitive Jux hip-hop producer/CEO/emcee El-P. Thanks to his influence on Gibson and Stephenson in particular, Pynchon became one of the progenitors of cyberpunk fiction. Though the term "cyberpunk" did not become prevalent until the early 1980s, many readers retroactively include ''Gravity's Rainbow'' in the genre, along with other works—''e.g.,'' Samuel R. Delany's ''Nova'' and many works of Philip K. Dick—which seem, after the fact, to anticipate cyberpunk styles and themes. The encyclopedic nature of Pynchon's novels also led to some attempts to link his work with the short-lived [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/hypertext_fiction hypertext fiction] movement of the 1990s.<ref>Page 2002; Krämer 2005</ref>

''Gravity's Rainbow'' and the more recent ''Mason & Dixon'' both feature wildly eccentric characters, episodes of frenzied action and frequent digressions on topics which are seemingly tangential to the central narrative. These characteristics, combined with the novels' imposing lengths, have led critic James Wood to classify Pynchon's work as hysterical realism. Other writers whose work has been labelled as hysterical realism include Rushdie, Stephenson, Wunderlee and Zadie Smith.

==Media scrutiny==
Relatively little is known about Thomas Pynchon as a private person; he has had few known contacts with journalists for more than forty years. Only a few photos of him are known to exist, nearly all from his high school and college days, and his whereabouts have often remained undisclosed.

A review of ''V.'' in the ''New York Times Book Review'' described Pynchon as "a recluse" living in Mexico, thereby introducing the media label which has pursued Pynchon throughout his career.<ref>Plimpton 1963: 5</ref> Nonetheless, Pynchon's absence from the public spotlight is one of the notable features of his life, and it has generated many rumors and apocryphal anecdotes.

===1970s and 1980s===
After the publication and success of ''Gravity's Rainbow'', interest mounted in finding out more about the identity of the author. At the 1974 National Book Award ceremony, the president of Viking Press, Tom Guinzberg, arranged for double-talking comedian [http://www.irwincorey.com/ "Professor" Irwin Corey] to accept the prize on Pynchon's behalf.<ref name="royster2005"/> Many of the assembled guests had no idea who Corey was, and, having never seen the author, they assumed that it was Pynchon himself on the stage delivering Corey's trademark torrent of rambling, pseudo-scholarly verbiage.<ref>Corey 1974</ref> Towards the end of Corey's address a streaker ran through the hall, adding further to the confusion.

An article published in the ''Soho Weekly News'' claimed that Pynchon was in fact J. D. Salinger.<ref>Batchelor 1976</ref> Pynchon's written response to this theory was simple: "Not bad. Keep trying."<ref> Reported in Tanner 1982</ref>

Thereafter, the first piece to provide substantial information about Pynchon's personal life was a biographical account written by a former Cornell University friend, Jules Siegel, and published in ''Playboy'' magazine. In his article, Siegel reveals that Pynchon had a [[complex (psychology)|complex]] about his teeth and underwent extensive and painful reconstructive surgery, was nicknamed "Tom" at Cornell and attended Mass diligently, acted as best man at Siegel's wedding, and that he later also had an affair with Siegel's wife. Siegel recalls Pynchon saying he did attend some of Vladimir Nabokov's lectures at Cornell but that he could hardly make out what Nabokov was saying because of his thick Russian accent. Siegel also records Pynchon's comment that "[e]very weirdo in the world is on my wavelength",<ref>Siegel 1977</ref> an observation borne out by the crankiness and zealotry which has attached itself to his name and work in subsequent years, particularly across the Internet.

===1990s===
Pynchon's avoidance of celebrity and public appearances caused journalists to continue to speculate about his identity and activities, and reinforced his reputation within the media as "reclusive". More astute readers and critics recognized that there were and are perhaps aesthetic (and ideological) motivations behind his choice to remain aloof from public life. For example, the protagonist in Janette Turner Hospital's short story, "For Mr. Voss or Occupant" (1991), explains to her daughter that she is writing
:a study of authors who become reclusive. Patrick White, Emily Dickinson, J. D. Salinger, Thomas Pynchon. The way they create solitary characters and personae and then disappear into their fictions.<ref>Hospital 1995: 361-2</ref>
More recently, book critic Arthur Salm has written that
:the man simply chooses not to be a public figure, an attitude that resonates on a frequency so out of phase with that of the prevailing culture that if Pynchon and Paris Hilton were ever to meet—the circumstances, I admit, are beyond imagining—the resulting matter/antimatter explosion would vaporize everything from here to Tau Ceti IV.<ref>Salm 2004</ref>

Belying this reputation somewhat, Pynchon has published a number of articles and reviews in the mainstream American media, including words of support for Salman Rushdie and his then-wife, Marianne Wiggins, after the fatwa was pronounced against Rushdie by the Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.<ref>Pynchon 1989</ref> In the following year, Rushdie's enthusiastic review of Pynchon's ''Vineland'' prompted Pynchon to send him another message hinting that if Rushdie were ever in New York, the two should arrange a meeting. Eventually, the two did meet, and Rushdie found himself surprised by how much Pynchon resembled the mental image Rushdie had formed beforehand.<ref>Hitchens 1997</ref>

In the early 1990s, Pynchon married his literary agent, Melanie Jackson — a great-granddaughter of Theodore Roosevelt — and fathered a son, Jackson, in 1991. The disclosure of Pynchon's location in New York, after many years in which he was believed to be dividing his time between Mexico and northern California, led some journalists and photographers to try to track him down. Shortly before the publication of ''Mason & Dixon'' in 1997, a CNN camera crew filmed him in Manhattan. Angered by this invasion of his privacy, he rang CNN asking that he not be identified in the footage of the street scenes near his home. When asked about his reclusive nature, he remarked, "My belief is that 'recluse' is a code word generated by journalists ... meaning, 'doesn't like to talk to reporters'." CNN also quoted him as saying, "Let me be unambiguous. I prefer not to be photographed."<ref>CNN 1997</ref> The next year, a reporter for the ''Sunday Times'' managed to snap a photo of him as he was walking with his son.<ref>Bone 1998</ref>

After several references to Pynchon's work and reputation were made on NBC's ''The John Larroquette Show,'' Pynchon (through his agent) reportedly contacted the show's producers to offer suggestions and corrections. When a local Pynchon sighting became a major plot point in a 1994 episode of the show, Pynchon was sent the script for his approval; as well as providing the title of a fictitious work to be used in one episode ("Pandemonium of the Sun"), the novelist apparently vetoed a final scene that called for an extra playing him to be filmed from behind, walking away from shot.<ref>CNN 1997; Glenn 2003</ref> Also during the 1990s, Pynchon apparently befriended members of the band Lotion and attended a number of their shows, culminating in the liner notes he contributed for the band's 1995 album ''Nobody's Cool''. The novelist then conducted an interview with the band ("Lunch With Lotion") for ''Esquire'' in June 1996 in the lead-up to the publication of ''Mason & Dixon''. More recently, Pynchon provided faxed answers to questions submitted by author David Hajdu and permitted excerpts from his personal correspondence to be quoted in Hajdu's 2001 book, ''Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña.''<ref>Warner 2001</ref>

Pynchon's attempt to maintain his personal privacy and have his work speak for itself has resulted in a number of outlandish rumors and hoaxes over the years. Indeed, claims that Pynchon was the Unabomber or a sympathizer with the Waco Branch Davidians after the 1993 siege were upstaged in the mid-1990s by the invention of an elaborate rumor insinuating that Pynchon and one "[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanda_Tinasky Wanda Tinasky]" were the same person. A spate of letters authored under that name had appeared in the late 1980s in the ''Anderson Valley Advertiser'' in Anderson Valley, California. The style and content of those letters were said to resemble Pynchon's, and Pynchon's ''Vineland'', published in 1990, also takes place in northern California, so it was suggested that Pynchon may have been in the area at that time, conducting research. A collection of the Tinasky letters was eventually published as a paperback book in 1996; however, Pynchon himself denied having written the letters, and no direct attribution of the letters to Pynchon was ever made. "Literary detective" Donald Foster subsequently showed that the ''Letters'' were in fact written by an obscure Beat writer called Tom Hawkins, who had murdered his wife and then committed suicide in 1988. Foster's evidence was conclusive, including finding the typewriter on which the "Tinasky" letters had been written.<ref>Foster 2000</ref>

In 1998, over 120 letters that Pynchon had written to his longtime agent, Candida Donadio, were donated by the family of private collector, Carter Burden, to the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City. The letters ranged from 1963 to 1982, thus covering some of the author's most creative and prolific years. Although the Morgan Library originally intended to allow scholars to view the letters, at Pynchon’s request, the Burden family and
Morgan Library agreed to seal these letters until after Pynchon's death.

===2000s===

After 9/11, a supposed "interview" with Pynchon was published in an issue of ''Playboy'' Japan, entitled "Most News is Propaganda. Bin Laden May Not Exist." It purported to be a talk with Pynchon on the events of 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden. Its authenticity is uncertain. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pynchon_playboy Rough translation of the Pynchon "interview"].


Responding ironically to the image which has been manufactured in the media over the years, during 2004, Pynchon made two cameo appearances on the animated television series ''The Simpsons''. The first occurs in the episode "Diatribe of a Mad Housewife", in which Marge Simpson becomes a novelist. He plays himself, with a paper bag over his head, and provides a blurb for the back cover of Marge's book, speaking in a broad Long Island accent: "Here's your quote: Thomas Pynchon loved this book, almost as much as he loves cameras!" He then starts yelling at passing cars: "Hey, over here, have your picture taken with a reclusive author! Today only, we'll throw in a free autograph! But, wait! There's more!" The second appearance occurs in "All's Fair in Oven War," which was the sixteenth-season premiere. In this appearance, Pynchon's dialogue consists entirely of puns on his novel titles ("These wings are 'V'-licious! I'll put this recipe in 'The Gravity's Rainbow Cookbook', right next to 'The Frying of Latke 49'."). Pynchon makes a third, non-speaking cameo, when he is seen at the fictional WordLoaf convention in the 18th season (2006) episode, "Moe'N'a Lisa." The episode first aired on November 19, 2006, the Sunday before Pynchon's sixth novel, ''Against the Day'', was released, perhaps as part of an increasingly unusual publicity campaign.

In July of 2006, Amazon.com created a page showing an upcoming 992-page, untitled, Thomas Pynchon novel. A description of the soon-to-be published novel appeared on Amazon purporting to be written by Pynchon himself. The description was soon taken down, prompting speculation over its authenticity, but the blurb was soon back up along with the title of Pynchon's new novel, ''Against the Day''.

Shortly before ''Against the Day'' was published, Pynchon's prose appeared in the program for "The Daily Show: Ten Fu@#ing Years (The Concert)", a retrospective on Jon Stewart's comedy-news broadcast ''The Daily Show.''<ref>Pynchon, Thomas. [http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_dailyshow.html "The Evolution of ''The Daily Show''"]. Printed in program notes (16 November 2006).</ref> Only weeks later, Pynchon sent a one-page, typewritten letter to ''The Daily Telegraph,'' defending fellow writer Ian McEwan against plagiarism charges. (McEwan had been accused of copying details from the late Lucilla Andrews's autobiography, ''No Time for Romance.'') His sentiment echoes thoughts on literary theft expressed over two decades earlier in the ''Slow Learner'' introduction; the letter concludes,
:Memoirs of the Blitz have borne indispensable witness, and helped later generations know something of the tragedy and heroism of those days. For Mr. McEwan to have put details from one of them to further creative use, acknowledging this openly and often, and then explaining it clearly and honorably, surely merits not our scolding, but our gratitude.<ref>Pynchon, Thomas. [http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_mcewan.html "Words for Ian McEwan"] (6 December 2006)</ref>

==Works==
* ''[[V.]]'' (1963), winner of [[William Faulkner Foundation]] Award
* ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]'' (1966), winner of Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Foundation Award
* ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'' (1973), 1974 [[National Book Award]] for fiction, judges' unanimous selection for [[Pulitzer Prize]] overruled by advisory board, awarded William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1975 (award declined)
* ''[[Slow Learner]]'' (1984), collection of early short stories
* ''[[Vineland]]'' (1990)
* ''[[Mason & Dixon]]'' (1997)
* ''[[Against the Day]]'' (21 November, 2006)

As well as fictional works, Pynchon has written essays, introductions, and reviews addressing subjects as diverse as missile security, the Watts Riots, Luddism and the work of Donald Barthelme. Some of his non-fiction pieces have appeared in the ''New York Times Book Review'' and ''The New York Review of Books'', and he has contributed blurbs for books and records. His 1984 Introduction to the ''Slow Learner'' collection of early stories is significant for its autobiographical candor. He has written introductions to at least two books, including the 1992 collection of Donald Barthelme's stories, ''The Teachings of Don B.'' and, more recently, the Penguin Centenary Edition of George Orwell's novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four,'' which was published in 2003.

==External Links==
* [http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pynchon Uncyclopedia's Pynchon Bio]

==Notes and references==

:''This article was originally based on the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page Wikipedia] page [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pynchon Thomas Pynchon], accessed 30 November 2006, last modified [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thomas_Pynchon&oldid=91019157 23:00 UTC, 29 November 2006]. Principal authors of that page include Wikipedia users Abaca, Anville, Nixdorf and Zafiroblue05. Used under the terms of the [http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html GNU FDL 1.2.]''

<references/>

* Batchelor, J.C. "Thomas Pynchon is not Thomas Pynchon, or, This is End of the Plot Which Has No Name". ''Soho Weekly News'', 22 April 1976.
* Bone, James. [http://www.suntimes.co.za:80/1998/06/07/lifestyle/life01.htm "Who the hell is he?]" ''Sunday Times'' (South Africa), 7 June 1998.
* CNN. "[http://cgi.cnn.com/US/9706/05/pynchon/ Where's Thomas Pynchon?]" 5 June 1997.
* CNN Book News. "[http://www.cnn.com/books/news/9909/29/nobel.prize/index.html Early Nobel announcement prompts speculation]". 29 September 1999.
* Corey, Irwin. "[http://www.irwincorey.org/routines.html Transcript of National Book Award acceptance speech]", delivered 18 April 1974.
* Ervin, Andrew. "[http://citypaper.net/articles/091400/ae.books.shtml Nobel Oblige]". ''Philadelphia City Paper'' 14–21 September 2000.
* Foster, Don. ''Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous''. Henry Holt, New York, 2000.
* Fowler, Douglas. ''A Reader's Guide to [[Gravity's Rainbow]]''. Ardis Press, 1980.
* Frost, Garrison. "[http://www.theaesthetic.com/NewFiles/pynchon.html Thomas Pynchon and the South Bay]". ''The Aesthetic'', 2003.
* Getlin, Josh. "[http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-wk-quick22.3jun22,0,5673134.story?coll=cl-calendar Pynchon Novel Out in December]". ''LA Times'', 22 June 2006.
* Glenn, Joshua. "[http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2003/10/19/pynchon_and_homer/ Pynchon and Homer]". ''Boston Globe'', 19 October 2003.
* Gordon, Andrew. "[http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/agordon/pynchon.htm Smoking Dope with Thomas Pynchon: A Sixties Memoir]".
* Grimes, William. [http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/01/11/home/28957.html "Toni Morrison Is '93 Winner Of Nobel Prize in Literature"]. ''New York Times Book Review'', 8 October 1993.
* Gussow, Mel. ''Pynchon's Letters Nudge His Mask.'' ''New York Times,'' 4 March 1998.
* Hitchens, Christopher. "[http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1295/is_n10_v61/ai_19841067 Salman Rushdie: Even this colossal threat did not work. Life goes on.]" ''The Progressive'', October 1997.
* Hospital, Janette Turner. ''Collected Stories 1970-1995''. University of Queensland Press, 1995.
* Italie, Hillel. "[http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060720/ap_en_ot/books_thomas_pynchon_1 New Thomas Pynchon Novel is on the way]" ''Associated Press'', 20 July 2006.
* Kihss, Peter. "Pulitzer Jurors; His Third Novel". ''The New York Times'', 8 May 1974, p. 38.
* Krämer, Oliver. "[http://www.sicetnon.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=PagEd&file=index&topic_id=40&page_id=208 Interview mit John M. Krafft, Herausgeber der 'Pynchon Notes']". ''Sic et Non.''
* McLemee, Scott. ''[http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/11/15/mclemee You Hide, They Seek]'' ''Inside Higher Ed'', 15 November 2006.
* ''New York Review of Books''. "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" (advertisement). Vol. 10, No. 3, 15 February 1968, p. 9.
* Page, Adrian. "Towards a poetics of hypertext fiction". In ''The Question of Literature: The Place on the Literary in Contemporary Theory'', edited by Elizabeth B Bissell. Manchester University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-71905-744-2.
* Patterson, Troy (a). "[http://www.slate.com/id/2146152 Did the master make an appearance on his Amazon page?]" ''Slate'', 20 July 2006.
* Patterson, Troy (b). "[http://www.slate.com/id/2146272 Mystery solved]" ''Slate'', 20 July 2006.
* Plimpton, George. "Mata Hari with a Clockwork Eye, Alligators in the Sewer". Rev. of ''V.'' ''New York Times Book Review'', 21 April 1963, p. 5.
* Pynchon, Thomas. "[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_watts.html A Journey into the Mind of Watts]". ''New York Times Magazine'', 12 June 1966, pp. 34-35, 78, 80-82, 84.
* Pynchon, Thomas. "[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_rushdie.html Words for Salman Rushdie]". ''[[New York Times Book Review]]'', 12 March 1989, p. 29.
* Pynchon, Thomas. [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159420120X/ Editorial review on ''Untitled Thomas Pynchon''], [[Amazon.com]] 14 July 2006.
* Roeder, Bill. "After the Rainbow". ''Newsweek'' 92, 7 August 1978.
* Royster, Paul. "[http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libraryscience/2/ Thomas Pynchon: A Brief Chronology]". Faculty Publications, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2005.
* Salm, Arthur. "A screaming comes across the sky (but not a photo)". San Diego ''Union-Tribune'', 8 February 2004.
* Siegel, Jules. "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?" ''Playboy'', March 1977.
* Tanner, Tony. ''Thomas Pynchon''. Methuen & Co., 1982.
* Ulin, David. "[http://www.salon.com/april97/media/media970425.html Gravity's End]". ''Salon'', 25 April 1997.
* Warner, Simon. "[http://www.popmatters.com/books/features/010802-hadju.shtml A king, a queen and two knaves?: An Interview with David Hajdu]". ''Pop Matters'', 2 August 2001.
* Weisenburger, Steven C. ''A [[Gravity's Rainbow]] Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's Novel''. University of Georgia Press, 1988.
* Wisnicki, Adrian. "A Trove of New Works by Thomas Pynchon? Bomarc Service News Rediscovered." ''Pynchon Notes'' 46-49 (2000-1), pp. 9-34.

==External links==

:''The following links were last verified on 30 November 2006.''

* [http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/thomaspynchon/ Official UK publisher's site]
* [http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3673 Literary Encyclopedia biography]
* [http://www.newenglandancestors.org/education/articles/research/special_guests/gary_boyd_roberts/48_659_448.asp The Ancestry of Novelist Thomas Pynchon]
* [http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/ HyperArts Pynchon Pages]
* [http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/ Pynchon Index]
* [http://waste.org/pynchon-l The Pynchon-L mailing list]
* ''[http://www2.ham.muohio.edu/~krafftjm/pynchon.html Pynchon Notes],'' a journal operated by Miami University in Oxford, Ohio
* [http://pynchonoid.blogspot.com/ pynchonoid.blogspot.com]
* [http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/ San Narciso Pynchon Page], hosted in Claremont, California, "a town that looks a lot, in fact, like [[San Narciso]]"
* [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/index.html Spermatikos Logos]

:'''''This page, though not necessarily others in the Pynchon Wiki, is licensed under the terms of the [[Pynchon Wiki:Text of the GNU Free Documentation License|GNU Free Documentation License 1.2.]]'''''
'''Bold text'''

Template:Pynchon Bio

2007-12-05T10:25:51Z

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[[image:pynchon-simpsons.jpg|right]]'''Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr.''' (born May 8, 1937) is an American writer based in New York City. He is noted for his dense and complex works of fiction. Hailing from Long Island, Pynchon spent two years in the United States Navy and earned an English degree from Cornell University. After publishing several short stories in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he began composing the novels for which he is best known today: ''[http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ V.]'' (1963), ''[http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ The Crying of Lot 49]'' (1966), ''[http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Gravity's Rainbow]'' (1973), ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vineland Vineland]'' (1990), ''[http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Mason & Dixon]'' (1997), and ''[http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Against the Day]'' (2006).

Pynchon is regarded by many readers and critics as one of the finest contemporary authors. He is a MacArthur Fellow and a recipient of the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Both his fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, styles and themes, including (but not limited to) the fields of history, science and mathematics. Pynchon is also known for his avoidance of personal publicity: very few photographs of him have ever been published, and rumors about his location and identity have been circulated since the 1960s.

==Biography==
Thomas Pynchon was born in 1937 in Glen Cove, Long Island, New York, one of three children of Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Sr. (1907-1995) and Katherine Frances Bennett (1909-1996). His earliest American ancestor, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Pynchon William Pynchon], emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony]] with the Winthrop Fleet in 1630, and thereafter a long line of Pynchon descendants found wealth and repute on American soil. Pynchon's family background and aspects of his ancestry have provided source material for his fictions, particularly in the Slothrop family histories related in "The Secret Integration" (1964) and ''[http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Gravity's Rainbow]''.

===Childhood and education===
Pynchon attended Oyster Bay High School, where he was awarded "student of the year" and contributed short fictional pieces to his school newspaper: "Voice of the Hamster",<ref>[http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_hamster.html "Voice of the Hamster"]</ref> "The Boys",<ref>[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_boys.html "The Boys"]</ref> and "Ye Legend of Sir Stupid and the Purple Knight".<ref>[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_knight.html "Ye Legend of Sir Stupid and the Purple"]</ref> These works featured many of the themes and literary devices he would use throughout his career: silly names, rampant drug use, and paranoia. After graduating in 1953 at the age of 16, he studied engineering physics at Cornell University, but left at the end of his second year to serve in the U.S. Navy. In 1957, Pynchon returned to Cornell to pursue a degree in English. His first published story, "The Small Rain", appeared in the ''Cornell Writer'' in May 1959, and narrates an actual experience of a friend who had served in the army; subsequently, however, episodes and characters throughout Pynchon's fiction draw freely upon his own experiences in the navy.

While at Cornell, Pynchon became a friend of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Fariña Richard Fariña], and both briefly led what Pynchon has called a "micro-cult" around Oakley Hall's 1958 novel ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warlock_(novel) Warlock]''. (He later reminisced about his college days in the introduction he wrote in 1983 for Fariña's novel ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Been_Down_So_Long_It_Looks_Like_Up_to_Me Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me],'' first published in 1966.) Pynchon also reportedly attended lectures given by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Nabokov Vladimir Nabokov], who then taught literature at Cornell. While Nabokov later said that he had no memory of Pynchon (although Nabokov's wife, Vera, who graded her husband's class papers, commented that she remembered his distinctive handwriting; his later handwriting appears unexceptional), other teachers at Cornell, like the novelist James McConkey, recall him as being a gifted and exceptional student. In 1958, Pynchon and Cornell classmate Kirkpatrick Sale wrote part or all of a science-fiction musical, ''Minstral Island'', which portrayed a dystopian future in which IBM rules the world. [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/paper_gibbs.html] Pynchon received his BA in June 1959.

===''V.''===
After leaving Cornell, Pynchon began to work on his first novel. From February 1960 to September 1962, he was employed as a technical writer at Boeing in Seattle, where he compiled safety articles for the ''Bomarc Service News,''<ref>Wisnicki 2000-1</ref> a support newsletter for the BOMARC surface-to-air missile deployed by the U.S. Air Force. Pynchon's experiences at Boeing inspired his depictions of the "[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoyodyne Yoyodyne]" corporation in ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V. V.]'' and ''[http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ The Crying of Lot 49],'' and both his background in physics and the technical journalism he undertook at Boeing provided much raw material for ''[http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Gravity's Rainbow].'' When it was published in 1963, Pynchon's novel ''V.'' won a William Faulkner Foundation Award for best first novel of the year.

After resigning from Boeing, Pynchon spent time in New York and Mexico before moving to California, where he was reportedly based for much of the 1960s and early 1970s, most notably in an apartment in Manhattan Beach, in Southern California.<ref>Frost 2003</ref> Pynchon during this period embraced the lifestyle and values of the hippie counterculture, which he would later make use of in his 1990 novel ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vineland Vineland].''<ref>Gordon 1994</ref> In 1964, his application to study mathematics as a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, was turned down.<ref name="royster2005">Royster 2005</ref> In 1966, he wrote a first-hand report on the aftermath and legacy of the Watts riots in Los Angeles. Entitled "A Journey Into the Mind of Watts," the article was published in the ''New York Times Magazine.''<ref>Pynchon 1966</ref>

From the mid-1960s Pynchon has also regularly provided blurbs and introductions for a wide range of novels and non-fiction works. One of the first of these pieces was a brief review of Hall's ''Warlock'' which appeared, along with comments by seven other writers on "neglected books", as part of a feature entitled "A Gift of Books" in the December 1965 issue of ''Holiday.''

===''The Crying of Lot 49''===

In April 1964, Pynchon wrote to his agent, Candida Donadio, that he was facing a creative crisis, with four novels in progress, and that "If they come out on paper anything like they are inside my head then it will be the literary event of the millennium."<ref>Gussow 1998</ref> In December 1965, Pynchon politely turned down an offer to teach literature at Bennington College, writing that he had resolved, two or three years earlier, to write three novels at once.<ref>McLemee 2006</ref> Pynchon called the decision "a moment of temporary insanity," but noted that he was "too stubborn to let any of them go, let alone all of them."

Pynchon's second novel, ''[http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ The Crying of Lot 49],'' was published a few months later in 1966. Whether it was one of the three or four novels Pynchon had in progress is unknown, but in a 1965 letter to Donadio, Pynchon had written that he was in the middle of writing a book that he called a "potboiler." When the book grew to 155 pages, he called it, "a short story, but with gland trouble," and hoped that Donadio "can unload it on some poor sucker." This would suggest that ''Crying of Lot 49'' was ''not'' one of the four novels Pynchon was writing as of 1964, but no answer is certain.

''The Crying of Lot 49'' won the Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Foundation Award shortly after publication. Although more concise and linear in its structure than Pynchon's other novels, its labyrinthine plot features an ancient, underground mail service known as "The Tristero" or "Trystero," a parody of a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/revenge_play Jacobean revenge drama] entitled "The Courier's Tragedy," and a corporate conspiracy involving the bones of World War II American GIs being used as charcoal cigarette filters. It proposes a series of seemingly incredible interconnections between these and other similarly bizarre revelations that confront the novel's protagonist, Oedipa Maas. Like ''V,'' the novel contains a wealth of references to science and technology and to obscure historical events, and both books dwell upon the detritus of American society and culture. ''The Crying of Lot 49'' also continues Pynchon's habit of composing parodic song lyrics and punning names, and referencing aspects of popular culture within his prose narrative. In particular, it incorporates several allusions to the Beatles and Nabokov's ''Lolita.''

In 1968, Pynchon was one of 447 signatories to the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest." Full-page advertisements in ''The New York Post'' and ''The New York Review of Books'' listed the names of those who had pledged not to pay "the proposed 10% income tax surcharge or any war-designated tax increase," and stated their belief "that American involvement in Vietnam is morally wrong".<ref>''New York Review of Books'' 1968:9</ref>

===''Gravity's Rainbow'' and Pynchon's rise to prominence===
Pynchon's most celebrated novel is his third, ''[http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Gravity's Rainbow]'', published in 1973. An intricate and allusive fiction which combines and elaborates on many of the themes of his earlier work, including preterition, paranoia, racism, colonialism, conspiracy, synchronicity, and [[entropy]], the novel has spawned a wealth of commentary and critical material, including two reader's guides,<ref>Fowler 1980; Weisenburger 1988</ref> books and scholarly articles, on-line concordances and discussions,<ref>[http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/ Pynchon HyperArts]</ref> and art works, and is regarded as one of the archetypal texts of American literary postmodernism. The major portion of ''Gravity's Rainbow'' takes place in London and Europe in the final months of the Second World War and the weeks immediately following VE Day, and is narrated for the most part from within the historical moment in which it is set. In this way, Pynchon's text enacts a type of dramatic irony whereby neither the characters nor the various narrative voices are aware of specific historical circumstances, such as the Holocaust, which are, however, very much to the forefront of the reader's understanding of this time in history. Such an approach generates dynamic tension and moments of acute self-consciousness, as both reader and author seem drawn ever deeper into the "plot", in various senses of that term. Encyclopedic in scope, the novel also displays enormous erudition in its treatment of an array of material drawn from the fields of psychology, chemistry, mathematics, history, religion, music, literature and film. Perhaps appropriately for a book so suffused with engineering knowledge, Pynchon reportedly wrote the first draft of ''Gravity's Rainbow'' in longhand on engineer's graph paper, in California and Mexico City.

''Gravity's Rainbow'' was a joint winner of the 1974 National Book Award for Fiction, along with Isaac Bashevis Singer's ''A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories''. In the same year, the fiction jury unanimously recommended ''Gravity's Rainbow'' for the Pulitzer Prize; however, the Pulitzer board vetoed the jury's recommendation, describing the novel as "unreadable", "turgid", "overwritten", and in parts "obscene", and no prize was awarded.<ref>Kihss 1974</ref> In 1975, Pynchon declined the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

===Post-''Gravity's Rainbow''===
A collection of Pynchon's early short stories, entitled ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Learner Slow Learner]]'', was published in 1984, with a lengthy autobiography|autobiographical introduction. In October of the same year, an article entitled "Is It O.K. to Be a Luddite?" was published in the ''New York Times Book Review''. In April 1988, Pynchon contributed an extensive review of Gabriel García Marquéz's novel, ''Love in the Time of Cholera'', to the ''New York Times'', under the title "The Heart's Eternal Vow". Another article, entitled "Nearer, My Couch, to Thee", was published in June 1993 in the ''New York Times Book Review'', as one in a series of articles in which various writers reflected on each of the Seven Deadly Sins. Pynchon's subject was "Sloth".

===''Vineland''===
Pynchon's fourth novel, ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vineland Vineland]'', was published in 1990. The novel is set in California in the 1980s and 1960s, and describes the relationship between an FBI COINTELPRO agent and a female radical filmmaker. Its strong socio-political undercurrents detail the constant battle between authoritarianism and communalism, and the nexus between resistance and complicity, but with a typically Pynchonian sense of humor.

In 1988, he received a MacArthur Fellowship and, since the early 1990s at least, many observers have mentioned Pynchon as a Nobel Prize contender.<ref>See, for example, Grimes 1993, CNN Book News 1999, Ervin 2000</ref> Renowned American literary critic Harold Bloom has named him as one of the four major American novelists of his time, along with Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, and Cormac McCarthy.

===''Mason & Dixon''===
Pynchon's fifth novel, ''[http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Mason & Dixon]'', was published in 1997. Pynchon began writing it as early as January 1975.<ref>Gussow</ref> The meticulously-researched novel is a sprawling saga recounting the lives and careers of the English astronomer, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Mason Charles Mason], and his partner, the surveyor [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah_Dixon Jeremiah Dixon], and the birth of the American Republic. While it received some negative reviews, the great majority of commentators acknowledged it as a welcome return to form, and some, including Bloom, have called it Pynchon's greatest work to date.

After the publication of ''Mason & Dixon'', a user by the online name of "Martin Scribler" posted a handful of messages on the Pynchon-L mailing list denouncing many members of that group as "dunces all" for discussing their own neuroses over actual literary discussion. Due to the high quality of Martin Scriblers' posts, their message, and the historical significance of his name (alluding to an 18th-century satire of pretentious erudition), many have speculated that Pynchon himself wrote these posts.

===''Against the Day''===

A variety of rumors pertaining to the subject matter of Pynchon's next book have circulated over a number of years. Most specific of these were comments made by the former German minister of culture, Michael Naumann, who stated that he assisted Pynchon in his research about "a Russian mathematician [who] studied for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hilbert David Hilbert] in Göttingen", and that the new novel would trace the life and loves of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofia_Kovalevskaya Sofia Kovalevskaya].

In July 2006, a new untitled novel by Pynchon was announced along with a synopsis written by Pynchon himself, which appeared on Amazon.com, stating that the novel's action takes place between the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition 1893 Chicago World's Fair] and the time immediately following World War I. "With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead," Pynchon writes in his Book Description, "it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred." He promises cameos by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla Nikola Tesla], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bela_Lugosi Bela Lugosi] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groucho_Marx Groucho Marx], as well as "stupid songs" and "strange sexual practices". Subsequently, the title of the new book was reported as ''Against the Day'' and a Penguin spokesperson confirmed that the synopsis was Pynchon's.<ref>Patterson 2006b; Italie 2006</ref>

''Against the Day'' was released November 21, 2006 and is 1,085 pages long in the first edition hardcover. The book was given almost no promotion by Penguin and professional book reviewers were given little time in advance to review the book, presumably in accord with Pynchon's wishes. An edited version of Pynchon's synopsis was used as the jacket flap copy and Kovalevskaya does appear, although as only one of over a hundred characters.

There has been no consensus among professional book reviewers, although many agree that it is by turns brilliant and exhausting ([http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_Reviews Complete Reviews]). An [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page ''Against the Day'' wiki] was launched on the same day the novel was published to help readers keep track of the numerous characters, events and themes.

==Themes and influence==
Along with its emphasis on loftier themes such as racism, imperialism and religion, and its cognizance and appropriation of many elements of traditional high culture and literary form, Pynchon's work also demonstrates a strong affinity with the practitioners and artifacts of low culture, including comic books and animated cartoons, pulp fiction, popular films, television programs, cookery, urban myths, conspiracy theories, and folk art. This blurring of the conventional boundary between "High" and "low" culture, sometimes interpreted as a "deconstruction", is seen as one of the defining characteristics of postmodernism.

In particular, Pynchon has revealed himself in his fiction and non-fiction as an aficionado of popular music. Song lyrics and mock musical numbers appear in each of his novels, and, in his autobiographical introduction to the ''Slow Learner'' collection of early stories, he reveals a fondness for both jazz and rock and roll. The character McClintic Sphere in ''V.'' is a fictional composite of master jazz musicians such as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornette_Coleman Ornette Coleman], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Parker Charlie Parker] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk Thelonious Monk]. In ''The Crying of Lot 49'', the lead singer of "The Paranoids" sports "a [[The Beatles|Beatle]] haircut" and sings with an English accent. In the closing pages of ''Gravity's Rainbow'', there is an apocryphal report that [[Tyrone Slothrop]], the novel's protagonist, played kazoo and harmonica as a guest musician on a record released by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fool_(band) The Fool] in the 1960s (having magically recovered the latter instrument, his "harp", in a German stream in 1945, after losing it down the toilet in 1939 at the Roseland Ballroom in Roxbury, Massachusetts, to the strains of the jazz standard "Cherokee", upon which tune Charlie Parker was simultaneously inventing bebop in New York, as Pynchon describes). In ''Vineland'', both Zoyd Wheeler and Isaiah Two Four are also musicians: Zoyd played keyboards in a '60s surf band called "The Corvairs", while Isaiah played in a punk band called "Billy Barf and the Vomitones". In ''Mason & Dixon'', one of the characters plays on the "Clavier" the varsity drinking song which will later become "The Star-Spangled Banner".

In his ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Learner Slow Learner]'' introduction, Pynchon acknowledges a debt to the anarchic bandleader Spike Jones, and in 1994, he penned a 3000-word set of liner notes for the album ''Spiked!'', a collection of Jones's recordings released on the short-lived BMG Catalyst label. Pynchon also wrote the liner notes for ''Nobody's Cool'', the second album of indie rock band Lotion, in which he states that "rock and roll remains one of the last honorable callings, and a working band is a miracle of everyday life. Which is basically what these guys do." He is also known to be a fan of Roky Erickson.

In terms of literary influences and affinity, an eclectic catalogue of Pynchonian precursors has been proposed by readers and critics. Beside overt references in the novels to writers as disparate as Henry Adams, Isaac Asimov, Giorgio de Chirico, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Emily Dickinson, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jorge Luis Borges, Ishmael Reed, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Patrick O'Brian, and Umberto Eco, and to an eclectic mix of iconic religious and philosophical sources, credible comparisons with works by Rabelais, Cervantes, Laurence Sterne, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad, Thomas Mann, William Burroughs, Ralph Ellison, Patrick White, and Toni Morrison have also been made. Some commentators have detected similarities with those writers in the Modernist tradition who wrote extremely long novels dealing with large metaphysical or political issues. Examples of such works might include ''Ulysses'' by James Joyce, ''A Passage to India'' by E.M. Forster, ''The Apes of God'' by Wyndham Lewis, ''The Man Without Qualities'' by Robert Musil, or ''The Castle'' by Franz Kafka. In his "Introduction" to ''Slow Learner'', Pynchon explicitly acknowledges his debt to Beat Generation writers, and expresses his admiration for Jack Kerouac's ''On the Road'' in particular; he also reveals his familiarity with literary works by T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, Saul Bellow, Herbert Gold, Philip Roth and Norman Mailer, and non-fiction works by Helen Waddell, Norbert Wiener and Isaac Asimov. Other contemporary American authors whose fiction is often categorised alongside Pynchon's include John Hawkes, Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, Donald Barthelme, John Barth, William Gaddis, Don DeLillo, and Joseph McElroy. Younger contemporary writers who have been touted as heirs apparent to Pynchon include David Foster Wallace, William Vollmann, Richard Powers, David Mitchell, Neal Stephenson, Dave Eggers, Christopher Wunderlee, and "Tommaso Pincio" whose pseudonym is an Italian rendering of Pynchon's name.

Investigations and digressions into the realms of human sexuality, psychology, sociology, mathematics, science, and technology recur throughout Pynchon's works. One of his earliest short stories, "Low-lands" (1960), features a meditation on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg Heisenberg's] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/uncertainty_principle uncertainty principle] as a metaphor for telling stories about one's own experiences. His next published work, "Entropy" (1960), introduced [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/entropy the concept] which was to become synonymous with Pynchon's name (though Pynchon later admitted the "shallowness of [his] understanding" of the subject, and noted that choosing an abstract concept first and trying to construct a narrative around it was "a lousy way to go about writing a story"). Another early story, "Under the Rose" (1961), includes amongst its cast of characters a cyborg set anachronistically in Victorian-era Egypt (a type of writing now called steampunk). This story, significantly reworked by Pynchon, appears as Chapter 3 of ''V.'' "The Secret Integration" (1964), Pynchon's last published short story, is a sensitively-handled coming-of-age tale in which a group of young boys face the consequences of the American policy of racial integration. At one point in the story, the boys attempt to understand the new policy by way of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/antiderivative mathematical operation], the only sense of the word with which they are familiar.

''The Crying of Lot 49'' also alludes to entropy and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/communication_theory communication theory], and contains scenes and descriptions which parody or appropriate [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/calculus calculus], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno's_paradoxes Zeno's paradoxes], and the thought experiment known as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell's_demon Maxwell's demon]. At the same time, the novel also investigates homosexuality, celibacy and both medically-sanctioned and illicit psychedelic drug use. ''Gravity's Rainbow'' describes many varieties of sexual fetishism (including sado-masochism, coprophilia and a borderline case of tentacle rape), and features numerous episodes of drug use, most notably marijuana but also cocaine, naturally occurring hallucinogens, and the mushroom ''Amanita muscaria.'' ''Gravity's Rainbow'' also derives much from Pynchon's background in mathematics: at one point, the geometry of garter belts is compared with that of cathedral spires, both described as mathematical singularities. His most recent novel, ''Mason & Dixon'', explores the scientific, theological, and sociocultural foundations of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment Age of Reason] whilst also depicting the relationships between actual historical figures and fictional characters in intricate detail and, like ''Gravity's Rainbow'', is an archetypal example of the genre of historiographical metafiction.

Pynchon's work has been cited as an influence and inspiration by many writers, musicians, artists and filmmakers, including Laurie Anderson, T. Coraghessan Boyle, David Cronenberg, Don DeLillo, Paul Di Filippo, William Gibson, Max P. Häring, Elfriede Jelinek, Lampara, Rick Moody, Arturo Perez-Reverte, Richard Powers, Adam Rapp, Salman Rushdie, Zak Smith, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, Adrian Voyd and the Definitive Jux hip-hop producer/CEO/emcee El-P. Thanks to his influence on Gibson and Stephenson in particular, Pynchon became one of the progenitors of cyberpunk fiction. Though the term "cyberpunk" did not become prevalent until the early 1980s, many readers retroactively include ''Gravity's Rainbow'' in the genre, along with other works—''e.g.,'' Samuel R. Delany's ''Nova'' and many works of Philip K. Dick—which seem, after the fact, to anticipate cyberpunk styles and themes. The encyclopedic nature of Pynchon's novels also led to some attempts to link his work with the short-lived [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/hypertext_fiction hypertext fiction] movement of the 1990s.<ref>Page 2002; Krämer 2005</ref>

''Gravity's Rainbow'' and the more recent ''Mason & Dixon'' both feature wildly eccentric characters, episodes of frenzied action and frequent digressions on topics which are seemingly tangential to the central narrative. These characteristics, combined with the novels' imposing lengths, have led critic James Wood to classify Pynchon's work as hysterical realism. Other writers whose work has been labelled as hysterical realism include Rushdie, Stephenson, Wunderlee and Zadie Smith.

==Media scrutiny==
Relatively little is known about Thomas Pynchon as a private person; he has had few known contacts with journalists for more than forty years. Only a few photos of him are known to exist, nearly all from his high school and college days, and his whereabouts have often remained undisclosed.

A review of ''V.'' in the ''New York Times Book Review'' described Pynchon as "a recluse" living in Mexico, thereby introducing the media label which has pursued Pynchon throughout his career.<ref>Plimpton 1963: 5</ref> Nonetheless, Pynchon's absence from the public spotlight is one of the notable features of his life, and it has generated many rumors and apocryphal anecdotes.

===1970s and 1980s===
After the publication and success of ''Gravity's Rainbow'', interest mounted in finding out more about the identity of the author. At the 1974 National Book Award ceremony, the president of Viking Press, Tom Guinzberg, arranged for double-talking comedian [http://www.irwincorey.com/ "Professor" Irwin Corey] to accept the prize on Pynchon's behalf.<ref name="royster2005"/> Many of the assembled guests had no idea who Corey was, and, having never seen the author, they assumed that it was Pynchon himself on the stage delivering Corey's trademark torrent of rambling, pseudo-scholarly verbiage.<ref>Corey 1974</ref> Towards the end of Corey's address a streaker ran through the hall, adding further to the confusion.

An article published in the ''Soho Weekly News'' claimed that Pynchon was in fact J. D. Salinger.<ref>Batchelor 1976</ref> Pynchon's written response to this theory was simple: "Not bad. Keep trying."<ref> Reported in Tanner 1982</ref>

Thereafter, the first piece to provide substantial information about Pynchon's personal life was a biographical account written by a former Cornell University friend, Jules Siegel, and published in ''Playboy'' magazine. In his article, Siegel reveals that Pynchon had a [[complex (psychology)|complex]] about his teeth and underwent extensive and painful reconstructive surgery, was nicknamed "Tom" at Cornell and attended Mass diligently, acted as best man at Siegel's wedding, and that he later also had an affair with Siegel's wife. Siegel recalls Pynchon saying he did attend some of Vladimir Nabokov's lectures at Cornell but that he could hardly make out what Nabokov was saying because of his thick Russian accent. Siegel also records Pynchon's comment that "[e]very weirdo in the world is on my wavelength",<ref>Siegel 1977</ref> an observation borne out by the crankiness and zealotry which has attached itself to his name and work in subsequent years, particularly across the Internet.

===1990s===
Pynchon's avoidance of celebrity and public appearances caused journalists to continue to speculate about his identity and activities, and reinforced his reputation within the media as "reclusive". More astute readers and critics recognized that there were and are perhaps aesthetic (and ideological) motivations behind his choice to remain aloof from public life. For example, the protagonist in Janette Turner Hospital's short story, "For Mr. Voss or Occupant" (1991), explains to her daughter that she is writing
:a study of authors who become reclusive. Patrick White, Emily Dickinson, J. D. Salinger, Thomas Pynchon. The way they create solitary characters and personae and then disappear into their fictions.<ref>Hospital 1995: 361-2</ref>
More recently, book critic Arthur Salm has written that
:the man simply chooses not to be a public figure, an attitude that resonates on a frequency so out of phase with that of the prevailing culture that if Pynchon and Paris Hilton were ever to meet—the circumstances, I admit, are beyond imagining—the resulting matter/antimatter explosion would vaporize everything from here to Tau Ceti IV.<ref>Salm 2004</ref>

Belying this reputation somewhat, Pynchon has published a number of articles and reviews in the mainstream American media, including words of support for Salman Rushdie and his then-wife, Marianne Wiggins, after the fatwa was pronounced against Rushdie by the Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.<ref>Pynchon 1989</ref> In the following year, Rushdie's enthusiastic review of Pynchon's ''Vineland'' prompted Pynchon to send him another message hinting that if Rushdie were ever in New York, the two should arrange a meeting. Eventually, the two did meet, and Rushdie found himself surprised by how much Pynchon resembled the mental image Rushdie had formed beforehand.<ref>Hitchens 1997</ref>

In the early 1990s, Pynchon married his literary agent, Melanie Jackson — a great-granddaughter of Theodore Roosevelt — and fathered a son, Jackson, in 1991. The disclosure of Pynchon's location in New York, after many years in which he was believed to be dividing his time between Mexico and northern California, led some journalists and photographers to try to track him down. Shortly before the publication of ''Mason & Dixon'' in 1997, a CNN camera crew filmed him in Manhattan. Angered by this invasion of his privacy, he rang CNN asking that he not be identified in the footage of the street scenes near his home. When asked about his reclusive nature, he remarked, "My belief is that 'recluse' is a code word generated by journalists ... meaning, 'doesn't like to talk to reporters'." CNN also quoted him as saying, "Let me be unambiguous. I prefer not to be photographed."<ref>CNN 1997</ref> The next year, a reporter for the ''Sunday Times'' managed to snap a photo of him as he was walking with his son.<ref>Bone 1998</ref>

After several references to Pynchon's work and reputation were made on NBC's ''The John Larroquette Show,'' Pynchon (through his agent) reportedly contacted the show's producers to offer suggestions and corrections. When a local Pynchon sighting became a major plot point in a 1994 episode of the show, Pynchon was sent the script for his approval; as well as providing the title of a fictitious work to be used in one episode ("Pandemonium of the Sun"), the novelist apparently vetoed a final scene that called for an extra playing him to be filmed from behind, walking away from shot.<ref>CNN 1997; Glenn 2003</ref> Also during the 1990s, Pynchon apparently befriended members of the band Lotion and attended a number of their shows, culminating in the liner notes he contributed for the band's 1995 album ''Nobody's Cool''. The novelist then conducted an interview with the band ("Lunch With Lotion") for ''Esquire'' in June 1996 in the lead-up to the publication of ''Mason & Dixon''. More recently, Pynchon provided faxed answers to questions submitted by author David Hajdu and permitted excerpts from his personal correspondence to be quoted in Hajdu's 2001 book, ''Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña.''<ref>Warner 2001</ref>

Pynchon's attempt to maintain his personal privacy and have his work speak for itself has resulted in a number of outlandish rumors and hoaxes over the years. Indeed, claims that Pynchon was the Unabomber or a sympathizer with the Waco Branch Davidians after the 1993 siege were upstaged in the mid-1990s by the invention of an elaborate rumor insinuating that Pynchon and one "[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanda_Tinasky Wanda Tinasky]" were the same person. A spate of letters authored under that name had appeared in the late 1980s in the ''Anderson Valley Advertiser'' in Anderson Valley, California. The style and content of those letters were said to resemble Pynchon's, and Pynchon's ''Vineland'', published in 1990, also takes place in northern California, so it was suggested that Pynchon may have been in the area at that time, conducting research. A collection of the Tinasky letters was eventually published as a paperback book in 1996; however, Pynchon himself denied having written the letters, and no direct attribution of the letters to Pynchon was ever made. "Literary detective" Donald Foster subsequently showed that the ''Letters'' were in fact written by an obscure Beat writer called Tom Hawkins, who had murdered his wife and then committed suicide in 1988. Foster's evidence was conclusive, including finding the typewriter on which the "Tinasky" letters had been written.<ref>Foster 2000</ref>

In 1998, over 120 letters that Pynchon had written to his longtime agent, Candida Donadio, were donated by the family of private collector, Carter Burden, to the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City. The letters ranged from 1963 to 1982, thus covering some of the author's most creative and prolific years. Although the Morgan Library originally intended to allow scholars to view the letters, at Pynchon’s request, the Burden family and
Morgan Library agreed to seal these letters until after Pynchon's death.

===2000s===

After 9/11, a supposed "interview" with Pynchon was published in an issue of ''Playboy'' Japan, entitled "Most News is Propaganda. Bin Laden May Not Exist." It purported to be a talk with Pynchon on the events of 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden. Its authenticity is uncertain. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pynchon_playboy Rough translation of the Pynchon "interview"].


Responding ironically to the image which has been manufactured in the media over the years, during 2004, Pynchon made two cameo appearances on the animated television series ''The Simpsons''. The first occurs in the episode "Diatribe of a Mad Housewife", in which Marge Simpson becomes a novelist. He plays himself, with a paper bag over his head, and provides a blurb for the back cover of Marge's book, speaking in a broad Long Island accent: "Here's your quote: Thomas Pynchon loved this book, almost as much as he loves cameras!" He then starts yelling at passing cars: "Hey, over here, have your picture taken with a reclusive author! Today only, we'll throw in a free autograph! But, wait! There's more!" The second appearance occurs in "All's Fair in Oven War," which was the sixteenth-season premiere. In this appearance, Pynchon's dialogue consists entirely of puns on his novel titles ("These wings are 'V'-licious! I'll put this recipe in 'The Gravity's Rainbow Cookbook', right next to 'The Frying of Latke 49'."). Pynchon makes a third, non-speaking cameo, when he is seen at the fictional WordLoaf convention in the 18th season (2006) episode, "Moe'N'a Lisa." The episode first aired on November 19, 2006, the Sunday before Pynchon's sixth novel, ''Against the Day'', was released, perhaps as part of an increasingly unusual publicity campaign.

In July of 2006, Amazon.com created a page showing an upcoming 992-page, untitled, Thomas Pynchon novel. A description of the soon-to-be published novel appeared on Amazon purporting to be written by Pynchon himself. The description was soon taken down, prompting speculation over its authenticity, but the blurb was soon back up along with the title of Pynchon's new novel, ''Against the Day''.

Shortly before ''Against the Day'' was published, Pynchon's prose appeared in the program for "The Daily Show: Ten Fu@#ing Years (The Concert)", a retrospective on Jon Stewart's comedy-news broadcast ''The Daily Show.''<ref>Pynchon, Thomas. [http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_dailyshow.html "The Evolution of ''The Daily Show''"]. Printed in program notes (16 November 2006).</ref> Only weeks later, Pynchon sent a one-page, typewritten letter to ''The Daily Telegraph,'' defending fellow writer Ian McEwan against plagiarism charges. (McEwan had been accused of copying details from the late Lucilla Andrews's autobiography, ''No Time for Romance.'') His sentiment echoes thoughts on literary theft expressed over two decades earlier in the ''Slow Learner'' introduction; the letter concludes,
:Memoirs of the Blitz have borne indispensable witness, and helped later generations know something of the tragedy and heroism of those days. For Mr. McEwan to have put details from one of them to further creative use, acknowledging this openly and often, and then explaining it clearly and honorably, surely merits not our scolding, but our gratitude.<ref>Pynchon, Thomas. [http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_mcewan.html "Words for Ian McEwan"] (6 December 2006)</ref>

==Works==
* ''[[V.]]'' (1963), winner of [[William Faulkner Foundation]] Award
* ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]'' (1966), winner of Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Foundation Award
* ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'' (1973), 1974 [[National Book Award]] for fiction, judges' unanimous selection for [[Pulitzer Prize]] overruled by advisory board, awarded William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1975 (award declined)
* ''[[Slow Learner]]'' (1984), collection of early short stories
* ''[[Vineland]]'' (1990)
* ''[[Mason & Dixon]]'' (1997)
* ''[[Against the Day]]'' (21 November, 2006)

As well as fictional works, Pynchon has written essays, introductions, and reviews addressing subjects as diverse as missile security, the Watts Riots, Luddism and the work of Donald Barthelme. Some of his non-fiction pieces have appeared in the ''New York Times Book Review'' and ''The New York Review of Books'', and he has contributed blurbs for books and records. His 1984 Introduction to the ''Slow Learner'' collection of early stories is significant for its autobiographical candor. He has written introductions to at least two books, including the 1992 collection of Donald Barthelme's stories, ''The Teachings of Don B.'' and, more recently, the Penguin Centenary Edition of George Orwell's novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four,'' which was published in 2003.

==External Links==
* [http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pynchon Uncyclopedia's Pynchon Bio]

==Notes and references==

:''This article was originally based on the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page Wikipedia] page [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pynchon Thomas Pynchon], accessed 30 November 2006, last modified [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thomas_Pynchon&oldid=91019157 23:00 UTC, 29 November 2006]. Principal authors of that page include Wikipedia users Abaca, Anville, Nixdorf and Zafiroblue05. Used under the terms of the [http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html GNU FDL 1.2.]''

<references/>

* Batchelor, J.C. "Thomas Pynchon is not Thomas Pynchon, or, This is End of the Plot Which Has No Name". ''Soho Weekly News'', 22 April 1976.
* Bone, James. [http://www.suntimes.co.za:80/1998/06/07/lifestyle/life01.htm "Who the hell is he?]" ''Sunday Times'' (South Africa), 7 June 1998.
* CNN. "[http://cgi.cnn.com/US/9706/05/pynchon/ Where's Thomas Pynchon?]" 5 June 1997.
* CNN Book News. "[http://www.cnn.com/books/news/9909/29/nobel.prize/index.html Early Nobel announcement prompts speculation]". 29 September 1999.
* Corey, Irwin. "[http://www.irwincorey.org/routines.html Transcript of National Book Award acceptance speech]", delivered 18 April 1974.
* Ervin, Andrew. "[http://citypaper.net/articles/091400/ae.books.shtml Nobel Oblige]". ''Philadelphia City Paper'' 14–21 September 2000.
* Foster, Don. ''Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous''. Henry Holt, New York, 2000.
* Fowler, Douglas. ''A Reader's Guide to [[Gravity's Rainbow]]''. Ardis Press, 1980.
* Frost, Garrison. "[http://www.theaesthetic.com/NewFiles/pynchon.html Thomas Pynchon and the South Bay]". ''The Aesthetic'', 2003.
* Getlin, Josh. "[http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-wk-quick22.3jun22,0,5673134.story?coll=cl-calendar Pynchon Novel Out in December]". ''LA Times'', 22 June 2006.
* Glenn, Joshua. "[http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2003/10/19/pynchon_and_homer/ Pynchon and Homer]". ''Boston Globe'', 19 October 2003.
* Gordon, Andrew. "[http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/agordon/pynchon.htm Smoking Dope with Thomas Pynchon: A Sixties Memoir]".
* Grimes, William. [http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/01/11/home/28957.html "Toni Morrison Is '93 Winner Of Nobel Prize in Literature"]. ''New York Times Book Review'', 8 October 1993.
* Gussow, Mel. ''Pynchon's Letters Nudge His Mask.'' ''New York Times,'' 4 March 1998.
* Hitchens, Christopher. "[http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1295/is_n10_v61/ai_19841067 Salman Rushdie: Even this colossal threat did not work. Life goes on.]" ''The Progressive'', October 1997.
* Hospital, Janette Turner. ''Collected Stories 1970-1995''. University of Queensland Press, 1995.
* Italie, Hillel. "[http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060720/ap_en_ot/books_thomas_pynchon_1 New Thomas Pynchon Novel is on the way]" ''Associated Press'', 20 July 2006.
* Kihss, Peter. "Pulitzer Jurors; His Third Novel". ''The New York Times'', 8 May 1974, p. 38.
* Krämer, Oliver. "[http://www.sicetnon.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=PagEd&file=index&topic_id=40&page_id=208 Interview mit John M. Krafft, Herausgeber der 'Pynchon Notes']". ''Sic et Non.''
* McLemee, Scott. ''[http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/11/15/mclemee You Hide, They Seek]'' ''Inside Higher Ed'', 15 November 2006.
* ''New York Review of Books''. "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" (advertisement). Vol. 10, No. 3, 15 February 1968, p. 9.
* Page, Adrian. "Towards a poetics of hypertext fiction". In ''The Question of Literature: The Place on the Literary in Contemporary Theory'', edited by Elizabeth B Bissell. Manchester University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-71905-744-2.
* Patterson, Troy (a). "[http://www.slate.com/id/2146152 Did the master make an appearance on his Amazon page?]" ''Slate'', 20 July 2006.
* Patterson, Troy (b). "[http://www.slate.com/id/2146272 Mystery solved]" ''Slate'', 20 July 2006.
* Plimpton, George. "Mata Hari with a Clockwork Eye, Alligators in the Sewer". Rev. of ''V.'' ''New York Times Book Review'', 21 April 1963, p. 5.
* Pynchon, Thomas. "[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_watts.html A Journey into the Mind of Watts]". ''New York Times Magazine'', 12 June 1966, pp. 34-35, 78, 80-82, 84.
* Pynchon, Thomas. "[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_rushdie.html Words for Salman Rushdie]". ''[[New York Times Book Review]]'', 12 March 1989, p. 29.
* Pynchon, Thomas. [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159420120X/ Editorial review on ''Untitled Thomas Pynchon''], [[Amazon.com]] 14 July 2006.
* Roeder, Bill. "After the Rainbow". ''Newsweek'' 92, 7 August 1978.
* Royster, Paul. "[http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libraryscience/2/ Thomas Pynchon: A Brief Chronology]". Faculty Publications, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2005.
* Salm, Arthur. "A screaming comes across the sky (but not a photo)". San Diego ''Union-Tribune'', 8 February 2004.
* Siegel, Jules. "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?" ''Playboy'', March 1977.
* Tanner, Tony. ''Thomas Pynchon''. Methuen & Co., 1982.
* Ulin, David. "[http://www.salon.com/april97/media/media970425.html Gravity's End]". ''Salon'', 25 April 1997.
* Warner, Simon. "[http://www.popmatters.com/books/features/010802-hadju.shtml A king, a queen and two knaves?: An Interview with David Hajdu]". ''Pop Matters'', 2 August 2001.
* Weisenburger, Steven C. ''A [[Gravity's Rainbow]] Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's Novel''. University of Georgia Press, 1988.
* Wisnicki, Adrian. "A Trove of New Works by Thomas Pynchon? Bomarc Service News Rediscovered." ''Pynchon Notes'' 46-49 (2000-1), pp. 9-34.

==External links==

:''The following links were last verified on 30 November 2006.''

* [http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/thomaspynchon/ Official UK publisher's site]
* [http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3673 Literary Encyclopedia biography]
* [http://www.newenglandancestors.org/education/articles/research/special_guests/gary_boyd_roberts/48_659_448.asp The Ancestry of Novelist Thomas Pynchon]
* [http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/ HyperArts Pynchon Pages]
* [http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/ Pynchon Index]
* [http://waste.org/pynchon-l The Pynchon-L mailing list]
* ''[http://www2.ham.muohio.edu/~krafftjm/pynchon.html Pynchon Notes],'' a journal operated by Miami University in Oxford, Ohio
* [http://pynchonoid.blogspot.com/ pynchonoid.blogspot.com]
* [http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/ San Narciso Pynchon Page], hosted in Claremont, California, "a town that looks a lot, in fact, like [[San Narciso]]"
* [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/index.html Spermatikos Logos]

:'''''This page, though not necessarily others in the Pynchon Wiki, is licensed under the terms of the [[Pynchon Wiki:Text of the GNU Free Documentation License|GNU Free Documentation License 1.2.]]'''''
'''Bold text'''

User:Adrianboyd

2007-10-30T03:12:29Z

Adrianboyd:

User:Adrianboyd

2007-10-30T03:10:11Z

Adrianboyd:

'''Against the Day''' is an introspective stream-of-consciousness where characters fluctuate with the objective mind of the reader so that every plot in the story is recreated accordingly with the subconscious psyche of the author. It’s multifaceted ‘dreamlike~architectural’ narrative will elevate the individual’s sensorial experience during the monumental span of reading the novel while achieving oneness within a unified cosmic field. '''(Me)'''

'''Hello everybody''', I am Adrian Boyd from [http://www.SexAntToysWiki.com Sex Ant Toys] and a big fan of Against The Day. Still hanging around the first hundred pages of the book and it is now 12:11AM according to my PowerBook G4 on September 21, 2007. Yeap, I believe I have crashed into Thomas Pynchon several times in New York around Washington Square Park and actually made conversation with him, maybe it was the other way around. Where exactly? I can't recall (maybe Thompson St North) Anyways... I am so grateful of being alive at the same time he is alive and experiencing his latest work at hand in this right moment of time. We don't get Bitches Brew here now or often... well... maybe when John Zorn performed his Second Book with Electric Masada at Tonic. Cheers to that and I truly believe AGAINST THE DAY is in FACT the BIGGEST ACCOMPLISHMENT in WORLD LITERATURE. HE IS. (12:37AM) ~ '''V.Rayuela8½Contempt (∞)'''

- Notes:

'''September 22, 2007 (8:04PM)''' 
It has come to my attention the difficulty of accepting the fact of not understanding the Franz Ferdinand pages of the book (ATD45) regardless of how good is the band or how such insignificant event led the world to commence a war to end all wars. Ironic, isn't it?

'''September 25, 2007 (2:06AM)''' 
Money is the basis of our own existence not the miracle itself. Let's ring on life and crush the system away!

'''October 29, 2007 (2:06AM)''' 
Ok... the book was put away for a freaking month...
now I am back... shit... hope it wont interfere with my sleep
havent slept in 2 day now...
been going back and forth, 7 or 8 books on hand;
working on music... writing articles...
switching like a mother
refreshing my mind on every art movement since dada
expecting a baby soon
peace I hope
of mind
pay for rent
go back where I started
nothing

ATD 1-25

2007-09-25T06:11:26Z

Adrianboyd: /* Page 15 */ edit

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==cover text==
The black text and its drop shadows are in different typefaces. It may be worth noting, from a conceptual point of view, that we can infer from the angle of the drop shadows that the light source is any individual holding the book—that is, the reader or a potential reader.

==cover seal==
The seal appears to be written in Tibetan language, according to somebody who posts regularly to Pynchon-l under the name "Ya Sam", who reports:

I contacted the Tibetan Cultural Centre with the request to translate
the mysterious legend on the AtD seal. They were kind enough to forward my
request to the Tibetan tranlsator Tenzin Namgyal to whose generosity we
owe the solution of one more ATD related mystery.

It is the Tibetan language, alright, and it means ...... Tibetan
Government Chamber of Commerce.

Read their response below:

:Dear Ya Sam, 
:I showed the seal you sent to our Tibetan translator, Tenzin Namgyal. He says the word to word translation is: Tibetan Government Commerce Chamber in other words: Tibetan Government Chamber of commerce. Why Pynchon has chosen to place this on the cover of his book is anyones guess. Reading the book reviews gave no insight into the reason. Perhaps after one has read it?

:Best wishes,

:Sandy Belth 
:Tibetan Cultural Center

Also of interest: the coin bears a striking resemblance to the doubloon in ''Moby-Dick'' that Ahab nails to the mainmast as a prize to the first crew member to sight the white whale. Melville's description runs thus:

:It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy example of these things. On its round border it bore the letters, REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a country planted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator, and named after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes, in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw the likeness of three Andes' summits; from one a flame; a tower on another; on the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra. (Ch.99, "The Doubloon")

==copyright page==
The copyright page states that ''Against the Day'' is published by Viking Penguin, but on the title page and elsewhere we can read that the book is published by Penguin Press. The copyright pages of other books from Penguin Press state "Penguin Press" as the publisher, as could be expected, and it seems likely that the substitution of "Penguin Press" with "Viking" is one of many typographical errors in the book (see [[errata]]).
I have confirmed from inside Penguin Press that this is a copyediting mistake. Here is a direct e-mail answer about the Viking Penguin listing: "this was a copyediting mistake that will be corrected. There was never a Viking contract for this book."

==Dedication==
Most of Pynchon's novels contain dedications-- ''Mason & Dixon'' ("For Melanie, and for Jackson") , ''Vineland'' ("For my mother and father"), and ''Gravity's Rainbow'' ("For Richard Fariña")-- but not so ''Against the Day,'' as published. Advance reading copies of the book did contain the words "Dedication TK" in italics, but this is simply [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Come publisher-speak] for "dedication to come." It is unknown whether Pynchon ever considered inclusion of a dedication or whether the publisher simply left the page open just in case, but the ultimate lack of a dedication may suggest that Pynchon feels he's thanked everyone he needs to thank.

==Epigraph==
"It's always night, or we wouldn't need light." - Thelonious Monk 
Jazz and particularly bebop seem to be a lifelong interest of Pynchon’s, appearing in some form in all his works and what biographical snippets exist. As a college student, Pynchon “spent a lot of time in jazz clubs, nursing the two-beer minimum,” by his own admission (''Slow Learner'', Introduction). The Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/that-thelonious-monk-epigraph.html notes] that: 1) in his youth, Pynchon allegedly referred to Monk as a "God"; 2) the character McClintic Sphere in ''V''. takes Monk's middle name, Sphere; and 3) "It's always night, or we wouldn't need light" was apparently something Monk was given to saying, rather than something he once said. For more on McClintic Sphere and Monk, see Charles Hollander's essay [http://www.howardm.net/tsmonk/pynchon.php Does McClintic Sphere in ''V.'' stand for Thelonious Monk?]. On [[ATD_724-747#Page 732|page 732]]: "...daylit America ... its steadfast denial of night."

==Page 1==

'''The Light Over the Ranges''' 
Range is defined in the Oxford American Dictionary as "a line or series of mountains or hills : the coastal ranges of the northwest," so "range" or "ranges" can be used to denote a number of mountains. 

'Ranges' may also refer to farms, homesteads and ranches in 1893 America. America was predominantly that in 1893. Cf. "Home, home on the range". 

"celebrating in song the wider range of life..." Thomas Pynchon on
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Waddell Helen Waddell's]
''The Wandering Scholars'', p. 8, Introduction to[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Learner ''Slow Learner], 1984.

A range is also a group of diverse objects. 

A-And range is a word full of its own meaning. Below is a partial list from one good word reference site on the web. 
The more this reader
tries to understand Against the Day, by rereading it and Pynchon's whole oeuvre, the more he feels 'range as diversity'--lost--lies behind TRP's opening chapter title. Especially once one knows how 'Light' is a major subject and theme in ATD.[[User:MKOHUT|MKOHUT]] 13:41, 28 May 2007 (PDT)MKohut
*scope: an area in which something acts or operates or has power or control: "the range of a supersonic jet"; "the ambit of municipal legislation"; "within the compass of this article"; "within the scope of an investigation"; "outside the reach of the law"; "in the political orbit of a world power" 

*change or be different within limits; "Estimates for the losses in the earthquake range as high as $2 billion"; "Interest rates run from 5 to 10 percent"; "The instruments ranged from tuba to cymbals"; "My students range from very bright to dull" 

*the limits within which something can be effective; "range of motion"; "he was beyond the reach of their fire" 

*a large tract of grassy open land on which livestock can graze; "they used to drive the cattle across the open range every spring"; "he dreamed of a home on the range" 

*roll: move about aimlessly or without any destination, often in search of food or employment; 

*have a range; be capable of projecting over a certain distance, as of a gun; "This gun ranges over two miles" 

*a series of hills or mountains; "the valley was between two ranges of hills"; "the plains lay just beyond the mountain range" 

*a place for shooting (firing or driving) projectiles of various kinds; "the army maintains a missile range in the desert"; "any good golf club will have a range where you can practice" 

*range or extend over; occupy a certain area; "The plants straddle the entire state" 

*lay out orderly or logically in a line or as if in a line; "lay out the clothes"; "lay out the arguments" 

*the limits of the values a function can take; "the range of this function is the interval from 0 to 1"

*a variety of different things or activities; "he answered a range of questions"; "he was impressed by the range and diversity of the collection" 

*crop: feed as in a meadow or pasture; "the herd was grazing" 

*compass: the limit of capability; "within the compass of education"

*let eat; "range the animals in the prairie"

[wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn wordnet]

==Page 3==

'''"Now single up all lines!"''' 
Pynchon was in the Navy for a spell and "single up all lines" is a common nautical term. Ships are docked with lines doubled -- that is, with two sets of ropes or chains holding the vessel to the dock. To "single up all lines" is to remove the redundant second lines in preparation to make way.

But the opening line has many possible connotations.
:The Modern Word's Quail [http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/pynchon_atd.html writes] that "it is simultaneously a self-directive and a call to the reader; suggesting that ''Against the Day'' is a culmination of his previous work, and also charging the reader to find meaning within its twisting labyrinth. It may also be a sly, preemptive joke on the book’s initial critics, as the novel begins with the launch of a bloated gasbag bearing a somewhat provocative name."

:"Single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in ''V.'', 11; ''COL49'', 31; ''Gravity's Rainbow'', 489; and ''Mason & Dixon'', 258, 260. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but ''Vineland''?)--in preparation for a voyage to...?

'''"Cheerly now...handsomely...very well!!"''' 
Cheerly means "heartily," and was traditionally used as cry of encouragement among sailors. Handsomely (in nautical context): carefully, in good order, unhurriedly.

:Pynchon served in the Navy and uses nautical language in most of his novels. ''Mason & Dixon'': "Cheerly. Cheerly, then, Lads..." (54).

'''"Windy City, here we come!"''' 
The nickname for Chicago, of course, but in 1893 the use meant city of braggarts more than it did wind. The earliest known references to the "Windy City" are from 1876, and involve Chicago's rivalry with Cincinnati. A popular myth states that "Windy City" was first used by New York Sun editor Charles Dana in the bidding for the 1893 Columbian Exposition. The popularity of the nickname has endured, even after the Cincinnati rivalry and the Columbian Exposition both ended. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windy_City,_Origin_of_Name_(Chicago)| Origin of name "Windy City" at Wikipedia]

'''Randolph St. Cosmo, the ship commander''' 
[[image:ex-voti-isernia.jpg|thumb|175px|Ex voti of Wax, from Isernia|right]]Historically, there are two versions of the 3rd century CE figure St. Cosmo (aka St. Cosmas): the "randy" St. Cosmo, aka the "modern Priapus," and the saintly martyred St. Cosmo of Church lore. Pynchon, it seems, is connecting Randolph St. Cosmo to the former. "Randy," as astute observers will note, is an adjective which means, well, "horny." There's a distinct sexual thread woven throughout ''Against the Day'' [[Basnight%2C_Lewis_%28%22Lew%22%29|(See the ''beginnings'' of exploring this angle...]]) a-and Heartsease, St. Cosmo's mate, is the first to get pregnant! so this seems to fit right in. [[St. Cosmo|Read more about the historical St. Cosmo...]]; and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sts._Cosmas_and_Damian Wikipedia entry]

In [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=V#veery ''Mason & Dixon''], Pynchon has the Veery brothers, Cosmo and Damian, who are professional effigy makes in Philadelphia! And, just to make it interesting, "He's a rare Wax Artist, our Cosmo is." (p. 290) (Note: Wax phallus effigies were offered by the women to St. Cosmo at the festivals held in his name, as shown above.)

'''Now secure the Special Sky Detail''' 
When a naval vessel is departing from port or returning to port, a specially trained team is put in charge of the complicated process. The command is, [http://tpub.com/content/administration/12968a/css/12968a_41.htm "Now set the Special Sea Detail."] ''Inconvenience'' is run along fairly strict naval lines—given the age of the officers and crew, you might say she is a tot ship—and the beginning of the book was preceded by an analogous "Now set the Special Sky Detail." Once the ship is aloft and clear of ground obstructions, the command comes, "Now secure the Special Sky Detail," meaning disband the team for the time being and all return to regular duties. The language, tasks and customs aboard the skyship will show parallels to navy usage throughout the book.

'''summer uniform of red-and-white-striped blazer and trousers of sky blue''' 
Calls to mind the color scheme of Ned Land's (Kirk Douglas) costume in Disney's 1954 film version of ''20,000 Leagues under the Sea''. 

Also calls to mind the colors of the American flag.

'''"scuttlebutt" . . . thousand . . . wonders''' 
A most vigorous campaign [to host the Columbian Exposition] was then inaugurated, the three other cities making a common cause against Washington, whose claim was based on the fact that the proposed exposition was to be held under auspices of the national government, and hence that the capital was the most appropriate place.... By each of the claimants every advantage was urged, and by each of their rivals every defect was exaggerated. Congressional committees accorded a hearing to the several delegations, that of Chicago being represented, among others, by DeWitt C. Cregier, Thomas B. Bryan, and Edward T. Jeffery. from "Book of the Fair" by Hubert Bancroft, 1893.
:"Scuttlebutt" is a very close equivalent to "water-cooler gossip." [http://www.jacksjoint.com/sailor_terminology.htm Here is a glossary] of nautical terms with some of the etymologies.

'''''Inconvenience''''' 
Pynchon's fictional navy includes the USS Scaffold and the Susanna Squaducci (''V.''), and the John E. Badass (''GR''). Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html notes] that the British Royal Navy has a long tradition of warships with names like Impulsive, Incendiary, Inconstant, Indignant, etc. Impulsive is the name of the ship Ploy, who loses all his teeth in V., gets transferred to.
Inconvenience is an apt name for the Chums' adventures in 'reality'. They are an inconvenience; they are inconvenienced. (In having to take on Chick Counterfly, for example). 

Pynchon uses the word ''inconvenience'' in a possibly thematic, connected way in ''Mason & Dixon'' and in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. In ''Mason & Dixon'', the word is applied to the difficulties of an Other, other human beings as we act, interact. See citations at the ''M & D'' wiki. Here is the clearest relevant use for understanding for the Chums' airship, perhaps: from ''Gravity's Rainbow'': "the gift of Daedalus that allowed him [Pokler] to put as much labyrinth as required between himself and the
''inconveniences of caring''. [Italics mine] They had sold him convenience, so much of it, all on credit, and now They were collecting."
page 435, Penguin paperback edition with the Frank Miller cover.

In addition, if we take the Latinate roots of in-con-ven-(ience) and willfully misread the "in" as adverbial "in" (as e.g. "in-come") rather than the privative "not" (as e.g. "in-cred-ible"), we get "the arriving-in-together"; the "inconvenience", then, is essentially a tongue-in-cheek "vehicle". 
I do not think it illuminating to "willfully misread"!?! We are trying to
willfully read possible meanings and resonances. [[User:MKOHUT|MKOHUT]] 06:01, 2 August 2007 (PDT)

Also, recall Fender-Belly Bodine, in [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=I#inconvenience ''Mason & Dixon'']: "Back on old H.M.S. ''Inconvenience'', we wasted many a Day and Night watching that fancy Counter get smaller by the minute..." (p.28)

'''patriotic bunting''' 
TRP reminds again that this is a very American skyship. 
AtD has many echoes of Doctorow's "Ragtime": Doctorow fictionalises the same era, including anarchists, bombings, and early Hollywood.

'''aeronautics''' 
It has been suggested that Pynchon relied to the Britannica 11th as a major reference for his treatment of early aeronautics. [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Aeronautics|Brittanica 11th on Aeronautics]

'''five-lad crew''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo (ship commander), Lindsay Noseworth (master-at-arms), Miles Blundell (handyman apprentice), Darby Suckling (factotum and mascot), and Chick Counterfly. The commander's name evokes Randolph St., a main thoroughfare in Chicago. Perhaps also saint(liness) and cosmos?

'''The [[Chums of Chance]]''' 
To be chummy with chance might mean lucky, fond of gambling, fond of chaos, irrational, or anarchist. Or maybe they became chums by accident. The "chance" may also be that of the winds that carry them in directions not always intended.
:The American philospher Charles Sanders Peirce, who set down his most important ideas in the late 1800's, argued that 'Chance' was a feature of the universe that can refute all determinisms.

"The certainty of chance" is a Surrealist slogan. We learned from ''Slow Learner'' that Pynchon was influenced early by Surrealism.
The slogan is quoted in this obit of a real life
character out of Pynchon, George Melly, Jazz singer, writer, anarchist and polymorphous lover.[http://www.economist.com/search/search.cfm?rv=2&qr=melly&area=1&x=6&y=7]

Cameraderie and isolation are two recurring topics in Pynchon's works. The Chums are a band of heroes like those commonly featured in the 19th century boys' fiction that Pynchon evokes, but also recall Pynchon's high school fictions, [http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_hamster.html Voice of the Hamster] and [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_boys.html The Boys], in which the teenage Pynchon lovingly portrayed his group of high school chums, known as, simply, "The Boys."

[[image:dart-explorigator.jpg|thumb|120px|right]]The Chums are reminiscent of two comics of the early 20th century, [[Little Nemo|''Little Nemo in Slumberland'']], by Windsor McCay, and ''The Explorigator'', by Harry Grant Dart. "The Explorigator" was the name of a fantastic airship that traversed the universe. It was manned by Admiral Fudge, a youthful adventurer and inventor, accompanied by a group of friends, also children his age (around nine or ten): Detective Rubbersole, Maurice Mizzentop, Nicholas Nohooks, Grenadier Shift, Teddy Typewriter, and Ah Fergetitt. ''The Explorigator'' ran for 14 weeks in 1908 and made an impression for its imaginative and visual creativity. [[The Explorigator|More on ''The Explorigator'']] <ref>[http://lambiek.net/artists/d/dart_harry_grant.htm Lambiek Comiclopedia]</ref>

The names of the Chums may also be derived from famous Jazz musicians: Miles (Davis), Chick (Corea), Darby (Hicks), (Boots) Randolph, and (Vachel) Lindsay (a stretch here?), notes the [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html#c116587978292060684 Chumps of Choice blog].

The creativity of Pynchon's naming of the Chums, as other characters, shows yet again his Dickensian influence.

Note that there's five Chums, the number of chapters of the book (a-and the number of letters in "Chums"!).

'''Chicago''' 
It has been suggested that Pynchon relied on the [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/ 1911 Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica] as a major reference for his treatment of 1890s Chicago. [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Chicago 1911 Britannica entry on Chicago]

Also, The band Chicago's third hit song "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" deals with how one faces living in a world under constraints of time [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Does_Anybody_Really_Know_What_Time_It_Is%3F]. The opening lyrics are:

Does anybody really know what time it is?
Does anybody really care?
About Time...

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. The International Exposition was held in a building which for the first time was devoted to electrical exhibits. It was a historical moment and the beginning of a revolution, as Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse introduced the public to electrical power by providing alternating current to illuminate the Exposition. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry]. This World's Fair was enveloped in optimism for the future. "The thousand or more such wonders which awaited [the Chums] there." p.3

'''lifelines''' 
Called "manropes" on sailing ships. Ropes running fore-and-aft above the gunwales to prevent sailors getting blown overboard. They were held up by short stanchions inserted into holes in the rails. Source: ''The Ashley Book of Knots,'' 1944.

'''as my faithful readers will remember''' 
Pynchon here is immediately inserting this story into a larger canon of Chums of Chance fictions, titles of which are mentioned in subsequent pages.

'''mascotte''' 
The English word 'mascot' has its origin in the late 19th cent.: from French mascotte. The spelling may also be a tribute to the Dutch brand of rolling papers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mascotte_%28rolling_papers%29 [Wikipedia]]

==Page 4==

'''Professor''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo is called Professor.
"Professor" was a common title for early hot-air balloonists. [EC]

'''"Turn to"''' 
Evokes the "Go to!" of Majistral and compatriots, ''V.'', chapter eleven. "Turn to" is also a shipboard expression, "put your back into it" or something of the kind.

'''Perhaps its familiarity... rendered it temporarily invisible to you." 
Perhaps an admonition from the author that familiar things will be easily overlooked?
I think the fact that they were picnic baskets matters...TRP perhaps saying, as he seems to suggest elsewhere, that we overlook the simple pleasures too often.

'''"for Miles, while possessed of good intentions and the kindest heart in the little band, suffered at times from a confusion in his motor processes, often producing lively results, yet as frequently compromising the crew's physical safety.'''" 
Talk about Filles de Kilimanjaro and Miles post-quintet years, a prolonged effect on survivors after the bombings of 1945 and in the arts of Japan’s exploding subculture.

'''Chick Counterfly''' 
Three possibilities: (1) A counter fly is an annoyance in (say) the butcher's shop. (2) Chick always speaks "counter" to anyone else's "flight" of imagery. (3) The only non-''AtD''-related uses of this word that I've found came in patents describing mechanisms; "the counterfly direction" means contrary to the direction everything else is flying in, hence this character counters the flying of the craft?

He is the only Chum we know who was "rescued" from the "real" world. Meaning there? To be counter to flying is to be earthbound, where he started and he is the one with whom the conversation about relanding
on a different "earth" happens.

Like Suckling's name suggesting a relationship to another Pynchon character (Pig Bodine), Pynchon winks at a relationship between Counterfly and Tyrone Slothrop. In Counterfly´s first utterance in the book, “Ha ha,” cried young Counterfly, “say, but if you ain’t the most slob-footed chap I ever seen!” you can derive "Tyrone Slothrop" from an anagram of Counterfly and "slob-footed chap."

:Huh? That's a pretty sloppy anagram, ain't it? What about that "b" and that"d" ... this is ''way'' too much of a stretch. There's something to these names, perhaps, but I don't think you're close here, friend.

==Page 5==

'''"all tableware with Chums of Chance Insignia is Organizational property"''' 
The organization in question is the Chums of Chance themselves, here considered as an institution rather than as a collection of individuals.

'''picklesome''' 
Having the nature of a pickle, i.e, a boy who is inclined to mischief.

A word not much seen since the nineteenth century.

'''Pugnax''' 
I suspect that, in keeping with a very strong [[Birds|"bird" theme]] (the original aeronauts!) in ''Against the Day'', Pynchon may have named Pugnax after a bird called the Ruff (''Philomachus pugnax'') which is a medium-sized wader. Note that Pugnax's first "utterance" is "Rr Rff-rff Rr-rr-rff-rrf-rrf"...

There are a number of characters named after birds or bird sounds: Linnet Dawes, "Pert" Chirpingdon-Groin (there is a pert bird), and Wren Provenance immediately come to mind, but I'm sure there are others, and there are myriad bird references and metaphors (the Sodality of Ǣtheronauts and their mechanical wings); I just haven't had the time to explore it deeply, but others may... (Just read [[Birds|the bit about birds]] from ''Homage to Pythagoras''...

You can even make a semiserious case that the Aeronauts are named for a bird, the white-throated swift, ''Aeronautes saxatalis'' [[ATD_243-272#Page_266|(mentioned on p. 266)]].

The name meaning, in Latin, "likes to fight" (i.e. one who is pugnacious). Pugnax's fantastic intelligence recalls another intelligent Pynchon dog, the Learned English Dog in ''Mason & Dixon''. His manner of speech is somewhat reminiscent of the mystery-solving cartoon dog Scooby-Doo, and [http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0612&msg=112507&sort=date members of PYNCHON-L] have speculated that his eyebrows and reading habits allude to Gromit, from the [http://www.wallaceandgromit.com/ Wallace and Gromit] claymation films.

Could this name be an homage to the dog in the Asterix comics, Idéfix in French; Dogmatix in English? Many of the character in the Asterix comics have names ending in "x".

'''"...during a confidential assignment in Our Nation's Capitol (see ''The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit'')..."''' 
This could be seen as a criticism of an American President, present or past. President Bush is a candidate, considering the Pynchon-authored [[Against the Day description|Amazon.com book description]] which included "With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

The Chums "rescued Pugnax, then but a pup"--an innocent, a child creature--"from a furious encounter..between rival packs of the city's wild dogs".
The wild dogs equal both political parties?

'''lavatorial assaults''' 
"from the sky, which no one can "begin to try to record, much less coordinate reports of" recall the V-2 rockets which are linked to Slothrop's erections in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. That is, pee from the sky is "folklore, superstition, or perhaps...the religious" in ATD compared to rockets screaming across the sky and the destruction in GR.

This also recalls jokes and urban legends regarding frozen waste from leaky airplane lavatories (i.e., "you can still be hit by an icy B.M.")

==Page 6==

'''''Princess Casamassima''''' 
Published 1886 (James had published two others by 1893), a classic dealing with terrorists, anarchists, and bombings. [http://www.henryjames.org.uk/pcasa/home.htm Full text] Sequel to "Roderick Hudson". It's the only Henry James novel in which he takes on such overtly political subjects, the only one which deals with violent extremes of human behavior. 
:Thematically, it's reactionary, the opposite of AtD. 
:ATD is not reactionary but also not the opposite of Princess Casamassima thematically, it can be easily argued.

Pugnax prefers in his reading "sentimental tales about his own species [rather] than those exhibiting extremes of human behavior, which he appeared to find a bit lurid." It seems Pynchon is slyly commenting on James' Princess Casamassima here in that that James novel DID deal with 'extremes of human behaviour' yet Pugnax prefers 'sentimental tales'! As many who have had dogs know, often when raised from puppyhood with loving owners, they 'think they are human'. Pugnax learns where to pee off the gondola - a pretty natural function for a dog - "like the rest of the crew".

Or: it is a theme in GR, that the book, writing itself, is an abstraction from experience and not, of course, the thing itself. Noseworth, "who placed upon the word 'book' . . . contempt" did, however, know the subject matter of 'Princess Casamassima.' He, Noseworth, hopes they will "suffer no occasion for exposure more immediate than that to be experienced, as with Pugnax at this moment, safely within the leaves of some book." It matters that the Chums ARE also characters in books of their adventures.

It should also be noted that the Princess Casamassima is one of the rare characters in James' novels who appears in more than one work. She was originally a character in the 1875 novel Roderick Hudson, where her name was, quite fittingly, Christina Light.

'''Placing . . . an emphasis''' 
Lapse of authorial control? Surely the creator of the ''Chums'' novels would not write such a Pynchonian sentence fragment!

'''Pugnax sniffed . . . as always this scent eluded him''' 
If Pugnax doesn't detect a human scent, that suggests Lindsay is not human. Not human, Master-at-Arms, speaks in hyper-constructed prose, has a notably short fuse . . . he's Lieutenant Worf of ''Star Trek, the Next Generation.''

'''''Krakatoa''''' 
Erupted 1883. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa Wikipedia entry.]

'''Heino Vanderjuice of New Haven''' 
Scientist who designed the ''Inconvenience's'' hydrogen engine. "Vanderjuice" suggests both "wonder juice" and "wander juice," fitting since his engine allows the Chums to wander and is wondrous insofar as it apparently violates the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics second law of thermodynamics]. "Heino" (HIE-no) is a man's given name [http://www.behindthename.com/php/view.php?name=heino meaning 'home'] in German, Finnish, and Estonian. Perhaps an allusion to the German pop star, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heino Heino].

:Um, a quibble: ''Vanderjuice'' is some kind of corrupted Dutch, and in Dutch the name Heino would be pronounced HAY-no. He is not an immigrant, though, and American speakers no doubt say HIGH-no.

Jules Verne influence? Vanderjuice a red herring, pointing to Dutch origin and electrical ("juice") background? Or does one try to parse the name into eg "Fond O' Juice"?

'''no better than a perpetual-motion machine''' 
A perpetual-motion machine is not just one that runs forever, but one that ''performs work'' forever without any input of energy. All PM machines ever invented have been either hoaxes ("secret free energy source the government doesn't want you to know about") or mistakes. The hydrogen generator/engine is neither, which is why the disdainful phrase "no better than" is crucial.

By the way, how does one generate hydrogen? In high school chem lab we used zinc filings and hydrochloric acid, but that seems unsuitable with Miles around. Is it possible Vanderjuice has invented a photovoltaic electrolysis cell?

'''Miles, with his marginal gifts of coördination, and Chick, with a want of alacrity fully as perceptible''' 
Like the old gag: The food in this restaurant isn't any good, but the service is awful.

'''ratlines and shrouds''' 
''Inconvenience'' is rigged like a sailing ship of the period, though it's hard to see why she needs to be. Shrouds fan out from a masthead down to a rail; ratlines run horizontally to join them. The whole affair serves the sailors as a ladder.

'''". . . anemometer of the Robinson's type"''' 
Cup anemometer invented in 1846 by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Thomas_Romney_Robinson Dr. John Thomas Romney Robinson]. Cup anemometers are still commonly used to measure wind speed because of their simplicity and reliability in a variety of environmental conditions. [http://www.arm.ac.uk/annrep/annrep2000/node13.html pic]

'''how rapidly the ship was proceeding''' 
But you can't measure the craft's progress by measuring wind speed at a point on the craft itself. All you get from the anemometer is a speed relative to the air, which is in variable motion. Since the craft is moving at the speed of the wind plus the speed of its propulsion device, the speed found by the anemometer is basically useless.

==Page 7==

'''Porfirio Díaz''' 
President of Mexico 1876-1880, 1884-1911. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porfirio_D%C3%ADaz Wikipedia]

In most countries, the Interior Ministry (Ministry of Internal Affairs, Home Office, etc.) ran programs like secret police. Are the Chums working for forces of conservativism?

'''"beside a black-water river of the Deep South". 
Blackwater River is in lower central Florida, pretty deep south; but there are numerous rivers in swampy areas that run black with organic matter.

'''a bitter and unresolved "piece of business"''' 
Rather than give a proper reason for the Chums to be in the Deep South, the narrator cops out by pleading that it's "not advisable" to specify.

'''"the Rebellion of thirty years previous"''' 
The Civil War was not called such during the time it was occurring; the South called it "the war between the states" to emphasize both their right to secede from the union and that this was a war between sovereign states; the North called it "the Rebellion of 1861" or, after termination of hostilities, "the Rebellion of 1861-1865," appellations that did not recognize the South's right to secede.

'''"one still not advisable to set upon one's page"''' 
The American Civil War, that "rebellion of thirty years previous," has not yet become a suitable subject for an adventure tale such as the Chums'.

'''absquatulated''' 
Means to move away quickly, usually to avoid capture. Apparently a mock-Latinate formation, "to go off and squat somewhere else." [http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-abs1.htm A brief article] on the history and etymology of "absquatulate." 
The word is used in Vineland.

'''"Crackerjack!" exclaimed Chick.''' 
Cracker Jack, the food, was first sold at the Chicago Exhibition of 1893, though it did not bear its present name. As one word here, however, it is not the candy: "Crackerjack" entered English first as a noun referring to "a person or thing of marked excellence," then as an adjective. The foodstuff gained its present name, according to the [http://www.crackerjack.com/history.php official Cracker Jack website], in 1896. The OED lists the first written use of "crackerjack" as 1895, two years after the present scene. It is by no means impossible, however, that the term would have been current in the spoken language in 1893.

'''to approach the gates of the Penitentiary''' 
A genuine saying. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Quay Matthew Quay,] a political kingmaker of the 1880s and 90s, said of Benjamin Harrison's squeaker victory over Grover Cleveland in 1888 that Harrison would "never know how many Republicans were compelled to approach the gates of the penitentiary to make him president."

'''posse comitatus''' 
What Western movie fans know as a "posse," i.e., citizens conscripted by a sheriff to assist in law enforcement. (See the Wikipedia entry on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_comitatus_(common_law) Posse Comitatus].) Remember that the ''Chums'' author gets paid by the word.

In the 1980s, a radical, violent, right-wing and anti-government movement adopted the name "Posse Comitatus."

==Page 8==

'''a pocketful of specie''' 
Specie means coins as opposed to paper money.

'''the town of Thick Bush''' 
Aside from whether this phrase might apply to some political figure of the past or present, "thick bush" is the literal meaning of the Spanish Matagorda, the name of many towns in Latin America and one on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

'''"which directs us never to interfere with legal customs of any locality down at which we may happen to have touched"''' 
Like the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_directive Prime Directive] in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_trek ''Star Trek'']. Lindsay's fussy syntax echoes Winston Churchill's exasperated "This is the kind of carping criticism up with which I will not put."

'''legal customs''' 
Legal = pertaining to law, in this case lynch law. The Chums are interpreting their Prime Directive pretty broadly here.

'''Katie bar the door''' 
An expression that means that there's trouble brewing. (See [http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-kat1.htm this article] about the expression's etymology.)

'''Ku Klux Klan''' 
Reminiscent of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan Klan] encounter scenes in the Coen Brothers' ''O Brother, Where Art Thou''.

'''tupelo, cypress, and hickory''' 
The trees are no help in locating the town; all three kinds like bottom land and grow all over the South.

'''speed . . . made it nearly invisible from the ground''' 
Few people in 1893 had seen a manmade object moving at 60 miles an hour, and many thought such a speed was lethal anyway. The ''Chums'' author suggests such an outlandish speed would make ''Inconvenience'' just a blur in the sky. Of course you can read the fin numbers on an airliner landing at 150 knots, but he didn't know that.

''Pedantry alert:'' In perfectly transparent air a ship flying a mile off the ground is visible about 125 miles away. If its flight path takes it right over your head, you can follow it for 250 miles. If it is making a groundspeed of 60 miles per hour, it takes 4 hours and change to go from horizon to horizon. In typical "clear" air (visibility say 30 miles), you will see the ship in your sky for a solid hour. These rough figures show how wrong the narrator is about speed.

'''way better than a mile a minute''' 
The Chums' point of departure is unknown, but they arrived in Chicago after catching a southerly wind (pg 3), southerly meaning "wind blowing from the south." The Chums surpass 60 miles an hour here, but as their previous speed was unknown, it's difficult to know where they were leaving from. (New Orleans to Chicago is 834 miles, slightly less than 14 hours at 60 miles/hour, so a possibility.)

==Page 9==

'''locker''' 
On board ship, any cabinet with a door or lid.

'''"Do not imagine, that in coming aboard ''Inconvenience'' you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual..."''' 
This may be Pynchon directly addressing the reader. Given that his [[Against_the_Day_description|book description]] proclaims the world of AtD as "what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two," this paragraph seems to indicate that Pynchon, like all great fantasy or sci-fi writers, does not intend to create a world where anything goes. Rather, he will create a world that differs from ours but then obey the rules and constraints he's already established. 
Cf. Pynchon's own relevant words in the introduction to Slow Learner. He remarks that in non-realistic fiction, he had to learn that not anything went.

A-and it must mean, coming from the commander, that all aboard the ''Inconvenience'' are also subjects to the 'facts' of the world. "The World is All that is the Case", from Wittgenstein, quoted in V.
(in the original German)

'''"Going up is like going north."''' 
Air gets cooler as the ship ascends into higher altitudes, and therefore like travelling northward. This page also suggests some further mystery of the Chums may be revealed to Chick and the reader in time.

:North is not a positive place in Pynchon's world. It is associated with anti-life---coldness as here---compared to the South, a place of light and warmth, such as the tropics. See GR.

:But to go far enough north means heading south again, observes Chick Counterfly--is this one meaning of his name? Then one would be "approaching the surface of another planet, maybe?" asks Chick.

"Not exactly" [answers Randolph] "No. Another 'surface', but an earthly one"
"You'll see. In time, of course". Time is earthly?

'''"Another 'surface'"''' 
In ancient conics the cone is formed by taking a line through a point (the vertex) at a particular angle to a plane and then inscribing a circle on the plane. Two conic surfaces are made by the motion of this line, one below this point and one above. The three conic sections (hyperbola, parabola, and ellipse) are created by slicing the conic surface(s) at different angles.
:huh?[[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:38, 15 January 2007 (PST)
:If you read this for plain meaning, then it's true (or Randolph believes) that there's another earthly surface, to which you can descend by ascending far enough above this one. Surely it is pertinent here that Pynchon's dear friend Richard Fariña (1937-66) titled his novel ''Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me.''

==Page 10==

'''Stockyards''' 
Chicago was, at the time, the meat-packing and slaughtering capital of the United States. The stench from the stockyards below must have been memorable.

'''...looked up at the airship in wonder..." 
The sight of any airship in 1893 must have been rare indeed. 
Our history reports that the first practical airships were built in 1898; [[ATD_429-459#Page_454|the idea or icon was around by 1896, though.]]

'''Beneath the rubbernecking Chums of Chance wheeled streets and alleyways''' 
Optical illusion. As you fly over a grid of streets, you perceive a landmark far away to move slowly while the lateral streets near you just whip past. Your brain interprets that the same way as hub and spokes, i.e., the motion of a wheel. Interesting question, though: If the ''Chums'' author was just making this stuff up, how did he know about the illusion?

'''Cartesian grid''' 
From Rene Descartes, 17th century philosopher and mathematician; see Wikipedia entry, whose most famous argument, "I think therefore I am" and mathematical studies have often lead him to be seen as the first modern philosopher of ultra-rationality. Geometry has 'the Cartesian coordinant system, a grid. Chicago's streets are laid out in a very rational grid arrangement.

Pynchon is reputed to have written 'Gravity's Rainbow' on engineer's grid paper.

In modern mathematics, curves are described only in relation to the two dimensional grid (see previous page). If conic sections are not specifically being thought of here, the theme of dimensionality, at least, is already at play.

'''that unshaped freedom being rationalized into movement only in straight lines''' 
Rationalization is a key sociological concept [from online Dictionary of Social Science]:RATIONALIZATION
This term has two specific meanings in sociology. (1) The concept was developed by German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) who used it in two ways. First, it was the process through which magical, supernatural and religious ideas lose cultural importance in a society and ideas based on science and practical calculation become dominant. For example, in modern societies science has rationalized our understanding of weather patterns. Science explains weather patterns as a result of interaction between physical elements like wind-speed and direction, air and water temperatures, humidity, etc. In some other cultures, weather is thought to express the pleasure or displeasure of gods, or spirits of ancestors. One explanation is rationalized and scientific, the other mysterious and magical. Rationalization also involves the development of forms of social organization devoted to the achievement of precise goals by efficient means. It is this type of rationalization that we see in the development of modern business corporations and of bureaucracy. These are organizations dedicated to the pursuit of defined goals by calculated, systematically administered means. (2) Within symbolic interactionism, rationalization is used more in the everyday sense of the word to refer to providing justifications or excuses for one's actions.

'''"only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor."''' 
From innocent bovines to ...the world? "Single up all lines"....
Stockyards were organized in such a way that the cattle would proceed through a series of chutes and passages, until they arrived alone at the point of death.

"Progressive reduction of choices" also occurred in ''Mason & Dixon''—there were infinitely many wildernesses out to the west until M&D ran the line and rationalized the country into Maryland and Pennsylvania.

==Page 11==

'''plummet''' 
In the real world, this might be bad physics, as closing the valve wouldn't slow the descent. Objects in a fluid medium like air float if their weight is less than the weight of the fluid they displace (hence why one fills a balloon with a light gas such as hydrogen or helium). Once the ''Inconvenience'' loses its buoyancy, it will continue to fall, unless its weight is reduced to what a lesser amount of hydrogen could support. The Inconvenience, however, has a hydrogen producing apparatus that could kick in, slow, and eventually stop their descent.

'''bear a hand''' 
Nautical: help out.

==Page 12==

'''Liverpool Kiss''' 
A head butt.

'''Herr Riemann''' 
Riemann, Georg Friedrich Bernhard (1826-1866) (pronounced REE mahn or in IPA: ['ri:man]) was a German mathematician who made important contributions to analysis and differential geometry, some of them paving the way for the later development of general relativity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann Wikipedia entry].

'''''Mr.'' Noseworth''' 
Lindsay insisting on proper naval forms: an ensign, lieutenant (junior grade), lieutenant or lieutenant commander in the U.S. navy is correctly addressed as "Mister Surname."

'''"topological genius"''' 
Riemann's differential geometry goes beyond the Cartesian grid. See conic sections and dimensionality above, page 10.

==Page 13==

'''There was an "eager stampede" to the rail''' 
Why is eager stampede in quotation marks? The sentence reads fine without it. Does it seem to show ironic knowingness on the part of the narrator? If so, why and who is the narrator?
: I suspect this is a stylistic device from the turn of the century light literature that Pynchon is emulating-- placing a novel term in quotation marks. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 01:35, 23 December 2006 (PST)

:insightfully true, I suspect, but it still shows 'narratorial knowingness', yes?

: Cf. Flaubert's use of quotations in ''Madame Bovary'' to isolate what he deemed the contemptible argot of the bourgeoisie.

::Apparently not a cliche: [http://books.google.com//books?num=100&q=eager.stampede&as_brr=0 GoogleBooks]

'''"...among the brighter star-shapes of exploded ballast bags..."''' 
Recalls the opening line of ''Mason & Dixon'': "Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr‘d the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins..."

'''"...quite as if were some giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinizing from above, in a spirit of constructive censure."''' 
This is strikingly reminiscent of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odilon_Redon Odilon Redon's] 1882 Lithograph ''L'Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l'infini (The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity).'' [http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A2&page_number=4&template_id=1&sort_order=1 At MoMa's Online Collection]
Notice that society = censure, if constructive. Gamboling nude on a summer day was OK until the ''Inconvenience'', as eyeball, appeared.

:The Odilon Redon lithograph appears on the cover of the 1998 Vintage paperback edition of Ian McEwan's Enduring Love, whose first unforgettable chapter triggers the novel with a ballooning incident leaving the reader dangling over the edge of suspense and suspension.

==Page 14==

'''charmed into docility''' 
If it took only one small lad to moor the ship, she was indeed docile. A wiki contributor once saw a Goodyear blimp in Houston, Texas, landing. The craft had half a dozen long falls of rope hanging from her nose, and a ground crew of nearly two dozen men ready to take hold of them. The blimp approached nose-low, the crew took the ropes, and a gust of wind suddenly moved the ship. The crew chief gave a safety command and all the men let loose their ropes at once. On the third pass, all hands working together managed to stop the ship and get her moored. If ''Inconvenience'' was a fraction as changeable and hard to control, Darby made a great job of getting the ship staked out by himself.

'''Jacob's-ladder''' 
Used here as "a marine ladder of rope or chain with wooden or iron rungs" (Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged) but is suggestive of Jacob's ladder in Genesis:

Genesis 28:12 And he [Jacob] dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. (King James version)

'''a giant sack of soiled laundry''' 
Perhaps ''freshly'' soiled during the great hydrogen valve disaster.

'''''vol-à-voile''''' 
The narrator has turned the French phrase ''vol-à-voiles'' (gliding) into a verb (removing the ''s'').

'''gold-beaters' skin''' 
Very thin vellum (membrane taken from the caecum or blind stomach of an ox). To prepare gold for gilding, it was placed between sheets of vellum and hammered thin.

'''Evening Quarters''' 
Naval practice of mustering the crew at the end of the day's work.

==Page 15==

'''ukulelist''' 
Ukuleles also appear in ''Gravity's Rainbow'', ''Vineland'', and ''Mason & Dixon''. According to Jules Siegel's article, "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?", Pynchon himself played the ukulele in college.

'''Vagabonds of the Void''' 
The song performed by the Chums of Chance reflects the Rock and Roll attitude of the group towards the groundworld upon arrival. It's also the first time in the book we truly encounter the hipness of the group with some sort of Nine Inch Nails fronting edge to it. 

[[image:Macassar-Oil.jpg|thumb|175px|''Macassar Oil. An Oily Puff for Soft Heads''|right]]'''Beaufort Scale''' 
A scale for measuring wind strength, developed 1805.

'''"Let the lightning lash ~ And the thunder trash" 
Again, the Chums are rock stars, the coolest cats in town.

'''"...forty-four buttons...one for each State of the Union." 
Wyoming was the 44th state admitted to the union in 1890.

'''port section of the crew''' 
The half of the crew permitted to go freely ashore this time. The other half tomorrow. "Port" and "starboard": are these simply either/or words that sailors remember easily?

'''Macassar oil''' 
Macassar oil is an oil used primarily by men in Victorian and Edwardian times to smooth their hair. It was advertised as containing oil from Macassar, which is the former name of Ujung Pandang, a district on the island of Celebes in Indonesia. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macassar_oil Wikipedia entry]

==Page 16==

'''About the fringes,' Randolph reminded the liberty-goers, 'of any gathering on the scale of this Exposition, are apt to lurk vicious and debased elements, whose sole aim is to take advantage of the unwary.''' 
Indeed, the Chicago World's Fair was haunted by one of America's more prolific and original serial killers, H.H. Holmes. Born in 1861, Holmes came to Chicago as a pharmacist and built an office building that was eventually dubbed 'The Castle'. Consisting of commercial stores on the first floor, and offices and apartments on the upper floors, the building also housed hidden rooms where Holmes murdered his victims, chutes that conveyed the bodies to the basement, and a chamber of horrors in the basement where he destroyed the corpses. Holmes took advantage of the World's Columbian Exposition to lure victims, primarily females who had come unaccompanied to Chicago, to the Castle for torture and murder. It is estimated that he killed over 200 people at the Castle while the Exposition was in operation. Two very good books about Holmes are The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson and Depraved by Harold Schechter. It is doubtful that Pynchon was thinking explicitly of Holmes when he wrote this passage, although he must be aware of the story. Randolph could not have known about Holmes since Holmes was not captured until after the Fair was over. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._H.H._Holmes Wikipedia entry]

'''tension of the gas''' 
I.e., the pressure in the bag.

==Page 17==

'''"as if it were something the stripling had only read about, in some boys' book of adventures...as if that page of their chronicles lay turned and done"''' 
The narrator makes us aware that Darby's adventures are as if/will be written down...the 'reality' of almost killing all of them is now just words on a page...as is this book, ATD?...Again a Pynchonian theme: no book is the reality.

'''"and the order 'About-face' had been uttered by some potent though invisible Commandant of Earthly Days, toward whom Darby, in amiable obedience, had turned again."''' 
Is this just a metaphor from the narrator to describe what it is like for Darby, or is it also self-referential to
all the adventures of the Chums?. Another Q: Is the Commandant of Earthly Days the invisible presence from whom the chums get their orders? Cf. earthly surface, p.9
:Related Q: Do the Chums receive their orders from the author of their books?

'''we were usually out the door and on the main road''' 
Dick and Chick knew the judge was more likely to order them out of town than into the lockup.

'''Chinese foofooraw''' 
Also spelled foofaraw, a great deal of fuss, or useless frills. Cf folderol. However, why Chinese?
:Chick's father tried to sell Mississippi to a Chinese syndicate.

'''cubeb''' 
The name for the berry and for the oil obtained from the unripe berry of the East Indian climbing shrub ''P. cubeba''. The dried fruits are sometimes used as a condiment or are ground and smoked in cigarette form as an herbal remedy. [http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/pepper The Free Dictionary] Also appears in ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' page 118.

'''"...goldurn Keeley Cure"''' 
A treatment for alcohol, nicotine and narcotic addiction involving injections of "bichloride" or "double chloride" of gold, and also known as the "gold cure". Named for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Keeley Dr. Leslie E. Keeley,] who opened the first of many Keeley Institutes in [http://www.dwighthigh.k12.il.us/dwight/dwight.htm Dwight, Illinois], not far from Chicago, in 1879.

==Page 18==

'''headgear''' 
Description vaguely reminiscent of "Madame Bovary". [http://robotwisdom.com/flaubert/bovary/bovary1.html [notes]]

'''eclipse green''' 
Apparently an actual shade. [http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/DIO_DRO/DIRECT.html [cite]]

'''Bindlestiffs of the Blue A.C.''' 
Bindlestiff means hobo; hence, the Hoboes of the Sky Aeronautical Club.

'''("Penny") Black''' 
The Penny Black was the world's first official adhesive postage stamp, issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1840. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black [Wikipedia]]

'''Tzigane''' 
French for "gypsy". Also a piece by Ravel. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzigane_(Ravel) [Wikipedia]]

'''Egypt''' 
Little Egypt is the southern area of the state of Illinois in the United States of America. Named so because it has a considerable river delta and a metropolis called Cairo (KAY-roe). The region is and was sometimes called simply "Egypt," especially in the 19th century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Egypt_(region) [Wikipedia]]

==Page 19==

'''goin all blue from the light of that electric fluid''' 
Their ship was beset by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elmo%27s_fire St. Elmo's fire,] a low-energy electrical discharge often seen on surface vessels and occasionally on aircraft. Electric charge does behave in some respects like a fluid and was long described in such terms.

'''Voices calling out together''' 
There is no reason to doubt they heard the voices, but an aural hallucination is not out of the question: a chorus of voices is one of the easiest effects to produce with a synthesizer.

[[image:balloons-paris.jpg|thumb|200px|Garçons de '71|right]]'''Garçons de '71''' 
French: The Boys of '71; During the Siege of Paris in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War Franco-Prussian War], 1870-1871, balloons were manufactured within railroad stations in Paris. The balloons were used to get mail and passengers out of Paris. The ''Garçons de '71'' are a (probably) fictional cadre of young men who operated such balloons [[Garçons de '71|Read on...]]

'''a condition of ''permanent siege''''' 
Surely no one has failed to notice what a "wartime president" is allowed to get away with. "No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

'''pétroleurs de Paris''' 
An early form of Molotov cocktail thrower during the Siege of Paris. There were pétroleurs and pétroleuses.

==Page 20==

'''they'll fly wherever they're needed''' 
While the Chums obey orders from above, the Garçons de '71 follow a different imperative.

'''energy we could feel, directed personally at us''' 
Someone may be trying to influence what the Bindlestiffs do, or keep them away from the Garçons' work of mercy.

==Page 21==

'''admissions gate''' 
Apparently a break in the fence, capitalized on by freelance impresarios.

'''fifty-cent pieces''' 
Odd. According to [http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html this remarkable Columbian Exposition site,] regular admission was just half a dollar. Maybe Lindsay and Miles could have negotiated with the midget.

==Page 22==

'''Kodaks''' 
The word Kodak was trademarked in 1888, and the first Kodak camera was sold with the slogan, "You press the button - we do the rest." In 1891, the company released the first daylight-loading camera, so film could be changed without a darkroom. Kodaks would have been a novelty at the fair in 1893.

'''half-light . . . in the interests of mercy . . . the safety of the lights''' 
Interesting contrast suggesting a tradeoff between comfort/solace in the shadows and safety in the bright light.

'''Isandhlwana''' 
Isandlwana is an isolated hill in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. On January 22, 1879, it was the site of the Battle of Isandlwana, where over 20,000 Zulu warriors defeated a contingent of British soldiers in the first engagement of the Anglo-Zulu War. Almost the entire column of about 1,200 British soldiers was killed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isandhlwana [Wikipedia]] You will find a chapter on Isandhlwana in any book that has the words "military" and "blunders" in the title.

==Page 23==

'''Tarahumara''' 
Indian tribe of Northern New Mexico, in the Sierra Madres, known for cave-dwelling in the late 19th century. [[Tarahumare_Indians|About the Tarahumara]]. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarahumara [Wikipedia]]

'''"geek"''' 
A geek's act comprised things no one would do who had not sunk all the way to the bottom of the carnie world: eating live creatures, throwing fits, and so forth. Much like the television show "Fear Factor," but sad rather than stultifying.

'''monte''' 
Three-card monte.

==Page 24==

'''the curse of Scotland''' 
A term used in poker, bridge and various other card games for the nine of diamonds. Dates from 1710. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Scotland [Wikipedia]]

'''like the electricity coming on... how everything fits together, connects. It doesn't last long, though.''' 
From something as random as calling out a card trick comes this extremely profound quote by Miles Blundell (full quote edited here). The heart of this quote/thought seems to be crucial.

What Miles describes is also the symptoms of a mild seizure - could he be epileptic? Epileptics were often credited with shamanic or prophetic powers, and many sightings of religious figures have been attributed to seizures. On page 4, Miles is also said to suffer from "confusion in his motor processes", which may be related.

'''Cracker Jack''' 
First sold at the at the first Chicago World's Fair in 1893. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_Jack [Wikipedia]]

'''New Levee district''' 
Chicago's redlight district c1890. [http://www.ipsn.org/genesis.htm [cite]]

'''Epworth League''' 
A Methodist youth organization founded in 1889. [http://www.southernmethodistchurch.org/id48.htm [cite]]

==Page 25==

'''Haymarket bomb''' 
The Haymarket Riot on May 4, 1886, in Chicago may be the origin of international May Day observances and in popular literature inspired the caricature of "a bomb-throwing anarchist." The causes of the incident are still controversial, although deeply polarized attitudes separating the business class and the working class in late 19th century Chicago are generally acknowledged as having precipitated the tragedy and its aftermath. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_bombing Wikipedia entry].

'''if the Governor decides to pardon that gang of anarchistic murderers''' 
In May of 1886, 350,000 workers, including 70,000 in Chicago were taking to the streets to rally for the eight hour work day. After four workers were killed by the police on May 3, the anarchist leaders in Chicago called for a meeting in Haymarket Square. Although the rally was peaceful, the police came in on horseback to break it up and an unknown individual in the crowd hurled a homemade bomb into the air. After the explosion, which killed a policeman, the police opened fire on the crowd. Subsequently, the anarchist leaders deemed responsible for the rally were arrested and tried for the murder of the policeman. The Eight men were convicted of the bombing and seven of them sentenced to death. Governor Richard J. Oglesby commuted two death sentences to life. Four were hanged and a fifth committed suicide. A later governor, John P. Altgeld, pardoned the three survivors on June 26, 1893, concluding that all eight of them were innocent. The last words of anarchist August Spies before he was hanged were 'The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.' Two very good books on the Haymarket Riot and the events surrounding it include The Haymarket Tragedy by Paul Avrich and Death In The Haymarket by James Green.

'''mixture of contempt and pity''' 
This is ''definitely'' not from one of the Chums' adventure stories.

'''embonpoint''' 
Convexity of body; what used to be called a "prosperous" look.

'''duck soup''' 
Meaning "an easy task," but also the name of a Marx Bros. movie. Perhaps relevant, given the cameo by Groucho promised on the book sleeve. Many of the Marx Brothers early movies had animal references in the title: Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup. The titles usually had nothing at all to do with the plot, although they contributed to the lunatic nature of the comedy. The expression 'Horse Feathers' is used a few times later on in Against The Day.

==References==
<references />

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

User:Adrianboyd

2007-09-25T06:09:26Z

Adrianboyd:

User:Adrianboyd

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:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==cover text==
The black text and its drop shadows are in different typefaces. It may be worth noting, from a conceptual point of view, that we can infer from the angle of the drop shadows that the light source is any individual holding the book—that is, the reader or a potential reader.

==cover seal==
The seal appears to be written in Tibetan language, according to somebody who posts regularly to Pynchon-l under the name "Ya Sam", who reports:

I contacted the Tibetan Cultural Centre with the request to translate
the mysterious legend on the AtD seal. They were kind enough to forward my
request to the Tibetan tranlsator Tenzin Namgyal to whose generosity we
owe the solution of one more ATD related mystery.

It is the Tibetan language, alright, and it means ...... Tibetan
Government Chamber of Commerce.

Read their response below:

:Dear Ya Sam, 
:I showed the seal you sent to our Tibetan translator, Tenzin Namgyal. He says the word to word translation is: Tibetan Government Commerce Chamber in other words: Tibetan Government Chamber of commerce. Why Pynchon has chosen to place this on the cover of his book is anyones guess. Reading the book reviews gave no insight into the reason. Perhaps after one has read it?

:Best wishes,

:Sandy Belth 
:Tibetan Cultural Center

Also of interest: the coin bears a striking resemblance to the doubloon in ''Moby-Dick'' that Ahab nails to the mainmast as a prize to the first crew member to sight the white whale. Melville's description runs thus:

:It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy example of these things. On its round border it bore the letters, REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a country planted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator, and named after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes, in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw the likeness of three Andes' summits; from one a flame; a tower on another; on the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra. (Ch.99, "The Doubloon")

==copyright page==
The copyright page states that ''Against the Day'' is published by Viking Penguin, but on the title page and elsewhere we can read that the book is published by Penguin Press. The copyright pages of other books from Penguin Press state "Penguin Press" as the publisher, as could be expected, and it seems likely that the substitution of "Penguin Press" with "Viking" is one of many typographical errors in the book (see [[errata]]).
I have confirmed from inside Penguin Press that this is a copyediting mistake. Here is a direct e-mail answer about the Viking Penguin listing: "this was a copyediting mistake that will be corrected. There was never a Viking contract for this book."

==Dedication==
Most of Pynchon's novels contain dedications-- ''Mason & Dixon'' ("For Melanie, and for Jackson") , ''Vineland'' ("For my mother and father"), and ''Gravity's Rainbow'' ("For Richard Fariña")-- but not so ''Against the Day,'' as published. Advance reading copies of the book did contain the words "Dedication TK" in italics, but this is simply [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Come publisher-speak] for "dedication to come." It is unknown whether Pynchon ever considered inclusion of a dedication or whether the publisher simply left the page open just in case, but the ultimate lack of a dedication may suggest that Pynchon feels he's thanked everyone he needs to thank.

==Epigraph==
"It's always night, or we wouldn't need light." - Thelonious Monk 
Jazz and particularly bebop seem to be a lifelong interest of Pynchon’s, appearing in some form in all his works and what biographical snippets exist. As a college student, Pynchon “spent a lot of time in jazz clubs, nursing the two-beer minimum,” by his own admission (''Slow Learner'', Introduction). The Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/that-thelonious-monk-epigraph.html notes] that: 1) in his youth, Pynchon allegedly referred to Monk as a "God"; 2) the character McClintic Sphere in ''V''. takes Monk's middle name, Sphere; and 3) "It's always night, or we wouldn't need light" was apparently something Monk was given to saying, rather than something he once said. For more on McClintic Sphere and Monk, see Charles Hollander's essay [http://www.howardm.net/tsmonk/pynchon.php Does McClintic Sphere in ''V.'' stand for Thelonious Monk?]. On [[ATD_724-747#Page 732|page 732]]: "...daylit America ... its steadfast denial of night."

==Page 1==

'''The Light Over the Ranges''' 
Range is defined in the Oxford American Dictionary as "a line or series of mountains or hills : the coastal ranges of the northwest," so "range" or "ranges" can be used to denote a number of mountains. 

'Ranges' may also refer to farms, homesteads and ranches in 1893 America. America was predominantly that in 1893. Cf. "Home, home on the range". 

"celebrating in song the wider range of life..." Thomas Pynchon on
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Waddell Helen Waddell's]
''The Wandering Scholars'', p. 8, Introduction to[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Learner ''Slow Learner], 1984.

A range is also a group of diverse objects. 

A-And range is a word full of its own meaning. Below is a partial list from one good word reference site on the web. 
The more this reader
tries to understand Against the Day, by rereading it and Pynchon's whole oeuvre, the more he feels 'range as diversity'--lost--lies behind TRP's opening chapter title. Especially once one knows how 'Light' is a major subject and theme in ATD.[[User:MKOHUT|MKOHUT]] 13:41, 28 May 2007 (PDT)MKohut
*scope: an area in which something acts or operates or has power or control: "the range of a supersonic jet"; "the ambit of municipal legislation"; "within the compass of this article"; "within the scope of an investigation"; "outside the reach of the law"; "in the political orbit of a world power" 

*change or be different within limits; "Estimates for the losses in the earthquake range as high as $2 billion"; "Interest rates run from 5 to 10 percent"; "The instruments ranged from tuba to cymbals"; "My students range from very bright to dull" 

*the limits within which something can be effective; "range of motion"; "he was beyond the reach of their fire" 

*a large tract of grassy open land on which livestock can graze; "they used to drive the cattle across the open range every spring"; "he dreamed of a home on the range" 

*roll: move about aimlessly or without any destination, often in search of food or employment; 

*have a range; be capable of projecting over a certain distance, as of a gun; "This gun ranges over two miles" 

*a series of hills or mountains; "the valley was between two ranges of hills"; "the plains lay just beyond the mountain range" 

*a place for shooting (firing or driving) projectiles of various kinds; "the army maintains a missile range in the desert"; "any good golf club will have a range where you can practice" 

*range or extend over; occupy a certain area; "The plants straddle the entire state" 

*lay out orderly or logically in a line or as if in a line; "lay out the clothes"; "lay out the arguments" 

*the limits of the values a function can take; "the range of this function is the interval from 0 to 1"

*a variety of different things or activities; "he answered a range of questions"; "he was impressed by the range and diversity of the collection" 

*crop: feed as in a meadow or pasture; "the herd was grazing" 

*compass: the limit of capability; "within the compass of education"

*let eat; "range the animals in the prairie"

[wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn wordnet]

==Page 3==

'''"Now single up all lines!"''' 
Pynchon was in the Navy for a spell and "single up all lines" is a common nautical term. Ships are docked with lines doubled -- that is, with two sets of ropes or chains holding the vessel to the dock. To "single up all lines" is to remove the redundant second lines in preparation to make way.

But the opening line has many possible connotations.
:The Modern Word's Quail [http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/pynchon_atd.html writes] that "it is simultaneously a self-directive and a call to the reader; suggesting that ''Against the Day'' is a culmination of his previous work, and also charging the reader to find meaning within its twisting labyrinth. It may also be a sly, preemptive joke on the book’s initial critics, as the novel begins with the launch of a bloated gasbag bearing a somewhat provocative name."

:"Single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in ''V.'', 11; ''COL49'', 31; ''Gravity's Rainbow'', 489; and ''Mason & Dixon'', 258, 260. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but ''Vineland''?)--in preparation for a voyage to...?

'''"Cheerly now...handsomely...very well!!"''' 
Cheerly means "heartily," and was traditionally used as cry of encouragement among sailors. Handsomely (in nautical context): carefully, in good order, unhurriedly.

:Pynchon served in the Navy and uses nautical language in most of his novels. ''Mason & Dixon'': "Cheerly. Cheerly, then, Lads..." (54).

'''"Windy City, here we come!"''' 
The nickname for Chicago, of course, but in 1893 the use meant city of braggarts more than it did wind. The earliest known references to the "Windy City" are from 1876, and involve Chicago's rivalry with Cincinnati. A popular myth states that "Windy City" was first used by New York Sun editor Charles Dana in the bidding for the 1893 Columbian Exposition. The popularity of the nickname has endured, even after the Cincinnati rivalry and the Columbian Exposition both ended. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windy_City,_Origin_of_Name_(Chicago)| Origin of name "Windy City" at Wikipedia]

'''Randolph St. Cosmo, the ship commander''' 
[[image:ex-voti-isernia.jpg|thumb|175px|Ex voti of Wax, from Isernia|right]]Historically, there are two versions of the 3rd century CE figure St. Cosmo (aka St. Cosmas): the "randy" St. Cosmo, aka the "modern Priapus," and the saintly martyred St. Cosmo of Church lore. Pynchon, it seems, is connecting Randolph St. Cosmo to the former. "Randy," as astute observers will note, is an adjective which means, well, "horny." There's a distinct sexual thread woven throughout ''Against the Day'' [[Basnight%2C_Lewis_%28%22Lew%22%29|(See the ''beginnings'' of exploring this angle...]]) a-and Heartsease, St. Cosmo's mate, is the first to get pregnant! so this seems to fit right in. [[St. Cosmo|Read more about the historical St. Cosmo...]]; and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sts._Cosmas_and_Damian Wikipedia entry]

In [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=V#veery ''Mason & Dixon''], Pynchon has the Veery brothers, Cosmo and Damian, who are professional effigy makes in Philadelphia! And, just to make it interesting, "He's a rare Wax Artist, our Cosmo is." (p. 290) (Note: Wax phallus effigies were offered by the women to St. Cosmo at the festivals held in his name, as shown above.)

'''Now secure the Special Sky Detail''' 
When a naval vessel is departing from port or returning to port, a specially trained team is put in charge of the complicated process. The command is, [http://tpub.com/content/administration/12968a/css/12968a_41.htm "Now set the Special Sea Detail."] ''Inconvenience'' is run along fairly strict naval lines—given the age of the officers and crew, you might say she is a tot ship—and the beginning of the book was preceded by an analogous "Now set the Special Sky Detail." Once the ship is aloft and clear of ground obstructions, the command comes, "Now secure the Special Sky Detail," meaning disband the team for the time being and all return to regular duties. The language, tasks and customs aboard the skyship will show parallels to navy usage throughout the book.

'''summer uniform of red-and-white-striped blazer and trousers of sky blue''' 
Calls to mind the color scheme of Ned Land's (Kirk Douglas) costume in Disney's 1954 film version of ''20,000 Leagues under the Sea''. 

Also calls to mind the colors of the American flag.

'''"scuttlebutt" . . . thousand . . . wonders''' 
A most vigorous campaign [to host the Columbian Exposition] was then inaugurated, the three other cities making a common cause against Washington, whose claim was based on the fact that the proposed exposition was to be held under auspices of the national government, and hence that the capital was the most appropriate place.... By each of the claimants every advantage was urged, and by each of their rivals every defect was exaggerated. Congressional committees accorded a hearing to the several delegations, that of Chicago being represented, among others, by DeWitt C. Cregier, Thomas B. Bryan, and Edward T. Jeffery. from "Book of the Fair" by Hubert Bancroft, 1893.
:"Scuttlebutt" is a very close equivalent to "water-cooler gossip." [http://www.jacksjoint.com/sailor_terminology.htm Here is a glossary] of nautical terms with some of the etymologies.

'''''Inconvenience''''' 
Pynchon's fictional navy includes the USS Scaffold and the Susanna Squaducci (''V.''), and the John E. Badass (''GR''). Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html notes] that the British Royal Navy has a long tradition of warships with names like Impulsive, Incendiary, Inconstant, Indignant, etc. Impulsive is the name of the ship Ploy, who loses all his teeth in V., gets transferred to.
Inconvenience is an apt name for the Chums' adventures in 'reality'. They are an inconvenience; they are inconvenienced. (In having to take on Chick Counterfly, for example). 

Pynchon uses the word ''inconvenience'' in a possibly thematic, connected way in ''Mason & Dixon'' and in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. In ''Mason & Dixon'', the word is applied to the difficulties of an Other, other human beings as we act, interact. See citations at the ''M & D'' wiki. Here is the clearest relevant use for understanding for the Chums' airship, perhaps: from ''Gravity's Rainbow'': "the gift of Daedalus that allowed him [Pokler] to put as much labyrinth as required between himself and the
''inconveniences of caring''. [Italics mine] They had sold him convenience, so much of it, all on credit, and now They were collecting."
page 435, Penguin paperback edition with the Frank Miller cover.

In addition, if we take the Latinate roots of in-con-ven-(ience) and willfully misread the "in" as adverbial "in" (as e.g. "in-come") rather than the privative "not" (as e.g. "in-cred-ible"), we get "the arriving-in-together"; the "inconvenience", then, is essentially a tongue-in-cheek "vehicle". 
I do not think it illuminating to "willfully misread"!?! We are trying to
willfully read possible meanings and resonances. [[User:MKOHUT|MKOHUT]] 06:01, 2 August 2007 (PDT)

Also, recall Fender-Belly Bodine, in [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=I#inconvenience ''Mason & Dixon'']: "Back on old H.M.S. ''Inconvenience'', we wasted many a Day and Night watching that fancy Counter get smaller by the minute..." (p.28)

'''patriotic bunting''' 
TRP reminds again that this is a very American skyship. 
AtD has many echoes of Doctorow's "Ragtime": Doctorow fictionalises the same era, including anarchists, bombings, and early Hollywood.

'''aeronautics''' 
It has been suggested that Pynchon relied to the Britannica 11th as a major reference for his treatment of early aeronautics. [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Aeronautics|Brittanica 11th on Aeronautics]

'''five-lad crew''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo (ship commander), Lindsay Noseworth (master-at-arms), Miles Blundell (handyman apprentice), Darby Suckling (factotum and mascot), and Chick Counterfly. The commander's name evokes Randolph St., a main thoroughfare in Chicago. Perhaps also saint(liness) and cosmos?

'''The [[Chums of Chance]]''' 
To be chummy with chance might mean lucky, fond of gambling, fond of chaos, irrational, or anarchist. Or maybe they became chums by accident. The "chance" may also be that of the winds that carry them in directions not always intended.
:The American philospher Charles Sanders Peirce, who set down his most important ideas in the late 1800's, argued that 'Chance' was a feature of the universe that can refute all determinisms.

"The certainty of chance" is a Surrealist slogan. We learned from ''Slow Learner'' that Pynchon was influenced early by Surrealism.
The slogan is quoted in this obit of a real life
character out of Pynchon, George Melly, Jazz singer, writer, anarchist and polymorphous lover.[http://www.economist.com/search/search.cfm?rv=2&qr=melly&area=1&x=6&y=7]

Cameraderie and isolation are two recurring topics in Pynchon's works. The Chums are a band of heroes like those commonly featured in the 19th century boys' fiction that Pynchon evokes, but also recall Pynchon's high school fictions, [http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_hamster.html Voice of the Hamster] and [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_boys.html The Boys], in which the teenage Pynchon lovingly portrayed his group of high school chums, known as, simply, "The Boys."

[[image:dart-explorigator.jpg|thumb|120px|right]]The Chums are reminiscent of two comics of the early 20th century, [[Little Nemo|''Little Nemo in Slumberland'']], by Windsor McCay, and ''The Explorigator'', by Harry Grant Dart. "The Explorigator" was the name of a fantastic airship that traversed the universe. It was manned by Admiral Fudge, a youthful adventurer and inventor, accompanied by a group of friends, also children his age (around nine or ten): Detective Rubbersole, Maurice Mizzentop, Nicholas Nohooks, Grenadier Shift, Teddy Typewriter, and Ah Fergetitt. ''The Explorigator'' ran for 14 weeks in 1908 and made an impression for its imaginative and visual creativity. [[The Explorigator|More on ''The Explorigator'']] <ref>[http://lambiek.net/artists/d/dart_harry_grant.htm Lambiek Comiclopedia]</ref>

The names of the Chums may also be derived from famous Jazz musicians: Miles (Davis), Chick (Corea), Darby (Hicks), (Boots) Randolph, and (Vachel) Lindsay (a stretch here?), notes the [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html#c116587978292060684 Chumps of Choice blog].

The creativity of Pynchon's naming of the Chums, as other characters, shows yet again his Dickensian influence.

Note that there's five Chums, the number of chapters of the book (a-and the number of letters in "Chums"!).

'''Chicago''' 
It has been suggested that Pynchon relied on the [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/ 1911 Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica] as a major reference for his treatment of 1890s Chicago. [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Chicago 1911 Britannica entry on Chicago]

Also, The band Chicago's third hit song "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" deals with how one faces living in a world under constraints of time [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Does_Anybody_Really_Know_What_Time_It_Is%3F]. The opening lyrics are:

Does anybody really know what time it is?
Does anybody really care?
About Time...

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. The International Exposition was held in a building which for the first time was devoted to electrical exhibits. It was a historical moment and the beginning of a revolution, as Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse introduced the public to electrical power by providing alternating current to illuminate the Exposition. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry]. This World's Fair was enveloped in optimism for the future. "The thousand or more such wonders which awaited [the Chums] there." p.3

'''lifelines''' 
Called "manropes" on sailing ships. Ropes running fore-and-aft above the gunwales to prevent sailors getting blown overboard. They were held up by short stanchions inserted into holes in the rails. Source: ''The Ashley Book of Knots,'' 1944.

'''as my faithful readers will remember''' 
Pynchon here is immediately inserting this story into a larger canon of Chums of Chance fictions, titles of which are mentioned in subsequent pages.

'''mascotte''' 
The English word 'mascot' has its origin in the late 19th cent.: from French mascotte. The spelling may also be a tribute to the Dutch brand of rolling papers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mascotte_%28rolling_papers%29 [Wikipedia]]

==Page 4==

'''Professor''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo is called Professor.
"Professor" was a common title for early hot-air balloonists. [EC]

'''"Turn to"''' 
Evokes the "Go to!" of Majistral and compatriots, ''V.'', chapter eleven. "Turn to" is also a shipboard expression, "put your back into it" or something of the kind.

'''Perhaps its familiarity... rendered it temporarily invisible to you." 
Perhaps an admonition from the author that familiar things will be easily overlooked?
I think the fact that they were picnic baskets matters...TRP perhaps saying, as he seems to suggest elsewhere, that we overlook the simple pleasures too often.

'''"for Miles, while possessed of good intentions and the kindest heart in the little band, suffered at times from a confusion in his motor processes, often producing lively results, yet as frequently compromising the crew's physical safety.'''" 
Talk about Filles de Kilimanjaro and Miles post-quintet years, a prolonged effect on survivors after the bombings of 1945 and in the arts of Japan’s exploding subculture.

'''Chick Counterfly''' 
Three possibilities: (1) A counter fly is an annoyance in (say) the butcher's shop. (2) Chick always speaks "counter" to anyone else's "flight" of imagery. (3) The only non-''AtD''-related uses of this word that I've found came in patents describing mechanisms; "the counterfly direction" means contrary to the direction everything else is flying in, hence this character counters the flying of the craft?

He is the only Chum we know who was "rescued" from the "real" world. Meaning there? To be counter to flying is to be earthbound, where he started and he is the one with whom the conversation about relanding
on a different "earth" happens.

Like Suckling's name suggesting a relationship to another Pynchon character (Pig Bodine), Pynchon winks at a relationship between Counterfly and Tyrone Slothrop. In Counterfly´s first utterance in the book, “Ha ha,” cried young Counterfly, “say, but if you ain’t the most slob-footed chap I ever seen!” you can derive "Tyrone Slothrop" from an anagram of Counterfly and "slob-footed chap."

:Huh? That's a pretty sloppy anagram, ain't it? What about that "b" and that"d" ... this is ''way'' too much of a stretch. There's something to these names, perhaps, but I don't think you're close here, friend.

==Page 5==

'''"all tableware with Chums of Chance Insignia is Organizational property"''' 
The organization in question is the Chums of Chance themselves, here considered as an institution rather than as a collection of individuals.

'''picklesome''' 
Having the nature of a pickle, i.e, a boy who is inclined to mischief.

A word not much seen since the nineteenth century.

'''Pugnax''' 
I suspect that, in keeping with a very strong [[Birds|"bird" theme]] (the original aeronauts!) in ''Against the Day'', Pynchon may have named Pugnax after a bird called the Ruff (''Philomachus pugnax'') which is a medium-sized wader. Note that Pugnax's first "utterance" is "Rr Rff-rff Rr-rr-rff-rrf-rrf"...

There are a number of characters named after birds or bird sounds: Linnet Dawes, "Pert" Chirpingdon-Groin (there is a pert bird), and Wren Provenance immediately come to mind, but I'm sure there are others, and there are myriad bird references and metaphors (the Sodality of Ǣtheronauts and their mechanical wings); I just haven't had the time to explore it deeply, but others may... (Just read [[Birds|the bit about birds]] from ''Homage to Pythagoras''...

You can even make a semiserious case that the Aeronauts are named for a bird, the white-throated swift, ''Aeronautes saxatalis'' [[ATD_243-272#Page_266|(mentioned on p. 266)]].

The name meaning, in Latin, "likes to fight" (i.e. one who is pugnacious). Pugnax's fantastic intelligence recalls another intelligent Pynchon dog, the Learned English Dog in ''Mason & Dixon''. His manner of speech is somewhat reminiscent of the mystery-solving cartoon dog Scooby-Doo, and [http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0612&msg=112507&sort=date members of PYNCHON-L] have speculated that his eyebrows and reading habits allude to Gromit, from the [http://www.wallaceandgromit.com/ Wallace and Gromit] claymation films.

Could this name be an homage to the dog in the Asterix comics, Idéfix in French; Dogmatix in English? Many of the character in the Asterix comics have names ending in "x".

'''"...during a confidential assignment in Our Nation's Capitol (see ''The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit'')..."''' 
This could be seen as a criticism of an American President, present or past. President Bush is a candidate, considering the Pynchon-authored [[Against the Day description|Amazon.com book description]] which included "With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

The Chums "rescued Pugnax, then but a pup"--an innocent, a child creature--"from a furious encounter..between rival packs of the city's wild dogs".
The wild dogs equal both political parties?

'''lavatorial assaults''' 
"from the sky, which no one can "begin to try to record, much less coordinate reports of" recall the V-2 rockets which are linked to Slothrop's erections in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. That is, pee from the sky is "folklore, superstition, or perhaps...the religious" in ATD compared to rockets screaming across the sky and the destruction in GR.

This also recalls jokes and urban legends regarding frozen waste from leaky airplane lavatories (i.e., "you can still be hit by an icy B.M.")

==Page 6==

'''''Princess Casamassima''''' 
Published 1886 (James had published two others by 1893), a classic dealing with terrorists, anarchists, and bombings. [http://www.henryjames.org.uk/pcasa/home.htm Full text] Sequel to "Roderick Hudson". It's the only Henry James novel in which he takes on such overtly political subjects, the only one which deals with violent extremes of human behavior. 
:Thematically, it's reactionary, the opposite of AtD. 
:ATD is not reactionary but also not the opposite of Princess Casamassima thematically, it can be easily argued.

Pugnax prefers in his reading "sentimental tales about his own species [rather] than those exhibiting extremes of human behavior, which he appeared to find a bit lurid." It seems Pynchon is slyly commenting on James' Princess Casamassima here in that that James novel DID deal with 'extremes of human behaviour' yet Pugnax prefers 'sentimental tales'! As many who have had dogs know, often when raised from puppyhood with loving owners, they 'think they are human'. Pugnax learns where to pee off the gondola - a pretty natural function for a dog - "like the rest of the crew".

Or: it is a theme in GR, that the book, writing itself, is an abstraction from experience and not, of course, the thing itself. Noseworth, "who placed upon the word 'book' . . . contempt" did, however, know the subject matter of 'Princess Casamassima.' He, Noseworth, hopes they will "suffer no occasion for exposure more immediate than that to be experienced, as with Pugnax at this moment, safely within the leaves of some book." It matters that the Chums ARE also characters in books of their adventures.

It should also be noted that the Princess Casamassima is one of the rare characters in James' novels who appears in more than one work. She was originally a character in the 1875 novel Roderick Hudson, where her name was, quite fittingly, Christina Light.

'''Placing . . . an emphasis''' 
Lapse of authorial control? Surely the creator of the ''Chums'' novels would not write such a Pynchonian sentence fragment!

'''Pugnax sniffed . . . as always this scent eluded him''' 
If Pugnax doesn't detect a human scent, that suggests Lindsay is not human. Not human, Master-at-Arms, speaks in hyper-constructed prose, has a notably short fuse . . . he's Lieutenant Worf of ''Star Trek, the Next Generation.''

'''''Krakatoa''''' 
Erupted 1883. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa Wikipedia entry.]

'''Heino Vanderjuice of New Haven''' 
Scientist who designed the ''Inconvenience's'' hydrogen engine. "Vanderjuice" suggests both "wonder juice" and "wander juice," fitting since his engine allows the Chums to wander and is wondrous insofar as it apparently violates the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics second law of thermodynamics]. "Heino" (HIE-no) is a man's given name [http://www.behindthename.com/php/view.php?name=heino meaning 'home'] in German, Finnish, and Estonian. Perhaps an allusion to the German pop star, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heino Heino].

:Um, a quibble: ''Vanderjuice'' is some kind of corrupted Dutch, and in Dutch the name Heino would be pronounced HAY-no. He is not an immigrant, though, and American speakers no doubt say HIGH-no.

Jules Verne influence? Vanderjuice a red herring, pointing to Dutch origin and electrical ("juice") background? Or does one try to parse the name into eg "Fond O' Juice"?

'''no better than a perpetual-motion machine''' 
A perpetual-motion machine is not just one that runs forever, but one that ''performs work'' forever without any input of energy. All PM machines ever invented have been either hoaxes ("secret free energy source the government doesn't want you to know about") or mistakes. The hydrogen generator/engine is neither, which is why the disdainful phrase "no better than" is crucial.

By the way, how does one generate hydrogen? In high school chem lab we used zinc filings and hydrochloric acid, but that seems unsuitable with Miles around. Is it possible Vanderjuice has invented a photovoltaic electrolysis cell?

'''Miles, with his marginal gifts of coördination, and Chick, with a want of alacrity fully as perceptible''' 
Like the old gag: The food in this restaurant isn't any good, but the service is awful.

'''ratlines and shrouds''' 
''Inconvenience'' is rigged like a sailing ship of the period, though it's hard to see why she needs to be. Shrouds fan out from a masthead down to a rail; ratlines run horizontally to join them. The whole affair serves the sailors as a ladder.

'''". . . anemometer of the Robinson's type"''' 
Cup anemometer invented in 1846 by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Thomas_Romney_Robinson Dr. John Thomas Romney Robinson]. Cup anemometers are still commonly used to measure wind speed because of their simplicity and reliability in a variety of environmental conditions. [http://www.arm.ac.uk/annrep/annrep2000/node13.html pic]

'''how rapidly the ship was proceeding''' 
But you can't measure the craft's progress by measuring wind speed at a point on the craft itself. All you get from the anemometer is a speed relative to the air, which is in variable motion. Since the craft is moving at the speed of the wind plus the speed of its propulsion device, the speed found by the anemometer is basically useless.

==Page 7==

'''Porfirio Díaz''' 
President of Mexico 1876-1880, 1884-1911. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porfirio_D%C3%ADaz Wikipedia]

In most countries, the Interior Ministry (Ministry of Internal Affairs, Home Office, etc.) ran programs like secret police. Are the Chums working for forces of conservativism?

'''"beside a black-water river of the Deep South". 
Blackwater River is in lower central Florida, pretty deep south; but there are numerous rivers in swampy areas that run black with organic matter.

'''a bitter and unresolved "piece of business"''' 
Rather than give a proper reason for the Chums to be in the Deep South, the narrator cops out by pleading that it's "not advisable" to specify.

'''"the Rebellion of thirty years previous"''' 
The Civil War was not called such during the time it was occurring; the South called it "the war between the states" to emphasize both their right to secede from the union and that this was a war between sovereign states; the North called it "the Rebellion of 1861" or, after termination of hostilities, "the Rebellion of 1861-1865," appellations that did not recognize the South's right to secede.

'''"one still not advisable to set upon one's page"''' 
The American Civil War, that "rebellion of thirty years previous," has not yet become a suitable subject for an adventure tale such as the Chums'.

'''absquatulated''' 
Means to move away quickly, usually to avoid capture. Apparently a mock-Latinate formation, "to go off and squat somewhere else." [http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-abs1.htm A brief article] on the history and etymology of "absquatulate." 
The word is used in Vineland.

'''"Crackerjack!" exclaimed Chick.''' 
Cracker Jack, the food, was first sold at the Chicago Exhibition of 1893, though it did not bear its present name. As one word here, however, it is not the candy: "Crackerjack" entered English first as a noun referring to "a person or thing of marked excellence," then as an adjective. The foodstuff gained its present name, according to the [http://www.crackerjack.com/history.php official Cracker Jack website], in 1896. The OED lists the first written use of "crackerjack" as 1895, two years after the present scene. It is by no means impossible, however, that the term would have been current in the spoken language in 1893.

'''to approach the gates of the Penitentiary''' 
A genuine saying. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Quay Matthew Quay,] a political kingmaker of the 1880s and 90s, said of Benjamin Harrison's squeaker victory over Grover Cleveland in 1888 that Harrison would "never know how many Republicans were compelled to approach the gates of the penitentiary to make him president."

'''posse comitatus''' 
What Western movie fans know as a "posse," i.e., citizens conscripted by a sheriff to assist in law enforcement. (See the Wikipedia entry on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_comitatus_(common_law) Posse Comitatus].) Remember that the ''Chums'' author gets paid by the word.

In the 1980s, a radical, violent, right-wing and anti-government movement adopted the name "Posse Comitatus."

==Page 8==

'''a pocketful of specie''' 
Specie means coins as opposed to paper money.

'''the town of Thick Bush''' 
Aside from whether this phrase might apply to some political figure of the past or present, "thick bush" is the literal meaning of the Spanish Matagorda, the name of many towns in Latin America and one on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

'''"which directs us never to interfere with legal customs of any locality down at which we may happen to have touched"''' 
Like the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_directive Prime Directive] in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_trek ''Star Trek'']. Lindsay's fussy syntax echoes Winston Churchill's exasperated "This is the kind of carping criticism up with which I will not put."

'''legal customs''' 
Legal = pertaining to law, in this case lynch law. The Chums are interpreting their Prime Directive pretty broadly here.

'''Katie bar the door''' 
An expression that means that there's trouble brewing. (See [http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-kat1.htm this article] about the expression's etymology.)

'''Ku Klux Klan''' 
Reminiscent of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan Klan] encounter scenes in the Coen Brothers' ''O Brother, Where Art Thou''.

'''tupelo, cypress, and hickory''' 
The trees are no help in locating the town; all three kinds like bottom land and grow all over the South.

'''speed . . . made it nearly invisible from the ground''' 
Few people in 1893 had seen a manmade object moving at 60 miles an hour, and many thought such a speed was lethal anyway. The ''Chums'' author suggests such an outlandish speed would make ''Inconvenience'' just a blur in the sky. Of course you can read the fin numbers on an airliner landing at 150 knots, but he didn't know that.

''Pedantry alert:'' In perfectly transparent air a ship flying a mile off the ground is visible about 125 miles away. If its flight path takes it right over your head, you can follow it for 250 miles. If it is making a groundspeed of 60 miles per hour, it takes 4 hours and change to go from horizon to horizon. In typical "clear" air (visibility say 30 miles), you will see the ship in your sky for a solid hour. These rough figures show how wrong the narrator is about speed.

'''way better than a mile a minute''' 
The Chums' point of departure is unknown, but they arrived in Chicago after catching a southerly wind (pg 3), southerly meaning "wind blowing from the south." The Chums surpass 60 miles an hour here, but as their previous speed was unknown, it's difficult to know where they were leaving from. (New Orleans to Chicago is 834 miles, slightly less than 14 hours at 60 miles/hour, so a possibility.)

==Page 9==

'''locker''' 
On board ship, any cabinet with a door or lid.

'''"Do not imagine, that in coming aboard ''Inconvenience'' you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual..."''' 
This may be Pynchon directly addressing the reader. Given that his [[Against_the_Day_description|book description]] proclaims the world of AtD as "what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two," this paragraph seems to indicate that Pynchon, like all great fantasy or sci-fi writers, does not intend to create a world where anything goes. Rather, he will create a world that differs from ours but then obey the rules and constraints he's already established. 
Cf. Pynchon's own relevant words in the introduction to Slow Learner. He remarks that in non-realistic fiction, he had to learn that not anything went.

A-and it must mean, coming from the commander, that all aboard the ''Inconvenience'' are also subjects to the 'facts' of the world. "The World is All that is the Case", from Wittgenstein, quoted in V.
(in the original German)

'''"Going up is like going north."''' 
Air gets cooler as the ship ascends into higher altitudes, and therefore like travelling northward. This page also suggests some further mystery of the Chums may be revealed to Chick and the reader in time.

:North is not a positive place in Pynchon's world. It is associated with anti-life---coldness as here---compared to the South, a place of light and warmth, such as the tropics. See GR.

:But to go far enough north means heading south again, observes Chick Counterfly--is this one meaning of his name? Then one would be "approaching the surface of another planet, maybe?" asks Chick.

"Not exactly" [answers Randolph] "No. Another 'surface', but an earthly one"
"You'll see. In time, of course". Time is earthly?

'''"Another 'surface'"''' 
In ancient conics the cone is formed by taking a line through a point (the vertex) at a particular angle to a plane and then inscribing a circle on the plane. Two conic surfaces are made by the motion of this line, one below this point and one above. The three conic sections (hyperbola, parabola, and ellipse) are created by slicing the conic surface(s) at different angles.
:huh?[[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:38, 15 January 2007 (PST)
:If you read this for plain meaning, then it's true (or Randolph believes) that there's another earthly surface, to which you can descend by ascending far enough above this one. Surely it is pertinent here that Pynchon's dear friend Richard Fariña (1937-66) titled his novel ''Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me.''

==Page 10==

'''Stockyards''' 
Chicago was, at the time, the meat-packing and slaughtering capital of the United States. The stench from the stockyards below must have been memorable.

'''...looked up at the airship in wonder..." 
The sight of any airship in 1893 must have been rare indeed. 
Our history reports that the first practical airships were built in 1898; [[ATD_429-459#Page_454|the idea or icon was around by 1896, though.]]

'''Beneath the rubbernecking Chums of Chance wheeled streets and alleyways''' 
Optical illusion. As you fly over a grid of streets, you perceive a landmark far away to move slowly while the lateral streets near you just whip past. Your brain interprets that the same way as hub and spokes, i.e., the motion of a wheel. Interesting question, though: If the ''Chums'' author was just making this stuff up, how did he know about the illusion?

'''Cartesian grid''' 
From Rene Descartes, 17th century philosopher and mathematician; see Wikipedia entry, whose most famous argument, "I think therefore I am" and mathematical studies have often lead him to be seen as the first modern philosopher of ultra-rationality. Geometry has 'the Cartesian coordinant system, a grid. Chicago's streets are laid out in a very rational grid arrangement.

Pynchon is reputed to have written 'Gravity's Rainbow' on engineer's grid paper.

In modern mathematics, curves are described only in relation to the two dimensional grid (see previous page). If conic sections are not specifically being thought of here, the theme of dimensionality, at least, is already at play.

'''that unshaped freedom being rationalized into movement only in straight lines''' 
Rationalization is a key sociological concept [from online Dictionary of Social Science]:RATIONALIZATION
This term has two specific meanings in sociology. (1) The concept was developed by German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) who used it in two ways. First, it was the process through which magical, supernatural and religious ideas lose cultural importance in a society and ideas based on science and practical calculation become dominant. For example, in modern societies science has rationalized our understanding of weather patterns. Science explains weather patterns as a result of interaction between physical elements like wind-speed and direction, air and water temperatures, humidity, etc. In some other cultures, weather is thought to express the pleasure or displeasure of gods, or spirits of ancestors. One explanation is rationalized and scientific, the other mysterious and magical. Rationalization also involves the development of forms of social organization devoted to the achievement of precise goals by efficient means. It is this type of rationalization that we see in the development of modern business corporations and of bureaucracy. These are organizations dedicated to the pursuit of defined goals by calculated, systematically administered means. (2) Within symbolic interactionism, rationalization is used more in the everyday sense of the word to refer to providing justifications or excuses for one's actions.

'''"only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor."''' 
From innocent bovines to ...the world? "Single up all lines"....
Stockyards were organized in such a way that the cattle would proceed through a series of chutes and passages, until they arrived alone at the point of death.

"Progressive reduction of choices" also occurred in ''Mason & Dixon''—there were infinitely many wildernesses out to the west until M&D ran the line and rationalized the country into Maryland and Pennsylvania.

==Page 11==

'''plummet''' 
In the real world, this might be bad physics, as closing the valve wouldn't slow the descent. Objects in a fluid medium like air float if their weight is less than the weight of the fluid they displace (hence why one fills a balloon with a light gas such as hydrogen or helium). Once the ''Inconvenience'' loses its buoyancy, it will continue to fall, unless its weight is reduced to what a lesser amount of hydrogen could support. The Inconvenience, however, has a hydrogen producing apparatus that could kick in, slow, and eventually stop their descent.

'''bear a hand''' 
Nautical: help out.

==Page 12==

'''Liverpool Kiss''' 
A head butt.

'''Herr Riemann''' 
Riemann, Georg Friedrich Bernhard (1826-1866) (pronounced REE mahn or in IPA: ['ri:man]) was a German mathematician who made important contributions to analysis and differential geometry, some of them paving the way for the later development of general relativity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann Wikipedia entry].

'''''Mr.'' Noseworth''' 
Lindsay insisting on proper naval forms: an ensign, lieutenant (junior grade), lieutenant or lieutenant commander in the U.S. navy is correctly addressed as "Mister Surname."

'''"topological genius"''' 
Riemann's differential geometry goes beyond the Cartesian grid. See conic sections and dimensionality above, page 10.

==Page 13==

'''There was an "eager stampede" to the rail''' 
Why is eager stampede in quotation marks? The sentence reads fine without it. Does it seem to show ironic knowingness on the part of the narrator? If so, why and who is the narrator?
: I suspect this is a stylistic device from the turn of the century light literature that Pynchon is emulating-- placing a novel term in quotation marks. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 01:35, 23 December 2006 (PST)

:insightfully true, I suspect, but it still shows 'narratorial knowingness', yes?

: Cf. Flaubert's use of quotations in ''Madame Bovary'' to isolate what he deemed the contemptible argot of the bourgeoisie.

::Apparently not a cliche: [http://books.google.com//books?num=100&q=eager.stampede&as_brr=0 GoogleBooks]

'''"...among the brighter star-shapes of exploded ballast bags..."''' 
Recalls the opening line of ''Mason & Dixon'': "Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr‘d the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins..."

'''"...quite as if were some giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinizing from above, in a spirit of constructive censure."''' 
This is strikingly reminiscent of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odilon_Redon Odilon Redon's] 1882 Lithograph ''L'Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l'infini (The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity).'' [http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A2&page_number=4&template_id=1&sort_order=1 At MoMa's Online Collection]
Notice that society = censure, if constructive. Gamboling nude on a summer day was OK until the ''Inconvenience'', as eyeball, appeared.

:The Odilon Redon lithograph appears on the cover of the 1998 Vintage paperback edition of Ian McEwan's Enduring Love, whose first unforgettable chapter triggers the novel with a ballooning incident leaving the reader dangling over the edge of suspense and suspension.

==Page 14==

'''charmed into docility''' 
If it took only one small lad to moor the ship, she was indeed docile. A wiki contributor once saw a Goodyear blimp in Houston, Texas, landing. The craft had half a dozen long falls of rope hanging from her nose, and a ground crew of nearly two dozen men ready to take hold of them. The blimp approached nose-low, the crew took the ropes, and a gust of wind suddenly moved the ship. The crew chief gave a safety command and all the men let loose their ropes at once. On the third pass, all hands working together managed to stop the ship and get her moored. If ''Inconvenience'' was a fraction as changeable and hard to control, Darby made a great job of getting the ship staked out by himself.

'''Jacob's-ladder''' 
Used here as "a marine ladder of rope or chain with wooden or iron rungs" (Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged) but is suggestive of Jacob's ladder in Genesis:

Genesis 28:12 And he [Jacob] dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. (King James version)

'''a giant sack of soiled laundry''' 
Perhaps ''freshly'' soiled during the great hydrogen valve disaster.

'''''vol-à-voile''''' 
The narrator has turned the French phrase ''vol-à-voiles'' (gliding) into a verb (removing the ''s'').

'''gold-beaters' skin''' 
Very thin vellum (membrane taken from the caecum or blind stomach of an ox). To prepare gold for gilding, it was placed between sheets of vellum and hammered thin.

'''Evening Quarters''' 
Naval practice of mustering the crew at the end of the day's work.

==Page 15==

'''ukulelist''' 
Ukuleles also appear in ''Gravity's Rainbow'', ''Vineland'', and ''Mason & Dixon''. According to Jules Siegel's article, "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?", Pynchon himself played the ukulele in college.

'''Vagabonds of the Void''' 
The song performed by the Chums of Chance reflects the Rock and Roll attitude of the group towards the groundworld upon arrival. It's also the first time in the book we truly encounter the hipness of the group with some sort of Rolling Stones Nine Inch Nails fronting edge to it. 

[[image:Macassar-Oil.jpg|thumb|175px|''Macassar Oil. An Oily Puff for Soft Heads''|right]]'''Beaufort Scale''' 
A scale for measuring wind strength, developed 1805.

'''"Let the lightning lash ~ And the thunder trash" 
Again, the Chums are rock stars, the coolest cats in town.

'''"...forty-four buttons...one for each State of the Union." 
Wyoming was the 44th state admitted to the union in 1890.

'''port section of the crew''' 
The half of the crew permitted to go freely ashore this time. The other half tomorrow. "Port" and "starboard": are these simply either/or words that sailors remember easily?

'''Macassar oil''' 
Macassar oil is an oil used primarily by men in Victorian and Edwardian times to smooth their hair. It was advertised as containing oil from Macassar, which is the former name of Ujung Pandang, a district on the island of Celebes in Indonesia. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macassar_oil Wikipedia entry]

==Page 16==

'''About the fringes,' Randolph reminded the liberty-goers, 'of any gathering on the scale of this Exposition, are apt to lurk vicious and debased elements, whose sole aim is to take advantage of the unwary.''' 
Indeed, the Chicago World's Fair was haunted by one of America's more prolific and original serial killers, H.H. Holmes. Born in 1861, Holmes came to Chicago as a pharmacist and built an office building that was eventually dubbed 'The Castle'. Consisting of commercial stores on the first floor, and offices and apartments on the upper floors, the building also housed hidden rooms where Holmes murdered his victims, chutes that conveyed the bodies to the basement, and a chamber of horrors in the basement where he destroyed the corpses. Holmes took advantage of the World's Columbian Exposition to lure victims, primarily females who had come unaccompanied to Chicago, to the Castle for torture and murder. It is estimated that he killed over 200 people at the Castle while the Exposition was in operation. Two very good books about Holmes are The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson and Depraved by Harold Schechter. It is doubtful that Pynchon was thinking explicitly of Holmes when he wrote this passage, although he must be aware of the story. Randolph could not have known about Holmes since Holmes was not captured until after the Fair was over. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._H.H._Holmes Wikipedia entry]

'''tension of the gas''' 
I.e., the pressure in the bag.

==Page 17==

'''"as if it were something the stripling had only read about, in some boys' book of adventures...as if that page of their chronicles lay turned and done"''' 
The narrator makes us aware that Darby's adventures are as if/will be written down...the 'reality' of almost killing all of them is now just words on a page...as is this book, ATD?...Again a Pynchonian theme: no book is the reality.

'''"and the order 'About-face' had been uttered by some potent though invisible Commandant of Earthly Days, toward whom Darby, in amiable obedience, had turned again."''' 
Is this just a metaphor from the narrator to describe what it is like for Darby, or is it also self-referential to
all the adventures of the Chums?. Another Q: Is the Commandant of Earthly Days the invisible presence from whom the chums get their orders? Cf. earthly surface, p.9
:Related Q: Do the Chums receive their orders from the author of their books?

'''we were usually out the door and on the main road''' 
Dick and Chick knew the judge was more likely to order them out of town than into the lockup.

'''Chinese foofooraw''' 
Also spelled foofaraw, a great deal of fuss, or useless frills. Cf folderol. However, why Chinese?
:Chick's father tried to sell Mississippi to a Chinese syndicate.

'''cubeb''' 
The name for the berry and for the oil obtained from the unripe berry of the East Indian climbing shrub ''P. cubeba''. The dried fruits are sometimes used as a condiment or are ground and smoked in cigarette form as an herbal remedy. [http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/pepper The Free Dictionary] Also appears in ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' page 118.

'''"...goldurn Keeley Cure"''' 
A treatment for alcohol, nicotine and narcotic addiction involving injections of "bichloride" or "double chloride" of gold, and also known as the "gold cure". Named for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Keeley Dr. Leslie E. Keeley,] who opened the first of many Keeley Institutes in [http://www.dwighthigh.k12.il.us/dwight/dwight.htm Dwight, Illinois], not far from Chicago, in 1879.

==Page 18==

'''headgear''' 
Description vaguely reminiscent of "Madame Bovary". [http://robotwisdom.com/flaubert/bovary/bovary1.html [notes]]

'''eclipse green''' 
Apparently an actual shade. [http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/DIO_DRO/DIRECT.html [cite]]

'''Bindlestiffs of the Blue A.C.''' 
Bindlestiff means hobo; hence, the Hoboes of the Sky Aeronautical Club.

'''("Penny") Black''' 
The Penny Black was the world's first official adhesive postage stamp, issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1840. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black [Wikipedia]]

'''Tzigane''' 
French for "gypsy". Also a piece by Ravel. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzigane_(Ravel) [Wikipedia]]

'''Egypt''' 
Little Egypt is the southern area of the state of Illinois in the United States of America. Named so because it has a considerable river delta and a metropolis called Cairo (KAY-roe). The region is and was sometimes called simply "Egypt," especially in the 19th century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Egypt_(region) [Wikipedia]]

==Page 19==

'''goin all blue from the light of that electric fluid''' 
Their ship was beset by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elmo%27s_fire St. Elmo's fire,] a low-energy electrical discharge often seen on surface vessels and occasionally on aircraft. Electric charge does behave in some respects like a fluid and was long described in such terms.

'''Voices calling out together''' 
There is no reason to doubt they heard the voices, but an aural hallucination is not out of the question: a chorus of voices is one of the easiest effects to produce with a synthesizer.

[[image:balloons-paris.jpg|thumb|200px|Garçons de '71|right]]'''Garçons de '71''' 
French: The Boys of '71; During the Siege of Paris in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War Franco-Prussian War], 1870-1871, balloons were manufactured within railroad stations in Paris. The balloons were used to get mail and passengers out of Paris. The ''Garçons de '71'' are a (probably) fictional cadre of young men who operated such balloons [[Garçons de '71|Read on...]]

'''a condition of ''permanent siege''''' 
Surely no one has failed to notice what a "wartime president" is allowed to get away with. "No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

'''pétroleurs de Paris''' 
An early form of Molotov cocktail thrower during the Siege of Paris. There were pétroleurs and pétroleuses.

==Page 20==

'''they'll fly wherever they're needed''' 
While the Chums obey orders from above, the Garçons de '71 follow a different imperative.

'''energy we could feel, directed personally at us''' 
Someone may be trying to influence what the Bindlestiffs do, or keep them away from the Garçons' work of mercy.

==Page 21==

'''admissions gate''' 
Apparently a break in the fence, capitalized on by freelance impresarios.

'''fifty-cent pieces''' 
Odd. According to [http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html this remarkable Columbian Exposition site,] regular admission was just half a dollar. Maybe Lindsay and Miles could have negotiated with the midget.

==Page 22==

'''Kodaks''' 
The word Kodak was trademarked in 1888, and the first Kodak camera was sold with the slogan, "You press the button - we do the rest." In 1891, the company released the first daylight-loading camera, so film could be changed without a darkroom. Kodaks would have been a novelty at the fair in 1893.

'''half-light . . . in the interests of mercy . . . the safety of the lights''' 
Interesting contrast suggesting a tradeoff between comfort/solace in the shadows and safety in the bright light.

'''Isandhlwana''' 
Isandlwana is an isolated hill in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. On January 22, 1879, it was the site of the Battle of Isandlwana, where over 20,000 Zulu warriors defeated a contingent of British soldiers in the first engagement of the Anglo-Zulu War. Almost the entire column of about 1,200 British soldiers was killed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isandhlwana [Wikipedia]] You will find a chapter on Isandhlwana in any book that has the words "military" and "blunders" in the title.

==Page 23==

'''Tarahumara''' 
Indian tribe of Northern New Mexico, in the Sierra Madres, known for cave-dwelling in the late 19th century. [[Tarahumare_Indians|About the Tarahumara]]. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarahumara [Wikipedia]]

'''"geek"''' 
A geek's act comprised things no one would do who had not sunk all the way to the bottom of the carnie world: eating live creatures, throwing fits, and so forth. Much like the television show "Fear Factor," but sad rather than stultifying.

'''monte''' 
Three-card monte.

==Page 24==

'''the curse of Scotland''' 
A term used in poker, bridge and various other card games for the nine of diamonds. Dates from 1710. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Scotland [Wikipedia]]

'''like the electricity coming on... how everything fits together, connects. It doesn't last long, though.''' 
From something as random as calling out a card trick comes this extremely profound quote by Miles Blundell (full quote edited here). The heart of this quote/thought seems to be crucial.

What Miles describes is also the symptoms of a mild seizure - could he be epileptic? Epileptics were often credited with shamanic or prophetic powers, and many sightings of religious figures have been attributed to seizures. On page 4, Miles is also said to suffer from "confusion in his motor processes", which may be related.

'''Cracker Jack''' 
First sold at the at the first Chicago World's Fair in 1893. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_Jack [Wikipedia]]

'''New Levee district''' 
Chicago's redlight district c1890. [http://www.ipsn.org/genesis.htm [cite]]

'''Epworth League''' 
A Methodist youth organization founded in 1889. [http://www.southernmethodistchurch.org/id48.htm [cite]]

==Page 25==

'''Haymarket bomb''' 
The Haymarket Riot on May 4, 1886, in Chicago may be the origin of international May Day observances and in popular literature inspired the caricature of "a bomb-throwing anarchist." The causes of the incident are still controversial, although deeply polarized attitudes separating the business class and the working class in late 19th century Chicago are generally acknowledged as having precipitated the tragedy and its aftermath. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_bombing Wikipedia entry].

'''if the Governor decides to pardon that gang of anarchistic murderers''' 
In May of 1886, 350,000 workers, including 70,000 in Chicago were taking to the streets to rally for the eight hour work day. After four workers were killed by the police on May 3, the anarchist leaders in Chicago called for a meeting in Haymarket Square. Although the rally was peaceful, the police came in on horseback to break it up and an unknown individual in the crowd hurled a homemade bomb into the air. After the explosion, which killed a policeman, the police opened fire on the crowd. Subsequently, the anarchist leaders deemed responsible for the rally were arrested and tried for the murder of the policeman. The Eight men were convicted of the bombing and seven of them sentenced to death. Governor Richard J. Oglesby commuted two death sentences to life. Four were hanged and a fifth committed suicide. A later governor, John P. Altgeld, pardoned the three survivors on June 26, 1893, concluding that all eight of them were innocent. The last words of anarchist August Spies before he was hanged were 'The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.' Two very good books on the Haymarket Riot and the events surrounding it include The Haymarket Tragedy by Paul Avrich and Death In The Haymarket by James Green.

'''mixture of contempt and pity''' 
This is ''definitely'' not from one of the Chums' adventure stories.

'''embonpoint''' 
Convexity of body; what used to be called a "prosperous" look.

'''duck soup''' 
Meaning "an easy task," but also the name of a Marx Bros. movie. Perhaps relevant, given the cameo by Groucho promised on the book sleeve. Many of the Marx Brothers early movies had animal references in the title: Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup. The titles usually had nothing at all to do with the plot, although they contributed to the lunatic nature of the comedy. The expression 'Horse Feathers' is used a few times later on in Against The Day.

==References==
<references />

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

User:Adrianboyd

2007-09-22T23:49:49Z

Adrianboyd: Add-On

ATD 1-25

2007-09-22T17:08:40Z

Adrianboyd: /* Page 4 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==cover text==
The black text and its drop shadows are in different typefaces. It may be worth noting, from a conceptual point of view, that we can infer from the angle of the drop shadows that the light source is any individual holding the book—that is, the reader or a potential reader.

==cover seal==
The seal appears to be written in Tibetan language, according to somebody who posts regularly to Pynchon-l under the name "Ya Sam", who reports:

I contacted the Tibetan Cultural Centre with the request to translate
the mysterious legend on the AtD seal. They were kind enough to forward my
request to the Tibetan tranlsator Tenzin Namgyal to whose generosity we
owe the solution of one more ATD related mystery.

It is the Tibetan language, alright, and it means ...... Tibetan
Government Chamber of Commerce.

Read their response below:

:Dear Ya Sam, 
:I showed the seal you sent to our Tibetan translator, Tenzin Namgyal. He says the word to word translation is: Tibetan Government Commerce Chamber in other words: Tibetan Government Chamber of commerce. Why Pynchon has chosen to place this on the cover of his book is anyones guess. Reading the book reviews gave no insight into the reason. Perhaps after one has read it?

:Best wishes,

:Sandy Belth 
:Tibetan Cultural Center

Also of interest: the coin bears a striking resemblance to the doubloon in ''Moby-Dick'' that Ahab nails to the mainmast as a prize to the first crew member to sight the white whale. Melville's description runs thus:

:It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy example of these things. On its round border it bore the letters, REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a country planted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator, and named after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes, in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw the likeness of three Andes' summits; from one a flame; a tower on another; on the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra. (Ch.99, "The Doubloon")

==copyright page==
The copyright page states that ''Against the Day'' is published by Viking Penguin, but on the title page and elsewhere we can read that the book is published by Penguin Press. The copyright pages of other books from Penguin Press state "Penguin Press" as the publisher, as could be expected, and it seems likely that the substitution of "Penguin Press" with "Viking" is one of many typographical errors in the book (see [[errata]]).
I have confirmed from inside Penguin Press that this is a copyediting mistake. Here is a direct e-mail answer about the Viking Penguin listing: "this was a copyediting mistake that will be corrected. There was never a Viking contract for this book."

==Dedication==
Most of Pynchon's novels contain dedications-- ''Mason & Dixon'' ("For Melanie, and for Jackson") , ''Vineland'' ("For my mother and father"), and ''Gravity's Rainbow'' ("For Richard Fariña")-- but not so ''Against the Day,'' as published. Advance reading copies of the book did contain the words "Dedication TK" in italics, but this is simply [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Come publisher-speak] for "dedication to come." It is unknown whether Pynchon ever considered inclusion of a dedication or whether the publisher simply left the page open just in case, but the ultimate lack of a dedication may suggest that Pynchon feels he's thanked everyone he needs to thank.

==Epigraph==
"It's always night, or we wouldn't need light." - Thelonious Monk 
Jazz and particularly bebop seem to be a lifelong interest of Pynchon’s, appearing in some form in all his works and what biographical snippets exist. As a college student, Pynchon “spent a lot of time in jazz clubs, nursing the two-beer minimum,” by his own admission (''Slow Learner'', Introduction). The Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/that-thelonious-monk-epigraph.html notes] that: 1) in his youth, Pynchon allegedly referred to Monk as a "God"; 2) the character McClintic Sphere in ''V''. takes Monk's middle name, Sphere; and 3) "It's always night, or we wouldn't need light" was apparently something Monk was given to saying, rather than something he once said. For more on McClintic Sphere and Monk, see Charles Hollander's essay [http://www.howardm.net/tsmonk/pynchon.php Does McClintic Sphere in ''V.'' stand for Thelonious Monk?]. On [[ATD_724-747#Page 732|page 732]]: "...daylit America ... its steadfast denial of night."

==Page 1==

'''The Light Over the Ranges''' 
Range is defined in the Oxford American Dictionary as "a line or series of mountains or hills : the coastal ranges of the northwest," so "range" or "ranges" can be used to denote a number of mountains. 

'Ranges' may also refer to farms, homesteads and ranches in 1893 America. America was predominantly that in 1893. Cf. "Home, home on the range". 

"celebrating in song the wider range of life..." Thomas Pynchon on
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Waddell Helen Waddell's]
''The Wandering Scholars'', p. 8, Introduction to[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Learner ''Slow Learner], 1984.

A range is also a group of diverse objects. 

A-And range is a word full of its own meaning. Below is a partial list from one good word reference site on the web. 
The more this reader
tries to understand Against the Day, by rereading it and Pynchon's whole oeuvre, the more he feels 'range as diversity'--lost--lies behind TRP's opening chapter title. Especially once one knows how 'Light' is a major subject and theme in ATD.[[User:MKOHUT|MKOHUT]] 13:41, 28 May 2007 (PDT)MKohut
*scope: an area in which something acts or operates or has power or control: "the range of a supersonic jet"; "the ambit of municipal legislation"; "within the compass of this article"; "within the scope of an investigation"; "outside the reach of the law"; "in the political orbit of a world power" 

*change or be different within limits; "Estimates for the losses in the earthquake range as high as $2 billion"; "Interest rates run from 5 to 10 percent"; "The instruments ranged from tuba to cymbals"; "My students range from very bright to dull" 

*the limits within which something can be effective; "range of motion"; "he was beyond the reach of their fire" 

*a large tract of grassy open land on which livestock can graze; "they used to drive the cattle across the open range every spring"; "he dreamed of a home on the range" 

*roll: move about aimlessly or without any destination, often in search of food or employment; 

*have a range; be capable of projecting over a certain distance, as of a gun; "This gun ranges over two miles" 

*a series of hills or mountains; "the valley was between two ranges of hills"; "the plains lay just beyond the mountain range" 

*a place for shooting (firing or driving) projectiles of various kinds; "the army maintains a missile range in the desert"; "any good golf club will have a range where you can practice" 

*range or extend over; occupy a certain area; "The plants straddle the entire state" 

*lay out orderly or logically in a line or as if in a line; "lay out the clothes"; "lay out the arguments" 

*the limits of the values a function can take; "the range of this function is the interval from 0 to 1"

*a variety of different things or activities; "he answered a range of questions"; "he was impressed by the range and diversity of the collection" 

*crop: feed as in a meadow or pasture; "the herd was grazing" 

*compass: the limit of capability; "within the compass of education"

*let eat; "range the animals in the prairie"

[wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn wordnet]

==Page 3==

'''"Now single up all lines!"''' 
Pynchon was in the Navy for a spell and "single up all lines" is a common nautical term. Ships are docked with lines doubled -- that is, with two sets of ropes or chains holding the vessel to the dock. To "single up all lines" is to remove the redundant second lines in preparation to make way.

But the opening line has many possible connotations.
:The Modern Word's Quail [http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/pynchon_atd.html writes] that "it is simultaneously a self-directive and a call to the reader; suggesting that ''Against the Day'' is a culmination of his previous work, and also charging the reader to find meaning within its twisting labyrinth. It may also be a sly, preemptive joke on the book’s initial critics, as the novel begins with the launch of a bloated gasbag bearing a somewhat provocative name."

:"Single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in ''V.'', 11; ''COL49'', 31; ''Gravity's Rainbow'', 489; and ''Mason & Dixon'', 258, 260. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but ''Vineland''?)--in preparation for a voyage to...?

'''"Cheerly now...handsomely...very well!!"''' 
Cheerly means "heartily," and was traditionally used as cry of encouragement among sailors. Handsomely (in nautical context): carefully, in good order, unhurriedly.

:Pynchon served in the Navy and uses nautical language in most of his novels. ''Mason & Dixon'': "Cheerly. Cheerly, then, Lads..." (54).

'''"Windy City, here we come!"''' 
The nickname for Chicago, of course, but in 1893 the use meant city of braggarts more than it did wind. The earliest known references to the "Windy City" are from 1876, and involve Chicago's rivalry with Cincinnati. A popular myth states that "Windy City" was first used by New York Sun editor Charles Dana in the bidding for the 1893 Columbian Exposition. The popularity of the nickname has endured, even after the Cincinnati rivalry and the Columbian Exposition both ended. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windy_City,_Origin_of_Name_(Chicago)| Origin of name "Windy City" at Wikipedia]

'''Randolph St. Cosmo, the ship commander''' 
[[image:ex-voti-isernia.jpg|thumb|175px|Ex voti of Wax, from Isernia|right]]Historically, there are two versions of the 3rd century CE figure St. Cosmo (aka St. Cosmas): the "randy" St. Cosmo, aka the "modern Priapus," and the saintly martyred St. Cosmo of Church lore. Pynchon, it seems, is connecting Randolph St. Cosmo to the former. "Randy," as astute observers will note, is an adjective which means, well, "horny." There's a distinct sexual thread woven throughout ''Against the Day'' [[Basnight%2C_Lewis_%28%22Lew%22%29|(See the ''beginnings'' of exploring this angle...]]) a-and Heartsease, St. Cosmo's mate, is the first to get pregnant! so this seems to fit right in. [[St. Cosmo|Read more about the historical St. Cosmo...]]; and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sts._Cosmas_and_Damian Wikipedia entry]

In [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=V#veery ''Mason & Dixon''], Pynchon has the Veery brothers, Cosmo and Damian, who are professional effigy makes in Philadelphia! And, just to make it interesting, "He's a rare Wax Artist, our Cosmo is." (p. 290) (Note: Wax phallus effigies were offered by the women to St. Cosmo at the festivals held in his name, as shown above.)

'''Now secure the Special Sky Detail''' 
When a naval vessel is departing from port or returning to port, a specially trained team is put in charge of the complicated process. The command is, [http://tpub.com/content/administration/12968a/css/12968a_41.htm "Now set the Special Sea Detail."] ''Inconvenience'' is run along fairly strict naval lines—given the age of the officers and crew, you might say she is a tot ship—and the beginning of the book was preceded by an analogous "Now set the Special Sky Detail." Once the ship is aloft and clear of ground obstructions, the command comes, "Now secure the Special Sky Detail," meaning disband the team for the time being and all return to regular duties. The language, tasks and customs aboard the skyship will show parallels to navy usage throughout the book.

'''summer uniform of red-and-white-striped blazer and trousers of sky blue''' 
Calls to mind the color scheme of Ned Land's (Kirk Douglas) costume in Disney's 1954 film version of ''20,000 Leagues under the Sea''. 

Also calls to mind the colors of the American flag.

'''"scuttlebutt" . . . thousand . . . wonders''' 
A most vigorous campaign [to host the Columbian Exposition] was then inaugurated, the three other cities making a common cause against Washington, whose claim was based on the fact that the proposed exposition was to be held under auspices of the national government, and hence that the capital was the most appropriate place.... By each of the claimants every advantage was urged, and by each of their rivals every defect was exaggerated. Congressional committees accorded a hearing to the several delegations, that of Chicago being represented, among others, by DeWitt C. Cregier, Thomas B. Bryan, and Edward T. Jeffery. from "Book of the Fair" by Hubert Bancroft, 1893.
:"Scuttlebutt" is a very close equivalent to "water-cooler gossip." [http://www.jacksjoint.com/sailor_terminology.htm Here is a glossary] of nautical terms with some of the etymologies.

'''''Inconvenience''''' 
Pynchon's fictional navy includes the USS Scaffold and the Susanna Squaducci (''V.''), and the John E. Badass (''GR''). Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html notes] that the British Royal Navy has a long tradition of warships with names like Impulsive, Incendiary, Inconstant, Indignant, etc. Impulsive is the name of the ship Ploy, who loses all his teeth in V., gets transferred to.
Inconvenience is an apt name for the Chums' adventures in 'reality'. They are an inconvenience; they are inconvenienced. (In having to take on Chick Counterfly, for example). 

Pynchon uses the word ''inconvenience'' in a possibly thematic, connected way in ''Mason & Dixon'' and in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. In ''Mason & Dixon'', the word is applied to the difficulties of an Other, other human beings as we act, interact. See citations at the ''M & D'' wiki. Here is the clearest relevant use for understanding for the Chums' airship, perhaps: from ''Gravity's Rainbow'': "the gift of Daedalus that allowed him [Pokler] to put as much labyrinth as required between himself and the
''inconveniences of caring''. [Italics mine] They had sold him convenience, so much of it, all on credit, and now They were collecting."
page 435, Penguin paperback edition with the Frank Miller cover.

In addition, if we take the Latinate roots of in-con-ven-(ience) and willfully misread the "in" as adverbial "in" (as e.g. "in-come") rather than the privative "not" (as e.g. "in-cred-ible"), we get "the arriving-in-together"; the "inconvenience", then, is essentially a tongue-in-cheek "vehicle". 
I do not think it illuminating to "willfully misread"!?! We are trying to
willfully read possible meanings and resonances. [[User:MKOHUT|MKOHUT]] 06:01, 2 August 2007 (PDT)

Also, recall Fender-Belly Bodine, in [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=I#inconvenience ''Mason & Dixon'']: "Back on old H.M.S. ''Inconvenience'', we wasted many a Day and Night watching that fancy Counter get smaller by the minute..." (p.28)

'''patriotic bunting''' 
TRP reminds again that this is a very American skyship. 
AtD has many echoes of Doctorow's "Ragtime": Doctorow fictionalises the same era, including anarchists, bombings, and early Hollywood.

'''aeronautics''' 
It has been suggested that Pynchon relied to the Britannica 11th as a major reference for his treatment of early aeronautics. [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Aeronautics|Brittanica 11th on Aeronautics]

'''five-lad crew''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo (ship commander), Lindsay Noseworth (master-at-arms), Miles Blundell (handyman apprentice), Darby Suckling (factotum and mascot), and Chick Counterfly. The commander's name evokes Randolph St., a main thoroughfare in Chicago. Perhaps also saint(liness) and cosmos?

'''The [[Chums of Chance]]''' 
To be chummy with chance might mean lucky, fond of gambling, fond of chaos, irrational, or anarchist. Or maybe they became chums by accident. The "chance" may also be that of the winds that carry them in directions not always intended.
:The American philospher Charles Sanders Peirce, who set down his most important ideas in the late 1800's, argued that 'Chance' was a feature of the universe that can refute all determinisms.

"The certainty of chance" is a Surrealist slogan. We learned from ''Slow Learner'' that Pynchon was influenced early by Surrealism.
The slogan is quoted in this obit of a real life
character out of Pynchon, George Melly, Jazz singer, writer, anarchist and polymorphous lover.[http://www.economist.com/search/search.cfm?rv=2&qr=melly&area=1&x=6&y=7]

Cameraderie and isolation are two recurring topics in Pynchon's works. The Chums are a band of heroes like those commonly featured in the 19th century boys' fiction that Pynchon evokes, but also recall Pynchon's high school fictions, [http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_hamster.html Voice of the Hamster] and [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_boys.html The Boys], in which the teenage Pynchon lovingly portrayed his group of high school chums, known as, simply, "The Boys."

[[image:dart-explorigator.jpg|thumb|120px|right]]The Chums are reminiscent of two comics of the early 20th century, [[Little Nemo|''Little Nemo in Slumberland'']], by Windsor McCay, and ''The Explorigator'', by Harry Grant Dart. "The Explorigator" was the name of a fantastic airship that traversed the universe. It was manned by Admiral Fudge, a youthful adventurer and inventor, accompanied by a group of friends, also children his age (around nine or ten): Detective Rubbersole, Maurice Mizzentop, Nicholas Nohooks, Grenadier Shift, Teddy Typewriter, and Ah Fergetitt. ''The Explorigator'' ran for 14 weeks in 1908 and made an impression for its imaginative and visual creativity. [[The Explorigator|More on ''The Explorigator'']] <ref>[http://lambiek.net/artists/d/dart_harry_grant.htm Lambiek Comiclopedia]</ref>

The names of the Chums may also be derived from famous Jazz musicians: Miles (Davis), Chick (Corea), Darby (Hicks), (Boots) Randolph, and (Vachel) Lindsay (a stretch here?), notes the [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html#c116587978292060684 Chumps of Choice blog].

The creativity of Pynchon's naming of the Chums, as other characters, shows yet again his Dickensian influence.

Note that there's five Chums, the number of chapters of the book (a-and the number of letters in "Chums"!).

'''Chicago''' 
It has been suggested that Pynchon relied on the [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/ 1911 Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica] as a major reference for his treatment of 1890s Chicago. [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Chicago 1911 Britannica entry on Chicago]

Also, The band Chicago's third hit song "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" deals with how one faces living in a world under constraints of time [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Does_Anybody_Really_Know_What_Time_It_Is%3F]. The opening lyrics are:

Does anybody really know what time it is?
Does anybody really care?
About Time...

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. The International Exposition was held in a building which for the first time was devoted to electrical exhibits. It was a historical moment and the beginning of a revolution, as Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse introduced the public to electrical power by providing alternating current to illuminate the Exposition. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry]. This World's Fair was enveloped in optimism for the future. "The thousand or more such wonders which awaited [the Chums] there." p.3

'''lifelines''' 
Called "manropes" on sailing ships. Ropes running fore-and-aft above the gunwales to prevent sailors getting blown overboard. They were held up by short stanchions inserted into holes in the rails. Source: ''The Ashley Book of Knots,'' 1944.

'''as my faithful readers will remember''' 
Pynchon here is immediately inserting this story into a larger canon of Chums of Chance fictions, titles of which are mentioned in subsequent pages.

'''mascotte''' 
The English word 'mascot' has its origin in the late 19th cent.: from French mascotte. The spelling may also be a tribute to the Dutch brand of rolling papers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mascotte_%28rolling_papers%29 [Wikipedia]]

==Page 4==

'''Professor''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo is called Professor.
"Professor" was a common title for early hot-air balloonists. [EC]

'''"Turn to"''' 
Evokes the "Go to!" of Majistral and compatriots, ''V.'', chapter eleven. "Turn to" is also a shipboard expression, "put your back into it" or something of the kind.

'''Perhaps its familiarity... rendered it temporarily invisible to you." 
Perhaps an admonition from the author that familiar things will be easily overlooked?
I think the fact that they were picnic baskets matters...TRP perhaps saying, as he seems to suggest elsewhere, that we overlook the simple pleasures too often.

'''"for Miles, while possessed of good intentions and the kindest heart in the little band, suffered at times from a confusion in his motor processes, often producing lively results, yet as frequently compromising the crew's physical safety.'''" 
Talk about Filles de Kilimanjaro and Miles post-quintet years, a prolonged effect on survivors after the bombings of 1945 and the arts of Japan’s exploding subculture.

'''Chick Counterfly''' 
Three possibilities: (1) A counter fly is an annoyance in (say) the butcher's shop. (2) Chick always speaks "counter" to anyone else's "flight" of imagery. (3) The only non-''AtD''-related uses of this word that I've found came in patents describing mechanisms; "the counterfly direction" means contrary to the direction everything else is flying in, hence this character counters the flying of the craft?

He is the only Chum we know who was "rescued" from the "real" world. Meaning there? To be counter to flying is to be earthbound, where he started and he is the one with whom the conversation about relanding
on a different "earth" happens.

Like Suckling's name suggesting a relationship to another Pynchon character (Pig Bodine), Pynchon winks at a relationship between Counterfly and Tyrone Slothrop. In Counterfly´s first utterance in the book, “Ha ha,” cried young Counterfly, “say, but if you ain’t the most slob-footed chap I ever seen!” you can derive "Tyrone Slothrop" from an anagram of Counterfly and "slob-footed chap."

:Huh? That's a pretty sloppy anagram, ain't it? What about that "b" and that"d" ... this is ''way'' too much of a stretch. There's something to these names, perhaps, but I don't think you're close here, friend.

==Page 5==

'''"all tableware with Chums of Chance Insignia is Organizational property"''' 
The organization in question is the Chums of Chance themselves, here considered as an institution rather than as a collection of individuals.

'''picklesome''' 
Having the nature of a pickle, i.e, a boy who is inclined to mischief.

A word not much seen since the nineteenth century.

'''Pugnax''' 
I suspect that, in keeping with a very strong [[Birds|"bird" theme]] (the original aeronauts!) in ''Against the Day'', Pynchon may have named Pugnax after a bird called the Ruff (''Philomachus pugnax'') which is a medium-sized wader. Note that Pugnax's first "utterance" is "Rr Rff-rff Rr-rr-rff-rrf-rrf"...

There are a number of characters named after birds or bird sounds: Linnet Dawes, "Pert" Chirpingdon-Groin (there is a pert bird), and Wren Provenance immediately come to mind, but I'm sure there are others, and there are myriad bird references and metaphors (the Sodality of Ǣtheronauts and their mechanical wings); I just haven't had the time to explore it deeply, but others may... (Just read [[Birds|the bit about birds]] from ''Homage to Pythagoras''...

You can even make a semiserious case that the Aeronauts are named for a bird, the white-throated swift, ''Aeronautes saxatalis'' [[ATD_243-272#Page_266|(mentioned on p. 266)]].

The name meaning, in Latin, "likes to fight" (i.e. one who is pugnacious). Pugnax's fantastic intelligence recalls another intelligent Pynchon dog, the Learned English Dog in ''Mason & Dixon''. His manner of speech is somewhat reminiscent of the mystery-solving cartoon dog Scooby-Doo, and [http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0612&msg=112507&sort=date members of PYNCHON-L] have speculated that his eyebrows and reading habits allude to Gromit, from the [http://www.wallaceandgromit.com/ Wallace and Gromit] claymation films.

Could this name be an homage to the dog in the Asterix comics, Idéfix in French; Dogmatix in English? Many of the character in the Asterix comics have names ending in "x".

'''"...during a confidential assignment in Our Nation's Capitol (see ''The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit'')..."''' 
This could be seen as a criticism of an American President, present or past. President Bush is a candidate, considering the Pynchon-authored [[Against the Day description|Amazon.com book description]] which included "With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

The Chums "rescued Pugnax, then but a pup"--an innocent, a child creature--"from a furious encounter..between rival packs of the city's wild dogs".
The wild dogs equal both political parties?

'''lavatorial assaults''' 
"from the sky, which no one can "begin to try to record, much less coordinate reports of" recall the V-2 rockets which are linked to Slothrop's erections in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. That is, pee from the sky is "folklore, superstition, or perhaps...the religious" in ATD compared to rockets screaming across the sky and the destruction in GR.

This also recalls jokes and urban legends regarding frozen waste from leaky airplane lavatories (i.e., "you can still be hit by an icy B.M.")

==Page 6==

'''''Princess Casamassima''''' 
Published 1886 (James had published two others by 1893), a classic dealing with terrorists, anarchists, and bombings. [http://www.henryjames.org.uk/pcasa/home.htm Full text] Sequel to "Roderick Hudson". It's the only Henry James novel in which he takes on such overtly political subjects, the only one which deals with violent extremes of human behavior. 
:Thematically, it's reactionary, the opposite of AtD. 
:ATD is not reactionary but also not the opposite of Princess Casamassima thematically, it can be easily argued.

Pugnax prefers in his reading "sentimental tales about his own species [rather] than those exhibiting extremes of human behavior, which he appeared to find a bit lurid." It seems Pynchon is slyly commenting on James' Princess Casamassima here in that that James novel DID deal with 'extremes of human behaviour' yet Pugnax prefers 'sentimental tales'! As many who have had dogs know, often when raised from puppyhood with loving owners, they 'think they are human'. Pugnax learns where to pee off the gondola - a pretty natural function for a dog - "like the rest of the crew".

Or: it is a theme in GR, that the book, writing itself, is an abstraction from experience and not, of course, the thing itself. Noseworth, "who placed upon the word 'book' . . . contempt" did, however, know the subject matter of 'Princess Casamassima.' He, Noseworth, hopes they will "suffer no occasion for exposure more immediate than that to be experienced, as with Pugnax at this moment, safely within the leaves of some book." It matters that the Chums ARE also characters in books of their adventures.

It should also be noted that the Princess Casamassima is one of the rare characters in James' novels who appears in more than one work. She was originally a character in the 1875 novel Roderick Hudson, where her name was, quite fittingly, Christina Light.

'''Placing . . . an emphasis''' 
Lapse of authorial control? Surely the creator of the ''Chums'' novels would not write such a Pynchonian sentence fragment!

'''Pugnax sniffed . . . as always this scent eluded him''' 
If Pugnax doesn't detect a human scent, that suggests Lindsay is not human. Not human, Master-at-Arms, speaks in hyper-constructed prose, has a notably short fuse . . . he's Lieutenant Worf of ''Star Trek, the Next Generation.''

'''''Krakatoa''''' 
Erupted 1883. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa Wikipedia entry.]

'''Heino Vanderjuice of New Haven''' 
Scientist who designed the ''Inconvenience's'' hydrogen engine. "Vanderjuice" suggests both "wonder juice" and "wander juice," fitting since his engine allows the Chums to wander and is wondrous insofar as it apparently violates the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics second law of thermodynamics]. "Heino" (HIE-no) is a man's given name [http://www.behindthename.com/php/view.php?name=heino meaning 'home'] in German, Finnish, and Estonian. Perhaps an allusion to the German pop star, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heino Heino].

:Um, a quibble: ''Vanderjuice'' is some kind of corrupted Dutch, and in Dutch the name Heino would be pronounced HAY-no. He is not an immigrant, though, and American speakers no doubt say HIGH-no.

Jules Verne influence? Vanderjuice a red herring, pointing to Dutch origin and electrical ("juice") background? Or does one try to parse the name into eg "Fond O' Juice"?

'''no better than a perpetual-motion machine''' 
A perpetual-motion machine is not just one that runs forever, but one that ''performs work'' forever without any input of energy. All PM machines ever invented have been either hoaxes ("secret free energy source the government doesn't want you to know about") or mistakes. The hydrogen generator/engine is neither, which is why the disdainful phrase "no better than" is crucial.

By the way, how does one generate hydrogen? In high school chem lab we used zinc filings and hydrochloric acid, but that seems unsuitable with Miles around. Is it possible Vanderjuice has invented a photovoltaic electrolysis cell?

'''Miles, with his marginal gifts of coördination, and Chick, with a want of alacrity fully as perceptible''' 
Like the old gag: The food in this restaurant isn't any good, but the service is awful.

'''ratlines and shrouds''' 
''Inconvenience'' is rigged like a sailing ship of the period, though it's hard to see why she needs to be. Shrouds fan out from a masthead down to a rail; ratlines run horizontally to join them. The whole affair serves the sailors as a ladder.

'''". . . anemometer of the Robinson's type"''' 
Cup anemometer invented in 1846 by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Thomas_Romney_Robinson Dr. John Thomas Romney Robinson]. Cup anemometers are still commonly used to measure wind speed because of their simplicity and reliability in a variety of environmental conditions. [http://www.arm.ac.uk/annrep/annrep2000/node13.html pic]

'''how rapidly the ship was proceeding''' 
But you can't measure the craft's progress by measuring wind speed at a point on the craft itself. All you get from the anemometer is a speed relative to the air, which is in variable motion. Since the craft is moving at the speed of the wind plus the speed of its propulsion device, the speed found by the anemometer is basically useless.

==Page 7==

'''Porfirio Díaz''' 
President of Mexico 1876-1880, 1884-1911. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porfirio_D%C3%ADaz Wikipedia]

In most countries, the Interior Ministry (Ministry of Internal Affairs, Home Office, etc.) ran programs like secret police. Are the Chums working for forces of conservativism?

'''"beside a black-water river of the Deep South". 
Blackwater River is in lower central Florida, pretty deep south; but there are numerous rivers in swampy areas that run black with organic matter.

'''a bitter and unresolved "piece of business"''' 
Rather than give a proper reason for the Chums to be in the Deep South, the narrator cops out by pleading that it's "not advisable" to specify.

'''"the Rebellion of thirty years previous"''' 
The Civil War was not called such during the time it was occurring; the South called it "the war between the states" to emphasize both their right to secede from the union and that this was a war between sovereign states; the North called it "the Rebellion of 1861" or, after termination of hostilities, "the Rebellion of 1861-1865," appellations that did not recognize the South's right to secede.

'''"one still not advisable to set upon one's page"''' 
The American Civil War, that "rebellion of thirty years previous," has not yet become a suitable subject for an adventure tale such as the Chums'.

'''absquatulated''' 
Means to move away quickly, usually to avoid capture. Apparently a mock-Latinate formation, "to go off and squat somewhere else." [http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-abs1.htm A brief article] on the history and etymology of "absquatulate." 
The word is used in Vineland.

'''"Crackerjack!" exclaimed Chick.''' 
Cracker Jack, the food, was first sold at the Chicago Exhibition of 1893, though it did not bear its present name. As one word here, however, it is not the candy: "Crackerjack" entered English first as a noun referring to "a person or thing of marked excellence," then as an adjective. The foodstuff gained its present name, according to the [http://www.crackerjack.com/history.php official Cracker Jack website], in 1896. The OED lists the first written use of "crackerjack" as 1895, two years after the present scene. It is by no means impossible, however, that the term would have been current in the spoken language in 1893.

'''to approach the gates of the Penitentiary''' 
A genuine saying. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Quay Matthew Quay,] a political kingmaker of the 1880s and 90s, said of Benjamin Harrison's squeaker victory over Grover Cleveland in 1888 that Harrison would "never know how many Republicans were compelled to approach the gates of the penitentiary to make him president."

'''posse comitatus''' 
What Western movie fans know as a "posse," i.e., citizens conscripted by a sheriff to assist in law enforcement. (See the Wikipedia entry on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_comitatus_(common_law) Posse Comitatus].) Remember that the ''Chums'' author gets paid by the word.

In the 1980s, a radical, violent, right-wing and anti-government movement adopted the name "Posse Comitatus."

==Page 8==

'''a pocketful of specie''' 
Specie means coins as opposed to paper money.

'''the town of Thick Bush''' 
Aside from whether this phrase might apply to some political figure of the past or present, "thick bush" is the literal meaning of the Spanish Matagorda, the name of many towns in Latin America and one on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

'''"which directs us never to interfere with legal customs of any locality down at which we may happen to have touched"''' 
Like the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_directive Prime Directive] in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_trek ''Star Trek'']. Lindsay's fussy syntax echoes Winston Churchill's exasperated "This is the kind of carping criticism up with which I will not put."

'''legal customs''' 
Legal = pertaining to law, in this case lynch law. The Chums are interpreting their Prime Directive pretty broadly here.

'''Katie bar the door''' 
An expression that means that there's trouble brewing. (See [http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-kat1.htm this article] about the expression's etymology.)

'''Ku Klux Klan''' 
Reminiscent of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan Klan] encounter scenes in the Coen Brothers' ''O Brother, Where Art Thou''.

'''tupelo, cypress, and hickory''' 
The trees are no help in locating the town; all three kinds like bottom land and grow all over the South.

'''speed . . . made it nearly invisible from the ground''' 
Few people in 1893 had seen a manmade object moving at 60 miles an hour, and many thought such a speed was lethal anyway. The ''Chums'' author suggests such an outlandish speed would make ''Inconvenience'' just a blur in the sky. Of course you can read the fin numbers on an airliner landing at 150 knots, but he didn't know that.

''Pedantry alert:'' In perfectly transparent air a ship flying a mile off the ground is visible about 125 miles away. If its flight path takes it right over your head, you can follow it for 250 miles. If it is making a groundspeed of 60 miles per hour, it takes 4 hours and change to go from horizon to horizon. In typical "clear" air (visibility say 30 miles), you will see the ship in your sky for a solid hour. These rough figures show how wrong the narrator is about speed.

'''way better than a mile a minute''' 
The Chums' point of departure is unknown, but they arrived in Chicago after catching a southerly wind (pg 3), southerly meaning "wind blowing from the south." The Chums surpass 60 miles an hour here, but as their previous speed was unknown, it's difficult to know where they were leaving from. (New Orleans to Chicago is 834 miles, slightly less than 14 hours at 60 miles/hour, so a possibility.)

==Page 9==

'''locker''' 
On board ship, any cabinet with a door or lid.

'''"Do not imagine, that in coming aboard ''Inconvenience'' you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual..."''' 
This may be Pynchon directly addressing the reader. Given that his [[Against_the_Day_description|book description]] proclaims the world of AtD as "what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two," this paragraph seems to indicate that Pynchon, like all great fantasy or sci-fi writers, does not intend to create a world where anything goes. Rather, he will create a world that differs from ours but then obey the rules and constraints he's already established. 
Cf. Pynchon's own relevant words in the introduction to Slow Learner. He remarks that in non-realistic fiction, he had to learn that not anything went.

A-and it must mean, coming from the commander, that all aboard the ''Inconvenience'' are also subjects to the 'facts' of the world. "The World is All that is the Case", from Wittgenstein, quoted in V.
(in the original German)

'''"Going up is like going north."''' 
Air gets cooler as the ship ascends into higher altitudes, and therefore like travelling northward. This page also suggests some further mystery of the Chums may be revealed to Chick and the reader in time.

:North is not a positive place in Pynchon's world. It is associated with anti-life---coldness as here---compared to the South, a place of light and warmth, such as the tropics. See GR.

:But to go far enough north means heading south again, observes Chick Counterfly--is this one meaning of his name? Then one would be "approaching the surface of another planet, maybe?" asks Chick.

"Not exactly" [answers Randolph] "No. Another 'surface', but an earthly one"
"You'll see. In time, of course". Time is earthly?

'''"Another 'surface'"''' 
In ancient conics the cone is formed by taking a line through a point (the vertex) at a particular angle to a plane and then inscribing a circle on the plane. Two conic surfaces are made by the motion of this line, one below this point and one above. The three conic sections (hyperbola, parabola, and ellipse) are created by slicing the conic surface(s) at different angles.
:huh?[[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:38, 15 January 2007 (PST)
:If you read this for plain meaning, then it's true (or Randolph believes) that there's another earthly surface, to which you can descend by ascending far enough above this one. Surely it is pertinent here that Pynchon's dear friend Richard Fariña (1937-66) titled his novel ''Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me.''

==Page 10==

'''Stockyards''' 
Chicago was, at the time, the meat-packing and slaughtering capital of the United States. The stench from the stockyards below must have been memorable.

'''...looked up at the airship in wonder..." 
The sight of any airship in 1893 must have been rare indeed. 
Our history reports that the first practical airships were built in 1898; [[ATD_429-459#Page_454|the idea or icon was around by 1896, though.]]

'''Beneath the rubbernecking Chums of Chance wheeled streets and alleyways''' 
Optical illusion. As you fly over a grid of streets, you perceive a landmark far away to move slowly while the lateral streets near you just whip past. Your brain interprets that the same way as hub and spokes, i.e., the motion of a wheel. Interesting question, though: If the ''Chums'' author was just making this stuff up, how did he know about the illusion?

'''Cartesian grid''' 
From Rene Descartes, 17th century philosopher and mathematician; see Wikipedia entry, whose most famous argument, "I think therefore I am" and mathematical studies have often lead him to be seen as the first modern philosopher of ultra-rationality. Geometry has 'the Cartesian coordinant system, a grid. Chicago's streets are laid out in a very rational grid arrangement.

Pynchon is reputed to have written 'Gravity's Rainbow' on engineer's grid paper.

In modern mathematics, curves are described only in relation to the two dimensional grid (see previous page). If conic sections are not specifically being thought of here, the theme of dimensionality, at least, is already at play.

'''that unshaped freedom being rationalized into movement only in straight lines''' 
Rationalization is a key sociological concept [from online Dictionary of Social Science]:RATIONALIZATION
This term has two specific meanings in sociology. (1) The concept was developed by German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) who used it in two ways. First, it was the process through which magical, supernatural and religious ideas lose cultural importance in a society and ideas based on science and practical calculation become dominant. For example, in modern societies science has rationalized our understanding of weather patterns. Science explains weather patterns as a result of interaction between physical elements like wind-speed and direction, air and water temperatures, humidity, etc. In some other cultures, weather is thought to express the pleasure or displeasure of gods, or spirits of ancestors. One explanation is rationalized and scientific, the other mysterious and magical. Rationalization also involves the development of forms of social organization devoted to the achievement of precise goals by efficient means. It is this type of rationalization that we see in the development of modern business corporations and of bureaucracy. These are organizations dedicated to the pursuit of defined goals by calculated, systematically administered means. (2) Within symbolic interactionism, rationalization is used more in the everyday sense of the word to refer to providing justifications or excuses for one's actions.

'''"only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor."''' 
From innocent bovines to ...the world? "Single up all lines"....
Stockyards were organized in such a way that the cattle would proceed through a series of chutes and passages, until they arrived alone at the point of death.

"Progressive reduction of choices" also occurred in ''Mason & Dixon''—there were infinitely many wildernesses out to the west until M&D ran the line and rationalized the country into Maryland and Pennsylvania.

==Page 11==

'''plummet''' 
In the real world, this might be bad physics, as closing the valve wouldn't slow the descent. Objects in a fluid medium like air float if their weight is less than the weight of the fluid they displace (hence why one fills a balloon with a light gas such as hydrogen or helium). Once the ''Inconvenience'' loses its buoyancy, it will continue to fall, unless its weight is reduced to what a lesser amount of hydrogen could support. The Inconvenience, however, has a hydrogen producing apparatus that could kick in, slow, and eventually stop their descent.

'''bear a hand''' 
Nautical: help out.

==Page 12==

'''Liverpool Kiss''' 
A head butt.

'''Herr Riemann''' 
Riemann, Georg Friedrich Bernhard (1826-1866) (pronounced REE mahn or in IPA: ['ri:man]) was a German mathematician who made important contributions to analysis and differential geometry, some of them paving the way for the later development of general relativity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann Wikipedia entry].

'''''Mr.'' Noseworth''' 
Lindsay insisting on proper naval forms: an ensign, lieutenant (junior grade), lieutenant or lieutenant commander in the U.S. navy is correctly addressed as "Mister Surname."

'''"topological genius"''' 
Riemann's differential geometry goes beyond the Cartesian grid. See conic sections and dimensionality above, page 10.

==Page 13==

'''There was an "eager stampede" to the rail''' 
Why is eager stampede in quotation marks? The sentence reads fine without it. Does it seem to show ironic knowingness on the part of the narrator? If so, why and who is the narrator?
: I suspect this is a stylistic device from the turn of the century light literature that Pynchon is emulating-- placing a novel term in quotation marks. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 01:35, 23 December 2006 (PST)

:insightfully true, I suspect, but it still shows 'narratorial knowingness', yes?

: Cf. Flaubert's use of quotations in ''Madame Bovary'' to isolate what he deemed the contemptible argot of the bourgeoisie.

::Apparently not a cliche: [http://books.google.com//books?num=100&q=eager.stampede&as_brr=0 GoogleBooks]

'''"...among the brighter star-shapes of exploded ballast bags..."''' 
Recalls the opening line of ''Mason & Dixon'': "Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr‘d the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins..."

'''"...quite as if were some giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinizing from above, in a spirit of constructive censure."''' 
This is strikingly reminiscent of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odilon_Redon Odilon Redon's] 1882 Lithograph ''L'Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l'infini (The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity).'' [http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A2&page_number=4&template_id=1&sort_order=1 At MoMa's Online Collection]
Notice that society = censure, if constructive. Gamboling nude on a summer day was OK until the ''Inconvenience'', as eyeball, appeared.

:The Odilon Redon lithograph appears on the cover of the 1998 Vintage paperback edition of Ian McEwan's Enduring Love, whose first unforgettable chapter triggers the novel with a ballooning incident leaving the reader dangling over the edge of suspense and suspension.

==Page 14==

'''charmed into docility''' 
If it took only one small lad to moor the ship, she was indeed docile. A wiki contributor once saw a Goodyear blimp in Houston, Texas, landing. The craft had half a dozen long falls of rope hanging from her nose, and a ground crew of nearly two dozen men ready to take hold of them. The blimp approached nose-low, the crew took the ropes, and a gust of wind suddenly moved the ship. The crew chief gave a safety command and all the men let loose their ropes at once. On the third pass, all hands working together managed to stop the ship and get her moored. If ''Inconvenience'' was a fraction as changeable and hard to control, Darby made a great job of getting the ship staked out by himself.

'''Jacob's-ladder''' 
Used here as "a marine ladder of rope or chain with wooden or iron rungs" (Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged) but is suggestive of Jacob's ladder in Genesis:

Genesis 28:12 And he [Jacob] dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. (King James version)

'''a giant sack of soiled laundry''' 
Perhaps ''freshly'' soiled during the great hydrogen valve disaster.

'''''vol-à-voile''''' 
The narrator has turned the French phrase ''vol-à-voiles'' (gliding) into a verb (removing the ''s'').

'''gold-beaters' skin''' 
Very thin vellum (membrane taken from the caecum or blind stomach of an ox). To prepare gold for gilding, it was placed between sheets of vellum and hammered thin.

'''Evening Quarters''' 
Naval practice of mustering the crew at the end of the day's work.

==Page 15==

'''ukulelist''' 
Ukuleles also appear in ''Gravity's Rainbow'', ''Vineland'', and ''Mason & Dixon''. According to Jules Siegel's article, "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?", Pynchon himself played the ukulele in college.

'''Vagabonds of the Void''' 
The song performed by the Chums of Chance reflects the Rock and Roll attitude of the group towards the groundworld upon arrival. It's also the first time in the book we truly encounter the hipness of the group with some sort of Rolling Stones Nine Inch Nails fronting edge to it. 

[[image:Macassar-Oil.jpg|thumb|175px|''Macassar Oil. An Oily Puff for Soft Heads''|right]]'''Beaufort Scale''' 
A scale for measuring wind strength, developed 1805.

'''"Let the lightning lash ~ And the thunder trash" 
Again, the Chums are rock stars, the coolest cats in town.

'''"...forty-four buttons...one for each State of the Union." 
Wyoming was the 44th state admitted to the union in 1890.

'''port section of the crew''' 
The half of the crew permitted to go freely ashore this time. The other half tomorrow. "Port" and "starboard": are these simply either/or words that sailors remember easily?

'''Macassar oil''' 
Macassar oil is an oil used primarily by men in Victorian and Edwardian times to smooth their hair. It was advertised as containing oil from Macassar, which is the former name of Ujung Pandang, a district on the island of Celebes in Indonesia. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macassar_oil Wikipedia entry]

==Page 16==

'''About the fringes,' Randolph reminded the liberty-goers, 'of any gathering on the scale of this Exposition, are apt to lurk vicious and debased elements, whose sole aim is to take advantage of the unwary.''' 
Indeed, the Chicago World's Fair was haunted by one of America's more prolific and original serial killers, H.H. Holmes. Born in 1861, Holmes came to Chicago as a pharmacist and built an office building that was eventually dubbed 'The Castle'. Consisting of commercial stores on the first floor, and offices and apartments on the upper floors, the building also housed hidden rooms where Holmes murdered his victims, chutes that conveyed the bodies to the basement, and a chamber of horrors in the basement where he destroyed the corpses. Holmes took advantage of the World's Columbian Exposition to lure victims, primarily females who had come unaccompanied to Chicago, to the Castle for torture and murder. It is estimated that he killed over 200 people at the Castle while the Exposition was in operation. Two very good books about Holmes are The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson and Depraved by Harold Schechter. It is doubtful that Pynchon was thinking explicitly of Holmes when he wrote this passage, although he must be aware of the story. Randolph could not have known about Holmes since Holmes was not captured until after the Fair was over. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._H.H._Holmes Wikipedia entry]

'''tension of the gas''' 
I.e., the pressure in the bag.

==Page 17==

'''"as if it were something the stripling had only read about, in some boys' book of adventures...as if that page of their chronicles lay turned and done"''' 
The narrator makes us aware that Darby's adventures are as if/will be written down...the 'reality' of almost killing all of them is now just words on a page...as is this book, ATD?...Again a Pynchonian theme: no book is the reality.

'''"and the order 'About-face' had been uttered by some potent though invisible Commandant of Earthly Days, toward whom Darby, in amiable obedience, had turned again."''' 
Is this just a metaphor from the narrator to describe what it is like for Darby, or is it also self-referential to
all the adventures of the Chums?. Another Q: Is the Commandant of Earthly Days the invisible presence from whom the chums get their orders? Cf. earthly surface, p.9
:Related Q: Do the Chums receive their orders from the author of their books?

'''we were usually out the door and on the main road''' 
Dick and Chick knew the judge was more likely to order them out of town than into the lockup.

'''Chinese foofooraw''' 
Also spelled foofaraw, a great deal of fuss, or useless frills. Cf folderol. However, why Chinese?
:Chick's father tried to sell Mississippi to a Chinese syndicate.

'''cubeb''' 
The name for the berry and for the oil obtained from the unripe berry of the East Indian climbing shrub ''P. cubeba''. The dried fruits are sometimes used as a condiment or are ground and smoked in cigarette form as an herbal remedy. [http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/pepper The Free Dictionary] Also appears in ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' page 118.

'''"...goldurn Keeley Cure"''' 
A treatment for alcohol, nicotine and narcotic addiction involving injections of "bichloride" or "double chloride" of gold, and also known as the "gold cure". Named for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Keeley Dr. Leslie E. Keeley,] who opened the first of many Keeley Institutes in [http://www.dwighthigh.k12.il.us/dwight/dwight.htm Dwight, Illinois], not far from Chicago, in 1879.

==Page 18==

'''headgear''' 
Description vaguely reminiscent of "Madame Bovary". [http://robotwisdom.com/flaubert/bovary/bovary1.html [notes]]

'''eclipse green''' 
Apparently an actual shade. [http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/DIO_DRO/DIRECT.html [cite]]

'''Bindlestiffs of the Blue A.C.''' 
Bindlestiff means hobo; hence, the Hoboes of the Sky Aeronautical Club.

'''("Penny") Black''' 
The Penny Black was the world's first official adhesive postage stamp, issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1840. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black [Wikipedia]]

'''Tzigane''' 
French for "gypsy". Also a piece by Ravel. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzigane_(Ravel) [Wikipedia]]

'''Egypt''' 
Little Egypt is the southern area of the state of Illinois in the United States of America. Named so because it has a considerable river delta and a metropolis called Cairo (KAY-roe). The region is and was sometimes called simply "Egypt," especially in the 19th century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Egypt_(region) [Wikipedia]]

==Page 19==

'''goin all blue from the light of that electric fluid''' 
Their ship was beset by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elmo%27s_fire St. Elmo's fire,] a low-energy electrical discharge often seen on surface vessels and occasionally on aircraft. Electric charge does behave in some respects like a fluid and was long described in such terms.

'''Voices calling out together''' 
There is no reason to doubt they heard the voices, but an aural hallucination is not out of the question: a chorus of voices is one of the easiest effects to produce with a synthesizer.

[[image:balloons-paris.jpg|thumb|200px|Garçons de '71|right]]'''Garçons de '71''' 
French: The Boys of '71; During the Siege of Paris in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War Franco-Prussian War], 1870-1871, balloons were manufactured within railroad stations in Paris. The balloons were used to get mail and passengers out of Paris. The ''Garçons de '71'' are a (probably) fictional cadre of young men who operated such balloons [[Garçons de '71|Read on...]]

'''a condition of ''permanent siege''''' 
Surely no one has failed to notice what a "wartime president" is allowed to get away with. "No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

'''pétroleurs de Paris''' 
An early form of Molotov cocktail thrower during the Siege of Paris. There were pétroleurs and pétroleuses.

==Page 20==

'''they'll fly wherever they're needed''' 
While the Chums obey orders from above, the Garçons de '71 follow a different imperative.

'''energy we could feel, directed personally at us''' 
Someone may be trying to influence what the Bindlestiffs do, or keep them away from the Garçons' work of mercy.

==Page 21==

'''admissions gate''' 
Apparently a break in the fence, capitalized on by freelance impresarios.

'''fifty-cent pieces''' 
Odd. According to [http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html this remarkable Columbian Exposition site,] regular admission was just half a dollar. Maybe Lindsay and Miles could have negotiated with the midget.

==Page 22==

'''Kodaks''' 
The word Kodak was trademarked in 1888, and the first Kodak camera was sold with the slogan, "You press the button - we do the rest." In 1891, the company released the first daylight-loading camera, so film could be changed without a darkroom. Kodaks would have been a novelty at the fair in 1893.

'''half-light . . . in the interests of mercy . . . the safety of the lights''' 
Interesting contrast suggesting a tradeoff between comfort/solace in the shadows and safety in the bright light.

'''Isandhlwana''' 
Isandlwana is an isolated hill in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. On January 22, 1879, it was the site of the Battle of Isandlwana, where over 20,000 Zulu warriors defeated a contingent of British soldiers in the first engagement of the Anglo-Zulu War. Almost the entire column of about 1,200 British soldiers was killed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isandhlwana [Wikipedia]] You will find a chapter on Isandhlwana in any book that has the words "military" and "blunders" in the title.

==Page 23==

'''Tarahumara''' 
Indian tribe of Northern New Mexico, in the Sierra Madres, known for cave-dwelling in the late 19th century. [[Tarahumare_Indians|About the Tarahumara]]. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarahumara [Wikipedia]]

'''"geek"''' 
A geek's act comprised things no one would do who had not sunk all the way to the bottom of the carnie world: eating live creatures, throwing fits, and so forth. Much like the television show "Fear Factor," but sad rather than stultifying.

'''monte''' 
Three-card monte.

==Page 24==

'''the curse of Scotland''' 
A term used in poker, bridge and various other card games for the nine of diamonds. Dates from 1710. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Scotland [Wikipedia]]

'''like the electricity coming on... how everything fits together, connects. It doesn't last long, though.''' 
From something as random as calling out a card trick comes this extremely profound quote by Miles Blundell (full quote edited here). The heart of this quote/thought seems to be crucial.

What Miles describes is also the symptoms of a mild seizure - could he be epileptic? Epileptics were often credited with shamanic or prophetic powers, and many sightings of religious figures have been attributed to seizures. On page 4, Miles is also said to suffer from "confusion in his motor processes", which may be related.

'''Cracker Jack''' 
First sold at the at the first Chicago World's Fair in 1893. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_Jack [Wikipedia]]

'''New Levee district''' 
Chicago's redlight district c1890. [http://www.ipsn.org/genesis.htm [cite]]

'''Epworth League''' 
A Methodist youth organization founded in 1889. [http://www.southernmethodistchurch.org/id48.htm [cite]]

==Page 25==

'''Haymarket bomb''' 
The Haymarket Riot on May 4, 1886, in Chicago may be the origin of international May Day observances and in popular literature inspired the caricature of "a bomb-throwing anarchist." The causes of the incident are still controversial, although deeply polarized attitudes separating the business class and the working class in late 19th century Chicago are generally acknowledged as having precipitated the tragedy and its aftermath. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_bombing Wikipedia entry].

'''if the Governor decides to pardon that gang of anarchistic murderers''' 
In May of 1886, 350,000 workers, including 70,000 in Chicago were taking to the streets to rally for the eight hour work day. After four workers were killed by the police on May 3, the anarchist leaders in Chicago called for a meeting in Haymarket Square. Although the rally was peaceful, the police came in on horseback to break it up and an unknown individual in the crowd hurled a homemade bomb into the air. After the explosion, which killed a policeman, the police opened fire on the crowd. Subsequently, the anarchist leaders deemed responsible for the rally were arrested and tried for the murder of the policeman. The Eight men were convicted of the bombing and seven of them sentenced to death. Governor Richard J. Oglesby commuted two death sentences to life. Four were hanged and a fifth committed suicide. A later governor, John P. Altgeld, pardoned the three survivors on June 26, 1893, concluding that all eight of them were innocent. The last words of anarchist August Spies before he was hanged were 'The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.' Two very good books on the Haymarket Riot and the events surrounding it include The Haymarket Tragedy by Paul Avrich and Death In The Haymarket by James Green.

'''mixture of contempt and pity''' 
This is ''definitely'' not from one of the Chums' adventure stories.

'''embonpoint''' 
Convexity of body; what used to be called a "prosperous" look.

'''duck soup''' 
Meaning "an easy task," but also the name of a Marx Bros. movie. Perhaps relevant, given the cameo by Groucho promised on the book sleeve. Many of the Marx Brothers early movies had animal references in the title: Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup. The titles usually had nothing at all to do with the plot, although they contributed to the lunatic nature of the comedy. The expression 'Horse Feathers' is used a few times later on in Against The Day.

==References==
<references />

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

User:Adrianboyd

2007-09-22T07:19:19Z

Adrianboyd:

I am Adrian Boyd from [http://www.SexAntToysWiki.com Sex Ant Toys] and a big fan of Against The Day. Still hanging around the first hundred pages of the book and it is now 12:11AM according to my PowerBook G4 on September 21, 2007. Yeap, I believe I have crashed into Thomas Pynchon several times in New York around Washington Square Park and actually made conversation with him, maybe it was the other way around. Where exactly? I can't recall (maybe Thompson St North) Anyways... I am so grateful of being alive at the same time he is alive and experiencing his latest work at hand in this right moment of time. We don't get Bitches Brew here now or often... well... maybe when John Zorn performed his Second Book with Electric Masada at Tonic. Cheers to that and I truly believe AGAINST THE DAY is in FACT the BIGGEST ACCOMPLISHMENT in WORLD LITERATURE. HE IS. (12:37AM)
V.Rayuela8½Contempt(∞)

ATD 1-25

2007-09-22T07:04:40Z

Adrianboyd: /* Page 15 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==cover text==
The black text and its drop shadows are in different typefaces. It may be worth noting, from a conceptual point of view, that we can infer from the angle of the drop shadows that the light source is any individual holding the book—that is, the reader or a potential reader.

==cover seal==
The seal appears to be written in Tibetan language, according to somebody who posts regularly to Pynchon-l under the name "Ya Sam", who reports:

I contacted the Tibetan Cultural Centre with the request to translate
the mysterious legend on the AtD seal. They were kind enough to forward my
request to the Tibetan tranlsator Tenzin Namgyal to whose generosity we
owe the solution of one more ATD related mystery.

It is the Tibetan language, alright, and it means ...... Tibetan
Government Chamber of Commerce.

Read their response below:

:Dear Ya Sam, 
:I showed the seal you sent to our Tibetan translator, Tenzin Namgyal. He says the word to word translation is: Tibetan Government Commerce Chamber in other words: Tibetan Government Chamber of commerce. Why Pynchon has chosen to place this on the cover of his book is anyones guess. Reading the book reviews gave no insight into the reason. Perhaps after one has read it?

:Best wishes,

:Sandy Belth 
:Tibetan Cultural Center

Also of interest: the coin bears a striking resemblance to the doubloon in ''Moby-Dick'' that Ahab nails to the mainmast as a prize to the first crew member to sight the white whale. Melville's description runs thus:

:It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy example of these things. On its round border it bore the letters, REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a country planted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator, and named after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes, in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw the likeness of three Andes' summits; from one a flame; a tower on another; on the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra. (Ch.99, "The Doubloon")

==copyright page==
The copyright page states that ''Against the Day'' is published by Viking Penguin, but on the title page and elsewhere we can read that the book is published by Penguin Press. The copyright pages of other books from Penguin Press state "Penguin Press" as the publisher, as could be expected, and it seems likely that the substitution of "Penguin Press" with "Viking" is one of many typographical errors in the book (see [[errata]]).
I have confirmed from inside Penguin Press that this is a copyediting mistake. Here is a direct e-mail answer about the Viking Penguin listing: "this was a copyediting mistake that will be corrected. There was never a Viking contract for this book."

==Dedication==
Most of Pynchon's novels contain dedications-- ''Mason & Dixon'' ("For Melanie, and for Jackson") , ''Vineland'' ("For my mother and father"), and ''Gravity's Rainbow'' ("For Richard Fariña")-- but not so ''Against the Day,'' as published. Advance reading copies of the book did contain the words "Dedication TK" in italics, but this is simply [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Come publisher-speak] for "dedication to come." It is unknown whether Pynchon ever considered inclusion of a dedication or whether the publisher simply left the page open just in case, but the ultimate lack of a dedication may suggest that Pynchon feels he's thanked everyone he needs to thank.

==Epigraph==
"It's always night, or we wouldn't need light." - Thelonious Monk 
Jazz and particularly bebop seem to be a lifelong interest of Pynchon’s, appearing in some form in all his works and what biographical snippets exist. As a college student, Pynchon “spent a lot of time in jazz clubs, nursing the two-beer minimum,” by his own admission (''Slow Learner'', Introduction). The Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/that-thelonious-monk-epigraph.html notes] that: 1) in his youth, Pynchon allegedly referred to Monk as a "God"; 2) the character McClintic Sphere in ''V''. takes Monk's middle name, Sphere; and 3) "It's always night, or we wouldn't need light" was apparently something Monk was given to saying, rather than something he once said. For more on McClintic Sphere and Monk, see Charles Hollander's essay [http://www.howardm.net/tsmonk/pynchon.php Does McClintic Sphere in ''V.'' stand for Thelonious Monk?]. On [[ATD_724-747#Page 732|page 732]]: "...daylit America ... its steadfast denial of night."

==Page 1==

'''The Light Over the Ranges''' 
Range is defined in the Oxford American Dictionary as "a line or series of mountains or hills : the coastal ranges of the northwest," so "range" or "ranges" can be used to denote a number of mountains. 

'Ranges' may also refer to farms, homesteads and ranches in 1893 America. America was predominantly that in 1893. Cf. "Home, home on the range". 

"celebrating in song the wider range of life..." Thomas Pynchon on
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Waddell Helen Waddell's]
''The Wandering Scholars'', p. 8, Introduction to[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Learner ''Slow Learner], 1984.

A range is also a group of diverse objects. 

A-And range is a word full of its own meaning. Below is a partial list from one good word reference site on the web. 
The more this reader
tries to understand Against the Day, by rereading it and Pynchon's whole oeuvre, the more he feels 'range as diversity'--lost--lies behind TRP's opening chapter title. Especially once one knows how 'Light' is a major subject and theme in ATD.[[User:MKOHUT|MKOHUT]] 13:41, 28 May 2007 (PDT)MKohut
*scope: an area in which something acts or operates or has power or control: "the range of a supersonic jet"; "the ambit of municipal legislation"; "within the compass of this article"; "within the scope of an investigation"; "outside the reach of the law"; "in the political orbit of a world power" 

*change or be different within limits; "Estimates for the losses in the earthquake range as high as $2 billion"; "Interest rates run from 5 to 10 percent"; "The instruments ranged from tuba to cymbals"; "My students range from very bright to dull" 

*the limits within which something can be effective; "range of motion"; "he was beyond the reach of their fire" 

*a large tract of grassy open land on which livestock can graze; "they used to drive the cattle across the open range every spring"; "he dreamed of a home on the range" 

*roll: move about aimlessly or without any destination, often in search of food or employment; 

*have a range; be capable of projecting over a certain distance, as of a gun; "This gun ranges over two miles" 

*a series of hills or mountains; "the valley was between two ranges of hills"; "the plains lay just beyond the mountain range" 

*a place for shooting (firing or driving) projectiles of various kinds; "the army maintains a missile range in the desert"; "any good golf club will have a range where you can practice" 

*range or extend over; occupy a certain area; "The plants straddle the entire state" 

*lay out orderly or logically in a line or as if in a line; "lay out the clothes"; "lay out the arguments" 

*the limits of the values a function can take; "the range of this function is the interval from 0 to 1"

*a variety of different things or activities; "he answered a range of questions"; "he was impressed by the range and diversity of the collection" 

*crop: feed as in a meadow or pasture; "the herd was grazing" 

*compass: the limit of capability; "within the compass of education"

*let eat; "range the animals in the prairie"

[wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn wordnet]

==Page 3==

'''"Now single up all lines!"''' 
Pynchon was in the Navy for a spell and "single up all lines" is a common nautical term. Ships are docked with lines doubled -- that is, with two sets of ropes or chains holding the vessel to the dock. To "single up all lines" is to remove the redundant second lines in preparation to make way.

But the opening line has many possible connotations.
:The Modern Word's Quail [http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/pynchon_atd.html writes] that "it is simultaneously a self-directive and a call to the reader; suggesting that ''Against the Day'' is a culmination of his previous work, and also charging the reader to find meaning within its twisting labyrinth. It may also be a sly, preemptive joke on the book’s initial critics, as the novel begins with the launch of a bloated gasbag bearing a somewhat provocative name."

:"Single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in ''V.'', 11; ''COL49'', 31; ''Gravity's Rainbow'', 489; and ''Mason & Dixon'', 258, 260. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but ''Vineland''?)--in preparation for a voyage to...?

'''"Cheerly now...handsomely...very well!!"''' 
Cheerly means "heartily," and was traditionally used as cry of encouragement among sailors. Handsomely (in nautical context): carefully, in good order, unhurriedly.

:Pynchon served in the Navy and uses nautical language in most of his novels. ''Mason & Dixon'': "Cheerly. Cheerly, then, Lads..." (54).

'''"Windy City, here we come!"''' 
The nickname for Chicago, of course, but in 1893 the use meant city of braggarts more than it did wind. The earliest known references to the "Windy City" are from 1876, and involve Chicago's rivalry with Cincinnati. A popular myth states that "Windy City" was first used by New York Sun editor Charles Dana in the bidding for the 1893 Columbian Exposition. The popularity of the nickname has endured, even after the Cincinnati rivalry and the Columbian Exposition both ended. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windy_City,_Origin_of_Name_(Chicago)| Origin of name "Windy City" at Wikipedia]

'''Randolph St. Cosmo, the ship commander''' 
[[image:ex-voti-isernia.jpg|thumb|175px|Ex voti of Wax, from Isernia|right]]Historically, there are two versions of the 3rd century CE figure St. Cosmo (aka St. Cosmas): the "randy" St. Cosmo, aka the "modern Priapus," and the saintly martyred St. Cosmo of Church lore. Pynchon, it seems, is connecting Randolph St. Cosmo to the former. "Randy," as astute observers will note, is an adjective which means, well, "horny." There's a distinct sexual thread woven throughout ''Against the Day'' [[Basnight%2C_Lewis_%28%22Lew%22%29|(See the ''beginnings'' of exploring this angle...]]) a-and Heartsease, St. Cosmo's mate, is the first to get pregnant! so this seems to fit right in. [[St. Cosmo|Read more about the historical St. Cosmo...]]; and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sts._Cosmas_and_Damian Wikipedia entry]

In [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=V#veery ''Mason & Dixon''], Pynchon has the Veery brothers, Cosmo and Damian, who are professional effigy makes in Philadelphia! And, just to make it interesting, "He's a rare Wax Artist, our Cosmo is." (p. 290) (Note: Wax phallus effigies were offered by the women to St. Cosmo at the festivals held in his name, as shown above.)

'''Now secure the Special Sky Detail''' 
When a naval vessel is departing from port or returning to port, a specially trained team is put in charge of the complicated process. The command is, [http://tpub.com/content/administration/12968a/css/12968a_41.htm "Now set the Special Sea Detail."] ''Inconvenience'' is run along fairly strict naval lines—given the age of the officers and crew, you might say she is a tot ship—and the beginning of the book was preceded by an analogous "Now set the Special Sky Detail." Once the ship is aloft and clear of ground obstructions, the command comes, "Now secure the Special Sky Detail," meaning disband the team for the time being and all return to regular duties. The language, tasks and customs aboard the skyship will show parallels to navy usage throughout the book.

'''summer uniform of red-and-white-striped blazer and trousers of sky blue''' 
Calls to mind the color scheme of Ned Land's (Kirk Douglas) costume in Disney's 1954 film version of ''20,000 Leagues under the Sea''. 

Also calls to mind the colors of the American flag.

'''"scuttlebutt" . . . thousand . . . wonders''' 
A most vigorous campaign [to host the Columbian Exposition] was then inaugurated, the three other cities making a common cause against Washington, whose claim was based on the fact that the proposed exposition was to be held under auspices of the national government, and hence that the capital was the most appropriate place.... By each of the claimants every advantage was urged, and by each of their rivals every defect was exaggerated. Congressional committees accorded a hearing to the several delegations, that of Chicago being represented, among others, by DeWitt C. Cregier, Thomas B. Bryan, and Edward T. Jeffery. from "Book of the Fair" by Hubert Bancroft, 1893.
:"Scuttlebutt" is a very close equivalent to "water-cooler gossip." [http://www.jacksjoint.com/sailor_terminology.htm Here is a glossary] of nautical terms with some of the etymologies.

'''''Inconvenience''''' 
Pynchon's fictional navy includes the USS Scaffold and the Susanna Squaducci (''V.''), and the John E. Badass (''GR''). Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html notes] that the British Royal Navy has a long tradition of warships with names like Impulsive, Incendiary, Inconstant, Indignant, etc. Impulsive is the name of the ship Ploy, who loses all his teeth in V., gets transferred to.
Inconvenience is an apt name for the Chums' adventures in 'reality'. They are an inconvenience; they are inconvenienced. (In having to take on Chick Counterfly, for example). 

Pynchon uses the word ''inconvenience'' in a possibly thematic, connected way in ''Mason & Dixon'' and in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. In ''Mason & Dixon'', the word is applied to the difficulties of an Other, other human beings as we act, interact. See citations at the ''M & D'' wiki. Here is the clearest relevant use for understanding for the Chums' airship, perhaps: from ''Gravity's Rainbow'': "the gift of Daedalus that allowed him [Pokler] to put as much labyrinth as required between himself and the
''inconveniences of caring''. [Italics mine] They had sold him convenience, so much of it, all on credit, and now They were collecting."
page 435, Penguin paperback edition with the Frank Miller cover.

In addition, if we take the Latinate roots of in-con-ven-(ience) and willfully misread the "in" as adverbial "in" (as e.g. "in-come") rather than the privative "not" (as e.g. "in-cred-ible"), we get "the arriving-in-together"; the "inconvenience", then, is essentially a tongue-in-cheek "vehicle". 
I do not think it illuminating to "willfully misread"!?! We are trying to
willfully read possible meanings and resonances. [[User:MKOHUT|MKOHUT]] 06:01, 2 August 2007 (PDT)

Also, recall Fender-Belly Bodine, in [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=I#inconvenience ''Mason & Dixon'']: "Back on old H.M.S. ''Inconvenience'', we wasted many a Day and Night watching that fancy Counter get smaller by the minute..." (p.28)

'''patriotic bunting''' 
TRP reminds again that this is a very American skyship. 
AtD has many echoes of Doctorow's "Ragtime": Doctorow fictionalises the same era, including anarchists, bombings, and early Hollywood.

'''aeronautics''' 
It has been suggested that Pynchon relied to the Britannica 11th as a major reference for his treatment of early aeronautics. [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Aeronautics|Brittanica 11th on Aeronautics]

'''five-lad crew''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo (ship commander), Lindsay Noseworth (master-at-arms), Miles Blundell (handyman apprentice), Darby Suckling (factotum and mascot), and Chick Counterfly. The commander's name evokes Randolph St., a main thoroughfare in Chicago. Perhaps also saint(liness) and cosmos?

'''The [[Chums of Chance]]''' 
To be chummy with chance might mean lucky, fond of gambling, fond of chaos, irrational, or anarchist. Or maybe they became chums by accident. The "chance" may also be that of the winds that carry them in directions not always intended.
:The American philospher Charles Sanders Peirce, who set down his most important ideas in the late 1800's, argued that 'Chance' was a feature of the universe that can refute all determinisms.

"The certainty of chance" is a Surrealist slogan. We learned from ''Slow Learner'' that Pynchon was influenced early by Surrealism.
The slogan is quoted in this obit of a real life
character out of Pynchon, George Melly, Jazz singer, writer, anarchist and polymorphous lover.[http://www.economist.com/search/search.cfm?rv=2&qr=melly&area=1&x=6&y=7]

Cameraderie and isolation are two recurring topics in Pynchon's works. The Chums are a band of heroes like those commonly featured in the 19th century boys' fiction that Pynchon evokes, but also recall Pynchon's high school fictions, [http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_hamster.html Voice of the Hamster] and [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_boys.html The Boys], in which the teenage Pynchon lovingly portrayed his group of high school chums, known as, simply, "The Boys."

[[image:dart-explorigator.jpg|thumb|120px|right]]The Chums are reminiscent of two comics of the early 20th century, [[Little Nemo|''Little Nemo in Slumberland'']], by Windsor McCay, and ''The Explorigator'', by Harry Grant Dart. "The Explorigator" was the name of a fantastic airship that traversed the universe. It was manned by Admiral Fudge, a youthful adventurer and inventor, accompanied by a group of friends, also children his age (around nine or ten): Detective Rubbersole, Maurice Mizzentop, Nicholas Nohooks, Grenadier Shift, Teddy Typewriter, and Ah Fergetitt. ''The Explorigator'' ran for 14 weeks in 1908 and made an impression for its imaginative and visual creativity. [[The Explorigator|More on ''The Explorigator'']] <ref>[http://lambiek.net/artists/d/dart_harry_grant.htm Lambiek Comiclopedia]</ref>

The names of the Chums may also be derived from famous Jazz musicians: Miles (Davis), Chick (Corea), Darby (Hicks), (Boots) Randolph, and (Vachel) Lindsay (a stretch here?), notes the [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html#c116587978292060684 Chumps of Choice blog].

The creativity of Pynchon's naming of the Chums, as other characters, shows yet again his Dickensian influence.

Note that there's five Chums, the number of chapters of the book (a-and the number of letters in "Chums"!).

'''Chicago''' 
It has been suggested that Pynchon relied on the [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/ 1911 Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica] as a major reference for his treatment of 1890s Chicago. [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Chicago 1911 Britannica entry on Chicago]

Also, The band Chicago's third hit song "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" deals with how one faces living in a world under constraints of time [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Does_Anybody_Really_Know_What_Time_It_Is%3F]. The opening lyrics are:

Does anybody really know what time it is?
Does anybody really care?
About Time...

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. The International Exposition was held in a building which for the first time was devoted to electrical exhibits. It was a historical moment and the beginning of a revolution, as Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse introduced the public to electrical power by providing alternating current to illuminate the Exposition. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry]. This World's Fair was enveloped in optimism for the future. "The thousand or more such wonders which awaited [the Chums] there." p.3

'''lifelines''' 
Called "manropes" on sailing ships. Ropes running fore-and-aft above the gunwales to prevent sailors getting blown overboard. They were held up by short stanchions inserted into holes in the rails. Source: ''The Ashley Book of Knots,'' 1944.

'''as my faithful readers will remember''' 
Pynchon here is immediately inserting this story into a larger canon of Chums of Chance fictions, titles of which are mentioned in subsequent pages.

'''mascotte''' 
The English word 'mascot' has its origin in the late 19th cent.: from French mascotte. The spelling may also be a tribute to the Dutch brand of rolling papers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mascotte_%28rolling_papers%29 [Wikipedia]]

==Page 4==

'''Professor''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo is called Professor.
"Professor" was a common title for early hot-air balloonists. [EC]

'''"Turn to"''' 
Evokes the "Go to!" of Majistral and compatriots, ''V.'', chapter eleven. "Turn to" is also a shipboard expression, "put your back into it" or something of the kind.

'''Perhaps its familiarity... rendered it temporarily invisible to you." 
Perhaps an admonition from the author that familiar things will be easily overlooked?
I think the fact that they were picnic baskets matters...TRP perhaps saying, as he seems to suggest elsewhere, that we overlook the simple pleasures too often.

'''"for Miles, while possessed of good intentions and the kindest heart in the little band, suffered at times from a confusion in his motor processes, often producing lively results, yet as frequently compromising the crew's physical safety.'''" 
Talk about Filles de Kilimanjaro, a prolonged effect on survivors after the bombings of 1945?

'''Chick Counterfly''' 
Three possibilities: (1) A counter fly is an annoyance in (say) the butcher's shop. (2) Chick always speaks "counter" to anyone else's "flight" of imagery. (3) The only non-''AtD''-related uses of this word that I've found came in patents describing mechanisms; "the counterfly direction" means contrary to the direction everything else is flying in, hence this character counters the flying of the craft?

He is the only Chum we know who was "rescued" from the "real" world. Meaning there? To be counter to flying is to be earthbound, where he started and he is the one with whom the conversation about relanding
on a different "earth" happens.

Like Suckling's name suggesting a relationship to another Pynchon character (Pig Bodine), Pynchon winks at a relationship between Counterfly and Tyrone Slothrop. In Counterfly´s first utterance in the book, “Ha ha,” cried young Counterfly, “say, but if you ain’t the most slob-footed chap I ever seen!” you can derive "Tyrone Slothrop" from an anagram of Counterfly and "slob-footed chap."

:Huh? That's a pretty sloppy anagram, ain't it? What about that "b" and that"d" ... this is ''way'' too much of a stretch. There's something to these names, perhaps, but I don't think you're close here, friend.

==Page 5==

'''"all tableware with Chums of Chance Insignia is Organizational property"''' 
The organization in question is the Chums of Chance themselves, here considered as an institution rather than as a collection of individuals.

'''picklesome''' 
Having the nature of a pickle, i.e, a boy who is inclined to mischief.

A word not much seen since the nineteenth century.

'''Pugnax''' 
I suspect that, in keeping with a very strong [[Birds|"bird" theme]] (the original aeronauts!) in ''Against the Day'', Pynchon may have named Pugnax after a bird called the Ruff (''Philomachus pugnax'') which is a medium-sized wader. Note that Pugnax's first "utterance" is "Rr Rff-rff Rr-rr-rff-rrf-rrf"...

There are a number of characters named after birds or bird sounds: Linnet Dawes, "Pert" Chirpingdon-Groin (there is a pert bird), and Wren Provenance immediately come to mind, but I'm sure there are others, and there are myriad bird references and metaphors (the Sodality of Ǣtheronauts and their mechanical wings); I just haven't had the time to explore it deeply, but others may... (Just read [[Birds|the bit about birds]] from ''Homage to Pythagoras''...

You can even make a semiserious case that the Aeronauts are named for a bird, the white-throated swift, ''Aeronautes saxatalis'' [[ATD_243-272#Page_266|(mentioned on p. 266)]].

The name meaning, in Latin, "likes to fight" (i.e. one who is pugnacious). Pugnax's fantastic intelligence recalls another intelligent Pynchon dog, the Learned English Dog in ''Mason & Dixon''. His manner of speech is somewhat reminiscent of the mystery-solving cartoon dog Scooby-Doo, and [http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0612&msg=112507&sort=date members of PYNCHON-L] have speculated that his eyebrows and reading habits allude to Gromit, from the [http://www.wallaceandgromit.com/ Wallace and Gromit] claymation films.

Could this name be an homage to the dog in the Asterix comics, Idéfix in French; Dogmatix in English? Many of the character in the Asterix comics have names ending in "x".

'''"...during a confidential assignment in Our Nation's Capitol (see ''The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit'')..."''' 
This could be seen as a criticism of an American President, present or past. President Bush is a candidate, considering the Pynchon-authored [[Against the Day description|Amazon.com book description]] which included "With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

The Chums "rescued Pugnax, then but a pup"--an innocent, a child creature--"from a furious encounter..between rival packs of the city's wild dogs".
The wild dogs equal both political parties?

'''lavatorial assaults''' 
"from the sky, which no one can "begin to try to record, much less coordinate reports of" recall the V-2 rockets which are linked to Slothrop's erections in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. That is, pee from the sky is "folklore, superstition, or perhaps...the religious" in ATD compared to rockets screaming across the sky and the destruction in GR.

This also recalls jokes and urban legends regarding frozen waste from leaky airplane lavatories (i.e., "you can still be hit by an icy B.M.")

==Page 6==

'''''Princess Casamassima''''' 
Published 1886 (James had published two others by 1893), a classic dealing with terrorists, anarchists, and bombings. [http://www.henryjames.org.uk/pcasa/home.htm Full text] Sequel to "Roderick Hudson". It's the only Henry James novel in which he takes on such overtly political subjects, the only one which deals with violent extremes of human behavior. 
:Thematically, it's reactionary, the opposite of AtD. 
:ATD is not reactionary but also not the opposite of Princess Casamassima thematically, it can be easily argued.

Pugnax prefers in his reading "sentimental tales about his own species [rather] than those exhibiting extremes of human behavior, which he appeared to find a bit lurid." It seems Pynchon is slyly commenting on James' Princess Casamassima here in that that James novel DID deal with 'extremes of human behaviour' yet Pugnax prefers 'sentimental tales'! As many who have had dogs know, often when raised from puppyhood with loving owners, they 'think they are human'. Pugnax learns where to pee off the gondola - a pretty natural function for a dog - "like the rest of the crew".

Or: it is a theme in GR, that the book, writing itself, is an abstraction from experience and not, of course, the thing itself. Noseworth, "who placed upon the word 'book' . . . contempt" did, however, know the subject matter of 'Princess Casamassima.' He, Noseworth, hopes they will "suffer no occasion for exposure more immediate than that to be experienced, as with Pugnax at this moment, safely within the leaves of some book." It matters that the Chums ARE also characters in books of their adventures.

It should also be noted that the Princess Casamassima is one of the rare characters in James' novels who appears in more than one work. She was originally a character in the 1875 novel Roderick Hudson, where her name was, quite fittingly, Christina Light.

'''Placing . . . an emphasis''' 
Lapse of authorial control? Surely the creator of the ''Chums'' novels would not write such a Pynchonian sentence fragment!

'''Pugnax sniffed . . . as always this scent eluded him''' 
If Pugnax doesn't detect a human scent, that suggests Lindsay is not human. Not human, Master-at-Arms, speaks in hyper-constructed prose, has a notably short fuse . . . he's Lieutenant Worf of ''Star Trek, the Next Generation.''

'''''Krakatoa''''' 
Erupted 1883. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa Wikipedia entry.]

'''Heino Vanderjuice of New Haven''' 
Scientist who designed the ''Inconvenience's'' hydrogen engine. "Vanderjuice" suggests both "wonder juice" and "wander juice," fitting since his engine allows the Chums to wander and is wondrous insofar as it apparently violates the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics second law of thermodynamics]. "Heino" (HIE-no) is a man's given name [http://www.behindthename.com/php/view.php?name=heino meaning 'home'] in German, Finnish, and Estonian. Perhaps an allusion to the German pop star, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heino Heino].

:Um, a quibble: ''Vanderjuice'' is some kind of corrupted Dutch, and in Dutch the name Heino would be pronounced HAY-no. He is not an immigrant, though, and American speakers no doubt say HIGH-no.

Jules Verne influence? Vanderjuice a red herring, pointing to Dutch origin and electrical ("juice") background? Or does one try to parse the name into eg "Fond O' Juice"?

'''no better than a perpetual-motion machine''' 
A perpetual-motion machine is not just one that runs forever, but one that ''performs work'' forever without any input of energy. All PM machines ever invented have been either hoaxes ("secret free energy source the government doesn't want you to know about") or mistakes. The hydrogen generator/engine is neither, which is why the disdainful phrase "no better than" is crucial.

By the way, how does one generate hydrogen? In high school chem lab we used zinc filings and hydrochloric acid, but that seems unsuitable with Miles around. Is it possible Vanderjuice has invented a photovoltaic electrolysis cell?

'''Miles, with his marginal gifts of coördination, and Chick, with a want of alacrity fully as perceptible''' 
Like the old gag: The food in this restaurant isn't any good, but the service is awful.

'''ratlines and shrouds''' 
''Inconvenience'' is rigged like a sailing ship of the period, though it's hard to see why she needs to be. Shrouds fan out from a masthead down to a rail; ratlines run horizontally to join them. The whole affair serves the sailors as a ladder.

'''". . . anemometer of the Robinson's type"''' 
Cup anemometer invented in 1846 by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Thomas_Romney_Robinson Dr. John Thomas Romney Robinson]. Cup anemometers are still commonly used to measure wind speed because of their simplicity and reliability in a variety of environmental conditions. [http://www.arm.ac.uk/annrep/annrep2000/node13.html pic]

'''how rapidly the ship was proceeding''' 
But you can't measure the craft's progress by measuring wind speed at a point on the craft itself. All you get from the anemometer is a speed relative to the air, which is in variable motion. Since the craft is moving at the speed of the wind plus the speed of its propulsion device, the speed found by the anemometer is basically useless.

==Page 7==

'''Porfirio Díaz''' 
President of Mexico 1876-1880, 1884-1911. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porfirio_D%C3%ADaz Wikipedia]

In most countries, the Interior Ministry (Ministry of Internal Affairs, Home Office, etc.) ran programs like secret police. Are the Chums working for forces of conservativism?

'''"beside a black-water river of the Deep South". 
Blackwater River is in lower central Florida, pretty deep south; but there are numerous rivers in swampy areas that run black with organic matter.

'''a bitter and unresolved "piece of business"''' 
Rather than give a proper reason for the Chums to be in the Deep South, the narrator cops out by pleading that it's "not advisable" to specify.

'''"the Rebellion of thirty years previous"''' 
The Civil War was not called such during the time it was occurring; the South called it "the war between the states" to emphasize both their right to secede from the union and that this was a war between sovereign states; the North called it "the Rebellion of 1861" or, after termination of hostilities, "the Rebellion of 1861-1865," appellations that did not recognize the South's right to secede.

'''"one still not advisable to set upon one's page"''' 
The American Civil War, that "rebellion of thirty years previous," has not yet become a suitable subject for an adventure tale such as the Chums'.

'''absquatulated''' 
Means to move away quickly, usually to avoid capture. Apparently a mock-Latinate formation, "to go off and squat somewhere else." [http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-abs1.htm A brief article] on the history and etymology of "absquatulate." 
The word is used in Vineland.

'''"Crackerjack!" exclaimed Chick.''' 
Cracker Jack, the food, was first sold at the Chicago Exhibition of 1893, though it did not bear its present name. As one word here, however, it is not the candy: "Crackerjack" entered English first as a noun referring to "a person or thing of marked excellence," then as an adjective. The foodstuff gained its present name, according to the [http://www.crackerjack.com/history.php official Cracker Jack website], in 1896. The OED lists the first written use of "crackerjack" as 1895, two years after the present scene. It is by no means impossible, however, that the term would have been current in the spoken language in 1893.

'''to approach the gates of the Penitentiary''' 
A genuine saying. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Quay Matthew Quay,] a political kingmaker of the 1880s and 90s, said of Benjamin Harrison's squeaker victory over Grover Cleveland in 1888 that Harrison would "never know how many Republicans were compelled to approach the gates of the penitentiary to make him president."

'''posse comitatus''' 
What Western movie fans know as a "posse," i.e., citizens conscripted by a sheriff to assist in law enforcement. (See the Wikipedia entry on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_comitatus_(common_law) Posse Comitatus].) Remember that the ''Chums'' author gets paid by the word.

In the 1980s, a radical, violent, right-wing and anti-government movement adopted the name "Posse Comitatus."

==Page 8==

'''a pocketful of specie''' 
Specie means coins as opposed to paper money.

'''the town of Thick Bush''' 
Aside from whether this phrase might apply to some political figure of the past or present, "thick bush" is the literal meaning of the Spanish Matagorda, the name of many towns in Latin America and one on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

'''"which directs us never to interfere with legal customs of any locality down at which we may happen to have touched"''' 
Like the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_directive Prime Directive] in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_trek ''Star Trek'']. Lindsay's fussy syntax echoes Winston Churchill's exasperated "This is the kind of carping criticism up with which I will not put."

'''legal customs''' 
Legal = pertaining to law, in this case lynch law. The Chums are interpreting their Prime Directive pretty broadly here.

'''Katie bar the door''' 
An expression that means that there's trouble brewing. (See [http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-kat1.htm this article] about the expression's etymology.)

'''Ku Klux Klan''' 
Reminiscent of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan Klan] encounter scenes in the Coen Brothers' ''O Brother, Where Art Thou''.

'''tupelo, cypress, and hickory''' 
The trees are no help in locating the town; all three kinds like bottom land and grow all over the South.

'''speed . . . made it nearly invisible from the ground''' 
Few people in 1893 had seen a manmade object moving at 60 miles an hour, and many thought such a speed was lethal anyway. The ''Chums'' author suggests such an outlandish speed would make ''Inconvenience'' just a blur in the sky. Of course you can read the fin numbers on an airliner landing at 150 knots, but he didn't know that.

''Pedantry alert:'' In perfectly transparent air a ship flying a mile off the ground is visible about 125 miles away. If its flight path takes it right over your head, you can follow it for 250 miles. If it is making a groundspeed of 60 miles per hour, it takes 4 hours and change to go from horizon to horizon. In typical "clear" air (visibility say 30 miles), you will see the ship in your sky for a solid hour. These rough figures show how wrong the narrator is about speed.

'''way better than a mile a minute''' 
The Chums' point of departure is unknown, but they arrived in Chicago after catching a southerly wind (pg 3), southerly meaning "wind blowing from the south." The Chums surpass 60 miles an hour here, but as their previous speed was unknown, it's difficult to know where they were leaving from. (New Orleans to Chicago is 834 miles, slightly less than 14 hours at 60 miles/hour, so a possibility.)

==Page 9==

'''locker''' 
On board ship, any cabinet with a door or lid.

'''"Do not imagine, that in coming aboard ''Inconvenience'' you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual..."''' 
This may be Pynchon directly addressing the reader. Given that his [[Against_the_Day_description|book description]] proclaims the world of AtD as "what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two," this paragraph seems to indicate that Pynchon, like all great fantasy or sci-fi writers, does not intend to create a world where anything goes. Rather, he will create a world that differs from ours but then obey the rules and constraints he's already established. 
Cf. Pynchon's own relevant words in the introduction to Slow Learner. He remarks that in non-realistic fiction, he had to learn that not anything went.

A-and it must mean, coming from the commander, that all aboard the ''Inconvenience'' are also subjects to the 'facts' of the world. "The World is All that is the Case", from Wittgenstein, quoted in V.
(in the original German)

'''"Going up is like going north."''' 
Air gets cooler as the ship ascends into higher altitudes, and therefore like travelling northward. This page also suggests some further mystery of the Chums may be revealed to Chick and the reader in time.

:North is not a positive place in Pynchon's world. It is associated with anti-life---coldness as here---compared to the South, a place of light and warmth, such as the tropics. See GR.

:But to go far enough north means heading south again, observes Chick Counterfly--is this one meaning of his name? Then one would be "approaching the surface of another planet, maybe?" asks Chick.

"Not exactly" [answers Randolph] "No. Another 'surface', but an earthly one"
"You'll see. In time, of course". Time is earthly?

'''"Another 'surface'"''' 
In ancient conics the cone is formed by taking a line through a point (the vertex) at a particular angle to a plane and then inscribing a circle on the plane. Two conic surfaces are made by the motion of this line, one below this point and one above. The three conic sections (hyperbola, parabola, and ellipse) are created by slicing the conic surface(s) at different angles.
:huh?[[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:38, 15 January 2007 (PST)
:If you read this for plain meaning, then it's true (or Randolph believes) that there's another earthly surface, to which you can descend by ascending far enough above this one. Surely it is pertinent here that Pynchon's dear friend Richard Fariña (1937-66) titled his novel ''Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me.''

==Page 10==

'''Stockyards''' 
Chicago was, at the time, the meat-packing and slaughtering capital of the United States. The stench from the stockyards below must have been memorable.

'''...looked up at the airship in wonder..." 
The sight of any airship in 1893 must have been rare indeed. 
Our history reports that the first practical airships were built in 1898; [[ATD_429-459#Page_454|the idea or icon was around by 1896, though.]]

'''Beneath the rubbernecking Chums of Chance wheeled streets and alleyways''' 
Optical illusion. As you fly over a grid of streets, you perceive a landmark far away to move slowly while the lateral streets near you just whip past. Your brain interprets that the same way as hub and spokes, i.e., the motion of a wheel. Interesting question, though: If the ''Chums'' author was just making this stuff up, how did he know about the illusion?

'''Cartesian grid''' 
From Rene Descartes, 17th century philosopher and mathematician; see Wikipedia entry, whose most famous argument, "I think therefore I am" and mathematical studies have often lead him to be seen as the first modern philosopher of ultra-rationality. Geometry has 'the Cartesian coordinant system, a grid. Chicago's streets are laid out in a very rational grid arrangement.

Pynchon is reputed to have written 'Gravity's Rainbow' on engineer's grid paper.

In modern mathematics, curves are described only in relation to the two dimensional grid (see previous page). If conic sections are not specifically being thought of here, the theme of dimensionality, at least, is already at play.

'''that unshaped freedom being rationalized into movement only in straight lines''' 
Rationalization is a key sociological concept [from online Dictionary of Social Science]:RATIONALIZATION
This term has two specific meanings in sociology. (1) The concept was developed by German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) who used it in two ways. First, it was the process through which magical, supernatural and religious ideas lose cultural importance in a society and ideas based on science and practical calculation become dominant. For example, in modern societies science has rationalized our understanding of weather patterns. Science explains weather patterns as a result of interaction between physical elements like wind-speed and direction, air and water temperatures, humidity, etc. In some other cultures, weather is thought to express the pleasure or displeasure of gods, or spirits of ancestors. One explanation is rationalized and scientific, the other mysterious and magical. Rationalization also involves the development of forms of social organization devoted to the achievement of precise goals by efficient means. It is this type of rationalization that we see in the development of modern business corporations and of bureaucracy. These are organizations dedicated to the pursuit of defined goals by calculated, systematically administered means. (2) Within symbolic interactionism, rationalization is used more in the everyday sense of the word to refer to providing justifications or excuses for one's actions.

'''"only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor."''' 
From innocent bovines to ...the world? "Single up all lines"....
Stockyards were organized in such a way that the cattle would proceed through a series of chutes and passages, until they arrived alone at the point of death.

"Progressive reduction of choices" also occurred in ''Mason & Dixon''—there were infinitely many wildernesses out to the west until M&D ran the line and rationalized the country into Maryland and Pennsylvania.

==Page 11==

'''plummet''' 
In the real world, this might be bad physics, as closing the valve wouldn't slow the descent. Objects in a fluid medium like air float if their weight is less than the weight of the fluid they displace (hence why one fills a balloon with a light gas such as hydrogen or helium). Once the ''Inconvenience'' loses its buoyancy, it will continue to fall, unless its weight is reduced to what a lesser amount of hydrogen could support. The Inconvenience, however, has a hydrogen producing apparatus that could kick in, slow, and eventually stop their descent.

'''bear a hand''' 
Nautical: help out.

==Page 12==

'''Liverpool Kiss''' 
A head butt.

'''Herr Riemann''' 
Riemann, Georg Friedrich Bernhard (1826-1866) (pronounced REE mahn or in IPA: ['ri:man]) was a German mathematician who made important contributions to analysis and differential geometry, some of them paving the way for the later development of general relativity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann Wikipedia entry].

'''''Mr.'' Noseworth''' 
Lindsay insisting on proper naval forms: an ensign, lieutenant (junior grade), lieutenant or lieutenant commander in the U.S. navy is correctly addressed as "Mister Surname."

'''"topological genius"''' 
Riemann's differential geometry goes beyond the Cartesian grid. See conic sections and dimensionality above, page 10.

==Page 13==

'''There was an "eager stampede" to the rail''' 
Why is eager stampede in quotation marks? The sentence reads fine without it. Does it seem to show ironic knowingness on the part of the narrator? If so, why and who is the narrator?
: I suspect this is a stylistic device from the turn of the century light literature that Pynchon is emulating-- placing a novel term in quotation marks. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 01:35, 23 December 2006 (PST)

:insightfully true, I suspect, but it still shows 'narratorial knowingness', yes?

: Cf. Flaubert's use of quotations in ''Madame Bovary'' to isolate what he deemed the contemptible argot of the bourgeoisie.

::Apparently not a cliche: [http://books.google.com//books?num=100&q=eager.stampede&as_brr=0 GoogleBooks]

'''"...among the brighter star-shapes of exploded ballast bags..."''' 
Recalls the opening line of ''Mason & Dixon'': "Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr‘d the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins..."

'''"...quite as if were some giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinizing from above, in a spirit of constructive censure."''' 
This is strikingly reminiscent of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odilon_Redon Odilon Redon's] 1882 Lithograph ''L'Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l'infini (The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity).'' [http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A2&page_number=4&template_id=1&sort_order=1 At MoMa's Online Collection]
Notice that society = censure, if constructive. Gamboling nude on a summer day was OK until the ''Inconvenience'', as eyeball, appeared.

:The Odilon Redon lithograph appears on the cover of the 1998 Vintage paperback edition of Ian McEwan's Enduring Love, whose first unforgettable chapter triggers the novel with a ballooning incident leaving the reader dangling over the edge of suspense and suspension.

==Page 14==

'''charmed into docility''' 
If it took only one small lad to moor the ship, she was indeed docile. A wiki contributor once saw a Goodyear blimp in Houston, Texas, landing. The craft had half a dozen long falls of rope hanging from her nose, and a ground crew of nearly two dozen men ready to take hold of them. The blimp approached nose-low, the crew took the ropes, and a gust of wind suddenly moved the ship. The crew chief gave a safety command and all the men let loose their ropes at once. On the third pass, all hands working together managed to stop the ship and get her moored. If ''Inconvenience'' was a fraction as changeable and hard to control, Darby made a great job of getting the ship staked out by himself.

'''Jacob's-ladder''' 
Used here as "a marine ladder of rope or chain with wooden or iron rungs" (Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged) but is suggestive of Jacob's ladder in Genesis:

Genesis 28:12 And he [Jacob] dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. (King James version)

'''a giant sack of soiled laundry''' 
Perhaps ''freshly'' soiled during the great hydrogen valve disaster.

'''''vol-à-voile''''' 
The narrator has turned the French phrase ''vol-à-voiles'' (gliding) into a verb (removing the ''s'').

'''gold-beaters' skin''' 
Very thin vellum (membrane taken from the caecum or blind stomach of an ox). To prepare gold for gilding, it was placed between sheets of vellum and hammered thin.

'''Evening Quarters''' 
Naval practice of mustering the crew at the end of the day's work.

==Page 15==

'''ukulelist''' 
Ukuleles also appear in ''Gravity's Rainbow'', ''Vineland'', and ''Mason & Dixon''. According to Jules Siegel's article, "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?", Pynchon himself played the ukulele in college.

'''Vagabonds of the Void''' 
The song performed by the Chums of Chance reflects the Rock and Roll attitude of the group towards the groundworld upon arrival. It's also the first time in the book we truly encounter the hipness of the group with some sort of Rolling Stones Nine Inch Nails fronting edge to it. 

[[image:Macassar-Oil.jpg|thumb|175px|''Macassar Oil. An Oily Puff for Soft Heads''|right]]'''Beaufort Scale''' 
A scale for measuring wind strength, developed 1805.

'''"Let the lightning lash ~ And the thunder trash" 
Again, the Chums are rock stars, the coolest cats in town.

'''"...forty-four buttons...one for each State of the Union." 
Wyoming was the 44th state admitted to the union in 1890.

'''port section of the crew''' 
The half of the crew permitted to go freely ashore this time. The other half tomorrow. "Port" and "starboard": are these simply either/or words that sailors remember easily?

'''Macassar oil''' 
Macassar oil is an oil used primarily by men in Victorian and Edwardian times to smooth their hair. It was advertised as containing oil from Macassar, which is the former name of Ujung Pandang, a district on the island of Celebes in Indonesia. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macassar_oil Wikipedia entry]

==Page 16==

'''About the fringes,' Randolph reminded the liberty-goers, 'of any gathering on the scale of this Exposition, are apt to lurk vicious and debased elements, whose sole aim is to take advantage of the unwary.''' 
Indeed, the Chicago World's Fair was haunted by one of America's more prolific and original serial killers, H.H. Holmes. Born in 1861, Holmes came to Chicago as a pharmacist and built an office building that was eventually dubbed 'The Castle'. Consisting of commercial stores on the first floor, and offices and apartments on the upper floors, the building also housed hidden rooms where Holmes murdered his victims, chutes that conveyed the bodies to the basement, and a chamber of horrors in the basement where he destroyed the corpses. Holmes took advantage of the World's Columbian Exposition to lure victims, primarily females who had come unaccompanied to Chicago, to the Castle for torture and murder. It is estimated that he killed over 200 people at the Castle while the Exposition was in operation. Two very good books about Holmes are The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson and Depraved by Harold Schechter. It is doubtful that Pynchon was thinking explicitly of Holmes when he wrote this passage, although he must be aware of the story. Randolph could not have known about Holmes since Holmes was not captured until after the Fair was over. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._H.H._Holmes Wikipedia entry]

'''tension of the gas''' 
I.e., the pressure in the bag.

==Page 17==

'''"as if it were something the stripling had only read about, in some boys' book of adventures...as if that page of their chronicles lay turned and done"''' 
The narrator makes us aware that Darby's adventures are as if/will be written down...the 'reality' of almost killing all of them is now just words on a page...as is this book, ATD?...Again a Pynchonian theme: no book is the reality.

'''"and the order 'About-face' had been uttered by some potent though invisible Commandant of Earthly Days, toward whom Darby, in amiable obedience, had turned again."''' 
Is this just a metaphor from the narrator to describe what it is like for Darby, or is it also self-referential to
all the adventures of the Chums?. Another Q: Is the Commandant of Earthly Days the invisible presence from whom the chums get their orders? Cf. earthly surface, p.9
:Related Q: Do the Chums receive their orders from the author of their books?

'''we were usually out the door and on the main road''' 
Dick and Chick knew the judge was more likely to order them out of town than into the lockup.

'''Chinese foofooraw''' 
Also spelled foofaraw, a great deal of fuss, or useless frills. Cf folderol. However, why Chinese?
:Chick's father tried to sell Mississippi to a Chinese syndicate.

'''cubeb''' 
The name for the berry and for the oil obtained from the unripe berry of the East Indian climbing shrub ''P. cubeba''. The dried fruits are sometimes used as a condiment or are ground and smoked in cigarette form as an herbal remedy. [http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/pepper The Free Dictionary] Also appears in ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' page 118.

'''"...goldurn Keeley Cure"''' 
A treatment for alcohol, nicotine and narcotic addiction involving injections of "bichloride" or "double chloride" of gold, and also known as the "gold cure". Named for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Keeley Dr. Leslie E. Keeley,] who opened the first of many Keeley Institutes in [http://www.dwighthigh.k12.il.us/dwight/dwight.htm Dwight, Illinois], not far from Chicago, in 1879.

==Page 18==

'''headgear''' 
Description vaguely reminiscent of "Madame Bovary". [http://robotwisdom.com/flaubert/bovary/bovary1.html [notes]]

'''eclipse green''' 
Apparently an actual shade. [http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/DIO_DRO/DIRECT.html [cite]]

'''Bindlestiffs of the Blue A.C.''' 
Bindlestiff means hobo; hence, the Hoboes of the Sky Aeronautical Club.

'''("Penny") Black''' 
The Penny Black was the world's first official adhesive postage stamp, issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1840. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black [Wikipedia]]

'''Tzigane''' 
French for "gypsy". Also a piece by Ravel. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzigane_(Ravel) [Wikipedia]]

'''Egypt''' 
Little Egypt is the southern area of the state of Illinois in the United States of America. Named so because it has a considerable river delta and a metropolis called Cairo (KAY-roe). The region is and was sometimes called simply "Egypt," especially in the 19th century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Egypt_(region) [Wikipedia]]

==Page 19==

'''goin all blue from the light of that electric fluid''' 
Their ship was beset by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elmo%27s_fire St. Elmo's fire,] a low-energy electrical discharge often seen on surface vessels and occasionally on aircraft. Electric charge does behave in some respects like a fluid and was long described in such terms.

'''Voices calling out together''' 
There is no reason to doubt they heard the voices, but an aural hallucination is not out of the question: a chorus of voices is one of the easiest effects to produce with a synthesizer.

[[image:balloons-paris.jpg|thumb|200px|Garçons de '71|right]]'''Garçons de '71''' 
French: The Boys of '71; During the Siege of Paris in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War Franco-Prussian War], 1870-1871, balloons were manufactured within railroad stations in Paris. The balloons were used to get mail and passengers out of Paris. The ''Garçons de '71'' are a (probably) fictional cadre of young men who operated such balloons [[Garçons de '71|Read on...]]

'''a condition of ''permanent siege''''' 
Surely no one has failed to notice what a "wartime president" is allowed to get away with. "No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

'''pétroleurs de Paris''' 
An early form of Molotov cocktail thrower during the Siege of Paris. There were pétroleurs and pétroleuses.

==Page 20==

'''they'll fly wherever they're needed''' 
While the Chums obey orders from above, the Garçons de '71 follow a different imperative.

'''energy we could feel, directed personally at us''' 
Someone may be trying to influence what the Bindlestiffs do, or keep them away from the Garçons' work of mercy.

==Page 21==

'''admissions gate''' 
Apparently a break in the fence, capitalized on by freelance impresarios.

'''fifty-cent pieces''' 
Odd. According to [http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html this remarkable Columbian Exposition site,] regular admission was just half a dollar. Maybe Lindsay and Miles could have negotiated with the midget.

==Page 22==

'''Kodaks''' 
The word Kodak was trademarked in 1888, and the first Kodak camera was sold with the slogan, "You press the button - we do the rest." In 1891, the company released the first daylight-loading camera, so film could be changed without a darkroom. Kodaks would have been a novelty at the fair in 1893.

'''half-light . . . in the interests of mercy . . . the safety of the lights''' 
Interesting contrast suggesting a tradeoff between comfort/solace in the shadows and safety in the bright light.

'''Isandhlwana''' 
Isandlwana is an isolated hill in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. On January 22, 1879, it was the site of the Battle of Isandlwana, where over 20,000 Zulu warriors defeated a contingent of British soldiers in the first engagement of the Anglo-Zulu War. Almost the entire column of about 1,200 British soldiers was killed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isandhlwana [Wikipedia]] You will find a chapter on Isandhlwana in any book that has the words "military" and "blunders" in the title.

==Page 23==

'''Tarahumara''' 
Indian tribe of Northern New Mexico, in the Sierra Madres, known for cave-dwelling in the late 19th century. [[Tarahumare_Indians|About the Tarahumara]]. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarahumara [Wikipedia]]

'''"geek"''' 
A geek's act comprised things no one would do who had not sunk all the way to the bottom of the carnie world: eating live creatures, throwing fits, and so forth. Much like the television show "Fear Factor," but sad rather than stultifying.

'''monte''' 
Three-card monte.

==Page 24==

'''the curse of Scotland''' 
A term used in poker, bridge and various other card games for the nine of diamonds. Dates from 1710. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Scotland [Wikipedia]]

'''like the electricity coming on... how everything fits together, connects. It doesn't last long, though.''' 
From something as random as calling out a card trick comes this extremely profound quote by Miles Blundell (full quote edited here). The heart of this quote/thought seems to be crucial.

What Miles describes is also the symptoms of a mild seizure - could he be epileptic? Epileptics were often credited with shamanic or prophetic powers, and many sightings of religious figures have been attributed to seizures. On page 4, Miles is also said to suffer from "confusion in his motor processes", which may be related.

'''Cracker Jack''' 
First sold at the at the first Chicago World's Fair in 1893. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_Jack [Wikipedia]]

'''New Levee district''' 
Chicago's redlight district c1890. [http://www.ipsn.org/genesis.htm [cite]]

'''Epworth League''' 
A Methodist youth organization founded in 1889. [http://www.southernmethodistchurch.org/id48.htm [cite]]

==Page 25==

'''Haymarket bomb''' 
The Haymarket Riot on May 4, 1886, in Chicago may be the origin of international May Day observances and in popular literature inspired the caricature of "a bomb-throwing anarchist." The causes of the incident are still controversial, although deeply polarized attitudes separating the business class and the working class in late 19th century Chicago are generally acknowledged as having precipitated the tragedy and its aftermath. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_bombing Wikipedia entry].

'''if the Governor decides to pardon that gang of anarchistic murderers''' 
In May of 1886, 350,000 workers, including 70,000 in Chicago were taking to the streets to rally for the eight hour work day. After four workers were killed by the police on May 3, the anarchist leaders in Chicago called for a meeting in Haymarket Square. Although the rally was peaceful, the police came in on horseback to break it up and an unknown individual in the crowd hurled a homemade bomb into the air. After the explosion, which killed a policeman, the police opened fire on the crowd. Subsequently, the anarchist leaders deemed responsible for the rally were arrested and tried for the murder of the policeman. The Eight men were convicted of the bombing and seven of them sentenced to death. Governor Richard J. Oglesby commuted two death sentences to life. Four were hanged and a fifth committed suicide. A later governor, John P. Altgeld, pardoned the three survivors on June 26, 1893, concluding that all eight of them were innocent. The last words of anarchist August Spies before he was hanged were 'The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.' Two very good books on the Haymarket Riot and the events surrounding it include The Haymarket Tragedy by Paul Avrich and Death In The Haymarket by James Green.

'''mixture of contempt and pity''' 
This is ''definitely'' not from one of the Chums' adventure stories.

'''embonpoint''' 
Convexity of body; what used to be called a "prosperous" look.

'''duck soup''' 
Meaning "an easy task," but also the name of a Marx Bros. movie. Perhaps relevant, given the cameo by Groucho promised on the book sleeve. Many of the Marx Brothers early movies had animal references in the title: Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup. The titles usually had nothing at all to do with the plot, although they contributed to the lunatic nature of the comedy. The expression 'Horse Feathers' is used a few times later on in Against The Day.

==References==
<references />

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 1-25

2007-09-22T06:55:29Z

Adrianboyd: /* Page 4 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==cover text==
The black text and its drop shadows are in different typefaces. It may be worth noting, from a conceptual point of view, that we can infer from the angle of the drop shadows that the light source is any individual holding the book—that is, the reader or a potential reader.

==cover seal==
The seal appears to be written in Tibetan language, according to somebody who posts regularly to Pynchon-l under the name "Ya Sam", who reports:

I contacted the Tibetan Cultural Centre with the request to translate
the mysterious legend on the AtD seal. They were kind enough to forward my
request to the Tibetan tranlsator Tenzin Namgyal to whose generosity we
owe the solution of one more ATD related mystery.

It is the Tibetan language, alright, and it means ...... Tibetan
Government Chamber of Commerce.

Read their response below:

:Dear Ya Sam, 
:I showed the seal you sent to our Tibetan translator, Tenzin Namgyal. He says the word to word translation is: Tibetan Government Commerce Chamber in other words: Tibetan Government Chamber of commerce. Why Pynchon has chosen to place this on the cover of his book is anyones guess. Reading the book reviews gave no insight into the reason. Perhaps after one has read it?

:Best wishes,

:Sandy Belth 
:Tibetan Cultural Center

Also of interest: the coin bears a striking resemblance to the doubloon in ''Moby-Dick'' that Ahab nails to the mainmast as a prize to the first crew member to sight the white whale. Melville's description runs thus:

:It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy example of these things. On its round border it bore the letters, REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a country planted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator, and named after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes, in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw the likeness of three Andes' summits; from one a flame; a tower on another; on the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra. (Ch.99, "The Doubloon")

==copyright page==
The copyright page states that ''Against the Day'' is published by Viking Penguin, but on the title page and elsewhere we can read that the book is published by Penguin Press. The copyright pages of other books from Penguin Press state "Penguin Press" as the publisher, as could be expected, and it seems likely that the substitution of "Penguin Press" with "Viking" is one of many typographical errors in the book (see [[errata]]).
I have confirmed from inside Penguin Press that this is a copyediting mistake. Here is a direct e-mail answer about the Viking Penguin listing: "this was a copyediting mistake that will be corrected. There was never a Viking contract for this book."

==Dedication==
Most of Pynchon's novels contain dedications-- ''Mason & Dixon'' ("For Melanie, and for Jackson") , ''Vineland'' ("For my mother and father"), and ''Gravity's Rainbow'' ("For Richard Fariña")-- but not so ''Against the Day,'' as published. Advance reading copies of the book did contain the words "Dedication TK" in italics, but this is simply [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Come publisher-speak] for "dedication to come." It is unknown whether Pynchon ever considered inclusion of a dedication or whether the publisher simply left the page open just in case, but the ultimate lack of a dedication may suggest that Pynchon feels he's thanked everyone he needs to thank.

==Epigraph==
"It's always night, or we wouldn't need light." - Thelonious Monk 
Jazz and particularly bebop seem to be a lifelong interest of Pynchon’s, appearing in some form in all his works and what biographical snippets exist. As a college student, Pynchon “spent a lot of time in jazz clubs, nursing the two-beer minimum,” by his own admission (''Slow Learner'', Introduction). The Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/that-thelonious-monk-epigraph.html notes] that: 1) in his youth, Pynchon allegedly referred to Monk as a "God"; 2) the character McClintic Sphere in ''V''. takes Monk's middle name, Sphere; and 3) "It's always night, or we wouldn't need light" was apparently something Monk was given to saying, rather than something he once said. For more on McClintic Sphere and Monk, see Charles Hollander's essay [http://www.howardm.net/tsmonk/pynchon.php Does McClintic Sphere in ''V.'' stand for Thelonious Monk?]. On [[ATD_724-747#Page 732|page 732]]: "...daylit America ... its steadfast denial of night."

==Page 1==

'''The Light Over the Ranges''' 
Range is defined in the Oxford American Dictionary as "a line or series of mountains or hills : the coastal ranges of the northwest," so "range" or "ranges" can be used to denote a number of mountains. 

'Ranges' may also refer to farms, homesteads and ranches in 1893 America. America was predominantly that in 1893. Cf. "Home, home on the range". 

"celebrating in song the wider range of life..." Thomas Pynchon on
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Waddell Helen Waddell's]
''The Wandering Scholars'', p. 8, Introduction to[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Learner ''Slow Learner], 1984.

A range is also a group of diverse objects. 

A-And range is a word full of its own meaning. Below is a partial list from one good word reference site on the web. 
The more this reader
tries to understand Against the Day, by rereading it and Pynchon's whole oeuvre, the more he feels 'range as diversity'--lost--lies behind TRP's opening chapter title. Especially once one knows how 'Light' is a major subject and theme in ATD.[[User:MKOHUT|MKOHUT]] 13:41, 28 May 2007 (PDT)MKohut
*scope: an area in which something acts or operates or has power or control: "the range of a supersonic jet"; "the ambit of municipal legislation"; "within the compass of this article"; "within the scope of an investigation"; "outside the reach of the law"; "in the political orbit of a world power" 

*change or be different within limits; "Estimates for the losses in the earthquake range as high as $2 billion"; "Interest rates run from 5 to 10 percent"; "The instruments ranged from tuba to cymbals"; "My students range from very bright to dull" 

*the limits within which something can be effective; "range of motion"; "he was beyond the reach of their fire" 

*a large tract of grassy open land on which livestock can graze; "they used to drive the cattle across the open range every spring"; "he dreamed of a home on the range" 

*roll: move about aimlessly or without any destination, often in search of food or employment; 

*have a range; be capable of projecting over a certain distance, as of a gun; "This gun ranges over two miles" 

*a series of hills or mountains; "the valley was between two ranges of hills"; "the plains lay just beyond the mountain range" 

*a place for shooting (firing or driving) projectiles of various kinds; "the army maintains a missile range in the desert"; "any good golf club will have a range where you can practice" 

*range or extend over; occupy a certain area; "The plants straddle the entire state" 

*lay out orderly or logically in a line or as if in a line; "lay out the clothes"; "lay out the arguments" 

*the limits of the values a function can take; "the range of this function is the interval from 0 to 1"

*a variety of different things or activities; "he answered a range of questions"; "he was impressed by the range and diversity of the collection" 

*crop: feed as in a meadow or pasture; "the herd was grazing" 

*compass: the limit of capability; "within the compass of education"

*let eat; "range the animals in the prairie"

[wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn wordnet]

==Page 3==

'''"Now single up all lines!"''' 
Pynchon was in the Navy for a spell and "single up all lines" is a common nautical term. Ships are docked with lines doubled -- that is, with two sets of ropes or chains holding the vessel to the dock. To "single up all lines" is to remove the redundant second lines in preparation to make way.

But the opening line has many possible connotations.
:The Modern Word's Quail [http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/pynchon_atd.html writes] that "it is simultaneously a self-directive and a call to the reader; suggesting that ''Against the Day'' is a culmination of his previous work, and also charging the reader to find meaning within its twisting labyrinth. It may also be a sly, preemptive joke on the book’s initial critics, as the novel begins with the launch of a bloated gasbag bearing a somewhat provocative name."

:"Single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in ''V.'', 11; ''COL49'', 31; ''Gravity's Rainbow'', 489; and ''Mason & Dixon'', 258, 260. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but ''Vineland''?)--in preparation for a voyage to...?

'''"Cheerly now...handsomely...very well!!"''' 
Cheerly means "heartily," and was traditionally used as cry of encouragement among sailors. Handsomely (in nautical context): carefully, in good order, unhurriedly.

:Pynchon served in the Navy and uses nautical language in most of his novels. ''Mason & Dixon'': "Cheerly. Cheerly, then, Lads..." (54).

'''"Windy City, here we come!"''' 
The nickname for Chicago, of course, but in 1893 the use meant city of braggarts more than it did wind. The earliest known references to the "Windy City" are from 1876, and involve Chicago's rivalry with Cincinnati. A popular myth states that "Windy City" was first used by New York Sun editor Charles Dana in the bidding for the 1893 Columbian Exposition. The popularity of the nickname has endured, even after the Cincinnati rivalry and the Columbian Exposition both ended. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windy_City,_Origin_of_Name_(Chicago)| Origin of name "Windy City" at Wikipedia]

'''Randolph St. Cosmo, the ship commander''' 
[[image:ex-voti-isernia.jpg|thumb|175px|Ex voti of Wax, from Isernia|right]]Historically, there are two versions of the 3rd century CE figure St. Cosmo (aka St. Cosmas): the "randy" St. Cosmo, aka the "modern Priapus," and the saintly martyred St. Cosmo of Church lore. Pynchon, it seems, is connecting Randolph St. Cosmo to the former. "Randy," as astute observers will note, is an adjective which means, well, "horny." There's a distinct sexual thread woven throughout ''Against the Day'' [[Basnight%2C_Lewis_%28%22Lew%22%29|(See the ''beginnings'' of exploring this angle...]]) a-and Heartsease, St. Cosmo's mate, is the first to get pregnant! so this seems to fit right in. [[St. Cosmo|Read more about the historical St. Cosmo...]]; and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sts._Cosmas_and_Damian Wikipedia entry]

In [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=V#veery ''Mason & Dixon''], Pynchon has the Veery brothers, Cosmo and Damian, who are professional effigy makes in Philadelphia! And, just to make it interesting, "He's a rare Wax Artist, our Cosmo is." (p. 290) (Note: Wax phallus effigies were offered by the women to St. Cosmo at the festivals held in his name, as shown above.)

'''Now secure the Special Sky Detail''' 
When a naval vessel is departing from port or returning to port, a specially trained team is put in charge of the complicated process. The command is, [http://tpub.com/content/administration/12968a/css/12968a_41.htm "Now set the Special Sea Detail."] ''Inconvenience'' is run along fairly strict naval lines—given the age of the officers and crew, you might say she is a tot ship—and the beginning of the book was preceded by an analogous "Now set the Special Sky Detail." Once the ship is aloft and clear of ground obstructions, the command comes, "Now secure the Special Sky Detail," meaning disband the team for the time being and all return to regular duties. The language, tasks and customs aboard the skyship will show parallels to navy usage throughout the book.

'''summer uniform of red-and-white-striped blazer and trousers of sky blue''' 
Calls to mind the color scheme of Ned Land's (Kirk Douglas) costume in Disney's 1954 film version of ''20,000 Leagues under the Sea''. 

Also calls to mind the colors of the American flag.

'''"scuttlebutt" . . . thousand . . . wonders''' 
A most vigorous campaign [to host the Columbian Exposition] was then inaugurated, the three other cities making a common cause against Washington, whose claim was based on the fact that the proposed exposition was to be held under auspices of the national government, and hence that the capital was the most appropriate place.... By each of the claimants every advantage was urged, and by each of their rivals every defect was exaggerated. Congressional committees accorded a hearing to the several delegations, that of Chicago being represented, among others, by DeWitt C. Cregier, Thomas B. Bryan, and Edward T. Jeffery. from "Book of the Fair" by Hubert Bancroft, 1893.
:"Scuttlebutt" is a very close equivalent to "water-cooler gossip." [http://www.jacksjoint.com/sailor_terminology.htm Here is a glossary] of nautical terms with some of the etymologies.

'''''Inconvenience''''' 
Pynchon's fictional navy includes the USS Scaffold and the Susanna Squaducci (''V.''), and the John E. Badass (''GR''). Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html notes] that the British Royal Navy has a long tradition of warships with names like Impulsive, Incendiary, Inconstant, Indignant, etc. Impulsive is the name of the ship Ploy, who loses all his teeth in V., gets transferred to.
Inconvenience is an apt name for the Chums' adventures in 'reality'. They are an inconvenience; they are inconvenienced. (In having to take on Chick Counterfly, for example). 

Pynchon uses the word ''inconvenience'' in a possibly thematic, connected way in ''Mason & Dixon'' and in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. In ''Mason & Dixon'', the word is applied to the difficulties of an Other, other human beings as we act, interact. See citations at the ''M & D'' wiki. Here is the clearest relevant use for understanding for the Chums' airship, perhaps: from ''Gravity's Rainbow'': "the gift of Daedalus that allowed him [Pokler] to put as much labyrinth as required between himself and the
''inconveniences of caring''. [Italics mine] They had sold him convenience, so much of it, all on credit, and now They were collecting."
page 435, Penguin paperback edition with the Frank Miller cover.

In addition, if we take the Latinate roots of in-con-ven-(ience) and willfully misread the "in" as adverbial "in" (as e.g. "in-come") rather than the privative "not" (as e.g. "in-cred-ible"), we get "the arriving-in-together"; the "inconvenience", then, is essentially a tongue-in-cheek "vehicle". 
I do not think it illuminating to "willfully misread"!?! We are trying to
willfully read possible meanings and resonances. [[User:MKOHUT|MKOHUT]] 06:01, 2 August 2007 (PDT)

Also, recall Fender-Belly Bodine, in [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=I#inconvenience ''Mason & Dixon'']: "Back on old H.M.S. ''Inconvenience'', we wasted many a Day and Night watching that fancy Counter get smaller by the minute..." (p.28)

'''patriotic bunting''' 
TRP reminds again that this is a very American skyship. 
AtD has many echoes of Doctorow's "Ragtime": Doctorow fictionalises the same era, including anarchists, bombings, and early Hollywood.

'''aeronautics''' 
It has been suggested that Pynchon relied to the Britannica 11th as a major reference for his treatment of early aeronautics. [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Aeronautics|Brittanica 11th on Aeronautics]

'''five-lad crew''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo (ship commander), Lindsay Noseworth (master-at-arms), Miles Blundell (handyman apprentice), Darby Suckling (factotum and mascot), and Chick Counterfly. The commander's name evokes Randolph St., a main thoroughfare in Chicago. Perhaps also saint(liness) and cosmos?

'''The [[Chums of Chance]]''' 
To be chummy with chance might mean lucky, fond of gambling, fond of chaos, irrational, or anarchist. Or maybe they became chums by accident. The "chance" may also be that of the winds that carry them in directions not always intended.
:The American philospher Charles Sanders Peirce, who set down his most important ideas in the late 1800's, argued that 'Chance' was a feature of the universe that can refute all determinisms.

"The certainty of chance" is a Surrealist slogan. We learned from ''Slow Learner'' that Pynchon was influenced early by Surrealism.
The slogan is quoted in this obit of a real life
character out of Pynchon, George Melly, Jazz singer, writer, anarchist and polymorphous lover.[http://www.economist.com/search/search.cfm?rv=2&qr=melly&area=1&x=6&y=7]

Cameraderie and isolation are two recurring topics in Pynchon's works. The Chums are a band of heroes like those commonly featured in the 19th century boys' fiction that Pynchon evokes, but also recall Pynchon's high school fictions, [http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_hamster.html Voice of the Hamster] and [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_boys.html The Boys], in which the teenage Pynchon lovingly portrayed his group of high school chums, known as, simply, "The Boys."

[[image:dart-explorigator.jpg|thumb|120px|right]]The Chums are reminiscent of two comics of the early 20th century, [[Little Nemo|''Little Nemo in Slumberland'']], by Windsor McCay, and ''The Explorigator'', by Harry Grant Dart. "The Explorigator" was the name of a fantastic airship that traversed the universe. It was manned by Admiral Fudge, a youthful adventurer and inventor, accompanied by a group of friends, also children his age (around nine or ten): Detective Rubbersole, Maurice Mizzentop, Nicholas Nohooks, Grenadier Shift, Teddy Typewriter, and Ah Fergetitt. ''The Explorigator'' ran for 14 weeks in 1908 and made an impression for its imaginative and visual creativity. [[The Explorigator|More on ''The Explorigator'']] <ref>[http://lambiek.net/artists/d/dart_harry_grant.htm Lambiek Comiclopedia]</ref>

The names of the Chums may also be derived from famous Jazz musicians: Miles (Davis), Chick (Corea), Darby (Hicks), (Boots) Randolph, and (Vachel) Lindsay (a stretch here?), notes the [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html#c116587978292060684 Chumps of Choice blog].

The creativity of Pynchon's naming of the Chums, as other characters, shows yet again his Dickensian influence.

Note that there's five Chums, the number of chapters of the book (a-and the number of letters in "Chums"!).

'''Chicago''' 
It has been suggested that Pynchon relied on the [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/ 1911 Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica] as a major reference for his treatment of 1890s Chicago. [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Chicago 1911 Britannica entry on Chicago]

Also, The band Chicago's third hit song "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" deals with how one faces living in a world under constraints of time [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Does_Anybody_Really_Know_What_Time_It_Is%3F]. The opening lyrics are:

Does anybody really know what time it is?
Does anybody really care?
About Time...

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. The International Exposition was held in a building which for the first time was devoted to electrical exhibits. It was a historical moment and the beginning of a revolution, as Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse introduced the public to electrical power by providing alternating current to illuminate the Exposition. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry]. This World's Fair was enveloped in optimism for the future. "The thousand or more such wonders which awaited [the Chums] there." p.3

'''lifelines''' 
Called "manropes" on sailing ships. Ropes running fore-and-aft above the gunwales to prevent sailors getting blown overboard. They were held up by short stanchions inserted into holes in the rails. Source: ''The Ashley Book of Knots,'' 1944.

'''as my faithful readers will remember''' 
Pynchon here is immediately inserting this story into a larger canon of Chums of Chance fictions, titles of which are mentioned in subsequent pages.

'''mascotte''' 
The English word 'mascot' has its origin in the late 19th cent.: from French mascotte. The spelling may also be a tribute to the Dutch brand of rolling papers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mascotte_%28rolling_papers%29 [Wikipedia]]

==Page 4==

'''Professor''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo is called Professor.
"Professor" was a common title for early hot-air balloonists. [EC]

'''"Turn to"''' 
Evokes the "Go to!" of Majistral and compatriots, ''V.'', chapter eleven. "Turn to" is also a shipboard expression, "put your back into it" or something of the kind.

'''Perhaps its familiarity... rendered it temporarily invisible to you." 
Perhaps an admonition from the author that familiar things will be easily overlooked?
I think the fact that they were picnic baskets matters...TRP perhaps saying, as he seems to suggest elsewhere, that we overlook the simple pleasures too often.

'''"for Miles, while possessed of good intentions and the kindest heart in the little band, suffered at times from a confusion in his motor processes, often producing lively results, yet as frequently compromising the crew's physical safety.'''" 
Talk about Filles de Kilimanjaro, a prolonged effect on survivors after the bombings of 1945?

'''Chick Counterfly''' 
Three possibilities: (1) A counter fly is an annoyance in (say) the butcher's shop. (2) Chick always speaks "counter" to anyone else's "flight" of imagery. (3) The only non-''AtD''-related uses of this word that I've found came in patents describing mechanisms; "the counterfly direction" means contrary to the direction everything else is flying in, hence this character counters the flying of the craft?

He is the only Chum we know who was "rescued" from the "real" world. Meaning there? To be counter to flying is to be earthbound, where he started and he is the one with whom the conversation about relanding
on a different "earth" happens.

Like Suckling's name suggesting a relationship to another Pynchon character (Pig Bodine), Pynchon winks at a relationship between Counterfly and Tyrone Slothrop. In Counterfly´s first utterance in the book, “Ha ha,” cried young Counterfly, “say, but if you ain’t the most slob-footed chap I ever seen!” you can derive "Tyrone Slothrop" from an anagram of Counterfly and "slob-footed chap."

:Huh? That's a pretty sloppy anagram, ain't it? What about that "b" and that"d" ... this is ''way'' too much of a stretch. There's something to these names, perhaps, but I don't think you're close here, friend.

==Page 5==

'''"all tableware with Chums of Chance Insignia is Organizational property"''' 
The organization in question is the Chums of Chance themselves, here considered as an institution rather than as a collection of individuals.

'''picklesome''' 
Having the nature of a pickle, i.e, a boy who is inclined to mischief.

A word not much seen since the nineteenth century.

'''Pugnax''' 
I suspect that, in keeping with a very strong [[Birds|"bird" theme]] (the original aeronauts!) in ''Against the Day'', Pynchon may have named Pugnax after a bird called the Ruff (''Philomachus pugnax'') which is a medium-sized wader. Note that Pugnax's first "utterance" is "Rr Rff-rff Rr-rr-rff-rrf-rrf"...

There are a number of characters named after birds or bird sounds: Linnet Dawes, "Pert" Chirpingdon-Groin (there is a pert bird), and Wren Provenance immediately come to mind, but I'm sure there are others, and there are myriad bird references and metaphors (the Sodality of Ǣtheronauts and their mechanical wings); I just haven't had the time to explore it deeply, but others may... (Just read [[Birds|the bit about birds]] from ''Homage to Pythagoras''...

You can even make a semiserious case that the Aeronauts are named for a bird, the white-throated swift, ''Aeronautes saxatalis'' [[ATD_243-272#Page_266|(mentioned on p. 266)]].

The name meaning, in Latin, "likes to fight" (i.e. one who is pugnacious). Pugnax's fantastic intelligence recalls another intelligent Pynchon dog, the Learned English Dog in ''Mason & Dixon''. His manner of speech is somewhat reminiscent of the mystery-solving cartoon dog Scooby-Doo, and [http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0612&msg=112507&sort=date members of PYNCHON-L] have speculated that his eyebrows and reading habits allude to Gromit, from the [http://www.wallaceandgromit.com/ Wallace and Gromit] claymation films.

Could this name be an homage to the dog in the Asterix comics, Idéfix in French; Dogmatix in English? Many of the character in the Asterix comics have names ending in "x".

'''"...during a confidential assignment in Our Nation's Capitol (see ''The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit'')..."''' 
This could be seen as a criticism of an American President, present or past. President Bush is a candidate, considering the Pynchon-authored [[Against the Day description|Amazon.com book description]] which included "With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

The Chums "rescued Pugnax, then but a pup"--an innocent, a child creature--"from a furious encounter..between rival packs of the city's wild dogs".
The wild dogs equal both political parties?

'''lavatorial assaults''' 
"from the sky, which no one can "begin to try to record, much less coordinate reports of" recall the V-2 rockets which are linked to Slothrop's erections in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. That is, pee from the sky is "folklore, superstition, or perhaps...the religious" in ATD compared to rockets screaming across the sky and the destruction in GR.

This also recalls jokes and urban legends regarding frozen waste from leaky airplane lavatories (i.e., "you can still be hit by an icy B.M.")

==Page 6==

'''''Princess Casamassima''''' 
Published 1886 (James had published two others by 1893), a classic dealing with terrorists, anarchists, and bombings. [http://www.henryjames.org.uk/pcasa/home.htm Full text] Sequel to "Roderick Hudson". It's the only Henry James novel in which he takes on such overtly political subjects, the only one which deals with violent extremes of human behavior. 
:Thematically, it's reactionary, the opposite of AtD. 
:ATD is not reactionary but also not the opposite of Princess Casamassima thematically, it can be easily argued.

Pugnax prefers in his reading "sentimental tales about his own species [rather] than those exhibiting extremes of human behavior, which he appeared to find a bit lurid." It seems Pynchon is slyly commenting on James' Princess Casamassima here in that that James novel DID deal with 'extremes of human behaviour' yet Pugnax prefers 'sentimental tales'! As many who have had dogs know, often when raised from puppyhood with loving owners, they 'think they are human'. Pugnax learns where to pee off the gondola - a pretty natural function for a dog - "like the rest of the crew".

Or: it is a theme in GR, that the book, writing itself, is an abstraction from experience and not, of course, the thing itself. Noseworth, "who placed upon the word 'book' . . . contempt" did, however, know the subject matter of 'Princess Casamassima.' He, Noseworth, hopes they will "suffer no occasion for exposure more immediate than that to be experienced, as with Pugnax at this moment, safely within the leaves of some book." It matters that the Chums ARE also characters in books of their adventures.

It should also be noted that the Princess Casamassima is one of the rare characters in James' novels who appears in more than one work. She was originally a character in the 1875 novel Roderick Hudson, where her name was, quite fittingly, Christina Light.

'''Placing . . . an emphasis''' 
Lapse of authorial control? Surely the creator of the ''Chums'' novels would not write such a Pynchonian sentence fragment!

'''Pugnax sniffed . . . as always this scent eluded him''' 
If Pugnax doesn't detect a human scent, that suggests Lindsay is not human. Not human, Master-at-Arms, speaks in hyper-constructed prose, has a notably short fuse . . . he's Lieutenant Worf of ''Star Trek, the Next Generation.''

'''''Krakatoa''''' 
Erupted 1883. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa Wikipedia entry.]

'''Heino Vanderjuice of New Haven''' 
Scientist who designed the ''Inconvenience's'' hydrogen engine. "Vanderjuice" suggests both "wonder juice" and "wander juice," fitting since his engine allows the Chums to wander and is wondrous insofar as it apparently violates the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics second law of thermodynamics]. "Heino" (HIE-no) is a man's given name [http://www.behindthename.com/php/view.php?name=heino meaning 'home'] in German, Finnish, and Estonian. Perhaps an allusion to the German pop star, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heino Heino].

:Um, a quibble: ''Vanderjuice'' is some kind of corrupted Dutch, and in Dutch the name Heino would be pronounced HAY-no. He is not an immigrant, though, and American speakers no doubt say HIGH-no.

Jules Verne influence? Vanderjuice a red herring, pointing to Dutch origin and electrical ("juice") background? Or does one try to parse the name into eg "Fond O' Juice"?

'''no better than a perpetual-motion machine''' 
A perpetual-motion machine is not just one that runs forever, but one that ''performs work'' forever without any input of energy. All PM machines ever invented have been either hoaxes ("secret free energy source the government doesn't want you to know about") or mistakes. The hydrogen generator/engine is neither, which is why the disdainful phrase "no better than" is crucial.

By the way, how does one generate hydrogen? In high school chem lab we used zinc filings and hydrochloric acid, but that seems unsuitable with Miles around. Is it possible Vanderjuice has invented a photovoltaic electrolysis cell?

'''Miles, with his marginal gifts of coördination, and Chick, with a want of alacrity fully as perceptible''' 
Like the old gag: The food in this restaurant isn't any good, but the service is awful.

'''ratlines and shrouds''' 
''Inconvenience'' is rigged like a sailing ship of the period, though it's hard to see why she needs to be. Shrouds fan out from a masthead down to a rail; ratlines run horizontally to join them. The whole affair serves the sailors as a ladder.

'''". . . anemometer of the Robinson's type"''' 
Cup anemometer invented in 1846 by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Thomas_Romney_Robinson Dr. John Thomas Romney Robinson]. Cup anemometers are still commonly used to measure wind speed because of their simplicity and reliability in a variety of environmental conditions. [http://www.arm.ac.uk/annrep/annrep2000/node13.html pic]

'''how rapidly the ship was proceeding''' 
But you can't measure the craft's progress by measuring wind speed at a point on the craft itself. All you get from the anemometer is a speed relative to the air, which is in variable motion. Since the craft is moving at the speed of the wind plus the speed of its propulsion device, the speed found by the anemometer is basically useless.

==Page 7==

'''Porfirio Díaz''' 
President of Mexico 1876-1880, 1884-1911. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porfirio_D%C3%ADaz Wikipedia]

In most countries, the Interior Ministry (Ministry of Internal Affairs, Home Office, etc.) ran programs like secret police. Are the Chums working for forces of conservativism?

'''"beside a black-water river of the Deep South". 
Blackwater River is in lower central Florida, pretty deep south; but there are numerous rivers in swampy areas that run black with organic matter.

'''a bitter and unresolved "piece of business"''' 
Rather than give a proper reason for the Chums to be in the Deep South, the narrator cops out by pleading that it's "not advisable" to specify.

'''"the Rebellion of thirty years previous"''' 
The Civil War was not called such during the time it was occurring; the South called it "the war between the states" to emphasize both their right to secede from the union and that this was a war between sovereign states; the North called it "the Rebellion of 1861" or, after termination of hostilities, "the Rebellion of 1861-1865," appellations that did not recognize the South's right to secede.

'''"one still not advisable to set upon one's page"''' 
The American Civil War, that "rebellion of thirty years previous," has not yet become a suitable subject for an adventure tale such as the Chums'.

'''absquatulated''' 
Means to move away quickly, usually to avoid capture. Apparently a mock-Latinate formation, "to go off and squat somewhere else." [http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-abs1.htm A brief article] on the history and etymology of "absquatulate." 
The word is used in Vineland.

'''"Crackerjack!" exclaimed Chick.''' 
Cracker Jack, the food, was first sold at the Chicago Exhibition of 1893, though it did not bear its present name. As one word here, however, it is not the candy: "Crackerjack" entered English first as a noun referring to "a person or thing of marked excellence," then as an adjective. The foodstuff gained its present name, according to the [http://www.crackerjack.com/history.php official Cracker Jack website], in 1896. The OED lists the first written use of "crackerjack" as 1895, two years after the present scene. It is by no means impossible, however, that the term would have been current in the spoken language in 1893.

'''to approach the gates of the Penitentiary''' 
A genuine saying. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Quay Matthew Quay,] a political kingmaker of the 1880s and 90s, said of Benjamin Harrison's squeaker victory over Grover Cleveland in 1888 that Harrison would "never know how many Republicans were compelled to approach the gates of the penitentiary to make him president."

'''posse comitatus''' 
What Western movie fans know as a "posse," i.e., citizens conscripted by a sheriff to assist in law enforcement. (See the Wikipedia entry on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_comitatus_(common_law) Posse Comitatus].) Remember that the ''Chums'' author gets paid by the word.

In the 1980s, a radical, violent, right-wing and anti-government movement adopted the name "Posse Comitatus."

==Page 8==

'''a pocketful of specie''' 
Specie means coins as opposed to paper money.

'''the town of Thick Bush''' 
Aside from whether this phrase might apply to some political figure of the past or present, "thick bush" is the literal meaning of the Spanish Matagorda, the name of many towns in Latin America and one on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

'''"which directs us never to interfere with legal customs of any locality down at which we may happen to have touched"''' 
Like the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_directive Prime Directive] in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_trek ''Star Trek'']. Lindsay's fussy syntax echoes Winston Churchill's exasperated "This is the kind of carping criticism up with which I will not put."

'''legal customs''' 
Legal = pertaining to law, in this case lynch law. The Chums are interpreting their Prime Directive pretty broadly here.

'''Katie bar the door''' 
An expression that means that there's trouble brewing. (See [http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-kat1.htm this article] about the expression's etymology.)

'''Ku Klux Klan''' 
Reminiscent of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan Klan] encounter scenes in the Coen Brothers' ''O Brother, Where Art Thou''.

'''tupelo, cypress, and hickory''' 
The trees are no help in locating the town; all three kinds like bottom land and grow all over the South.

'''speed . . . made it nearly invisible from the ground''' 
Few people in 1893 had seen a manmade object moving at 60 miles an hour, and many thought such a speed was lethal anyway. The ''Chums'' author suggests such an outlandish speed would make ''Inconvenience'' just a blur in the sky. Of course you can read the fin numbers on an airliner landing at 150 knots, but he didn't know that.

''Pedantry alert:'' In perfectly transparent air a ship flying a mile off the ground is visible about 125 miles away. If its flight path takes it right over your head, you can follow it for 250 miles. If it is making a groundspeed of 60 miles per hour, it takes 4 hours and change to go from horizon to horizon. In typical "clear" air (visibility say 30 miles), you will see the ship in your sky for a solid hour. These rough figures show how wrong the narrator is about speed.

'''way better than a mile a minute''' 
The Chums' point of departure is unknown, but they arrived in Chicago after catching a southerly wind (pg 3), southerly meaning "wind blowing from the south." The Chums surpass 60 miles an hour here, but as their previous speed was unknown, it's difficult to know where they were leaving from. (New Orleans to Chicago is 834 miles, slightly less than 14 hours at 60 miles/hour, so a possibility.)

==Page 9==

'''locker''' 
On board ship, any cabinet with a door or lid.

'''"Do not imagine, that in coming aboard ''Inconvenience'' you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual..."''' 
This may be Pynchon directly addressing the reader. Given that his [[Against_the_Day_description|book description]] proclaims the world of AtD as "what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two," this paragraph seems to indicate that Pynchon, like all great fantasy or sci-fi writers, does not intend to create a world where anything goes. Rather, he will create a world that differs from ours but then obey the rules and constraints he's already established. 
Cf. Pynchon's own relevant words in the introduction to Slow Learner. He remarks that in non-realistic fiction, he had to learn that not anything went.

A-and it must mean, coming from the commander, that all aboard the ''Inconvenience'' are also subjects to the 'facts' of the world. "The World is All that is the Case", from Wittgenstein, quoted in V.
(in the original German)

'''"Going up is like going north."''' 
Air gets cooler as the ship ascends into higher altitudes, and therefore like travelling northward. This page also suggests some further mystery of the Chums may be revealed to Chick and the reader in time.

:North is not a positive place in Pynchon's world. It is associated with anti-life---coldness as here---compared to the South, a place of light and warmth, such as the tropics. See GR.

:But to go far enough north means heading south again, observes Chick Counterfly--is this one meaning of his name? Then one would be "approaching the surface of another planet, maybe?" asks Chick.

"Not exactly" [answers Randolph] "No. Another 'surface', but an earthly one"
"You'll see. In time, of course". Time is earthly?

'''"Another 'surface'"''' 
In ancient conics the cone is formed by taking a line through a point (the vertex) at a particular angle to a plane and then inscribing a circle on the plane. Two conic surfaces are made by the motion of this line, one below this point and one above. The three conic sections (hyperbola, parabola, and ellipse) are created by slicing the conic surface(s) at different angles.
:huh?[[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:38, 15 January 2007 (PST)
:If you read this for plain meaning, then it's true (or Randolph believes) that there's another earthly surface, to which you can descend by ascending far enough above this one. Surely it is pertinent here that Pynchon's dear friend Richard Fariña (1937-66) titled his novel ''Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me.''

==Page 10==

'''Stockyards''' 
Chicago was, at the time, the meat-packing and slaughtering capital of the United States. The stench from the stockyards below must have been memorable.

'''...looked up at the airship in wonder..." 
The sight of any airship in 1893 must have been rare indeed. 
Our history reports that the first practical airships were built in 1898; [[ATD_429-459#Page_454|the idea or icon was around by 1896, though.]]

'''Beneath the rubbernecking Chums of Chance wheeled streets and alleyways''' 
Optical illusion. As you fly over a grid of streets, you perceive a landmark far away to move slowly while the lateral streets near you just whip past. Your brain interprets that the same way as hub and spokes, i.e., the motion of a wheel. Interesting question, though: If the ''Chums'' author was just making this stuff up, how did he know about the illusion?

'''Cartesian grid''' 
From Rene Descartes, 17th century philosopher and mathematician; see Wikipedia entry, whose most famous argument, "I think therefore I am" and mathematical studies have often lead him to be seen as the first modern philosopher of ultra-rationality. Geometry has 'the Cartesian coordinant system, a grid. Chicago's streets are laid out in a very rational grid arrangement.

Pynchon is reputed to have written 'Gravity's Rainbow' on engineer's grid paper.

In modern mathematics, curves are described only in relation to the two dimensional grid (see previous page). If conic sections are not specifically being thought of here, the theme of dimensionality, at least, is already at play.

'''that unshaped freedom being rationalized into movement only in straight lines''' 
Rationalization is a key sociological concept [from online Dictionary of Social Science]:RATIONALIZATION
This term has two specific meanings in sociology. (1) The concept was developed by German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) who used it in two ways. First, it was the process through which magical, supernatural and religious ideas lose cultural importance in a society and ideas based on science and practical calculation become dominant. For example, in modern societies science has rationalized our understanding of weather patterns. Science explains weather patterns as a result of interaction between physical elements like wind-speed and direction, air and water temperatures, humidity, etc. In some other cultures, weather is thought to express the pleasure or displeasure of gods, or spirits of ancestors. One explanation is rationalized and scientific, the other mysterious and magical. Rationalization also involves the development of forms of social organization devoted to the achievement of precise goals by efficient means. It is this type of rationalization that we see in the development of modern business corporations and of bureaucracy. These are organizations dedicated to the pursuit of defined goals by calculated, systematically administered means. (2) Within symbolic interactionism, rationalization is used more in the everyday sense of the word to refer to providing justifications or excuses for one's actions.

'''"only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor."''' 
From innocent bovines to ...the world? "Single up all lines"....
Stockyards were organized in such a way that the cattle would proceed through a series of chutes and passages, until they arrived alone at the point of death.

"Progressive reduction of choices" also occurred in ''Mason & Dixon''—there were infinitely many wildernesses out to the west until M&D ran the line and rationalized the country into Maryland and Pennsylvania.

==Page 11==

'''plummet''' 
In the real world, this might be bad physics, as closing the valve wouldn't slow the descent. Objects in a fluid medium like air float if their weight is less than the weight of the fluid they displace (hence why one fills a balloon with a light gas such as hydrogen or helium). Once the ''Inconvenience'' loses its buoyancy, it will continue to fall, unless its weight is reduced to what a lesser amount of hydrogen could support. The Inconvenience, however, has a hydrogen producing apparatus that could kick in, slow, and eventually stop their descent.

'''bear a hand''' 
Nautical: help out.

==Page 12==

'''Liverpool Kiss''' 
A head butt.

'''Herr Riemann''' 
Riemann, Georg Friedrich Bernhard (1826-1866) (pronounced REE mahn or in IPA: ['ri:man]) was a German mathematician who made important contributions to analysis and differential geometry, some of them paving the way for the later development of general relativity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann Wikipedia entry].

'''''Mr.'' Noseworth''' 
Lindsay insisting on proper naval forms: an ensign, lieutenant (junior grade), lieutenant or lieutenant commander in the U.S. navy is correctly addressed as "Mister Surname."

'''"topological genius"''' 
Riemann's differential geometry goes beyond the Cartesian grid. See conic sections and dimensionality above, page 10.

==Page 13==

'''There was an "eager stampede" to the rail''' 
Why is eager stampede in quotation marks? The sentence reads fine without it. Does it seem to show ironic knowingness on the part of the narrator? If so, why and who is the narrator?
: I suspect this is a stylistic device from the turn of the century light literature that Pynchon is emulating-- placing a novel term in quotation marks. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 01:35, 23 December 2006 (PST)

:insightfully true, I suspect, but it still shows 'narratorial knowingness', yes?

: Cf. Flaubert's use of quotations in ''Madame Bovary'' to isolate what he deemed the contemptible argot of the bourgeoisie.

::Apparently not a cliche: [http://books.google.com//books?num=100&q=eager.stampede&as_brr=0 GoogleBooks]

'''"...among the brighter star-shapes of exploded ballast bags..."''' 
Recalls the opening line of ''Mason & Dixon'': "Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr‘d the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins..."

'''"...quite as if were some giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinizing from above, in a spirit of constructive censure."''' 
This is strikingly reminiscent of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odilon_Redon Odilon Redon's] 1882 Lithograph ''L'Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l'infini (The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity).'' [http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A2&page_number=4&template_id=1&sort_order=1 At MoMa's Online Collection]
Notice that society = censure, if constructive. Gamboling nude on a summer day was OK until the ''Inconvenience'', as eyeball, appeared.

:The Odilon Redon lithograph appears on the cover of the 1998 Vintage paperback edition of Ian McEwan's Enduring Love, whose first unforgettable chapter triggers the novel with a ballooning incident leaving the reader dangling over the edge of suspense and suspension.

==Page 14==

'''charmed into docility''' 
If it took only one small lad to moor the ship, she was indeed docile. A wiki contributor once saw a Goodyear blimp in Houston, Texas, landing. The craft had half a dozen long falls of rope hanging from her nose, and a ground crew of nearly two dozen men ready to take hold of them. The blimp approached nose-low, the crew took the ropes, and a gust of wind suddenly moved the ship. The crew chief gave a safety command and all the men let loose their ropes at once. On the third pass, all hands working together managed to stop the ship and get her moored. If ''Inconvenience'' was a fraction as changeable and hard to control, Darby made a great job of getting the ship staked out by himself.

'''Jacob's-ladder''' 
Used here as "a marine ladder of rope or chain with wooden or iron rungs" (Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged) but is suggestive of Jacob's ladder in Genesis:

Genesis 28:12 And he [Jacob] dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. (King James version)

'''a giant sack of soiled laundry''' 
Perhaps ''freshly'' soiled during the great hydrogen valve disaster.

'''''vol-à-voile''''' 
The narrator has turned the French phrase ''vol-à-voiles'' (gliding) into a verb (removing the ''s'').

'''gold-beaters' skin''' 
Very thin vellum (membrane taken from the caecum or blind stomach of an ox). To prepare gold for gilding, it was placed between sheets of vellum and hammered thin.

'''Evening Quarters''' 
Naval practice of mustering the crew at the end of the day's work.

==Page 15==

'''ukulelist''' 
Ukuleles also appear in ''Gravity's Rainbow'', ''Vineland'', and ''Mason & Dixon''. According to Jules Siegel's article, "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?", Pynchon himself played the ukulele in college.

'''Fronting with a Nine Inch Nails edge''' 
The song performed by the Chums of Chance reflects the Rock and Roll attitude of the group towards the groundworld upon arrival: 
:: '''''For we're the''''' 
:: '''''Aces of the Altitudes''''' 
:: '''''Vagabonds of the Void...''''' 
:: '''''When some folks shrink with terror, say,''''' 
:: '''''We scarcely get annoyed.''''' 
It's also the first time in the book we truly encounter the hipness of the group.

[[image:Macassar-Oil.jpg|thumb|175px|''Macassar Oil. An Oily Puff for Soft Heads''|right]]'''Beaufort Scale''' 
A scale for measuring wind strength, developed 1805.

'''"Let the lightning lash ~ And the thunder trash" 
Again, the Chums are rock stars, the coolest cats in town.

'''"...forty-four buttons...one for each State of the Union." 
Wyoming was the 44th state admitted to the union in 1890.

'''port section of the crew''' 
The half of the crew permitted to go freely ashore this time. The other half tomorrow. "Port" and "starboard": are these simply either/or words that sailors remember easily?

'''Macassar oil''' 
Macassar oil is an oil used primarily by men in Victorian and Edwardian times to smooth their hair. It was advertised as containing oil from Macassar, which is the former name of Ujung Pandang, a district on the island of Celebes in Indonesia. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macassar_oil Wikipedia entry]

==Page 16==

'''About the fringes,' Randolph reminded the liberty-goers, 'of any gathering on the scale of this Exposition, are apt to lurk vicious and debased elements, whose sole aim is to take advantage of the unwary.''' 
Indeed, the Chicago World's Fair was haunted by one of America's more prolific and original serial killers, H.H. Holmes. Born in 1861, Holmes came to Chicago as a pharmacist and built an office building that was eventually dubbed 'The Castle'. Consisting of commercial stores on the first floor, and offices and apartments on the upper floors, the building also housed hidden rooms where Holmes murdered his victims, chutes that conveyed the bodies to the basement, and a chamber of horrors in the basement where he destroyed the corpses. Holmes took advantage of the World's Columbian Exposition to lure victims, primarily females who had come unaccompanied to Chicago, to the Castle for torture and murder. It is estimated that he killed over 200 people at the Castle while the Exposition was in operation. Two very good books about Holmes are The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson and Depraved by Harold Schechter. It is doubtful that Pynchon was thinking explicitly of Holmes when he wrote this passage, although he must be aware of the story. Randolph could not have known about Holmes since Holmes was not captured until after the Fair was over. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._H.H._Holmes Wikipedia entry]

'''tension of the gas''' 
I.e., the pressure in the bag.

==Page 17==

'''"as if it were something the stripling had only read about, in some boys' book of adventures...as if that page of their chronicles lay turned and done"''' 
The narrator makes us aware that Darby's adventures are as if/will be written down...the 'reality' of almost killing all of them is now just words on a page...as is this book, ATD?...Again a Pynchonian theme: no book is the reality.

'''"and the order 'About-face' had been uttered by some potent though invisible Commandant of Earthly Days, toward whom Darby, in amiable obedience, had turned again."''' 
Is this just a metaphor from the narrator to describe what it is like for Darby, or is it also self-referential to
all the adventures of the Chums?. Another Q: Is the Commandant of Earthly Days the invisible presence from whom the chums get their orders? Cf. earthly surface, p.9
:Related Q: Do the Chums receive their orders from the author of their books?

'''we were usually out the door and on the main road''' 
Dick and Chick knew the judge was more likely to order them out of town than into the lockup.

'''Chinese foofooraw''' 
Also spelled foofaraw, a great deal of fuss, or useless frills. Cf folderol. However, why Chinese?
:Chick's father tried to sell Mississippi to a Chinese syndicate.

'''cubeb''' 
The name for the berry and for the oil obtained from the unripe berry of the East Indian climbing shrub ''P. cubeba''. The dried fruits are sometimes used as a condiment or are ground and smoked in cigarette form as an herbal remedy. [http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/pepper The Free Dictionary] Also appears in ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' page 118.

'''"...goldurn Keeley Cure"''' 
A treatment for alcohol, nicotine and narcotic addiction involving injections of "bichloride" or "double chloride" of gold, and also known as the "gold cure". Named for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Keeley Dr. Leslie E. Keeley,] who opened the first of many Keeley Institutes in [http://www.dwighthigh.k12.il.us/dwight/dwight.htm Dwight, Illinois], not far from Chicago, in 1879.

==Page 18==

'''headgear''' 
Description vaguely reminiscent of "Madame Bovary". [http://robotwisdom.com/flaubert/bovary/bovary1.html [notes]]

'''eclipse green''' 
Apparently an actual shade. [http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/DIO_DRO/DIRECT.html [cite]]

'''Bindlestiffs of the Blue A.C.''' 
Bindlestiff means hobo; hence, the Hoboes of the Sky Aeronautical Club.

'''("Penny") Black''' 
The Penny Black was the world's first official adhesive postage stamp, issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1840. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black [Wikipedia]]

'''Tzigane''' 
French for "gypsy". Also a piece by Ravel. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzigane_(Ravel) [Wikipedia]]

'''Egypt''' 
Little Egypt is the southern area of the state of Illinois in the United States of America. Named so because it has a considerable river delta and a metropolis called Cairo (KAY-roe). The region is and was sometimes called simply "Egypt," especially in the 19th century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Egypt_(region) [Wikipedia]]

==Page 19==

'''goin all blue from the light of that electric fluid''' 
Their ship was beset by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elmo%27s_fire St. Elmo's fire,] a low-energy electrical discharge often seen on surface vessels and occasionally on aircraft. Electric charge does behave in some respects like a fluid and was long described in such terms.

'''Voices calling out together''' 
There is no reason to doubt they heard the voices, but an aural hallucination is not out of the question: a chorus of voices is one of the easiest effects to produce with a synthesizer.

[[image:balloons-paris.jpg|thumb|200px|Garçons de '71|right]]'''Garçons de '71''' 
French: The Boys of '71; During the Siege of Paris in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War Franco-Prussian War], 1870-1871, balloons were manufactured within railroad stations in Paris. The balloons were used to get mail and passengers out of Paris. The ''Garçons de '71'' are a (probably) fictional cadre of young men who operated such balloons [[Garçons de '71|Read on...]]

'''a condition of ''permanent siege''''' 
Surely no one has failed to notice what a "wartime president" is allowed to get away with. "No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

'''pétroleurs de Paris''' 
An early form of Molotov cocktail thrower during the Siege of Paris. There were pétroleurs and pétroleuses.

==Page 20==

'''they'll fly wherever they're needed''' 
While the Chums obey orders from above, the Garçons de '71 follow a different imperative.

'''energy we could feel, directed personally at us''' 
Someone may be trying to influence what the Bindlestiffs do, or keep them away from the Garçons' work of mercy.

==Page 21==

'''admissions gate''' 
Apparently a break in the fence, capitalized on by freelance impresarios.

'''fifty-cent pieces''' 
Odd. According to [http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html this remarkable Columbian Exposition site,] regular admission was just half a dollar. Maybe Lindsay and Miles could have negotiated with the midget.

==Page 22==

'''Kodaks''' 
The word Kodak was trademarked in 1888, and the first Kodak camera was sold with the slogan, "You press the button - we do the rest." In 1891, the company released the first daylight-loading camera, so film could be changed without a darkroom. Kodaks would have been a novelty at the fair in 1893.

'''half-light . . . in the interests of mercy . . . the safety of the lights''' 
Interesting contrast suggesting a tradeoff between comfort/solace in the shadows and safety in the bright light.

'''Isandhlwana''' 
Isandlwana is an isolated hill in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. On January 22, 1879, it was the site of the Battle of Isandlwana, where over 20,000 Zulu warriors defeated a contingent of British soldiers in the first engagement of the Anglo-Zulu War. Almost the entire column of about 1,200 British soldiers was killed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isandhlwana [Wikipedia]] You will find a chapter on Isandhlwana in any book that has the words "military" and "blunders" in the title.

==Page 23==

'''Tarahumara''' 
Indian tribe of Northern New Mexico, in the Sierra Madres, known for cave-dwelling in the late 19th century. [[Tarahumare_Indians|About the Tarahumara]]. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarahumara [Wikipedia]]

'''"geek"''' 
A geek's act comprised things no one would do who had not sunk all the way to the bottom of the carnie world: eating live creatures, throwing fits, and so forth. Much like the television show "Fear Factor," but sad rather than stultifying.

'''monte''' 
Three-card monte.

==Page 24==

'''the curse of Scotland''' 
A term used in poker, bridge and various other card games for the nine of diamonds. Dates from 1710. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Scotland [Wikipedia]]

'''like the electricity coming on... how everything fits together, connects. It doesn't last long, though.''' 
From something as random as calling out a card trick comes this extremely profound quote by Miles Blundell (full quote edited here). The heart of this quote/thought seems to be crucial.

What Miles describes is also the symptoms of a mild seizure - could he be epileptic? Epileptics were often credited with shamanic or prophetic powers, and many sightings of religious figures have been attributed to seizures. On page 4, Miles is also said to suffer from "confusion in his motor processes", which may be related.

'''Cracker Jack''' 
First sold at the at the first Chicago World's Fair in 1893. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_Jack [Wikipedia]]

'''New Levee district''' 
Chicago's redlight district c1890. [http://www.ipsn.org/genesis.htm [cite]]

'''Epworth League''' 
A Methodist youth organization founded in 1889. [http://www.southernmethodistchurch.org/id48.htm [cite]]

==Page 25==

'''Haymarket bomb''' 
The Haymarket Riot on May 4, 1886, in Chicago may be the origin of international May Day observances and in popular literature inspired the caricature of "a bomb-throwing anarchist." The causes of the incident are still controversial, although deeply polarized attitudes separating the business class and the working class in late 19th century Chicago are generally acknowledged as having precipitated the tragedy and its aftermath. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_bombing Wikipedia entry].

'''if the Governor decides to pardon that gang of anarchistic murderers''' 
In May of 1886, 350,000 workers, including 70,000 in Chicago were taking to the streets to rally for the eight hour work day. After four workers were killed by the police on May 3, the anarchist leaders in Chicago called for a meeting in Haymarket Square. Although the rally was peaceful, the police came in on horseback to break it up and an unknown individual in the crowd hurled a homemade bomb into the air. After the explosion, which killed a policeman, the police opened fire on the crowd. Subsequently, the anarchist leaders deemed responsible for the rally were arrested and tried for the murder of the policeman. The Eight men were convicted of the bombing and seven of them sentenced to death. Governor Richard J. Oglesby commuted two death sentences to life. Four were hanged and a fifth committed suicide. A later governor, John P. Altgeld, pardoned the three survivors on June 26, 1893, concluding that all eight of them were innocent. The last words of anarchist August Spies before he was hanged were 'The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.' Two very good books on the Haymarket Riot and the events surrounding it include The Haymarket Tragedy by Paul Avrich and Death In The Haymarket by James Green.

'''mixture of contempt and pity''' 
This is ''definitely'' not from one of the Chums' adventure stories.

'''embonpoint''' 
Convexity of body; what used to be called a "prosperous" look.

'''duck soup''' 
Meaning "an easy task," but also the name of a Marx Bros. movie. Perhaps relevant, given the cameo by Groucho promised on the book sleeve. Many of the Marx Brothers early movies had animal references in the title: Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup. The titles usually had nothing at all to do with the plot, although they contributed to the lunatic nature of the comedy. The expression 'Horse Feathers' is used a few times later on in Against The Day.

==References==
<references />

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

User:MKOHUT

2007-09-22T06:43:37Z

Adrianboyd: New page: Thanks... As I am reading the book... There's too much happening... and my thoughts are at the authors request.

Thanks... As I am reading the book... There's too much happening... and my thoughts are at the authors request.

Template:Pynchon Bio

2007-09-21T05:38:39Z

Adrianboyd: /* Themes and influence */

[[image:pynchon-simpsons.jpg|right]]'''Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr.''' (born May 8, 1937) is an American writer based in New York City. He is noted for his dense and complex works of fiction. Hailing from Long Island, Pynchon spent two years in the United States Navy and earned an English degree from Cornell University. After publishing several short stories in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he began composing the novels for which he is best known today: ''[http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ V.]'' (1963), ''[http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ The Crying of Lot 49]'' (1966), ''[http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Gravity's Rainbow]'' (1973), ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vineland Vineland]'' (1990), ''[http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Mason & Dixon]'' (1997), and ''[http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Against the Day]'' (2006).

Pynchon is regarded by many readers and critics as one of the finest contemporary authors. He is a MacArthur Fellow and a recipient of the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Both his fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, styles and themes, including (but not limited to) the fields of history, science and mathematics. Pynchon is also known for his avoidance of personal publicity: very few photographs of him have ever been published, and rumors about his location and identity have been circulated since the 1960s.

==Biography==
Thomas Pynchon was born in 1937 in Glen Cove, Long Island, New York, one of three children of Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Sr. (1907-1995) and Katherine Frances Bennett (1909-1996). His earliest American ancestor, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Pynchon William Pynchon], emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony]] with the Winthrop Fleet in 1630, and thereafter a long line of Pynchon descendants found wealth and repute on American soil. Pynchon's family background and aspects of his ancestry have provided source material for his fictions, particularly in the Slothrop family histories related in "The Secret Integration" (1964) and ''[http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Gravity's Rainbow]''.

===Childhood and education===
Pynchon attended Oyster Bay High School, where he was awarded "student of the year" and contributed short fictional pieces to his school newspaper: "Voice of the Hamster",<ref>[http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_hamster.html "Voice of the Hamster"]</ref> "The Boys",<ref>[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_boys.html "The Boys"]</ref> and "Ye Legend of Sir Stupid and the Purple Knight".<ref>[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_knight.html "Ye Legend of Sir Stupid and the Purple"]</ref> These works featured many of the themes and literary devices he would use throughout his career: silly names, rampant drug use, and paranoia. After graduating in 1953 at the age of 16, he studied engineering physics at Cornell University, but left at the end of his second year to serve in the U.S. Navy. In 1957, Pynchon returned to Cornell to pursue a degree in English. His first published story, "The Small Rain", appeared in the ''Cornell Writer'' in May 1959, and narrates an actual experience of a friend who had served in the army; subsequently, however, episodes and characters throughout Pynchon's fiction draw freely upon his own experiences in the navy.

While at Cornell, Pynchon became a friend of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Fariña Richard Fariña], and both briefly led what Pynchon has called a "micro-cult" around Oakley Hall's 1958 novel ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warlock_(novel) Warlock]''. (He later reminisced about his college days in the introduction he wrote in 1983 for Fariña's novel ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Been_Down_So_Long_It_Looks_Like_Up_to_Me Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me],'' first published in 1966.) Pynchon also reportedly attended lectures given by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Nabokov Vladimir Nabokov], who then taught literature at Cornell. While Nabokov later said that he had no memory of Pynchon (although Nabokov's wife, Vera, who graded her husband's class papers, commented that she remembered his distinctive handwriting; his later handwriting appears unexceptional), other teachers at Cornell, like the novelist James McConkey, recall him as being a gifted and exceptional student. In 1958, Pynchon and Cornell classmate Kirkpatrick Sale wrote part or all of a science-fiction musical, ''Minstral Island'', which portrayed a dystopian future in which IBM rules the world. [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/paper_gibbs.html] Pynchon received his BA in June 1959.

===''V.''===
After leaving Cornell, Pynchon began to work on his first novel. From February 1960 to September 1962, he was employed as a technical writer at Boeing in Seattle, where he compiled safety articles for the ''Bomarc Service News,''<ref>Wisnicki 2000-1</ref> a support newsletter for the BOMARC surface-to-air missile deployed by the U.S. Air Force. Pynchon's experiences at Boeing inspired his depictions of the "[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoyodyne Yoyodyne]" corporation in ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V. V.]'' and ''[http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ The Crying of Lot 49],'' and both his background in physics and the technical journalism he undertook at Boeing provided much raw material for ''[http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Gravity's Rainbow].'' When it was published in 1963, Pynchon's novel ''V.'' won a William Faulkner Foundation Award for best first novel of the year.

After resigning from Boeing, Pynchon spent time in New York and Mexico before moving to California, where he was reportedly based for much of the 1960s and early 1970s, most notably in an apartment in Manhattan Beach, in Southern California.<ref>Frost 2003</ref> Pynchon during this period embraced the lifestyle and values of the hippie counterculture, which he would later make use of in his 1990 novel ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vineland Vineland].''<ref>Gordon 1994</ref> In 1964, his application to study mathematics as a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, was turned down.<ref name="royster2005">Royster 2005</ref> In 1966, he wrote a first-hand report on the aftermath and legacy of the Watts riots in Los Angeles. Entitled "A Journey Into the Mind of Watts," the article was published in the ''New York Times Magazine.''<ref>Pynchon 1966</ref>

From the mid-1960s Pynchon has also regularly provided blurbs and introductions for a wide range of novels and non-fiction works. One of the first of these pieces was a brief review of Hall's ''Warlock'' which appeared, along with comments by seven other writers on "neglected books", as part of a feature entitled "A Gift of Books" in the December 1965 issue of ''Holiday.''

===''The Crying of Lot 49''===

In April 1964, Pynchon wrote to his agent, Candida Donadio, that he was facing a creative crisis, with four novels in progress, and that "If they come out on paper anything like they are inside my head then it will be the literary event of the millennium."<ref>Gussow 1998</ref> In December 1965, Pynchon politely turned down an offer to teach literature at Bennington College, writing that he had resolved, two or three years earlier, to write three novels at once.<ref>McLemee 2006</ref> Pynchon called the decision "a moment of temporary insanity," but noted that he was "too stubborn to let any of them go, let alone all of them."

Pynchon's second novel, ''[http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ The Crying of Lot 49],'' was published a few months later in 1966. Whether it was one of the three or four novels Pynchon had in progress is unknown, but in a 1965 letter to Donadio, Pynchon had written that he was in the middle of writing a book that he called a "potboiler." When the book grew to 155 pages, he called it, "a short story, but with gland trouble," and hoped that Donadio "can unload it on some poor sucker." This would suggest that ''Crying of Lot 49'' was ''not'' one of the four novels Pynchon was writing as of 1964, but no answer is certain.

''The Crying of Lot 49'' won the Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Foundation Award shortly after publication. Although more concise and linear in its structure than Pynchon's other novels, its labyrinthine plot features an ancient, underground mail service known as "The Tristero" or "Trystero," a parody of a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/revenge_play Jacobean revenge drama] entitled "The Courier's Tragedy," and a corporate conspiracy involving the bones of World War II American GIs being used as charcoal cigarette filters. It proposes a series of seemingly incredible interconnections between these and other similarly bizarre revelations that confront the novel's protagonist, Oedipa Maas. Like ''V,'' the novel contains a wealth of references to science and technology and to obscure historical events, and both books dwell upon the detritus of American society and culture. ''The Crying of Lot 49'' also continues Pynchon's habit of composing parodic song lyrics and punning names, and referencing aspects of popular culture within his prose narrative. In particular, it incorporates several allusions to the Beatles and Nabokov's ''Lolita.''

In 1968, Pynchon was one of 447 signatories to the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest." Full-page advertisements in ''The New York Post'' and ''The New York Review of Books'' listed the names of those who had pledged not to pay "the proposed 10% income tax surcharge or any war-designated tax increase," and stated their belief "that American involvement in Vietnam is morally wrong".<ref>''New York Review of Books'' 1968:9</ref>

===''Gravity's Rainbow'' and Pynchon's rise to prominence===
Pynchon's most celebrated novel is his third, ''[http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Gravity's Rainbow]'', published in 1973. An intricate and allusive fiction which combines and elaborates on many of the themes of his earlier work, including preterition, paranoia, racism, colonialism, conspiracy, synchronicity, and [[entropy]], the novel has spawned a wealth of commentary and critical material, including two reader's guides,<ref>Fowler 1980; Weisenburger 1988</ref> books and scholarly articles, on-line concordances and discussions,<ref>[http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/ Pynchon HyperArts]</ref> and art works, and is regarded as one of the archetypal texts of American literary postmodernism. The major portion of ''Gravity's Rainbow'' takes place in London and Europe in the final months of the Second World War and the weeks immediately following VE Day, and is narrated for the most part from within the historical moment in which it is set. In this way, Pynchon's text enacts a type of dramatic irony whereby neither the characters nor the various narrative voices are aware of specific historical circumstances, such as the Holocaust, which are, however, very much to the forefront of the reader's understanding of this time in history. Such an approach generates dynamic tension and moments of acute self-consciousness, as both reader and author seem drawn ever deeper into the "plot", in various senses of that term. Encyclopedic in scope, the novel also displays enormous erudition in its treatment of an array of material drawn from the fields of psychology, chemistry, mathematics, history, religion, music, literature and film. Perhaps appropriately for a book so suffused with engineering knowledge, Pynchon reportedly wrote the first draft of ''Gravity's Rainbow'' in longhand on engineer's graph paper, in California and Mexico City.

''Gravity's Rainbow'' was a joint winner of the 1974 National Book Award for Fiction, along with Isaac Bashevis Singer's ''A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories''. In the same year, the fiction jury unanimously recommended ''Gravity's Rainbow'' for the Pulitzer Prize; however, the Pulitzer board vetoed the jury's recommendation, describing the novel as "unreadable", "turgid", "overwritten", and in parts "obscene", and no prize was awarded.<ref>Kihss 1974</ref> In 1975, Pynchon declined the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

===Post-''Gravity's Rainbow''===
A collection of Pynchon's early short stories, entitled ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Learner Slow Learner]]'', was published in 1984, with a lengthy autobiography|autobiographical introduction. In October of the same year, an article entitled "Is It O.K. to Be a Luddite?" was published in the ''New York Times Book Review''. In April 1988, Pynchon contributed an extensive review of Gabriel García Marquéz's novel, ''Love in the Time of Cholera'', to the ''New York Times'', under the title "The Heart's Eternal Vow". Another article, entitled "Nearer, My Couch, to Thee", was published in June 1993 in the ''New York Times Book Review'', as one in a series of articles in which various writers reflected on each of the Seven Deadly Sins. Pynchon's subject was "Sloth".

===''Vineland''===
Pynchon's fourth novel, ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vineland Vineland]'', was published in 1990. The novel is set in California in the 1980s and 1960s, and describes the relationship between an FBI COINTELPRO agent and a female radical filmmaker. Its strong socio-political undercurrents detail the constant battle between authoritarianism and communalism, and the nexus between resistance and complicity, but with a typically Pynchonian sense of humor.

In 1988, he received a MacArthur Fellowship and, since the early 1990s at least, many observers have mentioned Pynchon as a Nobel Prize contender.<ref>See, for example, Grimes 1993, CNN Book News 1999, Ervin 2000</ref> Renowned American literary critic Harold Bloom has named him as one of the four major American novelists of his time, along with Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, and Cormac McCarthy.

===''Mason & Dixon''===
Pynchon's fifth novel, ''[http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ Mason & Dixon]'', was published in 1997. Pynchon began writing it as early as January 1975.<ref>Gussow</ref> The meticulously-researched novel is a sprawling saga recounting the lives and careers of the English astronomer, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Mason Charles Mason], and his partner, the surveyor [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah_Dixon Jeremiah Dixon], and the birth of the American Republic. While it received some negative reviews, the great majority of commentators acknowledged it as a welcome return to form, and some, including Bloom, have called it Pynchon's greatest work to date.

After the publication of ''Mason & Dixon'', a user by the online name of "Martin Scribler" posted a handful of messages on the Pynchon-L mailing list denouncing many members of that group as "dunces all" for discussing their own neuroses over actual literary discussion. Due to the high quality of Martin Scriblers' posts, their message, and the historical significance of his name (alluding to an 18th-century satire of pretentious erudition), many have speculated that Pynchon himself wrote these posts.

===''Against the Day''===

A variety of rumors pertaining to the subject matter of Pynchon's next book have circulated over a number of years. Most specific of these were comments made by the former German minister of culture, Michael Naumann, who stated that he assisted Pynchon in his research about "a Russian mathematician [who] studied for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hilbert David Hilbert] in Göttingen", and that the new novel would trace the life and loves of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sofia_Kovalevskaya Sofia Kovalevskaya].

In July 2006, a new untitled novel by Pynchon was announced along with a synopsis written by Pynchon himself, which appeared on Amazon.com, stating that the novel's action takes place between the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition 1893 Chicago World's Fair] and the time immediately following World War I. "With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead," Pynchon writes in his Book Description, "it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred." He promises cameos by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla Nikola Tesla], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bela_Lugosi Bela Lugosi] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groucho_Marx Groucho Marx], as well as "stupid songs" and "strange sexual practices". Subsequently, the title of the new book was reported as ''Against the Day'' and a Penguin spokesperson confirmed that the synopsis was Pynchon's.<ref>Patterson 2006b; Italie 2006</ref>

''Against the Day'' was released November 21, 2006 and is 1,085 pages long in the first edition hardcover. The book was given almost no promotion by Penguin and professional book reviewers were given little time in advance to review the book, presumably in accord with Pynchon's wishes. An edited version of Pynchon's synopsis was used as the jacket flap copy and Kovalevskaya does appear, although as only one of over a hundred characters.

There has been no consensus among professional book reviewers, although many agree that it is by turns brilliant and exhausting ([http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_Reviews Complete Reviews]). An [http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page ''Against the Day'' wiki] was launched on the same day the novel was published to help readers keep track of the numerous characters, events and themes.

==Themes and influence==
Along with its emphasis on loftier themes such as racism, imperialism and religion, and its cognizance and appropriation of many elements of traditional high culture and literary form, Pynchon's work also demonstrates a strong affinity with the practitioners and artifacts of low culture, including comic books and animated cartoons, pulp fiction, popular films, television programs, cookery, urban myths, conspiracy theories, and folk art. This blurring of the conventional boundary between "High" and "low" culture, sometimes interpreted as a "deconstruction", is seen as one of the defining characteristics of postmodernism.

In particular, Pynchon has revealed himself in his fiction and non-fiction as an aficionado of popular music. Song lyrics and mock musical numbers appear in each of his novels, and, in his autobiographical introduction to the ''Slow Learner'' collection of early stories, he reveals a fondness for both jazz and rock and roll. The character McClintic Sphere in ''V.'' is a fictional composite of master jazz musicians such as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornette_Coleman Ornette Coleman], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Parker Charlie Parker] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk Thelonious Monk]. In ''The Crying of Lot 49'', the lead singer of "The Paranoids" sports "a [[The Beatles|Beatle]] haircut" and sings with an English accent. In the closing pages of ''Gravity's Rainbow'', there is an apocryphal report that [[Tyrone Slothrop]], the novel's protagonist, played kazoo and harmonica as a guest musician on a record released by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fool_(band) The Fool] in the 1960s (having magically recovered the latter instrument, his "harp", in a German stream in 1945, after losing it down the toilet in 1939 at the Roseland Ballroom in Roxbury, Massachusetts, to the strains of the jazz standard "Cherokee", upon which tune Charlie Parker was simultaneously inventing bebop in New York, as Pynchon describes). In ''Vineland'', both Zoyd Wheeler and Isaiah Two Four are also musicians: Zoyd played keyboards in a '60s surf band called "The Corvairs", while Isaiah played in a punk band called "Billy Barf and the Vomitones". In ''Mason & Dixon'', one of the characters plays on the "Clavier" the varsity drinking song which will later become "The Star-Spangled Banner".

In his ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Learner Slow Learner]'' introduction, Pynchon acknowledges a debt to the anarchic bandleader Spike Jones, and in 1994, he penned a 3000-word set of liner notes for the album ''Spiked!'', a collection of Jones's recordings released on the short-lived BMG Catalyst label. Pynchon also wrote the liner notes for ''Nobody's Cool'', the second album of indie rock band Lotion, in which he states that "rock and roll remains one of the last honorable callings, and a working band is a miracle of everyday life. Which is basically what these guys do." He is also known to be a fan of Roky Erickson.

In terms of literary influences and affinity, an eclectic catalogue of Pynchonian precursors has been proposed by readers and critics. Beside overt references in the novels to writers as disparate as Henry Adams, Isaac Asimov, Giorgio de Chirico, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Emily Dickinson, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jorge Luis Borges, Ishmael Reed, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Patrick O'Brian, and Umberto Eco, and to an eclectic mix of iconic religious and philosophical sources, credible comparisons with works by Rabelais, Cervantes, Laurence Sterne, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad, Thomas Mann, William Burroughs, Ralph Ellison, Patrick White, and Toni Morrison have also been made. Some commentators have detected similarities with those writers in the Modernist tradition who wrote extremely long novels dealing with large metaphysical or political issues. Examples of such works might include ''Ulysses'' by James Joyce, ''A Passage to India'' by E.M. Forster, ''The Apes of God'' by Wyndham Lewis, ''The Man Without Qualities'' by Robert Musil, or ''The Castle'' by Franz Kafka. In his "Introduction" to ''Slow Learner'', Pynchon explicitly acknowledges his debt to Beat Generation writers, and expresses his admiration for Jack Kerouac's ''On the Road'' in particular; he also reveals his familiarity with literary works by T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, Saul Bellow, Herbert Gold, Philip Roth and Norman Mailer, and non-fiction works by Helen Waddell, Norbert Wiener and Isaac Asimov. Other contemporary American authors whose fiction is often categorised alongside Pynchon's include John Hawkes, Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller, Donald Barthelme, John Barth, William Gaddis, Don DeLillo, and Joseph McElroy. Younger contemporary writers who have been touted as heirs apparent to Pynchon include David Foster Wallace, William Vollmann, Richard Powers, David Mitchell, Neal Stephenson, Dave Eggers, Christopher Wunderlee, and "Tommaso Pincio" whose pseudonym is an Italian rendering of Pynchon's name.

Investigations and digressions into the realms of human sexuality, psychology, sociology, mathematics, science, and technology recur throughout Pynchon's works. One of his earliest short stories, "Low-lands" (1960), features a meditation on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg Heisenberg's] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/uncertainty_principle uncertainty principle] as a metaphor for telling stories about one's own experiences. His next published work, "Entropy" (1960), introduced [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/entropy the concept] which was to become synonymous with Pynchon's name (though Pynchon later admitted the "shallowness of [his] understanding" of the subject, and noted that choosing an abstract concept first and trying to construct a narrative around it was "a lousy way to go about writing a story"). Another early story, "Under the Rose" (1961), includes amongst its cast of characters a cyborg set anachronistically in Victorian-era Egypt (a type of writing now called steampunk). This story, significantly reworked by Pynchon, appears as Chapter 3 of ''V.'' "The Secret Integration" (1964), Pynchon's last published short story, is a sensitively-handled coming-of-age tale in which a group of young boys face the consequences of the American policy of racial integration. At one point in the story, the boys attempt to understand the new policy by way of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/antiderivative mathematical operation], the only sense of the word with which they are familiar.

''The Crying of Lot 49'' also alludes to entropy and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/communication_theory communication theory], and contains scenes and descriptions which parody or appropriate [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/calculus calculus], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno's_paradoxes Zeno's paradoxes], and the thought experiment known as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell's_demon Maxwell's demon]. At the same time, the novel also investigates homosexuality, celibacy and both medically-sanctioned and illicit psychedelic drug use. ''Gravity's Rainbow'' describes many varieties of sexual fetishism (including sado-masochism, coprophilia and a borderline case of tentacle rape), and features numerous episodes of drug use, most notably marijuana but also cocaine, naturally occurring hallucinogens, and the mushroom ''Amanita muscaria.'' ''Gravity's Rainbow'' also derives much from Pynchon's background in mathematics: at one point, the geometry of garter belts is compared with that of cathedral spires, both described as mathematical singularities. His most recent novel, ''Mason & Dixon'', explores the scientific, theological, and sociocultural foundations of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment Age of Reason] whilst also depicting the relationships between actual historical figures and fictional characters in intricate detail and, like ''Gravity's Rainbow'', is an archetypal example of the genre of historiographical metafiction.

Pynchon's work has been cited as an influence and inspiration by many writers, musicians, artists and filmmakers, including Laurie Anderson, T. Coraghessan Boyle, David Cronenberg, Don DeLillo, Paul Di Filippo, William Gibson, Max P. Häring, Elfriede Jelinek, Rick Moody, Arturo Perez-Reverte, Richard Powers, Adam Rapp, Salman Rushdie, Zak Smith, Neal Stephenson, Bruce Sterling, Adrian Boyd and the Definitive Jux hip-hop producer/CEO/emcee El-P. Thanks to his influence on Gibson and Stephenson in particular, Pynchon became one of the progenitors of cyberpunk fiction. Though the term "cyberpunk" did not become prevalent until the early 1980s, many readers retroactively include ''Gravity's Rainbow'' in the genre, along with other works—''e.g.,'' Samuel R. Delany's ''Nova'' and many works of Philip K. Dick—which seem, after the fact, to anticipate cyberpunk styles and themes. The encyclopedic nature of Pynchon's novels also led to some attempts to link his work with the short-lived [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/hypertext_fiction hypertext fiction] movement of the 1990s.<ref>Page 2002; Krämer 2005</ref>

''Gravity's Rainbow'' and the more recent ''Mason & Dixon'' both feature wildly eccentric characters, episodes of frenzied action and frequent digressions on topics which are seemingly tangential to the central narrative. These characteristics, combined with the novels' imposing lengths, have led critic James Wood to classify Pynchon's work as hysterical realism. Other writers whose work has been labelled as hysterical realism include Rushdie, Stephenson, Wunderlee and Zadie Smith.

==Media scrutiny==
Relatively little is known about Thomas Pynchon as a private person; he has had few known contacts with journalists for more than forty years. Only a few photos of him are known to exist, nearly all from his high school and college days, and his whereabouts have often remained undisclosed.

A review of ''V.'' in the ''New York Times Book Review'' described Pynchon as "a recluse" living in Mexico, thereby introducing the media label which has pursued Pynchon throughout his career.<ref>Plimpton 1963: 5</ref> Nonetheless, Pynchon's absence from the public spotlight is one of the notable features of his life, and it has generated many rumors and apocryphal anecdotes.

===1970s and 1980s===
After the publication and success of ''Gravity's Rainbow'', interest mounted in finding out more about the identity of the author. At the 1974 National Book Award ceremony, the president of Viking Press, Tom Guinzberg, arranged for double-talking comedian [http://www.irwincorey.com/ "Professor" Irwin Corey] to accept the prize on Pynchon's behalf.<ref name="royster2005"/> Many of the assembled guests had no idea who Corey was, and, having never seen the author, they assumed that it was Pynchon himself on the stage delivering Corey's trademark torrent of rambling, pseudo-scholarly verbiage.<ref>Corey 1974</ref> Towards the end of Corey's address a streaker ran through the hall, adding further to the confusion.

An article published in the ''Soho Weekly News'' claimed that Pynchon was in fact J. D. Salinger.<ref>Batchelor 1976</ref> Pynchon's written response to this theory was simple: "Not bad. Keep trying."<ref> Reported in Tanner 1982</ref>

Thereafter, the first piece to provide substantial information about Pynchon's personal life was a biographical account written by a former Cornell University friend, Jules Siegel, and published in ''Playboy'' magazine. In his article, Siegel reveals that Pynchon had a [[complex (psychology)|complex]] about his teeth and underwent extensive and painful reconstructive surgery, was nicknamed "Tom" at Cornell and attended Mass diligently, acted as best man at Siegel's wedding, and that he later also had an affair with Siegel's wife. Siegel recalls Pynchon saying he did attend some of Vladimir Nabokov's lectures at Cornell but that he could hardly make out what Nabokov was saying because of his thick Russian accent. Siegel also records Pynchon's comment that "[e]very weirdo in the world is on my wavelength",<ref>Siegel 1977</ref> an observation borne out by the crankiness and zealotry which has attached itself to his name and work in subsequent years, particularly across the Internet.

===1990s===
Pynchon's avoidance of celebrity and public appearances caused journalists to continue to speculate about his identity and activities, and reinforced his reputation within the media as "reclusive". More astute readers and critics recognized that there were and are perhaps aesthetic (and ideological) motivations behind his choice to remain aloof from public life. For example, the protagonist in Janette Turner Hospital's short story, "For Mr. Voss or Occupant" (1991), explains to her daughter that she is writing
:a study of authors who become reclusive. Patrick White, Emily Dickinson, J. D. Salinger, Thomas Pynchon. The way they create solitary characters and personae and then disappear into their fictions.<ref>Hospital 1995: 361-2</ref>
More recently, book critic Arthur Salm has written that
:the man simply chooses not to be a public figure, an attitude that resonates on a frequency so out of phase with that of the prevailing culture that if Pynchon and Paris Hilton were ever to meet—the circumstances, I admit, are beyond imagining—the resulting matter/antimatter explosion would vaporize everything from here to Tau Ceti IV.<ref>Salm 2004</ref>

Belying this reputation somewhat, Pynchon has published a number of articles and reviews in the mainstream American media, including words of support for Salman Rushdie and his then-wife, Marianne Wiggins, after the fatwa was pronounced against Rushdie by the Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.<ref>Pynchon 1989</ref> In the following year, Rushdie's enthusiastic review of Pynchon's ''Vineland'' prompted Pynchon to send him another message hinting that if Rushdie were ever in New York, the two should arrange a meeting. Eventually, the two did meet, and Rushdie found himself surprised by how much Pynchon resembled the mental image Rushdie had formed beforehand.<ref>Hitchens 1997</ref>

In the early 1990s, Pynchon married his literary agent, Melanie Jackson — a great-granddaughter of Theodore Roosevelt — and fathered a son, Jackson, in 1991. The disclosure of Pynchon's location in New York, after many years in which he was believed to be dividing his time between Mexico and northern California, led some journalists and photographers to try to track him down. Shortly before the publication of ''Mason & Dixon'' in 1997, a CNN camera crew filmed him in Manhattan. Angered by this invasion of his privacy, he rang CNN asking that he not be identified in the footage of the street scenes near his home. When asked about his reclusive nature, he remarked, "My belief is that 'recluse' is a code word generated by journalists ... meaning, 'doesn't like to talk to reporters'." CNN also quoted him as saying, "Let me be unambiguous. I prefer not to be photographed."<ref>CNN 1997</ref> The next year, a reporter for the ''Sunday Times'' managed to snap a photo of him as he was walking with his son.<ref>Bone 1998</ref>

After several references to Pynchon's work and reputation were made on NBC's ''The John Larroquette Show,'' Pynchon (through his agent) reportedly contacted the show's producers to offer suggestions and corrections. When a local Pynchon sighting became a major plot point in a 1994 episode of the show, Pynchon was sent the script for his approval; as well as providing the title of a fictitious work to be used in one episode ("Pandemonium of the Sun"), the novelist apparently vetoed a final scene that called for an extra playing him to be filmed from behind, walking away from shot.<ref>CNN 1997; Glenn 2003</ref> Also during the 1990s, Pynchon apparently befriended members of the band Lotion and attended a number of their shows, culminating in the liner notes he contributed for the band's 1995 album ''Nobody's Cool''. The novelist then conducted an interview with the band ("Lunch With Lotion") for ''Esquire'' in June 1996 in the lead-up to the publication of ''Mason & Dixon''. More recently, Pynchon provided faxed answers to questions submitted by author David Hajdu and permitted excerpts from his personal correspondence to be quoted in Hajdu's 2001 book, ''Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña.''<ref>Warner 2001</ref>

Pynchon's attempt to maintain his personal privacy and have his work speak for itself has resulted in a number of outlandish rumors and hoaxes over the years. Indeed, claims that Pynchon was the Unabomber or a sympathizer with the Waco Branch Davidians after the 1993 siege were upstaged in the mid-1990s by the invention of an elaborate rumor insinuating that Pynchon and one "[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanda_Tinasky Wanda Tinasky]" were the same person. A spate of letters authored under that name had appeared in the late 1980s in the ''Anderson Valley Advertiser'' in Anderson Valley, California. The style and content of those letters were said to resemble Pynchon's, and Pynchon's ''Vineland'', published in 1990, also takes place in northern California, so it was suggested that Pynchon may have been in the area at that time, conducting research. A collection of the Tinasky letters was eventually published as a paperback book in 1996; however, Pynchon himself denied having written the letters, and no direct attribution of the letters to Pynchon was ever made. "Literary detective" Donald Foster subsequently showed that the ''Letters'' were in fact written by an obscure Beat writer called Tom Hawkins, who had murdered his wife and then committed suicide in 1988. Foster's evidence was conclusive, including finding the typewriter on which the "Tinasky" letters had been written.<ref>Foster 2000</ref>

In 1998, over 120 letters that Pynchon had written to his longtime agent, Candida Donadio, were donated by the family of private collector, Carter Burden, to the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City. The letters ranged from 1963 to 1982, thus covering some of the author's most creative and prolific years. Although the Morgan Library originally intended to allow scholars to view the letters, at Pynchon’s request, the Burden family and
Morgan Library agreed to seal these letters until after Pynchon's death.

===2000s===

After 9/11, a supposed "interview" with Pynchon was published in an issue of ''Playboy'' Japan, entitled "Most News is Propaganda. Bin Laden May Not Exist." It purported to be a talk with Pynchon on the events of 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden. Its authenticity is uncertain. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pynchon_playboy Rough translation of the Pynchon "interview"].


Responding ironically to the image which has been manufactured in the media over the years, during 2004, Pynchon made two cameo appearances on the animated television series ''The Simpsons''. The first occurs in the episode "Diatribe of a Mad Housewife", in which Marge Simpson becomes a novelist. He plays himself, with a paper bag over his head, and provides a blurb for the back cover of Marge's book, speaking in a broad Long Island accent: "Here's your quote: Thomas Pynchon loved this book, almost as much as he loves cameras!" He then starts yelling at passing cars: "Hey, over here, have your picture taken with a reclusive author! Today only, we'll throw in a free autograph! But, wait! There's more!" The second appearance occurs in "All's Fair in Oven War," which was the sixteenth-season premiere. In this appearance, Pynchon's dialogue consists entirely of puns on his novel titles ("These wings are 'V'-licious! I'll put this recipe in 'The Gravity's Rainbow Cookbook', right next to 'The Frying of Latke 49'."). Pynchon makes a third, non-speaking cameo, when he is seen at the fictional WordLoaf convention in the 18th season (2006) episode, "Moe'N'a Lisa." The episode first aired on November 19, 2006, the Sunday before Pynchon's sixth novel, ''Against the Day'', was released, perhaps as part of an increasingly unusual publicity campaign.

In July of 2006, Amazon.com created a page showing an upcoming 992-page, untitled, Thomas Pynchon novel. A description of the soon-to-be published novel appeared on Amazon purporting to be written by Pynchon himself. The description was soon taken down, prompting speculation over its authenticity, but the blurb was soon back up along with the title of Pynchon's new novel, ''Against the Day''.

Shortly before ''Against the Day'' was published, Pynchon's prose appeared in the program for "The Daily Show: Ten Fu@#ing Years (The Concert)", a retrospective on Jon Stewart's comedy-news broadcast ''The Daily Show.''<ref>Pynchon, Thomas. [http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_dailyshow.html "The Evolution of ''The Daily Show''"]. Printed in program notes (16 November 2006).</ref> Only weeks later, Pynchon sent a one-page, typewritten letter to ''The Daily Telegraph,'' defending fellow writer Ian McEwan against plagiarism charges. (McEwan had been accused of copying details from the late Lucilla Andrews's autobiography, ''No Time for Romance.'') His sentiment echoes thoughts on literary theft expressed over two decades earlier in the ''Slow Learner'' introduction; the letter concludes,
:Memoirs of the Blitz have borne indispensable witness, and helped later generations know something of the tragedy and heroism of those days. For Mr. McEwan to have put details from one of them to further creative use, acknowledging this openly and often, and then explaining it clearly and honorably, surely merits not our scolding, but our gratitude.<ref>Pynchon, Thomas. [http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_mcewan.html "Words for Ian McEwan"] (6 December 2006)</ref>

==Works==
* ''[[V.]]'' (1963), winner of [[William Faulkner Foundation]] Award
* ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]'' (1966), winner of Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Foundation Award
* ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'' (1973), 1974 [[National Book Award]] for fiction, judges' unanimous selection for [[Pulitzer Prize]] overruled by advisory board, awarded William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1975 (award declined)
* ''[[Slow Learner]]'' (1984), collection of early short stories
* ''[[Vineland]]'' (1990)
* ''[[Mason & Dixon]]'' (1997)
* ''[[Against the Day]]'' (21 November, 2006)

As well as fictional works, Pynchon has written essays, introductions, and reviews addressing subjects as diverse as missile security, the Watts Riots, Luddism and the work of Donald Barthelme. Some of his non-fiction pieces have appeared in the ''New York Times Book Review'' and ''The New York Review of Books'', and he has contributed blurbs for books and records. His 1984 Introduction to the ''Slow Learner'' collection of early stories is significant for its autobiographical candor. He has written introductions to at least two books, including the 1992 collection of Donald Barthelme's stories, ''The Teachings of Don B.'' and, more recently, the Penguin Centenary Edition of George Orwell's novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four,'' which was published in 2003.

==External Links==
* [http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pynchon Uncyclopedia's Pynchon Bio]

==Notes and references==

:''This article was originally based on the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page Wikipedia] page [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pynchon Thomas Pynchon], accessed 30 November 2006, last modified [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thomas_Pynchon&oldid=91019157 23:00 UTC, 29 November 2006]. Principal authors of that page include Wikipedia users Abaca, Anville, Nixdorf and Zafiroblue05. Used under the terms of the [http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html GNU FDL 1.2.]''

<references/>

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* Bone, James. [http://www.suntimes.co.za:80/1998/06/07/lifestyle/life01.htm "Who the hell is he?]" ''Sunday Times'' (South Africa), 7 June 1998.
* CNN. "[http://cgi.cnn.com/US/9706/05/pynchon/ Where's Thomas Pynchon?]" 5 June 1997.
* CNN Book News. "[http://www.cnn.com/books/news/9909/29/nobel.prize/index.html Early Nobel announcement prompts speculation]". 29 September 1999.
* Corey, Irwin. "[http://www.irwincorey.org/routines.html Transcript of National Book Award acceptance speech]", delivered 18 April 1974.
* Ervin, Andrew. "[http://citypaper.net/articles/091400/ae.books.shtml Nobel Oblige]". ''Philadelphia City Paper'' 14–21 September 2000.
* Foster, Don. ''Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous''. Henry Holt, New York, 2000.
* Fowler, Douglas. ''A Reader's Guide to [[Gravity's Rainbow]]''. Ardis Press, 1980.
* Frost, Garrison. "[http://www.theaesthetic.com/NewFiles/pynchon.html Thomas Pynchon and the South Bay]". ''The Aesthetic'', 2003.
* Getlin, Josh. "[http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-wk-quick22.3jun22,0,5673134.story?coll=cl-calendar Pynchon Novel Out in December]". ''LA Times'', 22 June 2006.
* Glenn, Joshua. "[http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2003/10/19/pynchon_and_homer/ Pynchon and Homer]". ''Boston Globe'', 19 October 2003.
* Gordon, Andrew. "[http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/agordon/pynchon.htm Smoking Dope with Thomas Pynchon: A Sixties Memoir]".
* Grimes, William. [http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/01/11/home/28957.html "Toni Morrison Is '93 Winner Of Nobel Prize in Literature"]. ''New York Times Book Review'', 8 October 1993.
* Gussow, Mel. ''Pynchon's Letters Nudge His Mask.'' ''New York Times,'' 4 March 1998.
* Hitchens, Christopher. "[http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1295/is_n10_v61/ai_19841067 Salman Rushdie: Even this colossal threat did not work. Life goes on.]" ''The Progressive'', October 1997.
* Hospital, Janette Turner. ''Collected Stories 1970-1995''. University of Queensland Press, 1995.
* Italie, Hillel. "[http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060720/ap_en_ot/books_thomas_pynchon_1 New Thomas Pynchon Novel is on the way]" ''Associated Press'', 20 July 2006.
* Kihss, Peter. "Pulitzer Jurors; His Third Novel". ''The New York Times'', 8 May 1974, p. 38.
* Krämer, Oliver. "[http://www.sicetnon.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=PagEd&file=index&topic_id=40&page_id=208 Interview mit John M. Krafft, Herausgeber der 'Pynchon Notes']". ''Sic et Non.''
* McLemee, Scott. ''[http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/11/15/mclemee You Hide, They Seek]'' ''Inside Higher Ed'', 15 November 2006.
* ''New York Review of Books''. "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" (advertisement). Vol. 10, No. 3, 15 February 1968, p. 9.
* Page, Adrian. "Towards a poetics of hypertext fiction". In ''The Question of Literature: The Place on the Literary in Contemporary Theory'', edited by Elizabeth B Bissell. Manchester University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-71905-744-2.
* Patterson, Troy (a). "[http://www.slate.com/id/2146152 Did the master make an appearance on his Amazon page?]" ''Slate'', 20 July 2006.
* Patterson, Troy (b). "[http://www.slate.com/id/2146272 Mystery solved]" ''Slate'', 20 July 2006.
* Plimpton, George. "Mata Hari with a Clockwork Eye, Alligators in the Sewer". Rev. of ''V.'' ''New York Times Book Review'', 21 April 1963, p. 5.
* Pynchon, Thomas. "[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_watts.html A Journey into the Mind of Watts]". ''New York Times Magazine'', 12 June 1966, pp. 34-35, 78, 80-82, 84.
* Pynchon, Thomas. "[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_rushdie.html Words for Salman Rushdie]". ''[[New York Times Book Review]]'', 12 March 1989, p. 29.
* Pynchon, Thomas. [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159420120X/ Editorial review on ''Untitled Thomas Pynchon''], [[Amazon.com]] 14 July 2006.
* Roeder, Bill. "After the Rainbow". ''Newsweek'' 92, 7 August 1978.
* Royster, Paul. "[http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libraryscience/2/ Thomas Pynchon: A Brief Chronology]". Faculty Publications, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2005.
* Salm, Arthur. "A screaming comes across the sky (but not a photo)". San Diego ''Union-Tribune'', 8 February 2004.
* Siegel, Jules. "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?" ''Playboy'', March 1977.
* Tanner, Tony. ''Thomas Pynchon''. Methuen & Co., 1982.
* Ulin, David. "[http://www.salon.com/april97/media/media970425.html Gravity's End]". ''Salon'', 25 April 1997.
* Warner, Simon. "[http://www.popmatters.com/books/features/010802-hadju.shtml A king, a queen and two knaves?: An Interview with David Hajdu]". ''Pop Matters'', 2 August 2001.
* Weisenburger, Steven C. ''A [[Gravity's Rainbow]] Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's Novel''. University of Georgia Press, 1988.
* Wisnicki, Adrian. "A Trove of New Works by Thomas Pynchon? Bomarc Service News Rediscovered." ''Pynchon Notes'' 46-49 (2000-1), pp. 9-34.

==External links==

:''The following links were last verified on 30 November 2006.''

* [http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/thomaspynchon/ Official UK publisher's site]
* [http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3673 Literary Encyclopedia biography]
* [http://www.newenglandancestors.org/education/articles/research/special_guests/gary_boyd_roberts/48_659_448.asp The Ancestry of Novelist Thomas Pynchon]
* [http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/ HyperArts Pynchon Pages]
* [http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/ Pynchon Index]
* [http://waste.org/pynchon-l The Pynchon-L mailing list]
* ''[http://www2.ham.muohio.edu/~krafftjm/pynchon.html Pynchon Notes],'' a journal operated by Miami University in Oxford, Ohio
* [http://pynchonoid.blogspot.com/ pynchonoid.blogspot.com]
* [http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/ San Narciso Pynchon Page], hosted in Claremont, California, "a town that looks a lot, in fact, like [[San Narciso]]"
* [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/index.html Spermatikos Logos]

:'''''This page, though not necessarily others in the Pynchon Wiki, is licensed under the terms of the [[Pynchon Wiki:Text of the GNU Free Documentation License|GNU Free Documentation License 1.2.]]'''''
'''Bold text'''

User:Adrianboyd

2007-09-21T04:38:01Z

Adrianboyd: New page: I am Adrian Boyd from [http://www.SexAntToysWiki.com Sex Ant Toys] and a big fan of Against The Day. Still hanging around the first hundred pages of the book and it is now 12:11AM accordin...

ATD 26-56

2007-09-21T04:03:12Z

Adrianboyd: putting entry in the correct page (from 34 to 33) - World-System

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 26==

'''egret plumes''' 
Some species of egrets were threatened with extinction in the 19th century because their plumes (also called ''aigrettes'') were much used in millinery. Problem is, the egrets grew the showy feathers only in breeding season, so that's when they were killed, hence no little egrets (egretlets?).

'''Little Egypt''' 
was the stage name for two popular exotic dancers, Ashea Wabe who danced at the Seeley banquet at the 1893 World's Fair and Farida Mazar Spyropoulos, also performing under the stage name Fatima, appeared at the "Street in Cairo" exhibition on the Midway at the World's Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Egypt_(dancer) Wikipedia entry] Also a 1961 [[Little_Egypt|song]] by the Coasters.

==Page 27==

'''Bacchanale''' 
From ''Samson et Dalila'', op. 47 (1877) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_and_Delilah_%28opera%29 Wikipedia entry]. Listen to a [http://themodernword.com/wiki/bacchanale.mp3 30 second MP3 sample]

"Bacchanalia" describes not just the music but the dance too, in this context.

'''from here to Timbuctoo''' 
Now known as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu Timbuktu,] a standard figure of speech for the other end of Creation.

'''Maxim whirling machines...''' 
This paragraph describes a number of real flying apparati: [http://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/i/Chanute/library/Prog_Aero_Oct1893.html This article] from October 1893 describes the Maxim whirling machine and others.

'''ornithurgy''' 
Invented word?

My guess is that it signifies something like bird-works: 
ornith- variant of ornitho; [New Latin orntho-, from Greek, from orns, ornth-, bird;] [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ornitho-] 
-urgy [New Latin -rgia, from Greek -ourgi, from -ourgos, working, from ergon, work; see werg- in Indo-European roots [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/-urgy]

Above seems exactly right. This contributor was mislead by an inadequate source linking "theurgy" and "thurgy". I have erased the mistakes. The above meaning clearly fits the other use of 'ornithurgy' in AtD.[[User:MKOHUT|MKOHUT]] 13:23, 9 July 2007 (PDT)

'''Dally''' 
Merle's relationship with Dally is reminiscent of Ryan and Tatum O'Neal's characters in the 1973 Peter Bogdanovich film, "Paper Moon". Merle's family situation (single father, smart aleck daughter, mother who took off) is identical to that of ''Vineland's'' protagonist Zoyd Wheeler.

==Page 28==

'''''Imbottigliata!''''' Italian for "bottled".

'''Dahlia Rideout''' 
The Lolita motif is common in Pynchon's works. Other Lolitas include Bianca in [[http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow.'']

:Dahlia is four or five years old! She is not a Lolita motif here. Lolita was twelve and Humbert was sick.

'''in Randolph's face a degree of stupefaction one regrets to term characteristic''' 
Randolph "froze" previously, on page 12; evidently this is a trait already established in the ''Chums'' novels.

'''fulminate me if she ain't''' 
What an odd turn of phrase: set me off explosively.

'''this Trouvé-screw unit over here''' 
Gustave Trouvé built advanced machinery from the 1860s to the 1890s; [http://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/i/Chanute/library/Prog_Screws_May1892.html his work on airscrews] was pivotal, and he also invented [http://www.electricrecordteam.com/history.htm the outboard motor.] Before Trouvé's design studies, propulsion in the air used sail-rotors like windmills or depended on slightly modified marine propellers.

==Page 29==

'''Midway Plaisance''' 
The big central concourse of the White City. "Plaisance" is an alternative (or Frenchified) spelling of "pleasance," an esthetically appealing spot. According to [http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html this very good site] on the Columbian Exposition, the Midway Plaisance lent its name to the midways of circuses ever after.

'''a l'étouffée''' 
French, meaning braised. So, braised alligator meat. Braised food, for instance crawfish, is a culinary specialty of New Orleans.

In the New Orleans context, a recipe is pertinent because "braise" doesn't exactly tell the story of this Cajun preparation. The following is drastically abridged from, of all things, the obituary of Joe Daole ("Joe Dale") in the ''Atlanta Journal-Constitution,'' April 21, 2007:
:Saute onion, green pepper, celery, parsley and garlic in a great deal of butter. Add peeled and chopped tomatoes and seasonings. Simmer, covered, 5-10 minutes. Make a dark brown roux with oil and flour; add to vegetables. Add seafood stock and bring to a boil. Add peeled shrimp or crawfish tail meat and cook just 2-3 minutes. Serve over rice.

'''Sloane Laboratory''' 
Yale's physics lab built 1882. Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page_33|page 33]].

'''Professor Gibbs''' 
Josiah Williard Gibbs (1839-1903), American mathematical physicist. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut. In 1854 he went to Yale and won prizes for excellence in Latin and mathematics. He undertook research in engineering and received his Ph.D in 1863, the first doctorate in engineering to be conferred in the US. From 1866 to 1869 Gibbs studies in Europe - first in Paris, then in Berlin and finally in Heidelberg. He was professor at Yale from 1871 to 1903. He contributed substantially to the study of thermodynamics, and his most important work, ''On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances'' (1876 and 1878) and his "phase rule" established him as a founder of physical chemistry. Gibbs' work on vector analysis was also of major importance in pure mathematics. Gibbs was one of the greatest American scientists in the 19th century. ([http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Gibbs.html Gibbs].)

'''De Forest''' 
Lee De Forest (1873-1961), American inventor. He was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa and educated at Yale and Chicago. A pioneer of radio, he introduced the grid into the therm-ionic valve, and invented the audion (1907), feedback circuit (1912) and the four-electrode valve. He involved in first news by radio (1916). He also did much early work on sound reproduction and on television. He patented over 300 inventions in wireless telegraphy, radio, telephony, talking pictures, high-speed facsimile transmission, television, radiotherapy, radar, etc. He was called, sometimes, "the father of radio." ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_De_Forest De Forest].)

'''Kimura''' 
He received his Ph.D degree in mathematics from Yale University in 1896. (Dissertation: ''Studies on General Spherical Functions''.) He published a paper ''On the Nabla of Quaternions'' in ''The Annals of Mathermatics'', Vol 10, No. 1/6 (1895-1896). In 1912, he published a paper called ''One-Waveness in Wireless Telegraphy; Pseudo-Impact Excitation'' in ''Physical Review'' of May 1912. (''Nabla'' is an early name for the "del" operator, symbolized by the inverted Greek letter Δ.)

'''Ray Ipsow''' 
In Latin ''re ipso'' means "the thing itself." "To the thing itself" was the motto and rallying cry of the investigational method known as phenomenology [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology Wikipedia entry] developed by Edmund Husserl [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Husserl Wikipedia entry]. As the phrase indicates, it is a plea against abstraction--a theme of GR--- and for reality 'itself'.

'''Outer Indianoplace''' 
Derogatory nickname for Indianapolis.

'''down in New Orleans . . . that Khartoum business''' 
Evidently two Chums of Chance books we didn't know about. Perhaps ''The Chums of Chance and the Voodoo Priest'' and ''The Chums of Chance and the Mussulman Hordes.''

'''Khartoum... Mahdi's army''' 
Khartoum is the capital of Sudan. The Mahdi army refered to here was an Islamic group in the 1880s that advocated a return to strict Islamic values and battled with the government of Khartoum and Egyptian armies.More on these convoluted events at the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sudan_(1884-1898) Wikipedia entry].

The concept of the Mahdi is far beyond this one historic event, however.
In point of fact, the U.S. is fighting the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahdi_Army Mahdi Army] in Iraq right now.

==Page 30==

'''contrary wind . . . Oltre Giubba, instead of down at Alex''' 
From Khartoum you fly north by west to Alexandria. That wind was about as contrary as it could be: from Khartoum to Oltre Giuba is south by east. Now called [http://www.jubaland.org/ Jubaland,] Oltre Giuba (just one B, please, this isn't ''Pagliacci'') is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oltre_Giuba the southwesternmost part of Somalia,] across the Juba River from the rest. Not to be confused with Juba province in southern Sudan.
:Oh, and the Oltre Giuba diversion must have taken place before ''Inconvenience'' was fitted with hydrogen steam power, else she could have flown against the wind.

'''railroad watch''' 
High-quality pocket watch. [http://www.pockethorology.org/Railroad/Railroad.htm [pix and info]]

==Page 31==

'''Scarsdale Vibe''' 
Scarsdale NY boasts that it's Westchester County's wealthiest community, so a 'Scarsdale vibe' implies 'stinking of money'. Vibe is another Pynchon baddie whose last name starts with "V", ''e.g.'', Brock Vond in ''Vineland.''

'''"The Juggernaut"''' 
The name of Vibe's private train derives from the Sanskrit Jagannātha, meaning "Lord of the Universe" one of the many names of Lord Krishna. "Krishna" itself means "black" or "dark" skinned. British colonial "urban" legend had it that Hindus sought to be crushed under the wheels of giant cars in Krishna's "chariot procession" at Puri as a way of gaining salvation. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juggernaut see the Wikipedia entry.]

Capitalism has often been described as a juggernaut. One of numerous uses:
"Even as leaders of nation states compete for power and prestige, the juggernaut of capitalism diminishes borders, weakens governments and, eventually," ...
http://www.southpacific.arts.unsw.edu.au/resources/resource_nissology.htm - 
:A leading sociologist, Anthony Giddens, is also responsible for the phrase, "the juggernaut of modernity". See this incredibly relevant definition and analysis of this phrase: "The most defining property of modernity, according to Giddens, is '''that we are disembedded from time and space'''. In pre-modern societies, space was the area in which one moved, time was the experience one had while moving. In modern societies, however, the social space is no longer confined by the boundaries set by the space in which one moves. One can now imagine what other spaces look like, even if he has never been there. In this regard, Giddens talks about virtual space and virtual time. Another distinctive property of modernity lies in the field of knowledge. In pre-modern societies, it were the elders who possessed the knowledge: they were definable in time and space. In modern societies we must rely on expert systems. These are not present in time and space, but we must trust them. Even if we trust them, we know that something could go wrong: there's always a risk we have to take. Also the technologies which we use, and which transform constraints into means, hold risks. Consequently, there is always a heightened sense of uncertainty in contemporary societies. It is also in this regard that Giddens uses the image of a 'juggernaut': modernity is said to be like an unsteerable juggernaut traveling through space." Wikipedia [[http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Giddens]]

'''in disguise . . . bodyguards and secretaries . . . ebony stick''' 
Some great disguise!

'''Foley Walker''' 
"Foley walker" is a term used to indicate a sound-effects expert. Also known as a foley artist [http://www.natf.org/wad/foley.htm [cite]]

Coalhouse Walker is a major character in Doctorow's ''Ragtime'', mentioned earlier as a book set within the same time period.

Probably a stretch: "One of the company's (i.e. Thiel‘s Detective Service Company) first employees was John F. Farley, a former U.S. Cavalry trooper. In 1885, Farley was appointed manager of Thiel's Denver office. Farley was known as the 'King of the Strikebreakers.' In 1895 Farley gave up any pretense of detective work and specialized in strike services, at one point allegedly earning $1 million from a strike in San Francisco. After a decade of strikebreaking, Farley retired—not having lost a single one of the 35 strike actions to which he had supplied personnel. Farley later became Denver's chief of police." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiel_Detective_Service_Company from Wikipedia]. The Denver city election results trial of 1889 invited media focus on corruption ties and payoffs between "Soapy" Smith (Criminal Boss of Denver), the mayor and Farley, the chief of police (see Note 6 in this [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soapy_Smith Wikipedia entry])

'''Forty-seventh and Ashland''' 
[...] First, the story [...] about Ashland being named for the ashes of the Great Chicago Fire is an urban legend. Ashland Avenue, first known as Reuben Street, was already developed before the fire and was considered the height of suburban living on the West Side in the 1860s.
[http://www.gapersblock.com/airbags/archives/ashland_the_great_fire_and_the_ruins_of_chicago/ [cite]] [...] The spread of movie palaces in the automobile age presaged the spread of commercial buildings from the Loop to the neighborhoods and suburbs. By 1930, Marshall Field & Co. had created smaller versions of its downtown store in Evanston and Oak Park, while neighborhood retailers like Goldblatt's and Wieboldt's were moving downtown. Chicago developed regional shopping districts at 47th and Ashland, 63rd and Halsted, Irving Park and Pulaski, and many other locations. Certain areas catered to specialized industries, such as “Automobile Row” on South Michigan Avenue, or the Maxwell Street Market, an open-air European-style market that resisted every effort at modernization until its destruction in the 1990s. [...]
[http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/316.html [cite]]
[http://americanhistory.si.edu/onthemove/img/crops/478.jpg [photo]]

==Page 32==

'''Second Corinthians''' 
This exchange between Vibe and Ipsow refers specifically to 2 Corinthians 11:19 -- For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise.
[http://www.kingjamesversionofthebible.com/47-secondcorinthians.html [cite]]

'''Ipsow's response to S. Vibe on lines 21-23( ...in these days need arises directly from criminal acts of the rich)''' can be seen as a direct paraphrase of Ch. 5 of the book of James:
Now listen you rich.. you have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! the wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields cry out against you... you have lived in luxury and fattened yourself in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and killed innocent men ... James 5

==Page 33==

'''"Old Zip Coon"''' 
"Old Zip Coon" dates from as early as 1834 and is considered the original name for the 19th-century American folk song, 'Turkey in the Straw'. [[Old Zip Coon | lyrics]] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_in_the_Straw Wikipedia] See also [http://www.stephen-foster-songs.de/Amsong59.htm] and [http://www.csufresno.edu:80/folklore/ballads/RJ19258.html]. 
The word "coon" may originate in America as a derogatory name for a Negro, but it was current in England too (therefore not "for an African-American"). For other occurrences of the word, with show business associations in every case, see text and annotations: [[#Page_48|page 48]], [[ATD_336-357#Page_344|page 344]], [[ATD_358-373#Page_369|page 369]] and [[ATD_397-428#Page 424|page 424.]]
:In this contributor's boyhood, a brand of chewing tobacco heavily advertised on East Tennessee radio and television used the tune in its jingle, with lyrics close to:
<blockquote>If you like a spicy taste 
Every morning, night and noon, 
Then you're bound to like the taste 
When you chew Red Coon.</blockquote>
:The package at this time portrayed a raccoon, but it's possible a different image had come before.

'''Dr. Tesla''' 
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), American inventor. He was born in Croatia of Serbian parents. He studied at Graz (Austria), Prague and Paris. He discovered (1881) principle of rotating magnetic field, basis of practically all alternating-current (AC) machinery. Between 1882-1884 he was an engineer in Paris (1882-84) and constructed his first induction motor (1883). He emigrated to the United States (1884, naturalized in 1889). Worked for Thmoas Edison (1884-85) but left the Edison Works at Menlo Park (Edison opposed to AC idea) to concentrate on his own inventions, which include improved dynamos, transformers, electric bulbs, wireless communication (1897) and the high-frequency coil which bears his name. (Cf [[ATD_97-118#Page_97|page 97]] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla Tesla].)

<div id="rewrite">'''violate . . . the essence of everything modern history is supposed to be''' 
Notice what he ''doesn't'' say: the principles of the free market, the essence of the capitalist economic system. As if modern history has already been written and such research would somehow undermine it.</div>

'''Sloane Lab''' 
Completed in 1912, was the gift of Henry T. Sloane, BA 1866, and William D. Sloane, MA HON. 1889. Of Longmeadow stone, it is Collegiate Gothic in style. Charles C. Haight was the architect. (An underground addition was constructed in 1958 to house a Van de Graaff machine-now removed. The John A. Hartford Foundation, Inc., and the U.S. Public Health Service financed it. Sloane Lab was the first University constructed on the Hillhouse Estate (less the three acres adjoining Sachem’s Wood). The property was a gift in 1910 of Mrs. Russell Sage, and called Pierson Sage Square. The University had wanted to acquire the land to develop into a turn-of-the-century “science park”. The well-known landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmstead advised in the land’s development. [217 Prospect Street]
[http://www.facilities.yale.edu/campus/Building1.asp?lstBldg=1075 [cite]] and [http://www.facilities.yale.edu/images/BFS/1075.jpg [photo]].

Interestingly, Frederick Law Olmstead was also pivital in the development of the grounds for the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. His famous "Wooded Isle" remains a centerpiece in Chicago's Jackson Park. [http://www.hydepark.org/parks/jpac/jpkhistoryandfair.htm [link]] and
[http://www.hydepark.org/parks/pics/laggen4.JPG [photo]].

For a more detailed account of Olmstead's landscape architecture as it relates to the 1893 World's Fair, see Erik Larson's ''The Devil in the White City''.

:These would be anachronistic, but as the note for p29 above mentions, a lab existed by 1882.

'''World-System''' 
Dr. Tesla's idea of providing electrical power that anyone could tap in for free alludes the birth of wireless internet before being monopolized by b(p)ig companies and corporate greed.

==Page 34==

'''the most terrible weapon the world has seen . . . rational systems of control''' 
This statement defines the threat—as the plutocrats see it—of free power (anarchy) and their justification for bending government and every other compelling force to stamp it out.

'''out of the fish-market anarchy of all battling all''' 
Vibe quotes Thomas Hobbes, who in ''Leviathan'' (1651) described the primitive state of the human race as ''bellum omnium contra omnes,'' the war of all against all, which was ended only by the creation of the State. Note the change of "war" to "anarchy."

'''Pierpont''' 
John Pierpont Morgan I (April 17, 1837 – March 31, 1913) was an American financier and banker, who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation.
[...]
In 1900, Morgan financed inventor Nikola Tesla and his Wardenclyffe Tower with $150,000 for experiments in radio. Tesla was unsuccessful and, in 1904, Morgan pulled out. Later, Tesla created an AC generator
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._P._Morgan [cite]]

'''non-linear phenomena of scale''' 
Linear scaling means, for example, store twice as much charge, get twice as much voltage. An instance of behavior becoming nonlinear is when air insulation breaks down (arcs, lightning); here adding charge may lead to a ''decrease'' in voltage.

'''Somble, Strool & Fleshway''' 
Law firms in Pynchon have such charming names; compare Salitieri, Poore, Nash, de Brutus, and Short in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow''] or Warpe, Wistfull, Kubitschek and McMingus in [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''The Crying of Lot 49'']. This one has more of a Dickensian sound. Somble could be a portmanteau of ''somber'' and ''tremble'' or ''some bull''; Strool, perhaps, of ''strait'' (= narrow) and ''cruel,'' or ''stool'' and ''drool''. "Fleshway" might suggest a reference to Samuel Butler's ''The Way of All Flesh,'' which was not published until 1903, but it seems more likely to go back to [http://www.gracecathedral.org/enrichment/brush_excerpts/brush_20041027.shtml a biblical phrase] associated with death.

Using the onomatapeia technique such as in the ''Gravity's Rainbow'' law firm, we start to get 'Some Bull, is ('t) Drool And.......Help needed! How about "some bull's strool and fleshway." Strool being the portmanteau of stool and drool, and fleshway being the meaty part of the flushway (g.i. tract, anus) -- you know, something like bullshit with the consitency of diarrhea.

Incidentally, Strool is an actual surname as well as the name of a town in South Dakota.

By the way, Thomas Hobbes' ''Leviathan'' (see "all against all" entry toward the top of this page) is also the source of Salitieri et al. ("solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short," describing the life of human beings in their primitive state). 

'''vestiary''' 
Of, or relating to, clothing.

==Page 36==

'''Fairgoers would see the ship overhead and yet not see it''' 
Useful property for a surveillance platform.

'''Lew Basnight''' 
"Bas" is French for "low", though "bas nuit" means nothing in French.

A detective named 'Lew' reminds us (who is "us"?) of Ross Macdonald's character Lew Archer which in turn recalls another detective, Miles Archer, partner of Sam Spade in San Francisco detective agency Spade & Archer. This may be a bad pun on 'lube-ass night' and also might refer to the incident causing Lew to be shunned by his peers.

[[image:beaver-on-the-brain.jpg|thumb|Beaver on the Brain T-Shirt|right]]Very possibly, Pynchon is having some fun here, working a whole sexual angle, naming his character after the phrase "BAS night," meaning a boys' night out, "BAS" being an acronym for "Bitches Ain't Shit" from the [http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/drdre/bitchesaintshit.html "song" by Dr. Dre] (featuring Snoop Dogg, Dat Nigga Daz, Kurupt, Jewel). And, hey, Lew meets Nicholas Nookshaft, Grand Cohen of T.W.I.T. (Nookie Shaft? Twat crossed w/clit? A-and isn't that tetractys an inverted beaver?), where he meets Yashmeen, a ''very'' sexual woman. And then there's that whole "Beavers of the Brain" cyclomite episode ([[ATD 171-198#Page 183|p. 183]]) (Beavers, fercrissakes!). Perhaps something worth following up ... or not!

It is possible Basnight is an Americanization of the German "Fasnacht". "Fastnacht or Fasnacht is the pre-Lenten carnival in Alemannic folklore in Switzerland, southern Germany, Alsace and western Austria. It is also known in parts of Pennsylvania Dutch Country as Fauschnaut Day and is celebrated on the day before Ash Wednesday, or the last Tuesday before Lent." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasnacht]

"A likely derivation is from PIE pwo- "purify" (cognate to pava-mana), or alternatively connected with Middle High German vaselen "prosper, bud" and interpreted as a fertility rite."

Fasnacht Day is known in English as Shrove Tuesday. "The word shrove is a past tense of the English verb "shrive," which means to obtain absolution for one's sins by confessing and doing penance." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrove_Tuesday] All of this seems to tally well with the Basnight character.

Another pun theory: on page 38, Lew is described as being in an ignorance "black as night." This can be abbreviated to "Basnight."
Lew is pronounced "loo," which of course is the British toilet.
Lew Basnight then means, "toilet, black as night." Just a thought...

'''White City Investigations''' 
Since the White City dates from 01 May 1893, this ought to be later.

The name recalls the White Visitation of [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow'']. Any connection?

==Page 37==
'''fictitiousness''' 
On this and the previous page, there is a question raised of whether the Chums are fictional. Or it could be saying that such fantastical sights as the airship are easy to miss at the fair.

It seems more likely that the comparison here is simply between that of the fair, a small, self-contained world of marvels (like all World's Fairs) and the "real world" outside its gates.

There is lots more going on (and it's ''lots'' more interesting). Consider these passages on pages 36-37:
*the . . . celebration possessed the exact degree of fictitiousness to permit the boys access and agency
*The harsh nonfictional world waited outside the White City's limits
*he (Lew) had not . . . heard of the Chums of Chance
*every boy knows the Chums of Chance
*you're not storybook characters. . . . Are you?
Too much back-and-forth about fiction to be '''just''' about the exposition and the real world. Some premises that are implicit here:
*The Chums know that they live in literature whether they have a "real" existence or not.
*They know their books are popular with an audience of boys. (Lindsay is surprised that Lew didn't read them earlier, not that he isn't reading them now.)
*Lew doesn't regard objective evidence (they are standing before him, he's ascended in their ship) as sufficient to rule out ambiguity (". . . Are you?").
*The lads are able to experience and act only in a quasi-fictitious environment. Off the fairgrounds (in the WCI office), Randolph gives nothing but answers scripted for him by National.
All this suggests that even the Chums aren't sure on what level they exist. They definitely have adventures, as recorded in their books, but they don't seem to have adventures ''not'' contained in the novels.
What will happen if they come to the end of a ''Chums'' book while we are still reading ''AtD''?

'''No more than Wyatt Earp or Nellie Bly''' 
See the next two entries. Earp had a "real" life but people remember him chiefly because of stories written about him (and by him through ghostwriters, [http://baseportal.com/cgi-bin/baseportal.pl?htx=/zpub2000/sfentries&cmd=list&range=0,50&Title~=E&cmd=all&Id=98 link 1], [http://www.ferncanyonpress.com/tombston/robbery.shtml link 2]). Bly entertained masses of people by having adventures and then writing about them. Each "lived" through a body of literature.

'''Wyatt Earp''' 
(1848–1929), was a teamster, sometime buffalo hunter, officer of the law in various Western frontier towns, gambler, and saloon-keeper in the Wild West and the U.S. mining frontier from California to Alaska. He is best known for his participation in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyatt_Earp Wikipedia]

'''Nellie Bly''' 
(1864-1922) was an American journalist, author, industrialist, and charity worker. She is most famous for an undercover exposé in which she faked insanity to study a mental institution from within. She is also well-known for her record-breaking trip around the world. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bly Wikipedia]

'''Regarding Lew Basnight's malady...''' 
Again, there seems to be a character with a neurological illness; in this case it is presented as amnesia, but seizures also result in "lost time". (See comments on Miles' "electricity coming on" on page 24.) Such maladies are more common than one supposes, and can offer a glimpse of other-worldliness akin to that of hallucinogenics, and epileptics have, at times, been considered to have access to past or future lives.

'''making a point of pronouncing his name disrespectfully''' 
The only way it could be done is, apparently, by saying Lube Ass Night. Well, that or tone of voice.

'''the Upstate-Downstate Beast''' 
Illinois is one of three states with an Upstate, though one of them doesn't use the term Downstate (South Carolina divides itself into Upstate and Lowcountry). The nickname points to a traveling man, perhaps. "Moral horror," "denounced," "revulsion" probably fit with many crimes, though most of those would have led to a prison sentence and we don't have any information of Lew's serving time.

'''"Although the longer a fellow's name has been in the magazines, the harder it is to tell fiction from non-fiction."''' 
May express Pynchon's reaction to the press' treatment of him over the years. In 1964, when Pynchon heard that the ''New York Herald Tribune'' was writing an article about him, Pynchon wrote to his agent that he assumed the piece "will be riddled with the same lies, calumnies and all-around knavish disregard for my privacy" as previous articles. ("Pynchon's Letters Nudge His Mask," ''New York Times,'' 4 Mar 1998).

'''Wensleydale''' 
A type of cheese made in Yorkshire, England.

==Page 38==

'''"You have destroyed your name."''' 
Wensleydale using very strong language. He doesn't say "destroyed your reputation" or "discredited your name" but "''destroyed'' your name." Does anyone else see this as suggesting Lew's name was not Lew Basnight before his sin?

'''to plead with him to come back''' 
A strange response, that Troth should ask the Upstate-Downstate Beast to return to her. You would think she'd prefer him as far away as he could get.

'''one of your other wives''' 
A direct reference to Lew's sin, or is Troth just pelting Lew with anything that's in reach?

==Page 39==

'''kazoos''' 
This silly instrument appears in several Pynchon novels.

'''slow ritual movement''' 
Maybe tai chi, or anachronistic Gurdjieffian dance?

'''Drave''' 
Possibly a back formation from 'Dravidians,' referring to David Koresh's Branch Davidians.
: huh? [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 16:23, 19 December 2006 (PST)
: I have to second that "huh?" This seems exceedingly improbable. [[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 06:15, 15 February 2007 (PST)
Another possibility is that Pynchon had in mind the Scottish noun "drave," which the OED defines as a "fishing expedition in which several men take part, each supplying a net and receiving a share of the profits made. Later, A haul (of fish); also, a shoal." This resonates with the evangelical role that Drave plays (Cf. Matthew 4:18, where Jesus addresses Peter and Matthew, "And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.")

It should be noted, though, that there is also a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drave Drave river] in south central Europe, though there seems to be little textual evidence to support this association.

'''Saratoga chips''' 
Potato chips were invented in Saratoga Springs, NY, and were often called Saratoga chips in the 19th century.

'''Esthonia Hotel''' 
Atonia is a lack of normal muscle tension, but also, "A frightening form of paralysis that occurs when a person suddenly finds himself or herself unable to move for a few minutes, most often upon falling asleep or waking up. Commonly called sleep paralysis, the condition is due to an ill-timed disconnection between the brain and the body." [http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=9811 Definition] This could mean that the hotel in question is nothing more than an internal hallucination of Basnight's, further suggesting that his problem is one of neurological rather than simply moral or spiritual cause.
:Could be, but at the same time let's not overlook the plain reading: Esthonia is an obsolete spelling of the country ''Estonia.''

'''''liable for criminal penalties''''' 
Law and the legal profession so far appear in AtD more than any other Pynchon novel (perhaps save ''The Crying of Lot 49''), and so far, like here, in a negative or confusing light, perhaps as part of the establishment Pynchon seems to rail against in the novel.

==Page 40==

'''lofty regions no high-iron pioneer had yet dared''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wainwright_Building In the early 1890s] anything taller than about 10 stories would have qualified.

'''remembrance stick''' 
Similar to keisaku in Zen Buddhism, an attempt by a sensei to alert students to their mindlessness in zazen (sitting meditation), usually administered by a stick. An English translation is stick of compassion. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyosaku [Wikipedia]]

Lew's performance of commonplace and strange chores is also similar to the way Zen training can proceed for novitiates.

==Page 41==

'''you keep bouncing free. Avoiding penance and thereby definition''' 
It is hard to tie Drave down philosophically. No connection between sin and penance, penance as destiny, penance happens or doesn't, and now this idea that penance ''defines'' one's existence.

==Page 42==

'''Spring arrived''' 
We've seen Lew pretty well through a year: summertime (p. 38) when Troth followed him to Chicago, autumn (p. 40) when he checked in at the Esthonia, winter (p. 41) as his bank account starved, now in the spring his moment of grace.

'''scorcher cap''' 
The cap of an early bicycling enthusiast. According to [http://www.velorution.biz/?p=1288 this] site,

:"In […]1892 [… a] bicyclist to be considered genuine had to be dressed in bicycle clothes. A man had to wear bicycle pants which were baggy at the top and tight to the legs below. Then he had to have bicycle socks and shoes. The shoes were made of canvass. Then he had to have a loose fitting grey colored short which we would designate now as a sport shirt. Then on his head he had to wear a tight fitting cap with a long bill in front, the longer the better up to a certain ceiling length. With this outfit and a bicycle with drop handlebars he was ready to appear in public as a real cyclist. If he could make 20 miles an hour on a good track he was called a 'scorcher,' the idea being that he was going so fast that he would scorch at least the end of his nose if nothing else."

'''shirtwaists with huge shoulders''' 
Fashionable the year of the Fair; compare Chevrolette McAdoo's outfit, p. 26.

'''He understood that things were exactly what they were.''' 
This sentence sums up the entire experience at the Esthonia hotel, which seems to be a Zen-like initiation. Here, Lew Basnight seems to have attained some form of enlightenment, and the description ("a condition...which he later came to think of as grace"), along with this sentence, are almost textbook examples of Zen enlightenment. No lights flash, no changes are seen; one merely understands that things are what they are. After this experience, he leaves the hotel, and no longer needs to be there. He then embarks on his new career, in part because of his extreme ability to notice minute details; something that he was not said to have had before.
:The sentence can also serve as a guide to readers of ''AtD.'' Even when it is tempting to speculate that "this paragraph is about Richard Nixon" or protest that "you can't see Sirius on a summer evening," it is worth the effort to let the text mean what it means.

==Page 43==

'''transfigured''' 
In Lew's time of grace, he shows a changed face.

'''leisurely rips through the fabric of the day''' 
See below

==Page 44==

'''He had learned to step to the side of the day.''' 
Through the book there are juxtapositions of things with and against the day (the 'title motif'). Here, we are told that Lew has learned to step "to the side" of the day. Possibly he is able to enter another plane? This is possible considering the dream-like hotel sequence on previous pages.
:I think that the "other plane" interpretation is a bit of a stretch. The passage seems to imply that Lew has learned to will and maintain a degree of detachment from his surroundings, perhaps a relinquishment of his perceived control over events or his attempts to control them.

'''it was apparently not as easy for anyone in "Chicago" to be that certain of his whereabouts''' 
The quotes here may be to distinguish the fact that while technically living in Chicago, Lew sometimes exists or moves within a place or plane that others also living there don't see, or have access to.

==Page 45==

'''two-headed eagle''' 
As Holy Roman Emperor, the Austro-Hungarian emperor bore a two-headed eagle (each head crowned) as part of his arms. The Tsar of Russia also used a two-headed eagle, but it was triply crowned (one crown between the heads). The Serbian two-headed eagle appeared on a shield with one crown above it, and the Montenegrin one had a single crown between the heads. Other details of the envelope would serve to disambiguate.

'''Trabants''' 
"Trabanten" (German for 'satellites') originally - during the Thirty Years' War - were lightly armed foot soldiers; later this term was used for servants and/or bodyguards of high-ranking persons.

'''"have a lawyer explain civil liability to you"''' 
Again, law. Pynchon must have boned up on legal jargon (or perhaps he got sued?). 
Or he may simply read the newspaper; this concept is neither obscure nor complex.

'''gumshoe''' 
Perhaps a bit too early to use this term; the Dictionary of American Slang dates it as "by 1906".

'''a couple a thousand hunkies''' 
"Hunkies" was a slur against Hungarians and other eastern Europeans. The word may have morphed into "honkies."

'''Francis Ferdinand''' 
This is indeed the same Franz Ferdinand whose assassination in 1914 triggered World War I. At the time of his appearance in AtD, he would have been 30, and his two passions throughout young adulthood and his 20s were travel and hunting (it is estimated that he shot more than 5,000 deer in his lifetime). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria Wikipedia entry]. He did indeed attend the Chicago Exposition. [http://columbus.iit.edu/bookfair/ch27.html]

A selection of Habsburgs, with ''AtD'' figures in '''''bold italic''''':
*'''''Franz Joseph I''''' (1830-1916; sometimes anglicized as Francis Joseph) became Emperor of Austria, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia, King of Bohemia in 1848 and occupied the throne until his death; even the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Joseph_I_of_Austria Wikipedia entry,] which seeks to be exhaustive, resorts to "etc." in the list of his titles
:*[http://www.visualstatistics.net/East-West/Mayerling%20Tragedy/Mayerling%20tragedy.htm '''''Rudolph'''''] (1858-1889), Crown Prince, Franz Joseph's son, who died, apparently by suicide, with his mistress '''''Mary Vetsera''''' at the Mayerling hunting lodge
*'''''Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph''''' (1832-1867), Franz Joseph's brother, set up as [http://www.casaimperial.org/emperador.htm Emperor Maximilian of Mexico] 1864-67 with French backing, executed
*[http://www.geocities.com/henrivanoene/genaustria06.html ''Karl Ludwig''] (1833-96), Franz Joseph's brother, from whom the rest of the Habsburgs descended
:*[[F|'''''Franz Ferdinand''''']] (1863-1914), Karl Ludwig's son, who became heir to the throne on his father's death and was [http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/duke.htm assassinated at Sarajevo] on June 28, 1914; the murder indirectly triggered the World War
:*[http://ftp.cac.psu.edu/~saw/royal/r16.html ''Otto Franz''] (1865-1906), Karl Ludwig's son
::*[http://www.firstworldwar.com/bio/karl.htm ''Karl I''] (1888-1922), Otto's elder son, who succeeded Franz Joseph as Emperor and King (abdicated 1918 at the end of the World War) and became ancestor of half the Habsburgs living today
::*''Maximilian'' (1895-1952), Otto's younger son, ancestor of the other half
:*[http://www.thepeerage.com/p11163.htm ''Ferdinand Karl Ludwig''] (1868-1915), Karl Ludwig's son
*[http://worldroots.com/cgi-bin/gasteldb?@I13495@ ''Ludwig Viktor''] (1842-1919), Franz Joseph's brother

See the annotation about Austria-Hungary on the next page.

'''shive artist''' 
Someone proficient with a knife (shive=knife or razor).

'''to rewrite history''' 
Hold on, '''re'''write? As Vibe did on [[#rewrite|page 33,]] Privett seems to reason that history has already been decided and some action would change it rather than generate a valid new history.

==Page 46==

'''"staff," a mixture of plaster and hemp fibers''' 
[http://ftp.apci.net/~truax/1904wf/WF_Mem-Staff.htm [pix and info]]

[http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html One source] says it was jute, not hemp.

According to [http://www.buildingstonemagazine.com/summer-06/historic.html ''Building Stone'' magazine,] the buildings were meant to be painted in bright colors, but the Chicago climate put the kibosh on that. Even keeping them white called for continuous repainting.

The Museum of Science and Industry is the only structure surviving from the exposition. Built as the Palace of Fine Arts, it started out faced in staff but was later [http://www.aviewoncities.com/chicago/museumofscienceandindustry.htm rebuilt] to the original exterior design in limestone and marble.

'''to counterfeit some deathless white stone''' 

Given the many references throughout AtD to "white" and "stones" to ''counterfeit'' a ''deathless'' white stone seems portentous.

'''"In Austria," the Archduke was explaining, ". . . the Chicago Stockyards might possibly be rented out . . . for a weekend's amusement"''' 

Pynchon continues his linking of the Stockyard killing-floor with the genocidal horrors of the 20th Century, it seems. See above. Heidegger (sic) made this connection somewhere and J.M Coetze's novel Elizabeth Costello uses it in a key chapter that was published separately. Researching the details.

'''beaters who drive the animals toward the hunters . . . waiting to shoot them''' 
Skillful use of ambiguity: waiting to shoot the animals or the beaters?

'''"Hungarians occupy the lowest level of brute existence"''' 
Even if the quote might be fictive, the Archduke's characterization is close to the point. Franz Ferdinand, a dour reactionary with aggressive ideas in foreign policy, had the reputation of an avowed Hungarophobe. The Compromise of 1867 created a dualistic Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, which the Archduke sought to transform in a "trialistic" way, giving an enivsioned southern Slav union of Croatia (which was united in a sub-confederation with Hungary), Bosnia and Dalmatia a status similar to that of the Kingdom of Hungary. Note how the Czechs, a population about twice as large as southwestern Slavs, were omitted from this scheme. The idea was evidently to weaken the Hungarian establishment, and recentralize power in Vienna.

'''Mannlicher''' 
A double-barreled rifle designed by Ferdinand Ritter von Mannlicher. It is reported that Archduke Franz Ferdinand had several of these made special for him.

Interestingly enough, the rifle is also mentioned in ''Green Hills of Africa'' and ''The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber'' by Ernest Hemingway, who used it extensively on hunting.

Franz was eventually assassinated in Sarajevo. Coincidentally (?), fellow assassinee JFK was initially claimed to have been a victim of Lee Harvey Oswald's Mannlicher rifle.

==Page 47==

'''K&K Special Security''' 
"K&K" stands for "Kaiserlich und Königlich," German for "imperial and royal (kingly)," to indicate the Austrian two titles of the ruler of the Dual Monarchy: King of Hungary and Emperor of Austria. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiserlich_und_königlich Wikipedia entry].

'''Kuchenteigs-Verderbtheit''' 
This is not a German word as far as I know and most likely not even a degenerate Habsburg or one of his officers would have used it (but then I haven't read Franz Ferdinand's account of his travels...). Sounds more like some Babelfish machine translation of "pastry-depravity" to me. I wonder what the German translator will make of this. My guess is, s/he will not make a "typical German" combined noun out of it, but turn the phrase to be able to use an adverb like "mehlspeisennarrisch" instead (what with in Austria and Bavaria there is a word for (mostly sweet) pastry: "Mehlspeise" (literally "flour-meal), and "narrisch" is Austrian/Viennese for being (slightly) mad). But then, of course, there might be a pun intended I as a bad english-speaker just dont get. Maybe via the pronounciation? Check out this [http://www.dict.cc/?s=Kuchenteigs-Verderbtheit dictionary], head for "continue searching" and press "voice output" - voila, thats what "Kuchenteigs-Verderbtheit" sounds like.

The term probably is made up, but the meaning is more like "shameful addiction to cookie dough." In the context of detectives, what may be happening here is this: The Austrians have heard the canard that American policemen are addicted to doughnuts, but they misunderstand both ''doughnut'' and ''addicted.''

Another possibility: Austrians have read that American detectives will do anything for dough.

'''Boll Weevil Lounge''' 
The boll weevil, a destructive cotton pest, first arrived in America (via Mexico) in 1892, only one year before the opening section of ATD. It is a fitting name for a "Negro Bar" as the boll weevil is the subject of dozens of blues songs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boll_weevil [Wikipedia]]

1893 is too soon for the songs and probably for the lounge too. Cotton was still king in the South; the big [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_States_and_International_Exposition_%281895%29 Atlanta exposition] was two years in the future, and the economic dislocation had not properly begun. The boll weevil songs date from the teens-20s and later.

'''...the only place in Chicago a man could find a decent orange phosphate...''' 
A reference to the modern stereotype that black people like orange soda, here called a phosphate.

==Page 48==

'''Wassermelone''' 
Watermelon; another black stereotype...

'''grip cars''' 
The lead cars in cable-car systems. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_City_Railway [Wikipedia]]

'''''deine Mutti'', as you would say''' 
Franz Ferdinand is attempting to engage the patrons of the Boll Weevil Lounge in a game of "the dozens", an insult contest in which opponents make fun of each other's mothers. "The dozens" has its origins in the New Orleans slave trade. As with the boll weevil, "the dozens" is closely associated with blues music. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dozens [Wikipedia]]

'''the World's Fair, not the World's Ugly''' 
A fairly sophisticated pun, if F.F.'s English is so rudimentary.

'''''...'st los, Hund?''''' 
German for "'s up, dog?"

'''All Pimps Look Alike to Me''' 
An early rag by Ernest Hogan was entitled All Coons Look Alike to Me; "Hogan was evidently not the originator of the song's lyrics, having appropriated them after hearing a pianist in a Chicago salon playing a song titled "All Pimps Look Alike to Me"". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hogan See this article.] 
For more "coon" references see text and annotations: [[#Page_33|page 33]], [[ATD_336-357#Page_344|page 344]], [[ATD_358-373#Page_369|page 369]] and especially [[ATD_397-428#Page 424|page 424]].

'''scapegrace''' 
Scoundrel.

'''And when Franz Ferdinand pays, everybody pays!''' 
WWI?

'''keester''' 
Buttocks.

==Page 49==

'''Kinsley's''' 
A famous steakhouse at 105-107 Adams St. in downtown Chicago. The building was erected in 1885.

'''At first Lew took it for a church''' 
This could be an allusion to the film, ''On The Waterfront'', and a similar scene when Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) is sent by Johnny Friendly and Co. to eavesdrop on a meeting being held in a church by local priest Father Barry (Karl Malden) along with workers from the docks who are fed up with Friendly and the Mob, especially in light of a recent death. Social themes of film seem apt as well. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_waterfront].

Karl Malden (Mladen Sekulovich)incidentally was a product of this milieu, born in Chicago in 1912 to a Serb steelworker father and Czech seamstress mother. The Sekulovich family hails from Herzegovina.

'''Welsbach mantles''' 
One of the most important advances in the history of lighting, the Welsbach mantle (for a period so ubiquitous it became more commonly known simply as 'gas mantle') was first sold commercially in 1892 and quickly spread throughout Europe. It remained an important part of street lighting until the widespread introduction of electric lighting in the early 1900s. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_mantle Wikipedia entry].

'''Reverend Moss Gatlin''' 
A fictional character. Is he connected to Rev. Cherrycoke? They are both Reverends with strong political opinions and you can hear Pynchon's voice here very strong.

Possible allusion to Reverend Fr. John M. Corridan, the real-life counterpart of Father Barry in ''On The Waterfront''. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Corridan Wikipedia]

Some real, or anyway nonfictional, anarchist preachers:
*[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard107.html Thomas Olney,] 17th-century Baptist anarchist who was influential in Rhode Island
*[http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/hol055/96047023.html Rudolf Rocker] (1873-1958), nicknamed the "anarchist rabbi"
*[http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/gallery/galleryindex.htm Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis,] Dutch minister who came to anarchism in 1897
*[http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_archives/critics/mckinley/chap4.html Albert Dahlquist and Joseph A. Wildman,] caught up in persecutions after the McKinley assassination (Dahlquist was nearly lynched; Wildman was tarred and feathered)
*[http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/301208.shtml Father Frank Morales,] participant in Portland anti-globalization demonstrations
*[http://www.deadanarchists.org/anton.html Hugh O. Pentecost,] who in 1889 was slated to address a meeting in commemoration of the Haymarket; Philadelphia authorities suppressed the gathering

'''fascinators''' 
Hair adornments. [http://www.ribbonsandpearls.co.uk/catalogue/fascinators/fascinator_hair_accessories_intro.htm [pix]]

'''bearing the insults of the day''' 
See notes on [[ATD_26-56#Page_43|pages 43 and 44]] above.

'''Blake's Jerusalem''' 
The original lines From William Blake's poem are:

I will not cease from mental fight, 
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand 
Till we have built Jerusalem 
In England's green and pleasant land.

'''Fierce as the winter's tempest . . . Death's for the bought and sold!''' 
This lyric does not come up in a Google search. It doesn't flow like any other lyric in Pynchon but reads like a rather good hymn text. No variations in the meter, no words broken for the sake of rhyme, no punctuation to show lengthened or chopped syllables. And yet thematically it is a seamless fit with the text around it. Are the lines original in ''AtD,'' or can their source be identified?

==Page 50==

'''Picardy third''' 
The use of a major chord at the end of a musical section in a minor key. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picardy_third Wikipedia entry]

==Page 51==

'''deadfalls''' 
Low points where refuse collects? Cf. Pynchon's story, Low-Lands?[http://www.thefreedictionary.com/deadfalls [def]]

'''prophesiers who had seen America as it might be in visions America's wardens could not tolerate''' 
Coupled with the cover blurb Pynchon wrote: "If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction." Could ''Against the Day'' be Pynchon's prophecy of a future America?

[[image:we_never_sleep.jpg|thumb|175px|right]]'''The Unsleeping Eye''' 
Reference to Pinkerton's competing PI agency. Pinkerton's National Detective Agency had a logo with an eye in the center, and below it read, "We Never Sleep." See also [[ATD_1-25#Page_13|page 13]].

'''bay rum''' 
A type of cologne or after-shave. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_rum Wikipedia article]

==Page 52==

'''''Inconvenience''''' 
Lew Basnight's temporary presence on the airship may be the first clue as to why it's called ''Inconvenience''. Perhaps his growing sympathy for the anarchists will lead to greater involvement by him, the Chums, or at least the book in portraying the anarchist movement, which is viewed as an inconvenience to the ruling classes. Pynchon may consider his novel's message, similarly, as an inconvenient truth about America's past, present or both.

:I thought it was just a polysyllable that sounds stately but means the opposite.--[[User:Robot|Robot]] 13:18, 5 December 2006 (PST)

In ''Mason & Dixon'', the willful reality of other people are referred to as inconveniences more than once.

'''the whiteness of the place nearly unbearable''' 
Causing an effect something like snow blindness.

'''some weeks till the fair closes''' 
30 October 1893.

'''our future's all a blank''' 
Whoever the Chums get their orders from, they have not received any new ones yet. They look ahead and see a blank page.

'''Freddie Turner''' 
Frederick Jackson Turner (1861 - 1932) was, with Charles A. Beard, the most influential American historian of the early 20th century. He is best known for ''The Significance of the Frontier in American History'', an essay which describes his views on how the idea of the frontier shaped the American character, and how the frontier drove American history and America's westward expansion. Excerpt: "In this advance, the frontier is the outer edge of the wave the meeting point between savagery and civilization."
[http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1893turner.html eText here...]; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Jackson_Turner Wikipedia]

==Page 53==

'''Here's where the Trail comes to an end at last''' 
With the advent of the railroad, the West changed dramatically. Chicago became the stockyards and slaughterhouse of America, and cowboys only funneled their cattle in that direction, no longer simply following them on the range or leading them to more local places of slaughter. The cowboy had become a cog in the wheel of a mechanism of death.

'''Blitz Instruments and Wackett Punches''' 
Mentioned in 1911 Britannica article 'Slaughter-house' [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Slaughter-house [etext]]

'''charabanc''' 
An open-topped bus for tourists.

'''"The frontier ends and disconnection begins"''' 
Here, the free cowboy myth of Buffalo Bill's show is replaced by the grim reality of the stockyard worker.

'''Cause and effect''' 
A major theme in ''Gravity's Rainbow''.

'''How the dickens do I know?''' 
A possible reference to the novels of Charles Dickens, who critiques in such works as ''Hard Times'' (1854) the onset of urban decay, and the choked living and working conditions of the proletariat as the Industrial Revolution steams onward. 
Or it may just be a standard euphemism; polite speakers were enjoined not to name the Devil.

'''hob-raising years''' 
Hell-raising years; his early years. [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/hob Definition of "hob".]

==Page 54==

'''where you knew you could stand and piss would flow two ways at once.''' 
The Professor is talking about growing up in Colorado, where the Continental Divide passes. It would be logical to suggest that, at the precise location of this divide, piss would indeed flow both east and west.
:For Easterners at least, it's a well-known tourist ritual to pee right on the line.

The best place to do this, for tourists, is at Cache La Poudre Lake, headwaters of the Colorado River on Trail Ridge Road (US 34) in Rocky Mountain National Park—it is exactly on the Divide, and water exits to East and West, Atlantic and Pacific.

'''into the control of potent operatives who did not wish him well''' 
Describing Lew's movement now, but a few pages previously that of the stock at the slaughterhouse.

'''Cheerfulness . . . a precarious commodity''' 
The original narrator of the Chums passages has definitely been pushed aside now. They seem to be in a totally different book.

==Page 55==

'''. . . they continued in a fragmented reverie which, . . . often announced some change in the works''' 
Good to notice when the Chums get like this again: i.e. unfocused, depressed, without direction, it may lead to patterns in the plot.
:No Fair, no orders, no adventures: The Chums are between books!

'''Speculation began to fill the day.''' 
See note on [[ATD_26-56#Page_43|pages 43 and 44]] above.

'''the ill-famed Hawk''' 
In deepening autumn it is ''rehearsing'' "swift descent, merciless assault, rapture of souls"; at the end of the passage "the temperature head[s] down." The Hawk appears to be a metaphor for winter or its storms. ([http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/the_hawk/ possible definition?]) 
:That is pretty conclusive. ''Hawk'' an established and documented metaphor for the winter wind.
The Hawk is also one of the ubiquitous birds of prey in ATD. The words showing its lethal effect and the drop in temperature are Pynchon themes
for evil. Evil comes from the lands of low temperatures. See GR.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 26-56

2007-09-21T03:57:07Z

Adrianboyd: /* Page 34 */ add-on

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==Page 26==

'''egret plumes''' 
Some species of egrets were threatened with extinction in the 19th century because their plumes (also called ''aigrettes'') were much used in millinery. Problem is, the egrets grew the showy feathers only in breeding season, so that's when they were killed, hence no little egrets (egretlets?).

'''Little Egypt''' 
was the stage name for two popular exotic dancers, Ashea Wabe who danced at the Seeley banquet at the 1893 World's Fair and Farida Mazar Spyropoulos, also performing under the stage name Fatima, appeared at the "Street in Cairo" exhibition on the Midway at the World's Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Egypt_(dancer) Wikipedia entry] Also a 1961 [[Little_Egypt|song]] by the Coasters.

==Page 27==

'''Bacchanale''' 
From ''Samson et Dalila'', op. 47 (1877) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_and_Delilah_%28opera%29 Wikipedia entry]. Listen to a [http://themodernword.com/wiki/bacchanale.mp3 30 second MP3 sample]

"Bacchanalia" describes not just the music but the dance too, in this context.

'''from here to Timbuctoo''' 
Now known as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu Timbuktu,] a standard figure of speech for the other end of Creation.

'''Maxim whirling machines...''' 
This paragraph describes a number of real flying apparati: [http://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/i/Chanute/library/Prog_Aero_Oct1893.html This article] from October 1893 describes the Maxim whirling machine and others.

'''ornithurgy''' 
Invented word?

My guess is that it signifies something like bird-works: 
ornith- variant of ornitho; [New Latin orntho-, from Greek, from orns, ornth-, bird;] [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ornitho-] 
-urgy [New Latin -rgia, from Greek -ourgi, from -ourgos, working, from ergon, work; see werg- in Indo-European roots [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/-urgy]

Above seems exactly right. This contributor was mislead by an inadequate source linking "theurgy" and "thurgy". I have erased the mistakes. The above meaning clearly fits the other use of 'ornithurgy' in AtD.[[User:MKOHUT|MKOHUT]] 13:23, 9 July 2007 (PDT)

'''Dally''' 
Merle's relationship with Dally is reminiscent of Ryan and Tatum O'Neal's characters in the 1973 Peter Bogdanovich film, "Paper Moon". Merle's family situation (single father, smart aleck daughter, mother who took off) is identical to that of ''Vineland's'' protagonist Zoyd Wheeler.

==Page 28==

'''''Imbottigliata!''''' Italian for "bottled".

'''Dahlia Rideout''' 
The Lolita motif is common in Pynchon's works. Other Lolitas include Bianca in [[http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow.'']

:Dahlia is four or five years old! She is not a Lolita motif here. Lolita was twelve and Humbert was sick.

'''in Randolph's face a degree of stupefaction one regrets to term characteristic''' 
Randolph "froze" previously, on page 12; evidently this is a trait already established in the ''Chums'' novels.

'''fulminate me if she ain't''' 
What an odd turn of phrase: set me off explosively.

'''this Trouvé-screw unit over here''' 
Gustave Trouvé built advanced machinery from the 1860s to the 1890s; [http://invention.psychology.msstate.edu/i/Chanute/library/Prog_Screws_May1892.html his work on airscrews] was pivotal, and he also invented [http://www.electricrecordteam.com/history.htm the outboard motor.] Before Trouvé's design studies, propulsion in the air used sail-rotors like windmills or depended on slightly modified marine propellers.

==Page 29==

'''Midway Plaisance''' 
The big central concourse of the White City. "Plaisance" is an alternative (or Frenchified) spelling of "pleasance," an esthetically appealing spot. According to [http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html this very good site] on the Columbian Exposition, the Midway Plaisance lent its name to the midways of circuses ever after.

'''a l'étouffée''' 
French, meaning braised. So, braised alligator meat. Braised food, for instance crawfish, is a culinary specialty of New Orleans.

In the New Orleans context, a recipe is pertinent because "braise" doesn't exactly tell the story of this Cajun preparation. The following is drastically abridged from, of all things, the obituary of Joe Daole ("Joe Dale") in the ''Atlanta Journal-Constitution,'' April 21, 2007:
:Saute onion, green pepper, celery, parsley and garlic in a great deal of butter. Add peeled and chopped tomatoes and seasonings. Simmer, covered, 5-10 minutes. Make a dark brown roux with oil and flour; add to vegetables. Add seafood stock and bring to a boil. Add peeled shrimp or crawfish tail meat and cook just 2-3 minutes. Serve over rice.

'''Sloane Laboratory''' 
Yale's physics lab built 1882. Cf [[ATD_26-56#Page_33|page 33]].

'''Professor Gibbs''' 
Josiah Williard Gibbs (1839-1903), American mathematical physicist. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut. In 1854 he went to Yale and won prizes for excellence in Latin and mathematics. He undertook research in engineering and received his Ph.D in 1863, the first doctorate in engineering to be conferred in the US. From 1866 to 1869 Gibbs studies in Europe - first in Paris, then in Berlin and finally in Heidelberg. He was professor at Yale from 1871 to 1903. He contributed substantially to the study of thermodynamics, and his most important work, ''On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances'' (1876 and 1878) and his "phase rule" established him as a founder of physical chemistry. Gibbs' work on vector analysis was also of major importance in pure mathematics. Gibbs was one of the greatest American scientists in the 19th century. ([http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Gibbs.html Gibbs].)

'''De Forest''' 
Lee De Forest (1873-1961), American inventor. He was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa and educated at Yale and Chicago. A pioneer of radio, he introduced the grid into the therm-ionic valve, and invented the audion (1907), feedback circuit (1912) and the four-electrode valve. He involved in first news by radio (1916). He also did much early work on sound reproduction and on television. He patented over 300 inventions in wireless telegraphy, radio, telephony, talking pictures, high-speed facsimile transmission, television, radiotherapy, radar, etc. He was called, sometimes, "the father of radio." ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_De_Forest De Forest].)

'''Kimura''' 
He received his Ph.D degree in mathematics from Yale University in 1896. (Dissertation: ''Studies on General Spherical Functions''.) He published a paper ''On the Nabla of Quaternions'' in ''The Annals of Mathermatics'', Vol 10, No. 1/6 (1895-1896). In 1912, he published a paper called ''One-Waveness in Wireless Telegraphy; Pseudo-Impact Excitation'' in ''Physical Review'' of May 1912. (''Nabla'' is an early name for the "del" operator, symbolized by the inverted Greek letter Δ.)

'''Ray Ipsow''' 
In Latin ''re ipso'' means "the thing itself." "To the thing itself" was the motto and rallying cry of the investigational method known as phenomenology [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology Wikipedia entry] developed by Edmund Husserl [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Husserl Wikipedia entry]. As the phrase indicates, it is a plea against abstraction--a theme of GR--- and for reality 'itself'.

'''Outer Indianoplace''' 
Derogatory nickname for Indianapolis.

'''down in New Orleans . . . that Khartoum business''' 
Evidently two Chums of Chance books we didn't know about. Perhaps ''The Chums of Chance and the Voodoo Priest'' and ''The Chums of Chance and the Mussulman Hordes.''

'''Khartoum... Mahdi's army''' 
Khartoum is the capital of Sudan. The Mahdi army refered to here was an Islamic group in the 1880s that advocated a return to strict Islamic values and battled with the government of Khartoum and Egyptian armies.More on these convoluted events at the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sudan_(1884-1898) Wikipedia entry].

The concept of the Mahdi is far beyond this one historic event, however.
In point of fact, the U.S. is fighting the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahdi_Army Mahdi Army] in Iraq right now.

==Page 30==

'''contrary wind . . . Oltre Giubba, instead of down at Alex''' 
From Khartoum you fly north by west to Alexandria. That wind was about as contrary as it could be: from Khartoum to Oltre Giuba is south by east. Now called [http://www.jubaland.org/ Jubaland,] Oltre Giuba (just one B, please, this isn't ''Pagliacci'') is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oltre_Giuba the southwesternmost part of Somalia,] across the Juba River from the rest. Not to be confused with Juba province in southern Sudan.
:Oh, and the Oltre Giuba diversion must have taken place before ''Inconvenience'' was fitted with hydrogen steam power, else she could have flown against the wind.

'''railroad watch''' 
High-quality pocket watch. [http://www.pockethorology.org/Railroad/Railroad.htm [pix and info]]

==Page 31==

'''Scarsdale Vibe''' 
Scarsdale NY boasts that it's Westchester County's wealthiest community, so a 'Scarsdale vibe' implies 'stinking of money'. Vibe is another Pynchon baddie whose last name starts with "V", ''e.g.'', Brock Vond in ''Vineland.''

'''"The Juggernaut"''' 
The name of Vibe's private train derives from the Sanskrit Jagannātha, meaning "Lord of the Universe" one of the many names of Lord Krishna. "Krishna" itself means "black" or "dark" skinned. British colonial "urban" legend had it that Hindus sought to be crushed under the wheels of giant cars in Krishna's "chariot procession" at Puri as a way of gaining salvation. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juggernaut see the Wikipedia entry.]

Capitalism has often been described as a juggernaut. One of numerous uses:
"Even as leaders of nation states compete for power and prestige, the juggernaut of capitalism diminishes borders, weakens governments and, eventually," ...
http://www.southpacific.arts.unsw.edu.au/resources/resource_nissology.htm - 
:A leading sociologist, Anthony Giddens, is also responsible for the phrase, "the juggernaut of modernity". See this incredibly relevant definition and analysis of this phrase: "The most defining property of modernity, according to Giddens, is '''that we are disembedded from time and space'''. In pre-modern societies, space was the area in which one moved, time was the experience one had while moving. In modern societies, however, the social space is no longer confined by the boundaries set by the space in which one moves. One can now imagine what other spaces look like, even if he has never been there. In this regard, Giddens talks about virtual space and virtual time. Another distinctive property of modernity lies in the field of knowledge. In pre-modern societies, it were the elders who possessed the knowledge: they were definable in time and space. In modern societies we must rely on expert systems. These are not present in time and space, but we must trust them. Even if we trust them, we know that something could go wrong: there's always a risk we have to take. Also the technologies which we use, and which transform constraints into means, hold risks. Consequently, there is always a heightened sense of uncertainty in contemporary societies. It is also in this regard that Giddens uses the image of a 'juggernaut': modernity is said to be like an unsteerable juggernaut traveling through space." Wikipedia [[http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Giddens]]

'''in disguise . . . bodyguards and secretaries . . . ebony stick''' 
Some great disguise!

'''Foley Walker''' 
"Foley walker" is a term used to indicate a sound-effects expert. Also known as a foley artist [http://www.natf.org/wad/foley.htm [cite]]

Coalhouse Walker is a major character in Doctorow's ''Ragtime'', mentioned earlier as a book set within the same time period.

Probably a stretch: "One of the company's (i.e. Thiel‘s Detective Service Company) first employees was John F. Farley, a former U.S. Cavalry trooper. In 1885, Farley was appointed manager of Thiel's Denver office. Farley was known as the 'King of the Strikebreakers.' In 1895 Farley gave up any pretense of detective work and specialized in strike services, at one point allegedly earning $1 million from a strike in San Francisco. After a decade of strikebreaking, Farley retired—not having lost a single one of the 35 strike actions to which he had supplied personnel. Farley later became Denver's chief of police." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiel_Detective_Service_Company from Wikipedia]. The Denver city election results trial of 1889 invited media focus on corruption ties and payoffs between "Soapy" Smith (Criminal Boss of Denver), the mayor and Farley, the chief of police (see Note 6 in this [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soapy_Smith Wikipedia entry])

'''Forty-seventh and Ashland''' 
[...] First, the story [...] about Ashland being named for the ashes of the Great Chicago Fire is an urban legend. Ashland Avenue, first known as Reuben Street, was already developed before the fire and was considered the height of suburban living on the West Side in the 1860s.
[http://www.gapersblock.com/airbags/archives/ashland_the_great_fire_and_the_ruins_of_chicago/ [cite]] [...] The spread of movie palaces in the automobile age presaged the spread of commercial buildings from the Loop to the neighborhoods and suburbs. By 1930, Marshall Field & Co. had created smaller versions of its downtown store in Evanston and Oak Park, while neighborhood retailers like Goldblatt's and Wieboldt's were moving downtown. Chicago developed regional shopping districts at 47th and Ashland, 63rd and Halsted, Irving Park and Pulaski, and many other locations. Certain areas catered to specialized industries, such as “Automobile Row” on South Michigan Avenue, or the Maxwell Street Market, an open-air European-style market that resisted every effort at modernization until its destruction in the 1990s. [...]
[http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/316.html [cite]]
[http://americanhistory.si.edu/onthemove/img/crops/478.jpg [photo]]

==Page 32==

'''Second Corinthians''' 
This exchange between Vibe and Ipsow refers specifically to 2 Corinthians 11:19 -- For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise.
[http://www.kingjamesversionofthebible.com/47-secondcorinthians.html [cite]]

'''Ipsow's response to S. Vibe on lines 21-23( ...in these days need arises directly from criminal acts of the rich)''' can be seen as a direct paraphrase of Ch. 5 of the book of James:
Now listen you rich.. you have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! the wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields cry out against you... you have lived in luxury and fattened yourself in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and killed innocent men ... James 5

==Page 33==

'''"Old Zip Coon"''' 
"Old Zip Coon" dates from as early as 1834 and is considered the original name for the 19th-century American folk song, 'Turkey in the Straw'. [[Old Zip Coon | lyrics]] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_in_the_Straw Wikipedia] See also [http://www.stephen-foster-songs.de/Amsong59.htm] and [http://www.csufresno.edu:80/folklore/ballads/RJ19258.html]. 
The word "coon" may originate in America as a derogatory name for a Negro, but it was current in England too (therefore not "for an African-American"). For other occurrences of the word, with show business associations in every case, see text and annotations: [[#Page_48|page 48]], [[ATD_336-357#Page_344|page 344]], [[ATD_358-373#Page_369|page 369]] and [[ATD_397-428#Page 424|page 424.]]
:In this contributor's boyhood, a brand of chewing tobacco heavily advertised on East Tennessee radio and television used the tune in its jingle, with lyrics close to:
<blockquote>If you like a spicy taste 
Every morning, night and noon, 
Then you're bound to like the taste 
When you chew Red Coon.</blockquote>
:The package at this time portrayed a raccoon, but it's possible a different image had come before.

'''Dr. Tesla''' 
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), American inventor. He was born in Croatia of Serbian parents. He studied at Graz (Austria), Prague and Paris. He discovered (1881) principle of rotating magnetic field, basis of practically all alternating-current (AC) machinery. Between 1882-1884 he was an engineer in Paris (1882-84) and constructed his first induction motor (1883). He emigrated to the United States (1884, naturalized in 1889). Worked for Thmoas Edison (1884-85) but left the Edison Works at Menlo Park (Edison opposed to AC idea) to concentrate on his own inventions, which include improved dynamos, transformers, electric bulbs, wireless communication (1897) and the high-frequency coil which bears his name. (Cf [[ATD_97-118#Page_97|page 97]] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla Tesla].)

<div id="rewrite">'''violate . . . the essence of everything modern history is supposed to be''' 
Notice what he ''doesn't'' say: the principles of the free market, the essence of the capitalist economic system. As if modern history has already been written and such research would somehow undermine it.</div>

'''Sloane Lab''' 
Completed in 1912, was the gift of Henry T. Sloane, BA 1866, and William D. Sloane, MA HON. 1889. Of Longmeadow stone, it is Collegiate Gothic in style. Charles C. Haight was the architect. (An underground addition was constructed in 1958 to house a Van de Graaff machine-now removed. The John A. Hartford Foundation, Inc., and the U.S. Public Health Service financed it. Sloane Lab was the first University constructed on the Hillhouse Estate (less the three acres adjoining Sachem’s Wood). The property was a gift in 1910 of Mrs. Russell Sage, and called Pierson Sage Square. The University had wanted to acquire the land to develop into a turn-of-the-century “science park”. The well-known landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmstead advised in the land’s development. [217 Prospect Street]
[http://www.facilities.yale.edu/campus/Building1.asp?lstBldg=1075 [cite]] and [http://www.facilities.yale.edu/images/BFS/1075.jpg [photo]].

Interestingly, Frederick Law Olmstead was also pivital in the development of the grounds for the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. His famous "Wooded Isle" remains a centerpiece in Chicago's Jackson Park. [http://www.hydepark.org/parks/jpac/jpkhistoryandfair.htm [link]] and
[http://www.hydepark.org/parks/pics/laggen4.JPG [photo]].

For a more detailed account of Olmstead's landscape architecture as it relates to the 1893 World's Fair, see Erik Larson's ''The Devil in the White City''.

:These would be anachronistic, but as the note for p29 above mentions, a lab existed by 1882.

==Page 34==

'''World-System''' 
Dr. Tesla's idea of providing electrical power that anyone could tap in for free alludes the birth of wireless internet before being monopolized by b(p)ig companies and corporate greed.

'''the most terrible weapon the world has seen . . . rational systems of control''' 
This statement defines the threat—as the plutocrats see it—of free power (anarchy) and their justification for bending government and every other compelling force to stamp it out.

'''out of the fish-market anarchy of all battling all''' 
Vibe quotes Thomas Hobbes, who in ''Leviathan'' (1651) described the primitive state of the human race as ''bellum omnium contra omnes,'' the war of all against all, which was ended only by the creation of the State. Note the change of "war" to "anarchy."

'''Pierpont''' 
John Pierpont Morgan I (April 17, 1837 – March 31, 1913) was an American financier and banker, who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation.
[...]
In 1900, Morgan financed inventor Nikola Tesla and his Wardenclyffe Tower with $150,000 for experiments in radio. Tesla was unsuccessful and, in 1904, Morgan pulled out. Later, Tesla created an AC generator
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._P._Morgan [cite]]

'''non-linear phenomena of scale''' 
Linear scaling means, for example, store twice as much charge, get twice as much voltage. An instance of behavior becoming nonlinear is when air insulation breaks down (arcs, lightning); here adding charge may lead to a ''decrease'' in voltage.

'''Somble, Strool & Fleshway''' 
Law firms in Pynchon have such charming names; compare Salitieri, Poore, Nash, de Brutus, and Short in [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow''] or Warpe, Wistfull, Kubitschek and McMingus in [http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''The Crying of Lot 49'']. This one has more of a Dickensian sound. Somble could be a portmanteau of ''somber'' and ''tremble'' or ''some bull''; Strool, perhaps, of ''strait'' (= narrow) and ''cruel,'' or ''stool'' and ''drool''. "Fleshway" might suggest a reference to Samuel Butler's ''The Way of All Flesh,'' which was not published until 1903, but it seems more likely to go back to [http://www.gracecathedral.org/enrichment/brush_excerpts/brush_20041027.shtml a biblical phrase] associated with death.

Using the onomatapeia technique such as in the ''Gravity's Rainbow'' law firm, we start to get 'Some Bull, is ('t) Drool And.......Help needed! How about "some bull's strool and fleshway." Strool being the portmanteau of stool and drool, and fleshway being the meaty part of the flushway (g.i. tract, anus) -- you know, something like bullshit with the consitency of diarrhea.

Incidentally, Strool is an actual surname as well as the name of a town in South Dakota.

By the way, Thomas Hobbes' ''Leviathan'' (see "all against all" entry toward the top of this page) is also the source of Salitieri et al. ("solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short," describing the life of human beings in their primitive state). 

'''vestiary''' 
Of, or relating to, clothing.

==Page 36==

'''Fairgoers would see the ship overhead and yet not see it''' 
Useful property for a surveillance platform.

'''Lew Basnight''' 
"Bas" is French for "low", though "bas nuit" means nothing in French.

A detective named 'Lew' reminds us (who is "us"?) of Ross Macdonald's character Lew Archer which in turn recalls another detective, Miles Archer, partner of Sam Spade in San Francisco detective agency Spade & Archer. This may be a bad pun on 'lube-ass night' and also might refer to the incident causing Lew to be shunned by his peers.

[[image:beaver-on-the-brain.jpg|thumb|Beaver on the Brain T-Shirt|right]]Very possibly, Pynchon is having some fun here, working a whole sexual angle, naming his character after the phrase "BAS night," meaning a boys' night out, "BAS" being an acronym for "Bitches Ain't Shit" from the [http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/drdre/bitchesaintshit.html "song" by Dr. Dre] (featuring Snoop Dogg, Dat Nigga Daz, Kurupt, Jewel). And, hey, Lew meets Nicholas Nookshaft, Grand Cohen of T.W.I.T. (Nookie Shaft? Twat crossed w/clit? A-and isn't that tetractys an inverted beaver?), where he meets Yashmeen, a ''very'' sexual woman. And then there's that whole "Beavers of the Brain" cyclomite episode ([[ATD 171-198#Page 183|p. 183]]) (Beavers, fercrissakes!). Perhaps something worth following up ... or not!

It is possible Basnight is an Americanization of the German "Fasnacht". "Fastnacht or Fasnacht is the pre-Lenten carnival in Alemannic folklore in Switzerland, southern Germany, Alsace and western Austria. It is also known in parts of Pennsylvania Dutch Country as Fauschnaut Day and is celebrated on the day before Ash Wednesday, or the last Tuesday before Lent." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasnacht]

"A likely derivation is from PIE pwo- "purify" (cognate to pava-mana), or alternatively connected with Middle High German vaselen "prosper, bud" and interpreted as a fertility rite."

Fasnacht Day is known in English as Shrove Tuesday. "The word shrove is a past tense of the English verb "shrive," which means to obtain absolution for one's sins by confessing and doing penance." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrove_Tuesday] All of this seems to tally well with the Basnight character.

Another pun theory: on page 38, Lew is described as being in an ignorance "black as night." This can be abbreviated to "Basnight."
Lew is pronounced "loo," which of course is the British toilet.
Lew Basnight then means, "toilet, black as night." Just a thought...

'''White City Investigations''' 
Since the White City dates from 01 May 1893, this ought to be later.

The name recalls the White Visitation of [http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/ ''Gravity's Rainbow'']. Any connection?

==Page 37==
'''fictitiousness''' 
On this and the previous page, there is a question raised of whether the Chums are fictional. Or it could be saying that such fantastical sights as the airship are easy to miss at the fair.

It seems more likely that the comparison here is simply between that of the fair, a small, self-contained world of marvels (like all World's Fairs) and the "real world" outside its gates.

There is lots more going on (and it's ''lots'' more interesting). Consider these passages on pages 36-37:
*the . . . celebration possessed the exact degree of fictitiousness to permit the boys access and agency
*The harsh nonfictional world waited outside the White City's limits
*he (Lew) had not . . . heard of the Chums of Chance
*every boy knows the Chums of Chance
*you're not storybook characters. . . . Are you?
Too much back-and-forth about fiction to be '''just''' about the exposition and the real world. Some premises that are implicit here:
*The Chums know that they live in literature whether they have a "real" existence or not.
*They know their books are popular with an audience of boys. (Lindsay is surprised that Lew didn't read them earlier, not that he isn't reading them now.)
*Lew doesn't regard objective evidence (they are standing before him, he's ascended in their ship) as sufficient to rule out ambiguity (". . . Are you?").
*The lads are able to experience and act only in a quasi-fictitious environment. Off the fairgrounds (in the WCI office), Randolph gives nothing but answers scripted for him by National.
All this suggests that even the Chums aren't sure on what level they exist. They definitely have adventures, as recorded in their books, but they don't seem to have adventures ''not'' contained in the novels.
What will happen if they come to the end of a ''Chums'' book while we are still reading ''AtD''?

'''No more than Wyatt Earp or Nellie Bly''' 
See the next two entries. Earp had a "real" life but people remember him chiefly because of stories written about him (and by him through ghostwriters, [http://baseportal.com/cgi-bin/baseportal.pl?htx=/zpub2000/sfentries&cmd=list&range=0,50&Title~=E&cmd=all&Id=98 link 1], [http://www.ferncanyonpress.com/tombston/robbery.shtml link 2]). Bly entertained masses of people by having adventures and then writing about them. Each "lived" through a body of literature.

'''Wyatt Earp''' 
(1848–1929), was a teamster, sometime buffalo hunter, officer of the law in various Western frontier towns, gambler, and saloon-keeper in the Wild West and the U.S. mining frontier from California to Alaska. He is best known for his participation in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyatt_Earp Wikipedia]

'''Nellie Bly''' 
(1864-1922) was an American journalist, author, industrialist, and charity worker. She is most famous for an undercover exposé in which she faked insanity to study a mental institution from within. She is also well-known for her record-breaking trip around the world. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bly Wikipedia]

'''Regarding Lew Basnight's malady...''' 
Again, there seems to be a character with a neurological illness; in this case it is presented as amnesia, but seizures also result in "lost time". (See comments on Miles' "electricity coming on" on page 24.) Such maladies are more common than one supposes, and can offer a glimpse of other-worldliness akin to that of hallucinogenics, and epileptics have, at times, been considered to have access to past or future lives.

'''making a point of pronouncing his name disrespectfully''' 
The only way it could be done is, apparently, by saying Lube Ass Night. Well, that or tone of voice.

'''the Upstate-Downstate Beast''' 
Illinois is one of three states with an Upstate, though one of them doesn't use the term Downstate (South Carolina divides itself into Upstate and Lowcountry). The nickname points to a traveling man, perhaps. "Moral horror," "denounced," "revulsion" probably fit with many crimes, though most of those would have led to a prison sentence and we don't have any information of Lew's serving time.

'''"Although the longer a fellow's name has been in the magazines, the harder it is to tell fiction from non-fiction."''' 
May express Pynchon's reaction to the press' treatment of him over the years. In 1964, when Pynchon heard that the ''New York Herald Tribune'' was writing an article about him, Pynchon wrote to his agent that he assumed the piece "will be riddled with the same lies, calumnies and all-around knavish disregard for my privacy" as previous articles. ("Pynchon's Letters Nudge His Mask," ''New York Times,'' 4 Mar 1998).

'''Wensleydale''' 
A type of cheese made in Yorkshire, England.

==Page 38==

'''"You have destroyed your name."''' 
Wensleydale using very strong language. He doesn't say "destroyed your reputation" or "discredited your name" but "''destroyed'' your name." Does anyone else see this as suggesting Lew's name was not Lew Basnight before his sin?

'''to plead with him to come back''' 
A strange response, that Troth should ask the Upstate-Downstate Beast to return to her. You would think she'd prefer him as far away as he could get.

'''one of your other wives''' 
A direct reference to Lew's sin, or is Troth just pelting Lew with anything that's in reach?

==Page 39==

'''kazoos''' 
This silly instrument appears in several Pynchon novels.

'''slow ritual movement''' 
Maybe tai chi, or anachronistic Gurdjieffian dance?

'''Drave''' 
Possibly a back formation from 'Dravidians,' referring to David Koresh's Branch Davidians.
: huh? [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 16:23, 19 December 2006 (PST)
: I have to second that "huh?" This seems exceedingly improbable. [[User:Kirkm|Kirkm]] 06:15, 15 February 2007 (PST)
Another possibility is that Pynchon had in mind the Scottish noun "drave," which the OED defines as a "fishing expedition in which several men take part, each supplying a net and receiving a share of the profits made. Later, A haul (of fish); also, a shoal." This resonates with the evangelical role that Drave plays (Cf. Matthew 4:18, where Jesus addresses Peter and Matthew, "And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.")

It should be noted, though, that there is also a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drave Drave river] in south central Europe, though there seems to be little textual evidence to support this association.

'''Saratoga chips''' 
Potato chips were invented in Saratoga Springs, NY, and were often called Saratoga chips in the 19th century.

'''Esthonia Hotel''' 
Atonia is a lack of normal muscle tension, but also, "A frightening form of paralysis that occurs when a person suddenly finds himself or herself unable to move for a few minutes, most often upon falling asleep or waking up. Commonly called sleep paralysis, the condition is due to an ill-timed disconnection between the brain and the body." [http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=9811 Definition] This could mean that the hotel in question is nothing more than an internal hallucination of Basnight's, further suggesting that his problem is one of neurological rather than simply moral or spiritual cause.
:Could be, but at the same time let's not overlook the plain reading: Esthonia is an obsolete spelling of the country ''Estonia.''

'''''liable for criminal penalties''''' 
Law and the legal profession so far appear in AtD more than any other Pynchon novel (perhaps save ''The Crying of Lot 49''), and so far, like here, in a negative or confusing light, perhaps as part of the establishment Pynchon seems to rail against in the novel.

==Page 40==

'''lofty regions no high-iron pioneer had yet dared''' 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wainwright_Building In the early 1890s] anything taller than about 10 stories would have qualified.

'''remembrance stick''' 
Similar to keisaku in Zen Buddhism, an attempt by a sensei to alert students to their mindlessness in zazen (sitting meditation), usually administered by a stick. An English translation is stick of compassion. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyosaku [Wikipedia]]

Lew's performance of commonplace and strange chores is also similar to the way Zen training can proceed for novitiates.

==Page 41==

'''you keep bouncing free. Avoiding penance and thereby definition''' 
It is hard to tie Drave down philosophically. No connection between sin and penance, penance as destiny, penance happens or doesn't, and now this idea that penance ''defines'' one's existence.

==Page 42==

'''Spring arrived''' 
We've seen Lew pretty well through a year: summertime (p. 38) when Troth followed him to Chicago, autumn (p. 40) when he checked in at the Esthonia, winter (p. 41) as his bank account starved, now in the spring his moment of grace.

'''scorcher cap''' 
The cap of an early bicycling enthusiast. According to [http://www.velorution.biz/?p=1288 this] site,

:"In […]1892 [… a] bicyclist to be considered genuine had to be dressed in bicycle clothes. A man had to wear bicycle pants which were baggy at the top and tight to the legs below. Then he had to have bicycle socks and shoes. The shoes were made of canvass. Then he had to have a loose fitting grey colored short which we would designate now as a sport shirt. Then on his head he had to wear a tight fitting cap with a long bill in front, the longer the better up to a certain ceiling length. With this outfit and a bicycle with drop handlebars he was ready to appear in public as a real cyclist. If he could make 20 miles an hour on a good track he was called a 'scorcher,' the idea being that he was going so fast that he would scorch at least the end of his nose if nothing else."

'''shirtwaists with huge shoulders''' 
Fashionable the year of the Fair; compare Chevrolette McAdoo's outfit, p. 26.

'''He understood that things were exactly what they were.''' 
This sentence sums up the entire experience at the Esthonia hotel, which seems to be a Zen-like initiation. Here, Lew Basnight seems to have attained some form of enlightenment, and the description ("a condition...which he later came to think of as grace"), along with this sentence, are almost textbook examples of Zen enlightenment. No lights flash, no changes are seen; one merely understands that things are what they are. After this experience, he leaves the hotel, and no longer needs to be there. He then embarks on his new career, in part because of his extreme ability to notice minute details; something that he was not said to have had before.
:The sentence can also serve as a guide to readers of ''AtD.'' Even when it is tempting to speculate that "this paragraph is about Richard Nixon" or protest that "you can't see Sirius on a summer evening," it is worth the effort to let the text mean what it means.

==Page 43==

'''transfigured''' 
In Lew's time of grace, he shows a changed face.

'''leisurely rips through the fabric of the day''' 
See below

==Page 44==

'''He had learned to step to the side of the day.''' 
Through the book there are juxtapositions of things with and against the day (the 'title motif'). Here, we are told that Lew has learned to step "to the side" of the day. Possibly he is able to enter another plane? This is possible considering the dream-like hotel sequence on previous pages.
:I think that the "other plane" interpretation is a bit of a stretch. The passage seems to imply that Lew has learned to will and maintain a degree of detachment from his surroundings, perhaps a relinquishment of his perceived control over events or his attempts to control them.

'''it was apparently not as easy for anyone in "Chicago" to be that certain of his whereabouts''' 
The quotes here may be to distinguish the fact that while technically living in Chicago, Lew sometimes exists or moves within a place or plane that others also living there don't see, or have access to.

==Page 45==

'''two-headed eagle''' 
As Holy Roman Emperor, the Austro-Hungarian emperor bore a two-headed eagle (each head crowned) as part of his arms. The Tsar of Russia also used a two-headed eagle, but it was triply crowned (one crown between the heads). The Serbian two-headed eagle appeared on a shield with one crown above it, and the Montenegrin one had a single crown between the heads. Other details of the envelope would serve to disambiguate.

'''Trabants''' 
"Trabanten" (German for 'satellites') originally - during the Thirty Years' War - were lightly armed foot soldiers; later this term was used for servants and/or bodyguards of high-ranking persons.

'''"have a lawyer explain civil liability to you"''' 
Again, law. Pynchon must have boned up on legal jargon (or perhaps he got sued?). 
Or he may simply read the newspaper; this concept is neither obscure nor complex.

'''gumshoe''' 
Perhaps a bit too early to use this term; the Dictionary of American Slang dates it as "by 1906".

'''a couple a thousand hunkies''' 
"Hunkies" was a slur against Hungarians and other eastern Europeans. The word may have morphed into "honkies."

'''Francis Ferdinand''' 
This is indeed the same Franz Ferdinand whose assassination in 1914 triggered World War I. At the time of his appearance in AtD, he would have been 30, and his two passions throughout young adulthood and his 20s were travel and hunting (it is estimated that he shot more than 5,000 deer in his lifetime). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand_of_Austria Wikipedia entry]. He did indeed attend the Chicago Exposition. [http://columbus.iit.edu/bookfair/ch27.html]

A selection of Habsburgs, with ''AtD'' figures in '''''bold italic''''':
*'''''Franz Joseph I''''' (1830-1916; sometimes anglicized as Francis Joseph) became Emperor of Austria, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia, King of Bohemia in 1848 and occupied the throne until his death; even the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Joseph_I_of_Austria Wikipedia entry,] which seeks to be exhaustive, resorts to "etc." in the list of his titles
:*[http://www.visualstatistics.net/East-West/Mayerling%20Tragedy/Mayerling%20tragedy.htm '''''Rudolph'''''] (1858-1889), Crown Prince, Franz Joseph's son, who died, apparently by suicide, with his mistress '''''Mary Vetsera''''' at the Mayerling hunting lodge
*'''''Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph''''' (1832-1867), Franz Joseph's brother, set up as [http://www.casaimperial.org/emperador.htm Emperor Maximilian of Mexico] 1864-67 with French backing, executed
*[http://www.geocities.com/henrivanoene/genaustria06.html ''Karl Ludwig''] (1833-96), Franz Joseph's brother, from whom the rest of the Habsburgs descended
:*[[F|'''''Franz Ferdinand''''']] (1863-1914), Karl Ludwig's son, who became heir to the throne on his father's death and was [http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/duke.htm assassinated at Sarajevo] on June 28, 1914; the murder indirectly triggered the World War
:*[http://ftp.cac.psu.edu/~saw/royal/r16.html ''Otto Franz''] (1865-1906), Karl Ludwig's son
::*[http://www.firstworldwar.com/bio/karl.htm ''Karl I''] (1888-1922), Otto's elder son, who succeeded Franz Joseph as Emperor and King (abdicated 1918 at the end of the World War) and became ancestor of half the Habsburgs living today
::*''Maximilian'' (1895-1952), Otto's younger son, ancestor of the other half
:*[http://www.thepeerage.com/p11163.htm ''Ferdinand Karl Ludwig''] (1868-1915), Karl Ludwig's son
*[http://worldroots.com/cgi-bin/gasteldb?@I13495@ ''Ludwig Viktor''] (1842-1919), Franz Joseph's brother

See the annotation about Austria-Hungary on the next page.

'''shive artist''' 
Someone proficient with a knife (shive=knife or razor).

'''to rewrite history''' 
Hold on, '''re'''write? As Vibe did on [[#rewrite|page 33,]] Privett seems to reason that history has already been decided and some action would change it rather than generate a valid new history.

==Page 46==

'''"staff," a mixture of plaster and hemp fibers''' 
[http://ftp.apci.net/~truax/1904wf/WF_Mem-Staff.htm [pix and info]]

[http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html One source] says it was jute, not hemp.

According to [http://www.buildingstonemagazine.com/summer-06/historic.html ''Building Stone'' magazine,] the buildings were meant to be painted in bright colors, but the Chicago climate put the kibosh on that. Even keeping them white called for continuous repainting.

The Museum of Science and Industry is the only structure surviving from the exposition. Built as the Palace of Fine Arts, it started out faced in staff but was later [http://www.aviewoncities.com/chicago/museumofscienceandindustry.htm rebuilt] to the original exterior design in limestone and marble.

'''to counterfeit some deathless white stone''' 

Given the many references throughout AtD to "white" and "stones" to ''counterfeit'' a ''deathless'' white stone seems portentous.

'''"In Austria," the Archduke was explaining, ". . . the Chicago Stockyards might possibly be rented out . . . for a weekend's amusement"''' 

Pynchon continues his linking of the Stockyard killing-floor with the genocidal horrors of the 20th Century, it seems. See above. Heidegger (sic) made this connection somewhere and J.M Coetze's novel Elizabeth Costello uses it in a key chapter that was published separately. Researching the details.

'''beaters who drive the animals toward the hunters . . . waiting to shoot them''' 
Skillful use of ambiguity: waiting to shoot the animals or the beaters?

'''"Hungarians occupy the lowest level of brute existence"''' 
Even if the quote might be fictive, the Archduke's characterization is close to the point. Franz Ferdinand, a dour reactionary with aggressive ideas in foreign policy, had the reputation of an avowed Hungarophobe. The Compromise of 1867 created a dualistic Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, which the Archduke sought to transform in a "trialistic" way, giving an enivsioned southern Slav union of Croatia (which was united in a sub-confederation with Hungary), Bosnia and Dalmatia a status similar to that of the Kingdom of Hungary. Note how the Czechs, a population about twice as large as southwestern Slavs, were omitted from this scheme. The idea was evidently to weaken the Hungarian establishment, and recentralize power in Vienna.

'''Mannlicher''' 
A double-barreled rifle designed by Ferdinand Ritter von Mannlicher. It is reported that Archduke Franz Ferdinand had several of these made special for him.

Interestingly enough, the rifle is also mentioned in ''Green Hills of Africa'' and ''The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber'' by Ernest Hemingway, who used it extensively on hunting.

Franz was eventually assassinated in Sarajevo. Coincidentally (?), fellow assassinee JFK was initially claimed to have been a victim of Lee Harvey Oswald's Mannlicher rifle.

==Page 47==

'''K&K Special Security''' 
"K&K" stands for "Kaiserlich und Königlich," German for "imperial and royal (kingly)," to indicate the Austrian two titles of the ruler of the Dual Monarchy: King of Hungary and Emperor of Austria. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiserlich_und_königlich Wikipedia entry].

'''Kuchenteigs-Verderbtheit''' 
This is not a German word as far as I know and most likely not even a degenerate Habsburg or one of his officers would have used it (but then I haven't read Franz Ferdinand's account of his travels...). Sounds more like some Babelfish machine translation of "pastry-depravity" to me. I wonder what the German translator will make of this. My guess is, s/he will not make a "typical German" combined noun out of it, but turn the phrase to be able to use an adverb like "mehlspeisennarrisch" instead (what with in Austria and Bavaria there is a word for (mostly sweet) pastry: "Mehlspeise" (literally "flour-meal), and "narrisch" is Austrian/Viennese for being (slightly) mad). But then, of course, there might be a pun intended I as a bad english-speaker just dont get. Maybe via the pronounciation? Check out this [http://www.dict.cc/?s=Kuchenteigs-Verderbtheit dictionary], head for "continue searching" and press "voice output" - voila, thats what "Kuchenteigs-Verderbtheit" sounds like.

The term probably is made up, but the meaning is more like "shameful addiction to cookie dough." In the context of detectives, what may be happening here is this: The Austrians have heard the canard that American policemen are addicted to doughnuts, but they misunderstand both ''doughnut'' and ''addicted.''

Another possibility: Austrians have read that American detectives will do anything for dough.

'''Boll Weevil Lounge''' 
The boll weevil, a destructive cotton pest, first arrived in America (via Mexico) in 1892, only one year before the opening section of ATD. It is a fitting name for a "Negro Bar" as the boll weevil is the subject of dozens of blues songs. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boll_weevil [Wikipedia]]

1893 is too soon for the songs and probably for the lounge too. Cotton was still king in the South; the big [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_States_and_International_Exposition_%281895%29 Atlanta exposition] was two years in the future, and the economic dislocation had not properly begun. The boll weevil songs date from the teens-20s and later.

'''...the only place in Chicago a man could find a decent orange phosphate...''' 
A reference to the modern stereotype that black people like orange soda, here called a phosphate.

==Page 48==

'''Wassermelone''' 
Watermelon; another black stereotype...

'''grip cars''' 
The lead cars in cable-car systems. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_City_Railway [Wikipedia]]

'''''deine Mutti'', as you would say''' 
Franz Ferdinand is attempting to engage the patrons of the Boll Weevil Lounge in a game of "the dozens", an insult contest in which opponents make fun of each other's mothers. "The dozens" has its origins in the New Orleans slave trade. As with the boll weevil, "the dozens" is closely associated with blues music. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dozens [Wikipedia]]

'''the World's Fair, not the World's Ugly''' 
A fairly sophisticated pun, if F.F.'s English is so rudimentary.

'''''...'st los, Hund?''''' 
German for "'s up, dog?"

'''All Pimps Look Alike to Me''' 
An early rag by Ernest Hogan was entitled All Coons Look Alike to Me; "Hogan was evidently not the originator of the song's lyrics, having appropriated them after hearing a pianist in a Chicago salon playing a song titled "All Pimps Look Alike to Me"". [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hogan See this article.] 
For more "coon" references see text and annotations: [[#Page_33|page 33]], [[ATD_336-357#Page_344|page 344]], [[ATD_358-373#Page_369|page 369]] and especially [[ATD_397-428#Page 424|page 424]].

'''scapegrace''' 
Scoundrel.

'''And when Franz Ferdinand pays, everybody pays!''' 
WWI?

'''keester''' 
Buttocks.

==Page 49==

'''Kinsley's''' 
A famous steakhouse at 105-107 Adams St. in downtown Chicago. The building was erected in 1885.

'''At first Lew took it for a church''' 
This could be an allusion to the film, ''On The Waterfront'', and a similar scene when Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) is sent by Johnny Friendly and Co. to eavesdrop on a meeting being held in a church by local priest Father Barry (Karl Malden) along with workers from the docks who are fed up with Friendly and the Mob, especially in light of a recent death. Social themes of film seem apt as well. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_waterfront].

Karl Malden (Mladen Sekulovich)incidentally was a product of this milieu, born in Chicago in 1912 to a Serb steelworker father and Czech seamstress mother. The Sekulovich family hails from Herzegovina.

'''Welsbach mantles''' 
One of the most important advances in the history of lighting, the Welsbach mantle (for a period so ubiquitous it became more commonly known simply as 'gas mantle') was first sold commercially in 1892 and quickly spread throughout Europe. It remained an important part of street lighting until the widespread introduction of electric lighting in the early 1900s. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_mantle Wikipedia entry].

'''Reverend Moss Gatlin''' 
A fictional character. Is he connected to Rev. Cherrycoke? They are both Reverends with strong political opinions and you can hear Pynchon's voice here very strong.

Possible allusion to Reverend Fr. John M. Corridan, the real-life counterpart of Father Barry in ''On The Waterfront''. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Corridan Wikipedia]

Some real, or anyway nonfictional, anarchist preachers:
*[http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard107.html Thomas Olney,] 17th-century Baptist anarchist who was influential in Rhode Island
*[http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/hol055/96047023.html Rudolf Rocker] (1873-1958), nicknamed the "anarchist rabbi"
*[http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/gallery/galleryindex.htm Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis,] Dutch minister who came to anarchism in 1897
*[http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_archives/critics/mckinley/chap4.html Albert Dahlquist and Joseph A. Wildman,] caught up in persecutions after the McKinley assassination (Dahlquist was nearly lynched; Wildman was tarred and feathered)
*[http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/301208.shtml Father Frank Morales,] participant in Portland anti-globalization demonstrations
*[http://www.deadanarchists.org/anton.html Hugh O. Pentecost,] who in 1889 was slated to address a meeting in commemoration of the Haymarket; Philadelphia authorities suppressed the gathering

'''fascinators''' 
Hair adornments. [http://www.ribbonsandpearls.co.uk/catalogue/fascinators/fascinator_hair_accessories_intro.htm [pix]]

'''bearing the insults of the day''' 
See notes on [[ATD_26-56#Page_43|pages 43 and 44]] above.

'''Blake's Jerusalem''' 
The original lines From William Blake's poem are:

I will not cease from mental fight, 
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand 
Till we have built Jerusalem 
In England's green and pleasant land.

'''Fierce as the winter's tempest . . . Death's for the bought and sold!''' 
This lyric does not come up in a Google search. It doesn't flow like any other lyric in Pynchon but reads like a rather good hymn text. No variations in the meter, no words broken for the sake of rhyme, no punctuation to show lengthened or chopped syllables. And yet thematically it is a seamless fit with the text around it. Are the lines original in ''AtD,'' or can their source be identified?

==Page 50==

'''Picardy third''' 
The use of a major chord at the end of a musical section in a minor key. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picardy_third Wikipedia entry]

==Page 51==

'''deadfalls''' 
Low points where refuse collects? Cf. Pynchon's story, Low-Lands?[http://www.thefreedictionary.com/deadfalls [def]]

'''prophesiers who had seen America as it might be in visions America's wardens could not tolerate''' 
Coupled with the cover blurb Pynchon wrote: "If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction." Could ''Against the Day'' be Pynchon's prophecy of a future America?

[[image:we_never_sleep.jpg|thumb|175px|right]]'''The Unsleeping Eye''' 
Reference to Pinkerton's competing PI agency. Pinkerton's National Detective Agency had a logo with an eye in the center, and below it read, "We Never Sleep." See also [[ATD_1-25#Page_13|page 13]].

'''bay rum''' 
A type of cologne or after-shave. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_rum Wikipedia article]

==Page 52==

'''''Inconvenience''''' 
Lew Basnight's temporary presence on the airship may be the first clue as to why it's called ''Inconvenience''. Perhaps his growing sympathy for the anarchists will lead to greater involvement by him, the Chums, or at least the book in portraying the anarchist movement, which is viewed as an inconvenience to the ruling classes. Pynchon may consider his novel's message, similarly, as an inconvenient truth about America's past, present or both.

:I thought it was just a polysyllable that sounds stately but means the opposite.--[[User:Robot|Robot]] 13:18, 5 December 2006 (PST)

In ''Mason & Dixon'', the willful reality of other people are referred to as inconveniences more than once.

'''the whiteness of the place nearly unbearable''' 
Causing an effect something like snow blindness.

'''some weeks till the fair closes''' 
30 October 1893.

'''our future's all a blank''' 
Whoever the Chums get their orders from, they have not received any new ones yet. They look ahead and see a blank page.

'''Freddie Turner''' 
Frederick Jackson Turner (1861 - 1932) was, with Charles A. Beard, the most influential American historian of the early 20th century. He is best known for ''The Significance of the Frontier in American History'', an essay which describes his views on how the idea of the frontier shaped the American character, and how the frontier drove American history and America's westward expansion. Excerpt: "In this advance, the frontier is the outer edge of the wave the meeting point between savagery and civilization."
[http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1893turner.html eText here...]; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Jackson_Turner Wikipedia]

==Page 53==

'''Here's where the Trail comes to an end at last''' 
With the advent of the railroad, the West changed dramatically. Chicago became the stockyards and slaughterhouse of America, and cowboys only funneled their cattle in that direction, no longer simply following them on the range or leading them to more local places of slaughter. The cowboy had become a cog in the wheel of a mechanism of death.

'''Blitz Instruments and Wackett Punches''' 
Mentioned in 1911 Britannica article 'Slaughter-house' [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Slaughter-house [etext]]

'''charabanc''' 
An open-topped bus for tourists.

'''"The frontier ends and disconnection begins"''' 
Here, the free cowboy myth of Buffalo Bill's show is replaced by the grim reality of the stockyard worker.

'''Cause and effect''' 
A major theme in ''Gravity's Rainbow''.

'''How the dickens do I know?''' 
A possible reference to the novels of Charles Dickens, who critiques in such works as ''Hard Times'' (1854) the onset of urban decay, and the choked living and working conditions of the proletariat as the Industrial Revolution steams onward. 
Or it may just be a standard euphemism; polite speakers were enjoined not to name the Devil.

'''hob-raising years''' 
Hell-raising years; his early years. [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/hob Definition of "hob".]

==Page 54==

'''where you knew you could stand and piss would flow two ways at once.''' 
The Professor is talking about growing up in Colorado, where the Continental Divide passes. It would be logical to suggest that, at the precise location of this divide, piss would indeed flow both east and west.
:For Easterners at least, it's a well-known tourist ritual to pee right on the line.

The best place to do this, for tourists, is at Cache La Poudre Lake, headwaters of the Colorado River on Trail Ridge Road (US 34) in Rocky Mountain National Park—it is exactly on the Divide, and water exits to East and West, Atlantic and Pacific.

'''into the control of potent operatives who did not wish him well''' 
Describing Lew's movement now, but a few pages previously that of the stock at the slaughterhouse.

'''Cheerfulness . . . a precarious commodity''' 
The original narrator of the Chums passages has definitely been pushed aside now. They seem to be in a totally different book.

==Page 55==

'''. . . they continued in a fragmented reverie which, . . . often announced some change in the works''' 
Good to notice when the Chums get like this again: i.e. unfocused, depressed, without direction, it may lead to patterns in the plot.
:No Fair, no orders, no adventures: The Chums are between books!

'''Speculation began to fill the day.''' 
See note on [[ATD_26-56#Page_43|pages 43 and 44]] above.

'''the ill-famed Hawk''' 
In deepening autumn it is ''rehearsing'' "swift descent, merciless assault, rapture of souls"; at the end of the passage "the temperature head[s] down." The Hawk appears to be a metaphor for winter or its storms. ([http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/the_hawk/ possible definition?]) 
:That is pretty conclusive. ''Hawk'' an established and documented metaphor for the winter wind.
The Hawk is also one of the ubiquitous birds of prey in ATD. The words showing its lethal effect and the drop in temperature are Pynchon themes
for evil. Evil comes from the lands of low temperatures. See GR.

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 1-25

2007-09-21T02:11:33Z

Adrianboyd: /* Page 15 */

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==cover text==
The black text and its drop shadows are in different typefaces. It may be worth noting, from a conceptual point of view, that we can infer from the angle of the drop shadows that the light source is any individual holding the book—that is, the reader or a potential reader.

==cover seal==
The seal appears to be written in Tibetan language, according to somebody who posts regularly to Pynchon-l under the name "Ya Sam", who reports:

I contacted the Tibetan Cultural Centre with the request to translate
the mysterious legend on the AtD seal. They were kind enough to forward my
request to the Tibetan tranlsator Tenzin Namgyal to whose generosity we
owe the solution of one more ATD related mystery.

It is the Tibetan language, alright, and it means ...... Tibetan
Government Chamber of Commerce.

Read their response below:

:Dear Ya Sam, 
:I showed the seal you sent to our Tibetan translator, Tenzin Namgyal. He says the word to word translation is: Tibetan Government Commerce Chamber in other words: Tibetan Government Chamber of commerce. Why Pynchon has chosen to place this on the cover of his book is anyones guess. Reading the book reviews gave no insight into the reason. Perhaps after one has read it?

:Best wishes,

:Sandy Belth 
:Tibetan Cultural Center

Also of interest: the coin bears a striking resemblance to the doubloon in ''Moby-Dick'' that Ahab nails to the mainmast as a prize to the first crew member to sight the white whale. Melville's description runs thus:

:It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy example of these things. On its round border it bore the letters, REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a country planted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator, and named after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes, in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw the likeness of three Andes' summits; from one a flame; a tower on another; on the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra. (Ch.99, "The Doubloon")

==copyright page==
The copyright page states that ''Against the Day'' is published by Viking Penguin, but on the title page and elsewhere we can read that the book is published by Penguin Press. The copyright pages of other books from Penguin Press state "Penguin Press" as the publisher, as could be expected, and it seems likely that the substitution of "Penguin Press" with "Viking" is one of many typographical errors in the book (see [[errata]]).
I have confirmed from inside Penguin Press that this is a copyediting mistake. Here is a direct e-mail answer about the Viking Penguin listing: "this was a copyediting mistake that will be corrected. There was never a Viking contract for this book."

==Dedication==
Most of Pynchon's novels contain dedications-- ''Mason & Dixon'' ("For Melanie, and for Jackson") , ''Vineland'' ("For my mother and father"), and ''Gravity's Rainbow'' ("For Richard Fariña")-- but not so ''Against the Day,'' as published. Advance reading copies of the book did contain the words "Dedication TK" in italics, but this is simply [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Come publisher-speak] for "dedication to come." It is unknown whether Pynchon ever considered inclusion of a dedication or whether the publisher simply left the page open just in case, but the ultimate lack of a dedication may suggest that Pynchon feels he's thanked everyone he needs to thank.

==Epigraph==
"It's always night, or we wouldn't need light." - Thelonious Monk 
Jazz and particularly bebop seem to be a lifelong interest of Pynchon’s, appearing in some form in all his works and what biographical snippets exist. As a college student, Pynchon “spent a lot of time in jazz clubs, nursing the two-beer minimum,” by his own admission (''Slow Learner'', Introduction). The Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/that-thelonious-monk-epigraph.html notes] that: 1) in his youth, Pynchon allegedly referred to Monk as a "God"; 2) the character McClintic Sphere in ''V''. takes Monk's middle name, Sphere; and 3) "It's always night, or we wouldn't need light" was apparently something Monk was given to saying, rather than something he once said. For more on McClintic Sphere and Monk, see Charles Hollander's essay [http://www.howardm.net/tsmonk/pynchon.php Does McClintic Sphere in ''V.'' stand for Thelonious Monk?]. On [[ATD_724-747#Page 732|page 732]]: "...daylit America ... its steadfast denial of night."

==Page 1==

'''The Light Over the Ranges''' 
Range is defined in the Oxford American Dictionary as "a line or series of mountains or hills : the coastal ranges of the northwest," so "range" or "ranges" can be used to denote a number of mountains. 

'Ranges' may also refer to farms, homesteads and ranches in 1893 America. America was predominantly that in 1893. Cf. "Home, home on the range". 

"celebrating in song the wider range of life..." Thomas Pynchon on
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Waddell Helen Waddell's]
''The Wandering Scholars'', p. 8, Introduction to[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Learner ''Slow Learner], 1984.

A range is also a group of diverse objects. 

A-And range is a word full of its own meaning. Below is a partial list from one good word reference site on the web. 
The more this reader
tries to understand Against the Day, by rereading it and Pynchon's whole oeuvre, the more he feels 'range as diversity'--lost--lies behind TRP's opening chapter title. Especially once one knows how 'Light' is a major subject and theme in ATD.[[User:MKOHUT|MKOHUT]] 13:41, 28 May 2007 (PDT)MKohut
*scope: an area in which something acts or operates or has power or control: "the range of a supersonic jet"; "the ambit of municipal legislation"; "within the compass of this article"; "within the scope of an investigation"; "outside the reach of the law"; "in the political orbit of a world power" 

*change or be different within limits; "Estimates for the losses in the earthquake range as high as $2 billion"; "Interest rates run from 5 to 10 percent"; "The instruments ranged from tuba to cymbals"; "My students range from very bright to dull" 

*the limits within which something can be effective; "range of motion"; "he was beyond the reach of their fire" 

*a large tract of grassy open land on which livestock can graze; "they used to drive the cattle across the open range every spring"; "he dreamed of a home on the range" 

*roll: move about aimlessly or without any destination, often in search of food or employment; 

*have a range; be capable of projecting over a certain distance, as of a gun; "This gun ranges over two miles" 

*a series of hills or mountains; "the valley was between two ranges of hills"; "the plains lay just beyond the mountain range" 

*a place for shooting (firing or driving) projectiles of various kinds; "the army maintains a missile range in the desert"; "any good golf club will have a range where you can practice" 

*range or extend over; occupy a certain area; "The plants straddle the entire state" 

*lay out orderly or logically in a line or as if in a line; "lay out the clothes"; "lay out the arguments" 

*the limits of the values a function can take; "the range of this function is the interval from 0 to 1"

*a variety of different things or activities; "he answered a range of questions"; "he was impressed by the range and diversity of the collection" 

*crop: feed as in a meadow or pasture; "the herd was grazing" 

*compass: the limit of capability; "within the compass of education"

*let eat; "range the animals in the prairie"

[wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn wordnet]

==Page 3==

'''"Now single up all lines!"''' 
Pynchon was in the Navy for a spell and "single up all lines" is a common nautical term. Ships are docked with lines doubled -- that is, with two sets of ropes or chains holding the vessel to the dock. To "single up all lines" is to remove the redundant second lines in preparation to make way.

But the opening line has many possible connotations.
:The Modern Word's Quail [http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/pynchon_atd.html writes] that "it is simultaneously a self-directive and a call to the reader; suggesting that ''Against the Day'' is a culmination of his previous work, and also charging the reader to find meaning within its twisting labyrinth. It may also be a sly, preemptive joke on the book’s initial critics, as the novel begins with the launch of a bloated gasbag bearing a somewhat provocative name."

:"Single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in ''V.'', 11; ''COL49'', 31; ''Gravity's Rainbow'', 489; and ''Mason & Dixon'', 258, 260. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but ''Vineland''?)--in preparation for a voyage to...?

'''"Cheerly now...handsomely...very well!!"''' 
Cheerly means "heartily," and was traditionally used as cry of encouragement among sailors. Handsomely (in nautical context): carefully, in good order, unhurriedly.

:Pynchon served in the Navy and uses nautical language in most of his novels. ''Mason & Dixon'': "Cheerly. Cheerly, then, Lads..." (54).

'''"Windy City, here we come!"''' 
The nickname for Chicago, of course, but in 1893 the use meant city of braggarts more than it did wind. The earliest known references to the "Windy City" are from 1876, and involve Chicago's rivalry with Cincinnati. A popular myth states that "Windy City" was first used by New York Sun editor Charles Dana in the bidding for the 1893 Columbian Exposition. The popularity of the nickname has endured, even after the Cincinnati rivalry and the Columbian Exposition both ended. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windy_City,_Origin_of_Name_(Chicago)| Origin of name "Windy City" at Wikipedia]

'''Randolph St. Cosmo, the ship commander''' 
[[image:ex-voti-isernia.jpg|thumb|175px|Ex voti of Wax, from Isernia|right]]Historically, there are two versions of the 3rd century CE figure St. Cosmo (aka St. Cosmas): the "randy" St. Cosmo, aka the "modern Priapus," and the saintly martyred St. Cosmo of Church lore. Pynchon, it seems, is connecting Randolph St. Cosmo to the former. "Randy," as astute observers will note, is an adjective which means, well, "horny." There's a distinct sexual thread woven throughout ''Against the Day'' [[Basnight%2C_Lewis_%28%22Lew%22%29|(See the ''beginnings'' of exploring this angle...]]) a-and Heartsease, St. Cosmo's mate, is the first to get pregnant! so this seems to fit right in. [[St. Cosmo|Read more about the historical St. Cosmo...]]; and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sts._Cosmas_and_Damian Wikipedia entry]

In [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=V#veery ''Mason & Dixon''], Pynchon has the Veery brothers, Cosmo and Damian, who are professional effigy makes in Philadelphia! And, just to make it interesting, "He's a rare Wax Artist, our Cosmo is." (p. 290) (Note: Wax phallus effigies were offered by the women to St. Cosmo at the festivals held in his name, as shown above.)

'''Now secure the Special Sky Detail''' 
When a naval vessel is departing from port or returning to port, a specially trained team is put in charge of the complicated process. The command is, [http://tpub.com/content/administration/12968a/css/12968a_41.htm "Now set the Special Sea Detail."] ''Inconvenience'' is run along fairly strict naval lines—given the age of the officers and crew, you might say she is a tot ship—and the beginning of the book was preceded by an analogous "Now set the Special Sky Detail." Once the ship is aloft and clear of ground obstructions, the command comes, "Now secure the Special Sky Detail," meaning disband the team for the time being and all return to regular duties. The language, tasks and customs aboard the skyship will show parallels to navy usage throughout the book.

'''summer uniform of red-and-white-striped blazer and trousers of sky blue''' 
Calls to mind the color scheme of Ned Land's (Kirk Douglas) costume in Disney's 1954 film version of ''20,000 Leagues under the Sea''. 

Also calls to mind the colors of the American flag.

'''"scuttlebutt" . . . thousand . . . wonders''' 
A most vigorous campaign [to host the Columbian Exposition] was then inaugurated, the three other cities making a common cause against Washington, whose claim was based on the fact that the proposed exposition was to be held under auspices of the national government, and hence that the capital was the most appropriate place.... By each of the claimants every advantage was urged, and by each of their rivals every defect was exaggerated. Congressional committees accorded a hearing to the several delegations, that of Chicago being represented, among others, by DeWitt C. Cregier, Thomas B. Bryan, and Edward T. Jeffery. from "Book of the Fair" by Hubert Bancroft, 1893.
:"Scuttlebutt" is a very close equivalent to "water-cooler gossip." [http://www.jacksjoint.com/sailor_terminology.htm Here is a glossary] of nautical terms with some of the etymologies.

'''''Inconvenience''''' 
Pynchon's fictional navy includes the USS Scaffold and the Susanna Squaducci (''V.''), and the John E. Badass (''GR''). Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html notes] that the British Royal Navy has a long tradition of warships with names like Impulsive, Incendiary, Inconstant, Indignant, etc. Impulsive is the name of the ship Ploy, who loses all his teeth in V., gets transferred to.
Inconvenience is an apt name for the Chums' adventures in 'reality'. They are an inconvenience; they are inconvenienced. (In having to take on Chick Counterfly, for example). 

Pynchon uses the word ''inconvenience'' in a possibly thematic, connected way in ''Mason & Dixon'' and in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. In ''Mason & Dixon'', the word is applied to the difficulties of an Other, other human beings as we act, interact. See citations at the ''M & D'' wiki. Here is the clearest relevant use for understanding for the Chums' airship, perhaps: from ''Gravity's Rainbow'': "the gift of Daedalus that allowed him [Pokler] to put as much labyrinth as required between himself and the
''inconveniences of caring''. [Italics mine] They had sold him convenience, so much of it, all on credit, and now They were collecting."
page 435, Penguin paperback edition with the Frank Miller cover.

In addition, if we take the Latinate roots of in-con-ven-(ience) and willfully misread the "in" as adverbial "in" (as e.g. "in-come") rather than the privative "not" (as e.g. "in-cred-ible"), we get "the arriving-in-together"; the "inconvenience", then, is essentially a tongue-in-cheek "vehicle". 
I do not think it illuminating to "willfully misread"!?! We are trying to
willfully read possible meanings and resonances. [[User:MKOHUT|MKOHUT]] 06:01, 2 August 2007 (PDT)

Also, recall Fender-Belly Bodine, in [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=I#inconvenience ''Mason & Dixon'']: "Back on old H.M.S. ''Inconvenience'', we wasted many a Day and Night watching that fancy Counter get smaller by the minute..." (p.28)

'''patriotic bunting''' 
TRP reminds again that this is a very American skyship. 
AtD has many echoes of Doctorow's "Ragtime": Doctorow fictionalises the same era, including anarchists, bombings, and early Hollywood.

'''aeronautics''' 
It has been suggested that Pynchon relied to the Britannica 11th as a major reference for his treatment of early aeronautics. [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Aeronautics|Brittanica 11th on Aeronautics]

'''five-lad crew''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo (ship commander), Lindsay Noseworth (master-at-arms), Miles Blundell (handyman apprentice), Darby Suckling (factotum and mascot), and Chick Counterfly. The commander's name evokes Randolph St., a main thoroughfare in Chicago. Perhaps also saint(liness) and cosmos?

'''The [[Chums of Chance]]''' 
To be chummy with chance might mean lucky, fond of gambling, fond of chaos, irrational, or anarchist. Or maybe they became chums by accident. The "chance" may also be that of the winds that carry them in directions not always intended.
:The American philospher Charles Sanders Peirce, who set down his most important ideas in the late 1800's, argued that 'Chance' was a feature of the universe that can refute all determinisms.

"The certainty of chance" is a Surrealist slogan. We learned from ''Slow Learner'' that Pynchon was influenced early by Surrealism.
The slogan is quoted in this obit of a real life
character out of Pynchon, George Melly, Jazz singer, writer, anarchist and polymorphous lover.[http://www.economist.com/search/search.cfm?rv=2&qr=melly&area=1&x=6&y=7]

Cameraderie and isolation are two recurring topics in Pynchon's works. The Chums are a band of heroes like those commonly featured in the 19th century boys' fiction that Pynchon evokes, but also recall Pynchon's high school fictions, [http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_hamster.html Voice of the Hamster] and [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_boys.html The Boys], in which the teenage Pynchon lovingly portrayed his group of high school chums, known as, simply, "The Boys."

[[image:dart-explorigator.jpg|thumb|120px|right]]The Chums are reminiscent of two comics of the early 20th century, [[Little Nemo|''Little Nemo in Slumberland'']], by Windsor McCay, and ''The Explorigator'', by Harry Grant Dart. "The Explorigator" was the name of a fantastic airship that traversed the universe. It was manned by Admiral Fudge, a youthful adventurer and inventor, accompanied by a group of friends, also children his age (around nine or ten): Detective Rubbersole, Maurice Mizzentop, Nicholas Nohooks, Grenadier Shift, Teddy Typewriter, and Ah Fergetitt. ''The Explorigator'' ran for 14 weeks in 1908 and made an impression for its imaginative and visual creativity. [[The Explorigator|More on ''The Explorigator'']] <ref>[http://lambiek.net/artists/d/dart_harry_grant.htm Lambiek Comiclopedia]</ref>

The names of the Chums may also be derived from famous Jazz musicians: Miles (Davis), Chick (Corea), Darby (Hicks), (Boots) Randolph, and (Vachel) Lindsay (a stretch here?), notes the [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html#c116587978292060684 Chumps of Choice blog].

The creativity of Pynchon's naming of the Chums, as other characters, shows yet again his Dickensian influence.

Note that there's five Chums, the number of chapters of the book (a-and the number of letters in "Chums"!).

'''Chicago''' 
It has been suggested that Pynchon relied on the [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/ 1911 Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica] as a major reference for his treatment of 1890s Chicago. [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Chicago 1911 Britannica entry on Chicago]

Also, The band Chicago's third hit song "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" deals with how one faces living in a world under constraints of time [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Does_Anybody_Really_Know_What_Time_It_Is%3F]. The opening lyrics are:

Does anybody really know what time it is?
Does anybody really care?
About Time...

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. The International Exposition was held in a building which for the first time was devoted to electrical exhibits. It was a historical moment and the beginning of a revolution, as Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse introduced the public to electrical power by providing alternating current to illuminate the Exposition. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry]. This World's Fair was enveloped in optimism for the future. "The thousand or more such wonders which awaited [the Chums] there." p.3

'''lifelines''' 
Called "manropes" on sailing ships. Ropes running fore-and-aft above the gunwales to prevent sailors getting blown overboard. They were held up by short stanchions inserted into holes in the rails. Source: ''The Ashley Book of Knots,'' 1944.

'''as my faithful readers will remember''' 
Pynchon here is immediately inserting this story into a larger canon of Chums of Chance fictions, titles of which are mentioned in subsequent pages.

'''mascotte''' 
The English word 'mascot' has its origin in the late 19th cent.: from French mascotte. The spelling may also be a tribute to the Dutch brand of rolling papers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mascotte_%28rolling_papers%29 [Wikipedia]]

==Page 4==

'''Professor''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo is called Professor.
"Professor" was a common title for early hot-air balloonists. [EC]

'''"Turn to"''' 
Evokes the "Go to!" of Majistral and compatriots, ''V.'', chapter eleven. "Turn to" is also a shipboard expression, "put your back into it" or something of the kind.

'''Perhaps its familiarity... rendered it temporarily invisible to you." 
Perhaps an admonition from the author that familiar things will be easily overlooked?
I think the fact that they were picnic baskets matters...TRP perhaps saying, as he seems to suggest elsewhere, that we overlook the simple pleasures too often.

'''Miles Davis''' 
''for Miles, while possessed of good intentions and the kindest heart in the little band, suffered at times from a confusion in his motor processes, often producing lively results, yet as frequently compromising the crew's physical safety.''

'''Chick Counterfly''' 
Three possibilities: (1) A counter fly is an annoyance in (say) the butcher's shop. (2) Chick always speaks "counter" to anyone else's "flight" of imagery. (3) The only non-''AtD''-related uses of this word that I've found came in patents describing mechanisms; "the counterfly direction" means contrary to the direction everything else is flying in, hence this character counters the flying of the craft?

He is the only Chum we know who was "rescued" from the "real" world. Meaning there? To be counter to flying is to be earthbound, where he started and he is the one with whom the conversation about relanding
on a different "earth" happens.

Like Suckling's name suggesting a relationship to another Pynchon character (Pig Bodine), Pynchon winks at a relationship between Counterfly and Tyrone Slothrop. In Counterfly´s first utterance in the book, “Ha ha,” cried young Counterfly, “say, but if you ain’t the most slob-footed chap I ever seen!” you can derive "Tyrone Slothrop" from an anagram of Counterfly and "slob-footed chap."

:Huh? That's a pretty sloppy anagram, ain't it? What about that "b" and that"d" ... this is ''way'' too much of a stretch. There's something to these names, perhaps, but I don't think you're close here, friend.

==Page 5==

'''"all tableware with Chums of Chance Insignia is Organizational property"''' 
The organization in question is the Chums of Chance themselves, here considered as an institution rather than as a collection of individuals.

'''picklesome''' 
Having the nature of a pickle, i.e, a boy who is inclined to mischief.

A word not much seen since the nineteenth century.

'''Pugnax''' 
I suspect that, in keeping with a very strong [[Birds|"bird" theme]] (the original aeronauts!) in ''Against the Day'', Pynchon may have named Pugnax after a bird called the Ruff (''Philomachus pugnax'') which is a medium-sized wader. Note that Pugnax's first "utterance" is "Rr Rff-rff Rr-rr-rff-rrf-rrf"...

There are a number of characters named after birds or bird sounds: Linnet Dawes, "Pert" Chirpingdon-Groin (there is a pert bird), and Wren Provenance immediately come to mind, but I'm sure there are others, and there are myriad bird references and metaphors (the Sodality of Ǣtheronauts and their mechanical wings); I just haven't had the time to explore it deeply, but others may... (Just read [[Birds|the bit about birds]] from ''Homage to Pythagoras''...

You can even make a semiserious case that the Aeronauts are named for a bird, the white-throated swift, ''Aeronautes saxatalis'' [[ATD_243-272#Page_266|(mentioned on p. 266)]].

The name meaning, in Latin, "likes to fight" (i.e. one who is pugnacious). Pugnax's fantastic intelligence recalls another intelligent Pynchon dog, the Learned English Dog in ''Mason & Dixon''. His manner of speech is somewhat reminiscent of the mystery-solving cartoon dog Scooby-Doo, and [http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0612&msg=112507&sort=date members of PYNCHON-L] have speculated that his eyebrows and reading habits allude to Gromit, from the [http://www.wallaceandgromit.com/ Wallace and Gromit] claymation films.

Could this name be an homage to the dog in the Asterix comics, Idéfix in French; Dogmatix in English? Many of the character in the Asterix comics have names ending in "x".

'''"...during a confidential assignment in Our Nation's Capitol (see ''The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit'')..."''' 
This could be seen as a criticism of an American President, present or past. President Bush is a candidate, considering the Pynchon-authored [[Against the Day description|Amazon.com book description]] which included "With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

The Chums "rescued Pugnax, then but a pup"--an innocent, a child creature--"from a furious encounter..between rival packs of the city's wild dogs".
The wild dogs equal both political parties?

'''lavatorial assaults''' 
"from the sky, which no one can "begin to try to record, much less coordinate reports of" recall the V-2 rockets which are linked to Slothrop's erections in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. That is, pee from the sky is "folklore, superstition, or perhaps...the religious" in ATD compared to rockets screaming across the sky and the destruction in GR.

This also recalls jokes and urban legends regarding frozen waste from leaky airplane lavatories (i.e., "you can still be hit by an icy B.M.")

==Page 6==

'''''Princess Casamassima''''' 
Published 1886 (James had published two others by 1893), a classic dealing with terrorists, anarchists, and bombings. [http://www.henryjames.org.uk/pcasa/home.htm Full text] Sequel to "Roderick Hudson". It's the only Henry James novel in which he takes on such overtly political subjects, the only one which deals with violent extremes of human behavior. 
:Thematically, it's reactionary, the opposite of AtD. 
:ATD is not reactionary but also not the opposite of Princess Casamassima thematically, it can be easily argued.

Pugnax prefers in his reading "sentimental tales about his own species [rather] than those exhibiting extremes of human behavior, which he appeared to find a bit lurid." It seems Pynchon is slyly commenting on James' Princess Casamassima here in that that James novel DID deal with 'extremes of human behaviour' yet Pugnax prefers 'sentimental tales'! As many who have had dogs know, often when raised from puppyhood with loving owners, they 'think they are human'. Pugnax learns where to pee off the gondola - a pretty natural function for a dog - "like the rest of the crew".

Or: it is a theme in GR, that the book, writing itself, is an abstraction from experience and not, of course, the thing itself. Noseworth, "who placed upon the word 'book' . . . contempt" did, however, know the subject matter of 'Princess Casamassima.' He, Noseworth, hopes they will "suffer no occasion for exposure more immediate than that to be experienced, as with Pugnax at this moment, safely within the leaves of some book." It matters that the Chums ARE also characters in books of their adventures.

It should also be noted that the Princess Casamassima is one of the rare characters in James' novels who appears in more than one work. She was originally a character in the 1875 novel Roderick Hudson, where her name was, quite fittingly, Christina Light.

'''Placing . . . an emphasis''' 
Lapse of authorial control? Surely the creator of the ''Chums'' novels would not write such a Pynchonian sentence fragment!

'''Pugnax sniffed . . . as always this scent eluded him''' 
If Pugnax doesn't detect a human scent, that suggests Lindsay is not human. Not human, Master-at-Arms, speaks in hyper-constructed prose, has a notably short fuse . . . he's Lieutenant Worf of ''Star Trek, the Next Generation.''

'''''Krakatoa''''' 
Erupted 1883. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa Wikipedia entry.]

'''Heino Vanderjuice of New Haven''' 
Scientist who designed the ''Inconvenience's'' hydrogen engine. "Vanderjuice" suggests both "wonder juice" and "wander juice," fitting since his engine allows the Chums to wander and is wondrous insofar as it apparently violates the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics second law of thermodynamics]. "Heino" (HIE-no) is a man's given name [http://www.behindthename.com/php/view.php?name=heino meaning 'home'] in German, Finnish, and Estonian. Perhaps an allusion to the German pop star, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heino Heino].

:Um, a quibble: ''Vanderjuice'' is some kind of corrupted Dutch, and in Dutch the name Heino would be pronounced HAY-no. He is not an immigrant, though, and American speakers no doubt say HIGH-no.

Jules Verne influence? Vanderjuice a red herring, pointing to Dutch origin and electrical ("juice") background? Or does one try to parse the name into eg "Fond O' Juice"?

'''no better than a perpetual-motion machine''' 
A perpetual-motion machine is not just one that runs forever, but one that ''performs work'' forever without any input of energy. All PM machines ever invented have been either hoaxes ("secret free energy source the government doesn't want you to know about") or mistakes. The hydrogen generator/engine is neither, which is why the disdainful phrase "no better than" is crucial.

By the way, how does one generate hydrogen? In high school chem lab we used zinc filings and hydrochloric acid, but that seems unsuitable with Miles around. Is it possible Vanderjuice has invented a photovoltaic electrolysis cell?

'''Miles, with his marginal gifts of coördination, and Chick, with a want of alacrity fully as perceptible''' 
Like the old gag: The food in this restaurant isn't any good, but the service is awful.

'''ratlines and shrouds''' 
''Inconvenience'' is rigged like a sailing ship of the period, though it's hard to see why she needs to be. Shrouds fan out from a masthead down to a rail; ratlines run horizontally to join them. The whole affair serves the sailors as a ladder.

'''". . . anemometer of the Robinson's type"''' 
Cup anemometer invented in 1846 by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Thomas_Romney_Robinson Dr. John Thomas Romney Robinson]. Cup anemometers are still commonly used to measure wind speed because of their simplicity and reliability in a variety of environmental conditions. [http://www.arm.ac.uk/annrep/annrep2000/node13.html pic]

'''how rapidly the ship was proceeding''' 
But you can't measure the craft's progress by measuring wind speed at a point on the craft itself. All you get from the anemometer is a speed relative to the air, which is in variable motion. Since the craft is moving at the speed of the wind plus the speed of its propulsion device, the speed found by the anemometer is basically useless.

==Page 7==

'''Porfirio Díaz''' 
President of Mexico 1876-1880, 1884-1911. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porfirio_D%C3%ADaz Wikipedia]

In most countries, the Interior Ministry (Ministry of Internal Affairs, Home Office, etc.) ran programs like secret police. Are the Chums working for forces of conservativism?

'''"beside a black-water river of the Deep South". 
Blackwater River is in lower central Florida, pretty deep south; but there are numerous rivers in swampy areas that run black with organic matter.

'''a bitter and unresolved "piece of business"''' 
Rather than give a proper reason for the Chums to be in the Deep South, the narrator cops out by pleading that it's "not advisable" to specify.

'''"the Rebellion of thirty years previous"''' 
The Civil War was not called such during the time it was occurring; the South called it "the war between the states" to emphasize both their right to secede from the union and that this was a war between sovereign states; the North called it "the Rebellion of 1861" or, after termination of hostilities, "the Rebellion of 1861-1865," appellations that did not recognize the South's right to secede.

'''"one still not advisable to set upon one's page"''' 
The American Civil War, that "rebellion of thirty years previous," has not yet become a suitable subject for an adventure tale such as the Chums'.

'''absquatulated''' 
Means to move away quickly, usually to avoid capture. Apparently a mock-Latinate formation, "to go off and squat somewhere else." [http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-abs1.htm A brief article] on the history and etymology of "absquatulate." 
The word is used in Vineland.

'''"Crackerjack!" exclaimed Chick.''' 
Cracker Jack, the food, was first sold at the Chicago Exhibition of 1893, though it did not bear its present name. As one word here, however, it is not the candy: "Crackerjack" entered English first as a noun referring to "a person or thing of marked excellence," then as an adjective. The foodstuff gained its present name, according to the [http://www.crackerjack.com/history.php official Cracker Jack website], in 1896. The OED lists the first written use of "crackerjack" as 1895, two years after the present scene. It is by no means impossible, however, that the term would have been current in the spoken language in 1893.

'''to approach the gates of the Penitentiary''' 
A genuine saying. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Quay Matthew Quay,] a political kingmaker of the 1880s and 90s, said of Benjamin Harrison's squeaker victory over Grover Cleveland in 1888 that Harrison would "never know how many Republicans were compelled to approach the gates of the penitentiary to make him president."

'''posse comitatus''' 
What Western movie fans know as a "posse," i.e., citizens conscripted by a sheriff to assist in law enforcement. (See the Wikipedia entry on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_comitatus_(common_law) Posse Comitatus].) Remember that the ''Chums'' author gets paid by the word.

In the 1980s, a radical, violent, right-wing and anti-government movement adopted the name "Posse Comitatus."

==Page 8==

'''a pocketful of specie''' 
Specie means coins as opposed to paper money.

'''the town of Thick Bush''' 
Aside from whether this phrase might apply to some political figure of the past or present, "thick bush" is the literal meaning of the Spanish Matagorda, the name of many towns in Latin America and one on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

'''"which directs us never to interfere with legal customs of any locality down at which we may happen to have touched"''' 
Like the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_directive Prime Directive] in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_trek ''Star Trek'']. Lindsay's fussy syntax echoes Winston Churchill's exasperated "This is the kind of carping criticism up with which I will not put."

'''legal customs''' 
Legal = pertaining to law, in this case lynch law. The Chums are interpreting their Prime Directive pretty broadly here.

'''Katie bar the door''' 
An expression that means that there's trouble brewing. (See [http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-kat1.htm this article] about the expression's etymology.)

'''Ku Klux Klan''' 
Reminiscent of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan Klan] encounter scenes in the Coen Brothers' ''O Brother, Where Art Thou''.

'''tupelo, cypress, and hickory''' 
The trees are no help in locating the town; all three kinds like bottom land and grow all over the South.

'''speed . . . made it nearly invisible from the ground''' 
Few people in 1893 had seen a manmade object moving at 60 miles an hour, and many thought such a speed was lethal anyway. The ''Chums'' author suggests such an outlandish speed would make ''Inconvenience'' just a blur in the sky. Of course you can read the fin numbers on an airliner landing at 150 knots, but he didn't know that.

''Pedantry alert:'' In perfectly transparent air a ship flying a mile off the ground is visible about 125 miles away. If its flight path takes it right over your head, you can follow it for 250 miles. If it is making a groundspeed of 60 miles per hour, it takes 4 hours and change to go from horizon to horizon. In typical "clear" air (visibility say 30 miles), you will see the ship in your sky for a solid hour. These rough figures show how wrong the narrator is about speed.

'''way better than a mile a minute''' 
The Chums' point of departure is unknown, but they arrived in Chicago after catching a southerly wind (pg 3), southerly meaning "wind blowing from the south." The Chums surpass 60 miles an hour here, but as their previous speed was unknown, it's difficult to know where they were leaving from. (New Orleans to Chicago is 834 miles, slightly less than 14 hours at 60 miles/hour, so a possibility.)

==Page 9==

'''locker''' 
On board ship, any cabinet with a door or lid.

'''"Do not imagine, that in coming aboard ''Inconvenience'' you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual..."''' 
This may be Pynchon directly addressing the reader. Given that his [[Against_the_Day_description|book description]] proclaims the world of AtD as "what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two," this paragraph seems to indicate that Pynchon, like all great fantasy or sci-fi writers, does not intend to create a world where anything goes. Rather, he will create a world that differs from ours but then obey the rules and constraints he's already established. 
Cf. Pynchon's own relevant words in the introduction to Slow Learner. He remarks that in non-realistic fiction, he had to learn that not anything went.

A-and it must mean, coming from the commander, that all aboard the ''Inconvenience'' are also subjects to the 'facts' of the world. "The World is All that is the Case", from Wittgenstein, quoted in V.
(in the original German)

'''"Going up is like going north."''' 
Air gets cooler as the ship ascends into higher altitudes, and therefore like travelling northward. This page also suggests some further mystery of the Chums may be revealed to Chick and the reader in time.

:North is not a positive place in Pynchon's world. It is associated with anti-life---coldness as here---compared to the South, a place of light and warmth, such as the tropics. See GR.

:But to go far enough north means heading south again, observes Chick Counterfly--is this one meaning of his name? Then one would be "approaching the surface of another planet, maybe?" asks Chick.

"Not exactly" [answers Randolph] "No. Another 'surface', but an earthly one"
"You'll see. In time, of course". Time is earthly?

'''"Another 'surface'"''' 
In ancient conics the cone is formed by taking a line through a point (the vertex) at a particular angle to a plane and then inscribing a circle on the plane. Two conic surfaces are made by the motion of this line, one below this point and one above. The three conic sections (hyperbola, parabola, and ellipse) are created by slicing the conic surface(s) at different angles.
:huh?[[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:38, 15 January 2007 (PST)
:If you read this for plain meaning, then it's true (or Randolph believes) that there's another earthly surface, to which you can descend by ascending far enough above this one. Surely it is pertinent here that Pynchon's dear friend Richard Fariña (1937-66) titled his novel ''Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me.''

==Page 10==

'''Stockyards''' 
Chicago was, at the time, the meat-packing and slaughtering capital of the United States. The stench from the stockyards below must have been memorable.

'''...looked up at the airship in wonder..." 
The sight of any airship in 1893 must have been rare indeed. 
Our history reports that the first practical airships were built in 1898; [[ATD_429-459#Page_454|the idea or icon was around by 1896, though.]]

'''Beneath the rubbernecking Chums of Chance wheeled streets and alleyways''' 
Optical illusion. As you fly over a grid of streets, you perceive a landmark far away to move slowly while the lateral streets near you just whip past. Your brain interprets that the same way as hub and spokes, i.e., the motion of a wheel. Interesting question, though: If the ''Chums'' author was just making this stuff up, how did he know about the illusion?

'''Cartesian grid''' 
From Rene Descartes, 17th century philosopher and mathematician; see Wikipedia entry, whose most famous argument, "I think therefore I am" and mathematical studies have often lead him to be seen as the first modern philosopher of ultra-rationality. Geometry has 'the Cartesian coordinant system, a grid. Chicago's streets are laid out in a very rational grid arrangement.

Pynchon is reputed to have written 'Gravity's Rainbow' on engineer's grid paper.

In modern mathematics, curves are described only in relation to the two dimensional grid (see previous page). If conic sections are not specifically being thought of here, the theme of dimensionality, at least, is already at play.

'''that unshaped freedom being rationalized into movement only in straight lines''' 
Rationalization is a key sociological concept [from online Dictionary of Social Science]:RATIONALIZATION
This term has two specific meanings in sociology. (1) The concept was developed by German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) who used it in two ways. First, it was the process through which magical, supernatural and religious ideas lose cultural importance in a society and ideas based on science and practical calculation become dominant. For example, in modern societies science has rationalized our understanding of weather patterns. Science explains weather patterns as a result of interaction between physical elements like wind-speed and direction, air and water temperatures, humidity, etc. In some other cultures, weather is thought to express the pleasure or displeasure of gods, or spirits of ancestors. One explanation is rationalized and scientific, the other mysterious and magical. Rationalization also involves the development of forms of social organization devoted to the achievement of precise goals by efficient means. It is this type of rationalization that we see in the development of modern business corporations and of bureaucracy. These are organizations dedicated to the pursuit of defined goals by calculated, systematically administered means. (2) Within symbolic interactionism, rationalization is used more in the everyday sense of the word to refer to providing justifications or excuses for one's actions.

'''"only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor."''' 
From innocent bovines to ...the world? "Single up all lines"....
Stockyards were organized in such a way that the cattle would proceed through a series of chutes and passages, until they arrived alone at the point of death.

"Progressive reduction of choices" also occurred in ''Mason & Dixon''—there were infinitely many wildernesses out to the west until M&D ran the line and rationalized the country into Maryland and Pennsylvania.

==Page 11==

'''plummet''' 
In the real world, this might be bad physics, as closing the valve wouldn't slow the descent. Objects in a fluid medium like air float if their weight is less than the weight of the fluid they displace (hence why one fills a balloon with a light gas such as hydrogen or helium). Once the ''Inconvenience'' loses its buoyancy, it will continue to fall, unless its weight is reduced to what a lesser amount of hydrogen could support. The Inconvenience, however, has a hydrogen producing apparatus that could kick in, slow, and eventually stop their descent.

'''bear a hand''' 
Nautical: help out.

==Page 12==

'''Liverpool Kiss''' 
A head butt.

'''Herr Riemann''' 
Riemann, Georg Friedrich Bernhard (1826-1866) (pronounced REE mahn or in IPA: ['ri:man]) was a German mathematician who made important contributions to analysis and differential geometry, some of them paving the way for the later development of general relativity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann Wikipedia entry].

'''''Mr.'' Noseworth''' 
Lindsay insisting on proper naval forms: an ensign, lieutenant (junior grade), lieutenant or lieutenant commander in the U.S. navy is correctly addressed as "Mister Surname."

'''"topological genius"''' 
Riemann's differential geometry goes beyond the Cartesian grid. See conic sections and dimensionality above, page 10.

==Page 13==

'''There was an "eager stampede" to the rail''' 
Why is eager stampede in quotation marks? The sentence reads fine without it. Does it seem to show ironic knowingness on the part of the narrator? If so, why and who is the narrator?
: I suspect this is a stylistic device from the turn of the century light literature that Pynchon is emulating-- placing a novel term in quotation marks. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 01:35, 23 December 2006 (PST)

:insightfully true, I suspect, but it still shows 'narratorial knowingness', yes?

: Cf. Flaubert's use of quotations in ''Madame Bovary'' to isolate what he deemed the contemptible argot of the bourgeoisie.

::Apparently not a cliche: [http://books.google.com//books?num=100&q=eager.stampede&as_brr=0 GoogleBooks]

'''"...among the brighter star-shapes of exploded ballast bags..."''' 
Recalls the opening line of ''Mason & Dixon'': "Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr‘d the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins..."

'''"...quite as if were some giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinizing from above, in a spirit of constructive censure."''' 
This is strikingly reminiscent of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odilon_Redon Odilon Redon's] 1882 Lithograph ''L'Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l'infini (The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity).'' [http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A2&page_number=4&template_id=1&sort_order=1 At MoMa's Online Collection]
Notice that society = censure, if constructive. Gamboling nude on a summer day was OK until the ''Inconvenience'', as eyeball, appeared.

:The Odilon Redon lithograph appears on the cover of the 1998 Vintage paperback edition of Ian McEwan's Enduring Love, whose first unforgettable chapter triggers the novel with a ballooning incident leaving the reader dangling over the edge of suspense and suspension.

==Page 14==

'''charmed into docility''' 
If it took only one small lad to moor the ship, she was indeed docile. A wiki contributor once saw a Goodyear blimp in Houston, Texas, landing. The craft had half a dozen long falls of rope hanging from her nose, and a ground crew of nearly two dozen men ready to take hold of them. The blimp approached nose-low, the crew took the ropes, and a gust of wind suddenly moved the ship. The crew chief gave a safety command and all the men let loose their ropes at once. On the third pass, all hands working together managed to stop the ship and get her moored. If ''Inconvenience'' was a fraction as changeable and hard to control, Darby made a great job of getting the ship staked out by himself.

'''Jacob's-ladder''' 
Used here as "a marine ladder of rope or chain with wooden or iron rungs" (Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged) but is suggestive of Jacob's ladder in Genesis:

Genesis 28:12 And he [Jacob] dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. (King James version)

'''a giant sack of soiled laundry''' 
Perhaps ''freshly'' soiled during the great hydrogen valve disaster.

'''''vol-à-voile''''' 
The narrator has turned the French phrase ''vol-à-voiles'' (gliding) into a verb (removing the ''s'').

'''gold-beaters' skin''' 
Very thin vellum (membrane taken from the caecum or blind stomach of an ox). To prepare gold for gilding, it was placed between sheets of vellum and hammered thin.

'''Evening Quarters''' 
Naval practice of mustering the crew at the end of the day's work.

==Page 15==

'''ukulelist''' 
Ukuleles also appear in ''Gravity's Rainbow'', ''Vineland'', and ''Mason & Dixon''. According to Jules Siegel's article, "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?", Pynchon himself played the ukulele in college.

'''Fronting with a Nine Inch Nails edge''' 
The song performed by the Chums of Chance reflects the Rock and Roll attitude of the group towards the groundworld upon arrival: 
:: '''''For we're the''''' 
:: '''''Aces of the Altitudes''''' 
:: '''''Vagabonds of the Void...''''' 
:: '''''When some folks shrink with terror, say,''''' 
:: '''''We scarcely get annoyed.''''' 
It's also the first time in the book we truly encounter the hipness of the group.

[[image:Macassar-Oil.jpg|thumb|175px|''Macassar Oil. An Oily Puff for Soft Heads''|right]]'''Beaufort Scale''' 
A scale for measuring wind strength, developed 1805.

'''"Let the lightning lash ~ And the thunder trash" 
Again, the Chums are rock stars, the coolest cats in town.

'''"...forty-four buttons...one for each State of the Union." 
Wyoming was the 44th state admitted to the union in 1890.

'''port section of the crew''' 
The half of the crew permitted to go freely ashore this time. The other half tomorrow. "Port" and "starboard": are these simply either/or words that sailors remember easily?

'''Macassar oil''' 
Macassar oil is an oil used primarily by men in Victorian and Edwardian times to smooth their hair. It was advertised as containing oil from Macassar, which is the former name of Ujung Pandang, a district on the island of Celebes in Indonesia. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macassar_oil Wikipedia entry]

==Page 16==

'''About the fringes,' Randolph reminded the liberty-goers, 'of any gathering on the scale of this Exposition, are apt to lurk vicious and debased elements, whose sole aim is to take advantage of the unwary.''' 
Indeed, the Chicago World's Fair was haunted by one of America's more prolific and original serial killers, H.H. Holmes. Born in 1861, Holmes came to Chicago as a pharmacist and built an office building that was eventually dubbed 'The Castle'. Consisting of commercial stores on the first floor, and offices and apartments on the upper floors, the building also housed hidden rooms where Holmes murdered his victims, chutes that conveyed the bodies to the basement, and a chamber of horrors in the basement where he destroyed the corpses. Holmes took advantage of the World's Columbian Exposition to lure victims, primarily females who had come unaccompanied to Chicago, to the Castle for torture and murder. It is estimated that he killed over 200 people at the Castle while the Exposition was in operation. Two very good books about Holmes are The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson and Depraved by Harold Schechter. It is doubtful that Pynchon was thinking explicitly of Holmes when he wrote this passage, although he must be aware of the story. Randolph could not have known about Holmes since Holmes was not captured until after the Fair was over. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._H.H._Holmes Wikipedia entry]

'''tension of the gas''' 
I.e., the pressure in the bag.

==Page 17==

'''"as if it were something the stripling had only read about, in some boys' book of adventures...as if that page of their chronicles lay turned and done"''' 
The narrator makes us aware that Darby's adventures are as if/will be written down...the 'reality' of almost killing all of them is now just words on a page...as is this book, ATD?...Again a Pynchonian theme: no book is the reality.

'''"and the order 'About-face' had been uttered by some potent though invisible Commandant of Earthly Days, toward whom Darby, in amiable obedience, had turned again."''' 
Is this just a metaphor from the narrator to describe what it is like for Darby, or is it also self-referential to
all the adventures of the Chums?. Another Q: Is the Commandant of Earthly Days the invisible presence from whom the chums get their orders? Cf. earthly surface, p.9
:Related Q: Do the Chums receive their orders from the author of their books?

'''we were usually out the door and on the main road''' 
Dick and Chick knew the judge was more likely to order them out of town than into the lockup.

'''Chinese foofooraw''' 
Also spelled foofaraw, a great deal of fuss, or useless frills. Cf folderol. However, why Chinese?
:Chick's father tried to sell Mississippi to a Chinese syndicate.

'''cubeb''' 
The name for the berry and for the oil obtained from the unripe berry of the East Indian climbing shrub ''P. cubeba''. The dried fruits are sometimes used as a condiment or are ground and smoked in cigarette form as an herbal remedy. [http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/pepper The Free Dictionary] Also appears in ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' page 118.

'''"...goldurn Keeley Cure"''' 
A treatment for alcohol, nicotine and narcotic addiction involving injections of "bichloride" or "double chloride" of gold, and also known as the "gold cure". Named for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Keeley Dr. Leslie E. Keeley,] who opened the first of many Keeley Institutes in [http://www.dwighthigh.k12.il.us/dwight/dwight.htm Dwight, Illinois], not far from Chicago, in 1879.

==Page 18==

'''headgear''' 
Description vaguely reminiscent of "Madame Bovary". [http://robotwisdom.com/flaubert/bovary/bovary1.html [notes]]

'''eclipse green''' 
Apparently an actual shade. [http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/DIO_DRO/DIRECT.html [cite]]

'''Bindlestiffs of the Blue A.C.''' 
Bindlestiff means hobo; hence, the Hoboes of the Sky Aeronautical Club.

'''("Penny") Black''' 
The Penny Black was the world's first official adhesive postage stamp, issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1840. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black [Wikipedia]]

'''Tzigane''' 
French for "gypsy". Also a piece by Ravel. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzigane_(Ravel) [Wikipedia]]

'''Egypt''' 
Little Egypt is the southern area of the state of Illinois in the United States of America. Named so because it has a considerable river delta and a metropolis called Cairo (KAY-roe). The region is and was sometimes called simply "Egypt," especially in the 19th century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Egypt_(region) [Wikipedia]]

==Page 19==

'''goin all blue from the light of that electric fluid''' 
Their ship was beset by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elmo%27s_fire St. Elmo's fire,] a low-energy electrical discharge often seen on surface vessels and occasionally on aircraft. Electric charge does behave in some respects like a fluid and was long described in such terms.

'''Voices calling out together''' 
There is no reason to doubt they heard the voices, but an aural hallucination is not out of the question: a chorus of voices is one of the easiest effects to produce with a synthesizer.

[[image:balloons-paris.jpg|thumb|200px|Garçons de '71|right]]'''Garçons de '71''' 
French: The Boys of '71; During the Siege of Paris in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War Franco-Prussian War], 1870-1871, balloons were manufactured within railroad stations in Paris. The balloons were used to get mail and passengers out of Paris. The ''Garçons de '71'' are a (probably) fictional cadre of young men who operated such balloons [[Garçons de '71|Read on...]]

'''a condition of ''permanent siege''''' 
Surely no one has failed to notice what a "wartime president" is allowed to get away with. "No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

'''pétroleurs de Paris''' 
An early form of Molotov cocktail thrower during the Siege of Paris. There were pétroleurs and pétroleuses.

==Page 20==

'''they'll fly wherever they're needed''' 
While the Chums obey orders from above, the Garçons de '71 follow a different imperative.

'''energy we could feel, directed personally at us''' 
Someone may be trying to influence what the Bindlestiffs do, or keep them away from the Garçons' work of mercy.

==Page 21==

'''admissions gate''' 
Apparently a break in the fence, capitalized on by freelance impresarios.

'''fifty-cent pieces''' 
Odd. According to [http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html this remarkable Columbian Exposition site,] regular admission was just half a dollar. Maybe Lindsay and Miles could have negotiated with the midget.

==Page 22==

'''Kodaks''' 
The word Kodak was trademarked in 1888, and the first Kodak camera was sold with the slogan, "You press the button - we do the rest." In 1891, the company released the first daylight-loading camera, so film could be changed without a darkroom. Kodaks would have been a novelty at the fair in 1893.

'''half-light . . . in the interests of mercy . . . the safety of the lights''' 
Interesting contrast suggesting a tradeoff between comfort/solace in the shadows and safety in the bright light.

'''Isandhlwana''' 
Isandlwana is an isolated hill in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. On January 22, 1879, it was the site of the Battle of Isandlwana, where over 20,000 Zulu warriors defeated a contingent of British soldiers in the first engagement of the Anglo-Zulu War. Almost the entire column of about 1,200 British soldiers was killed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isandhlwana [Wikipedia]] You will find a chapter on Isandhlwana in any book that has the words "military" and "blunders" in the title.

==Page 23==

'''Tarahumara''' 
Indian tribe of Northern New Mexico, in the Sierra Madres, known for cave-dwelling in the late 19th century. [[Tarahumare_Indians|About the Tarahumara]]. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarahumara [Wikipedia]]

'''"geek"''' 
A geek's act comprised things no one would do who had not sunk all the way to the bottom of the carnie world: eating live creatures, throwing fits, and so forth. Much like the television show "Fear Factor," but sad rather than stultifying.

'''monte''' 
Three-card monte.

==Page 24==

'''the curse of Scotland''' 
A term used in poker, bridge and various other card games for the nine of diamonds. Dates from 1710. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Scotland [Wikipedia]]

'''like the electricity coming on... how everything fits together, connects. It doesn't last long, though.''' 
From something as random as calling out a card trick comes this extremely profound quote by Miles Blundell (full quote edited here). The heart of this quote/thought seems to be crucial.

What Miles describes is also the symptoms of a mild seizure - could he be epileptic? Epileptics were often credited with shamanic or prophetic powers, and many sightings of religious figures have been attributed to seizures. On page 4, Miles is also said to suffer from "confusion in his motor processes", which may be related.

'''Cracker Jack''' 
First sold at the at the first Chicago World's Fair in 1893. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_Jack [Wikipedia]]

'''New Levee district''' 
Chicago's redlight district c1890. [http://www.ipsn.org/genesis.htm [cite]]

'''Epworth League''' 
A Methodist youth organization founded in 1889. [http://www.southernmethodistchurch.org/id48.htm [cite]]

==Page 25==

'''Haymarket bomb''' 
The Haymarket Riot on May 4, 1886, in Chicago may be the origin of international May Day observances and in popular literature inspired the caricature of "a bomb-throwing anarchist." The causes of the incident are still controversial, although deeply polarized attitudes separating the business class and the working class in late 19th century Chicago are generally acknowledged as having precipitated the tragedy and its aftermath. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_bombing Wikipedia entry].

'''if the Governor decides to pardon that gang of anarchistic murderers''' 
In May of 1886, 350,000 workers, including 70,000 in Chicago were taking to the streets to rally for the eight hour work day. After four workers were killed by the police on May 3, the anarchist leaders in Chicago called for a meeting in Haymarket Square. Although the rally was peaceful, the police came in on horseback to break it up and an unknown individual in the crowd hurled a homemade bomb into the air. After the explosion, which killed a policeman, the police opened fire on the crowd. Subsequently, the anarchist leaders deemed responsible for the rally were arrested and tried for the murder of the policeman. The Eight men were convicted of the bombing and seven of them sentenced to death. Governor Richard J. Oglesby commuted two death sentences to life. Four were hanged and a fifth committed suicide. A later governor, John P. Altgeld, pardoned the three survivors on June 26, 1893, concluding that all eight of them were innocent. The last words of anarchist August Spies before he was hanged were 'The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.' Two very good books on the Haymarket Riot and the events surrounding it include The Haymarket Tragedy by Paul Avrich and Death In The Haymarket by James Green.

'''mixture of contempt and pity''' 
This is ''definitely'' not from one of the Chums' adventure stories.

'''embonpoint''' 
Convexity of body; what used to be called a "prosperous" look.

'''duck soup''' 
Meaning "an easy task," but also the name of a Marx Bros. movie. Perhaps relevant, given the cameo by Groucho promised on the book sleeve. Many of the Marx Brothers early movies had animal references in the title: Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup. The titles usually had nothing at all to do with the plot, although they contributed to the lunatic nature of the comedy. The expression 'Horse Feathers' is used a few times later on in Against The Day.

==References==
<references />

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 1-25

2007-09-21T01:59:28Z

Adrianboyd: /* Page 15 */ add on

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==cover text==
The black text and its drop shadows are in different typefaces. It may be worth noting, from a conceptual point of view, that we can infer from the angle of the drop shadows that the light source is any individual holding the book—that is, the reader or a potential reader.

==cover seal==
The seal appears to be written in Tibetan language, according to somebody who posts regularly to Pynchon-l under the name "Ya Sam", who reports:

I contacted the Tibetan Cultural Centre with the request to translate
the mysterious legend on the AtD seal. They were kind enough to forward my
request to the Tibetan tranlsator Tenzin Namgyal to whose generosity we
owe the solution of one more ATD related mystery.

It is the Tibetan language, alright, and it means ...... Tibetan
Government Chamber of Commerce.

Read their response below:

:Dear Ya Sam, 
:I showed the seal you sent to our Tibetan translator, Tenzin Namgyal. He says the word to word translation is: Tibetan Government Commerce Chamber in other words: Tibetan Government Chamber of commerce. Why Pynchon has chosen to place this on the cover of his book is anyones guess. Reading the book reviews gave no insight into the reason. Perhaps after one has read it?

:Best wishes,

:Sandy Belth 
:Tibetan Cultural Center

Also of interest: the coin bears a striking resemblance to the doubloon in ''Moby-Dick'' that Ahab nails to the mainmast as a prize to the first crew member to sight the white whale. Melville's description runs thus:

:It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy example of these things. On its round border it bore the letters, REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a country planted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator, and named after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes, in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw the likeness of three Andes' summits; from one a flame; a tower on another; on the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra. (Ch.99, "The Doubloon")

==copyright page==
The copyright page states that ''Against the Day'' is published by Viking Penguin, but on the title page and elsewhere we can read that the book is published by Penguin Press. The copyright pages of other books from Penguin Press state "Penguin Press" as the publisher, as could be expected, and it seems likely that the substitution of "Penguin Press" with "Viking" is one of many typographical errors in the book (see [[errata]]).
I have confirmed from inside Penguin Press that this is a copyediting mistake. Here is a direct e-mail answer about the Viking Penguin listing: "this was a copyediting mistake that will be corrected. There was never a Viking contract for this book."

==Dedication==
Most of Pynchon's novels contain dedications-- ''Mason & Dixon'' ("For Melanie, and for Jackson") , ''Vineland'' ("For my mother and father"), and ''Gravity's Rainbow'' ("For Richard Fariña")-- but not so ''Against the Day,'' as published. Advance reading copies of the book did contain the words "Dedication TK" in italics, but this is simply [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Come publisher-speak] for "dedication to come." It is unknown whether Pynchon ever considered inclusion of a dedication or whether the publisher simply left the page open just in case, but the ultimate lack of a dedication may suggest that Pynchon feels he's thanked everyone he needs to thank.

==Epigraph==
"It's always night, or we wouldn't need light." - Thelonious Monk 
Jazz and particularly bebop seem to be a lifelong interest of Pynchon’s, appearing in some form in all his works and what biographical snippets exist. As a college student, Pynchon “spent a lot of time in jazz clubs, nursing the two-beer minimum,” by his own admission (''Slow Learner'', Introduction). The Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/that-thelonious-monk-epigraph.html notes] that: 1) in his youth, Pynchon allegedly referred to Monk as a "God"; 2) the character McClintic Sphere in ''V''. takes Monk's middle name, Sphere; and 3) "It's always night, or we wouldn't need light" was apparently something Monk was given to saying, rather than something he once said. For more on McClintic Sphere and Monk, see Charles Hollander's essay [http://www.howardm.net/tsmonk/pynchon.php Does McClintic Sphere in ''V.'' stand for Thelonious Monk?]. On [[ATD_724-747#Page 732|page 732]]: "...daylit America ... its steadfast denial of night."

==Page 1==

'''The Light Over the Ranges''' 
Range is defined in the Oxford American Dictionary as "a line or series of mountains or hills : the coastal ranges of the northwest," so "range" or "ranges" can be used to denote a number of mountains. 

'Ranges' may also refer to farms, homesteads and ranches in 1893 America. America was predominantly that in 1893. Cf. "Home, home on the range". 

"celebrating in song the wider range of life..." Thomas Pynchon on
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Waddell Helen Waddell's]
''The Wandering Scholars'', p. 8, Introduction to[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Learner ''Slow Learner], 1984.

A range is also a group of diverse objects. 

A-And range is a word full of its own meaning. Below is a partial list from one good word reference site on the web. 
The more this reader
tries to understand Against the Day, by rereading it and Pynchon's whole oeuvre, the more he feels 'range as diversity'--lost--lies behind TRP's opening chapter title. Especially once one knows how 'Light' is a major subject and theme in ATD.[[User:MKOHUT|MKOHUT]] 13:41, 28 May 2007 (PDT)MKohut
*scope: an area in which something acts or operates or has power or control: "the range of a supersonic jet"; "the ambit of municipal legislation"; "within the compass of this article"; "within the scope of an investigation"; "outside the reach of the law"; "in the political orbit of a world power" 

*change or be different within limits; "Estimates for the losses in the earthquake range as high as $2 billion"; "Interest rates run from 5 to 10 percent"; "The instruments ranged from tuba to cymbals"; "My students range from very bright to dull" 

*the limits within which something can be effective; "range of motion"; "he was beyond the reach of their fire" 

*a large tract of grassy open land on which livestock can graze; "they used to drive the cattle across the open range every spring"; "he dreamed of a home on the range" 

*roll: move about aimlessly or without any destination, often in search of food or employment; 

*have a range; be capable of projecting over a certain distance, as of a gun; "This gun ranges over two miles" 

*a series of hills or mountains; "the valley was between two ranges of hills"; "the plains lay just beyond the mountain range" 

*a place for shooting (firing or driving) projectiles of various kinds; "the army maintains a missile range in the desert"; "any good golf club will have a range where you can practice" 

*range or extend over; occupy a certain area; "The plants straddle the entire state" 

*lay out orderly or logically in a line or as if in a line; "lay out the clothes"; "lay out the arguments" 

*the limits of the values a function can take; "the range of this function is the interval from 0 to 1"

*a variety of different things or activities; "he answered a range of questions"; "he was impressed by the range and diversity of the collection" 

*crop: feed as in a meadow or pasture; "the herd was grazing" 

*compass: the limit of capability; "within the compass of education"

*let eat; "range the animals in the prairie"

[wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn wordnet]

==Page 3==

'''"Now single up all lines!"''' 
Pynchon was in the Navy for a spell and "single up all lines" is a common nautical term. Ships are docked with lines doubled -- that is, with two sets of ropes or chains holding the vessel to the dock. To "single up all lines" is to remove the redundant second lines in preparation to make way.

But the opening line has many possible connotations.
:The Modern Word's Quail [http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/pynchon_atd.html writes] that "it is simultaneously a self-directive and a call to the reader; suggesting that ''Against the Day'' is a culmination of his previous work, and also charging the reader to find meaning within its twisting labyrinth. It may also be a sly, preemptive joke on the book’s initial critics, as the novel begins with the launch of a bloated gasbag bearing a somewhat provocative name."

:"Single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in ''V.'', 11; ''COL49'', 31; ''Gravity's Rainbow'', 489; and ''Mason & Dixon'', 258, 260. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but ''Vineland''?)--in preparation for a voyage to...?

'''"Cheerly now...handsomely...very well!!"''' 
Cheerly means "heartily," and was traditionally used as cry of encouragement among sailors. Handsomely (in nautical context): carefully, in good order, unhurriedly.

:Pynchon served in the Navy and uses nautical language in most of his novels. ''Mason & Dixon'': "Cheerly. Cheerly, then, Lads..." (54).

'''"Windy City, here we come!"''' 
The nickname for Chicago, of course, but in 1893 the use meant city of braggarts more than it did wind. The earliest known references to the "Windy City" are from 1876, and involve Chicago's rivalry with Cincinnati. A popular myth states that "Windy City" was first used by New York Sun editor Charles Dana in the bidding for the 1893 Columbian Exposition. The popularity of the nickname has endured, even after the Cincinnati rivalry and the Columbian Exposition both ended. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windy_City,_Origin_of_Name_(Chicago)| Origin of name "Windy City" at Wikipedia]

'''Randolph St. Cosmo, the ship commander''' 
[[image:ex-voti-isernia.jpg|thumb|175px|Ex voti of Wax, from Isernia|right]]Historically, there are two versions of the 3rd century CE figure St. Cosmo (aka St. Cosmas): the "randy" St. Cosmo, aka the "modern Priapus," and the saintly martyred St. Cosmo of Church lore. Pynchon, it seems, is connecting Randolph St. Cosmo to the former. "Randy," as astute observers will note, is an adjective which means, well, "horny." There's a distinct sexual thread woven throughout ''Against the Day'' [[Basnight%2C_Lewis_%28%22Lew%22%29|(See the ''beginnings'' of exploring this angle...]]) a-and Heartsease, St. Cosmo's mate, is the first to get pregnant! so this seems to fit right in. [[St. Cosmo|Read more about the historical St. Cosmo...]]; and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sts._Cosmas_and_Damian Wikipedia entry]

In [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=V#veery ''Mason & Dixon''], Pynchon has the Veery brothers, Cosmo and Damian, who are professional effigy makes in Philadelphia! And, just to make it interesting, "He's a rare Wax Artist, our Cosmo is." (p. 290) (Note: Wax phallus effigies were offered by the women to St. Cosmo at the festivals held in his name, as shown above.)

'''Now secure the Special Sky Detail''' 
When a naval vessel is departing from port or returning to port, a specially trained team is put in charge of the complicated process. The command is, [http://tpub.com/content/administration/12968a/css/12968a_41.htm "Now set the Special Sea Detail."] ''Inconvenience'' is run along fairly strict naval lines—given the age of the officers and crew, you might say she is a tot ship—and the beginning of the book was preceded by an analogous "Now set the Special Sky Detail." Once the ship is aloft and clear of ground obstructions, the command comes, "Now secure the Special Sky Detail," meaning disband the team for the time being and all return to regular duties. The language, tasks and customs aboard the skyship will show parallels to navy usage throughout the book.

'''summer uniform of red-and-white-striped blazer and trousers of sky blue''' 
Calls to mind the color scheme of Ned Land's (Kirk Douglas) costume in Disney's 1954 film version of ''20,000 Leagues under the Sea''. 

Also calls to mind the colors of the American flag.

'''"scuttlebutt" . . . thousand . . . wonders''' 
A most vigorous campaign [to host the Columbian Exposition] was then inaugurated, the three other cities making a common cause against Washington, whose claim was based on the fact that the proposed exposition was to be held under auspices of the national government, and hence that the capital was the most appropriate place.... By each of the claimants every advantage was urged, and by each of their rivals every defect was exaggerated. Congressional committees accorded a hearing to the several delegations, that of Chicago being represented, among others, by DeWitt C. Cregier, Thomas B. Bryan, and Edward T. Jeffery. from "Book of the Fair" by Hubert Bancroft, 1893.
:"Scuttlebutt" is a very close equivalent to "water-cooler gossip." [http://www.jacksjoint.com/sailor_terminology.htm Here is a glossary] of nautical terms with some of the etymologies.

'''''Inconvenience''''' 
Pynchon's fictional navy includes the USS Scaffold and the Susanna Squaducci (''V.''), and the John E. Badass (''GR''). Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html notes] that the British Royal Navy has a long tradition of warships with names like Impulsive, Incendiary, Inconstant, Indignant, etc. Impulsive is the name of the ship Ploy, who loses all his teeth in V., gets transferred to.
Inconvenience is an apt name for the Chums' adventures in 'reality'. They are an inconvenience; they are inconvenienced. (In having to take on Chick Counterfly, for example). 

Pynchon uses the word ''inconvenience'' in a possibly thematic, connected way in ''Mason & Dixon'' and in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. In ''Mason & Dixon'', the word is applied to the difficulties of an Other, other human beings as we act, interact. See citations at the ''M & D'' wiki. Here is the clearest relevant use for understanding for the Chums' airship, perhaps: from ''Gravity's Rainbow'': "the gift of Daedalus that allowed him [Pokler] to put as much labyrinth as required between himself and the
''inconveniences of caring''. [Italics mine] They had sold him convenience, so much of it, all on credit, and now They were collecting."
page 435, Penguin paperback edition with the Frank Miller cover.

In addition, if we take the Latinate roots of in-con-ven-(ience) and willfully misread the "in" as adverbial "in" (as e.g. "in-come") rather than the privative "not" (as e.g. "in-cred-ible"), we get "the arriving-in-together"; the "inconvenience", then, is essentially a tongue-in-cheek "vehicle". 
I do not think it illuminating to "willfully misread"!?! We are trying to
willfully read possible meanings and resonances. [[User:MKOHUT|MKOHUT]] 06:01, 2 August 2007 (PDT)

Also, recall Fender-Belly Bodine, in [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=I#inconvenience ''Mason & Dixon'']: "Back on old H.M.S. ''Inconvenience'', we wasted many a Day and Night watching that fancy Counter get smaller by the minute..." (p.28)

'''patriotic bunting''' 
TRP reminds again that this is a very American skyship. 
AtD has many echoes of Doctorow's "Ragtime": Doctorow fictionalises the same era, including anarchists, bombings, and early Hollywood.

'''aeronautics''' 
It has been suggested that Pynchon relied to the Britannica 11th as a major reference for his treatment of early aeronautics. [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Aeronautics|Brittanica 11th on Aeronautics]

'''five-lad crew''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo (ship commander), Lindsay Noseworth (master-at-arms), Miles Blundell (handyman apprentice), Darby Suckling (factotum and mascot), and Chick Counterfly. The commander's name evokes Randolph St., a main thoroughfare in Chicago. Perhaps also saint(liness) and cosmos?

'''The [[Chums of Chance]]''' 
To be chummy with chance might mean lucky, fond of gambling, fond of chaos, irrational, or anarchist. Or maybe they became chums by accident. The "chance" may also be that of the winds that carry them in directions not always intended.
:The American philospher Charles Sanders Peirce, who set down his most important ideas in the late 1800's, argued that 'Chance' was a feature of the universe that can refute all determinisms.

"The certainty of chance" is a Surrealist slogan. We learned from ''Slow Learner'' that Pynchon was influenced early by Surrealism.
The slogan is quoted in this obit of a real life
character out of Pynchon, George Melly, Jazz singer, writer, anarchist and polymorphous lover.[http://www.economist.com/search/search.cfm?rv=2&qr=melly&area=1&x=6&y=7]

Cameraderie and isolation are two recurring topics in Pynchon's works. The Chums are a band of heroes like those commonly featured in the 19th century boys' fiction that Pynchon evokes, but also recall Pynchon's high school fictions, [http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_hamster.html Voice of the Hamster] and [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_boys.html The Boys], in which the teenage Pynchon lovingly portrayed his group of high school chums, known as, simply, "The Boys."

[[image:dart-explorigator.jpg|thumb|120px|right]]The Chums are reminiscent of two comics of the early 20th century, [[Little Nemo|''Little Nemo in Slumberland'']], by Windsor McCay, and ''The Explorigator'', by Harry Grant Dart. "The Explorigator" was the name of a fantastic airship that traversed the universe. It was manned by Admiral Fudge, a youthful adventurer and inventor, accompanied by a group of friends, also children his age (around nine or ten): Detective Rubbersole, Maurice Mizzentop, Nicholas Nohooks, Grenadier Shift, Teddy Typewriter, and Ah Fergetitt. ''The Explorigator'' ran for 14 weeks in 1908 and made an impression for its imaginative and visual creativity. [[The Explorigator|More on ''The Explorigator'']] <ref>[http://lambiek.net/artists/d/dart_harry_grant.htm Lambiek Comiclopedia]</ref>

The names of the Chums may also be derived from famous Jazz musicians: Miles (Davis), Chick (Corea), Darby (Hicks), (Boots) Randolph, and (Vachel) Lindsay (a stretch here?), notes the [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html#c116587978292060684 Chumps of Choice blog].

The creativity of Pynchon's naming of the Chums, as other characters, shows yet again his Dickensian influence.

Note that there's five Chums, the number of chapters of the book (a-and the number of letters in "Chums"!).

'''Chicago''' 
It has been suggested that Pynchon relied on the [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/ 1911 Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica] as a major reference for his treatment of 1890s Chicago. [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Chicago 1911 Britannica entry on Chicago]

Also, The band Chicago's third hit song "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" deals with how one faces living in a world under constraints of time [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Does_Anybody_Really_Know_What_Time_It_Is%3F]. The opening lyrics are:

Does anybody really know what time it is?
Does anybody really care?
About Time...

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. The International Exposition was held in a building which for the first time was devoted to electrical exhibits. It was a historical moment and the beginning of a revolution, as Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse introduced the public to electrical power by providing alternating current to illuminate the Exposition. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry]. This World's Fair was enveloped in optimism for the future. "The thousand or more such wonders which awaited [the Chums] there." p.3

'''lifelines''' 
Called "manropes" on sailing ships. Ropes running fore-and-aft above the gunwales to prevent sailors getting blown overboard. They were held up by short stanchions inserted into holes in the rails. Source: ''The Ashley Book of Knots,'' 1944.

'''as my faithful readers will remember''' 
Pynchon here is immediately inserting this story into a larger canon of Chums of Chance fictions, titles of which are mentioned in subsequent pages.

'''mascotte''' 
The English word 'mascot' has its origin in the late 19th cent.: from French mascotte. The spelling may also be a tribute to the Dutch brand of rolling papers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mascotte_%28rolling_papers%29 [Wikipedia]]

==Page 4==

'''Professor''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo is called Professor.
"Professor" was a common title for early hot-air balloonists. [EC]

'''"Turn to"''' 
Evokes the "Go to!" of Majistral and compatriots, ''V.'', chapter eleven. "Turn to" is also a shipboard expression, "put your back into it" or something of the kind.

'''Perhaps its familiarity... rendered it temporarily invisible to you." 
Perhaps an admonition from the author that familiar things will be easily overlooked?
I think the fact that they were picnic baskets matters...TRP perhaps saying, as he seems to suggest elsewhere, that we overlook the simple pleasures too often.

'''Miles Davis''' 
''for Miles, while possessed of good intentions and the kindest heart in the little band, suffered at times from a confusion in his motor processes, often producing lively results, yet as frequently compromising the crew's physical safety.''

'''Chick Counterfly''' 
Three possibilities: (1) A counter fly is an annoyance in (say) the butcher's shop. (2) Chick always speaks "counter" to anyone else's "flight" of imagery. (3) The only non-''AtD''-related uses of this word that I've found came in patents describing mechanisms; "the counterfly direction" means contrary to the direction everything else is flying in, hence this character counters the flying of the craft?

He is the only Chum we know who was "rescued" from the "real" world. Meaning there? To be counter to flying is to be earthbound, where he started and he is the one with whom the conversation about relanding
on a different "earth" happens.

Like Suckling's name suggesting a relationship to another Pynchon character (Pig Bodine), Pynchon winks at a relationship between Counterfly and Tyrone Slothrop. In Counterfly´s first utterance in the book, “Ha ha,” cried young Counterfly, “say, but if you ain’t the most slob-footed chap I ever seen!” you can derive "Tyrone Slothrop" from an anagram of Counterfly and "slob-footed chap."

:Huh? That's a pretty sloppy anagram, ain't it? What about that "b" and that"d" ... this is ''way'' too much of a stretch. There's something to these names, perhaps, but I don't think you're close here, friend.

==Page 5==

'''"all tableware with Chums of Chance Insignia is Organizational property"''' 
The organization in question is the Chums of Chance themselves, here considered as an institution rather than as a collection of individuals.

'''picklesome''' 
Having the nature of a pickle, i.e, a boy who is inclined to mischief.

A word not much seen since the nineteenth century.

'''Pugnax''' 
I suspect that, in keeping with a very strong [[Birds|"bird" theme]] (the original aeronauts!) in ''Against the Day'', Pynchon may have named Pugnax after a bird called the Ruff (''Philomachus pugnax'') which is a medium-sized wader. Note that Pugnax's first "utterance" is "Rr Rff-rff Rr-rr-rff-rrf-rrf"...

There are a number of characters named after birds or bird sounds: Linnet Dawes, "Pert" Chirpingdon-Groin (there is a pert bird), and Wren Provenance immediately come to mind, but I'm sure there are others, and there are myriad bird references and metaphors (the Sodality of Ǣtheronauts and their mechanical wings); I just haven't had the time to explore it deeply, but others may... (Just read [[Birds|the bit about birds]] from ''Homage to Pythagoras''...

You can even make a semiserious case that the Aeronauts are named for a bird, the white-throated swift, ''Aeronautes saxatalis'' [[ATD_243-272#Page_266|(mentioned on p. 266)]].

The name meaning, in Latin, "likes to fight" (i.e. one who is pugnacious). Pugnax's fantastic intelligence recalls another intelligent Pynchon dog, the Learned English Dog in ''Mason & Dixon''. His manner of speech is somewhat reminiscent of the mystery-solving cartoon dog Scooby-Doo, and [http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0612&msg=112507&sort=date members of PYNCHON-L] have speculated that his eyebrows and reading habits allude to Gromit, from the [http://www.wallaceandgromit.com/ Wallace and Gromit] claymation films.

Could this name be an homage to the dog in the Asterix comics, Idéfix in French; Dogmatix in English? Many of the character in the Asterix comics have names ending in "x".

'''"...during a confidential assignment in Our Nation's Capitol (see ''The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit'')..."''' 
This could be seen as a criticism of an American President, present or past. President Bush is a candidate, considering the Pynchon-authored [[Against the Day description|Amazon.com book description]] which included "With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

The Chums "rescued Pugnax, then but a pup"--an innocent, a child creature--"from a furious encounter..between rival packs of the city's wild dogs".
The wild dogs equal both political parties?

'''lavatorial assaults''' 
"from the sky, which no one can "begin to try to record, much less coordinate reports of" recall the V-2 rockets which are linked to Slothrop's erections in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. That is, pee from the sky is "folklore, superstition, or perhaps...the religious" in ATD compared to rockets screaming across the sky and the destruction in GR.

This also recalls jokes and urban legends regarding frozen waste from leaky airplane lavatories (i.e., "you can still be hit by an icy B.M.")

==Page 6==

'''''Princess Casamassima''''' 
Published 1886 (James had published two others by 1893), a classic dealing with terrorists, anarchists, and bombings. [http://www.henryjames.org.uk/pcasa/home.htm Full text] Sequel to "Roderick Hudson". It's the only Henry James novel in which he takes on such overtly political subjects, the only one which deals with violent extremes of human behavior. 
:Thematically, it's reactionary, the opposite of AtD. 
:ATD is not reactionary but also not the opposite of Princess Casamassima thematically, it can be easily argued.

Pugnax prefers in his reading "sentimental tales about his own species [rather] than those exhibiting extremes of human behavior, which he appeared to find a bit lurid." It seems Pynchon is slyly commenting on James' Princess Casamassima here in that that James novel DID deal with 'extremes of human behaviour' yet Pugnax prefers 'sentimental tales'! As many who have had dogs know, often when raised from puppyhood with loving owners, they 'think they are human'. Pugnax learns where to pee off the gondola - a pretty natural function for a dog - "like the rest of the crew".

Or: it is a theme in GR, that the book, writing itself, is an abstraction from experience and not, of course, the thing itself. Noseworth, "who placed upon the word 'book' . . . contempt" did, however, know the subject matter of 'Princess Casamassima.' He, Noseworth, hopes they will "suffer no occasion for exposure more immediate than that to be experienced, as with Pugnax at this moment, safely within the leaves of some book." It matters that the Chums ARE also characters in books of their adventures.

It should also be noted that the Princess Casamassima is one of the rare characters in James' novels who appears in more than one work. She was originally a character in the 1875 novel Roderick Hudson, where her name was, quite fittingly, Christina Light.

'''Placing . . . an emphasis''' 
Lapse of authorial control? Surely the creator of the ''Chums'' novels would not write such a Pynchonian sentence fragment!

'''Pugnax sniffed . . . as always this scent eluded him''' 
If Pugnax doesn't detect a human scent, that suggests Lindsay is not human. Not human, Master-at-Arms, speaks in hyper-constructed prose, has a notably short fuse . . . he's Lieutenant Worf of ''Star Trek, the Next Generation.''

'''''Krakatoa''''' 
Erupted 1883. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa Wikipedia entry.]

'''Heino Vanderjuice of New Haven''' 
Scientist who designed the ''Inconvenience's'' hydrogen engine. "Vanderjuice" suggests both "wonder juice" and "wander juice," fitting since his engine allows the Chums to wander and is wondrous insofar as it apparently violates the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics second law of thermodynamics]. "Heino" (HIE-no) is a man's given name [http://www.behindthename.com/php/view.php?name=heino meaning 'home'] in German, Finnish, and Estonian. Perhaps an allusion to the German pop star, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heino Heino].

:Um, a quibble: ''Vanderjuice'' is some kind of corrupted Dutch, and in Dutch the name Heino would be pronounced HAY-no. He is not an immigrant, though, and American speakers no doubt say HIGH-no.

Jules Verne influence? Vanderjuice a red herring, pointing to Dutch origin and electrical ("juice") background? Or does one try to parse the name into eg "Fond O' Juice"?

'''no better than a perpetual-motion machine''' 
A perpetual-motion machine is not just one that runs forever, but one that ''performs work'' forever without any input of energy. All PM machines ever invented have been either hoaxes ("secret free energy source the government doesn't want you to know about") or mistakes. The hydrogen generator/engine is neither, which is why the disdainful phrase "no better than" is crucial.

By the way, how does one generate hydrogen? In high school chem lab we used zinc filings and hydrochloric acid, but that seems unsuitable with Miles around. Is it possible Vanderjuice has invented a photovoltaic electrolysis cell?

'''Miles, with his marginal gifts of coördination, and Chick, with a want of alacrity fully as perceptible''' 
Like the old gag: The food in this restaurant isn't any good, but the service is awful.

'''ratlines and shrouds''' 
''Inconvenience'' is rigged like a sailing ship of the period, though it's hard to see why she needs to be. Shrouds fan out from a masthead down to a rail; ratlines run horizontally to join them. The whole affair serves the sailors as a ladder.

'''". . . anemometer of the Robinson's type"''' 
Cup anemometer invented in 1846 by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Thomas_Romney_Robinson Dr. John Thomas Romney Robinson]. Cup anemometers are still commonly used to measure wind speed because of their simplicity and reliability in a variety of environmental conditions. [http://www.arm.ac.uk/annrep/annrep2000/node13.html pic]

'''how rapidly the ship was proceeding''' 
But you can't measure the craft's progress by measuring wind speed at a point on the craft itself. All you get from the anemometer is a speed relative to the air, which is in variable motion. Since the craft is moving at the speed of the wind plus the speed of its propulsion device, the speed found by the anemometer is basically useless.

==Page 7==

'''Porfirio Díaz''' 
President of Mexico 1876-1880, 1884-1911. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porfirio_D%C3%ADaz Wikipedia]

In most countries, the Interior Ministry (Ministry of Internal Affairs, Home Office, etc.) ran programs like secret police. Are the Chums working for forces of conservativism?

'''"beside a black-water river of the Deep South". 
Blackwater River is in lower central Florida, pretty deep south; but there are numerous rivers in swampy areas that run black with organic matter.

'''a bitter and unresolved "piece of business"''' 
Rather than give a proper reason for the Chums to be in the Deep South, the narrator cops out by pleading that it's "not advisable" to specify.

'''"the Rebellion of thirty years previous"''' 
The Civil War was not called such during the time it was occurring; the South called it "the war between the states" to emphasize both their right to secede from the union and that this was a war between sovereign states; the North called it "the Rebellion of 1861" or, after termination of hostilities, "the Rebellion of 1861-1865," appellations that did not recognize the South's right to secede.

'''"one still not advisable to set upon one's page"''' 
The American Civil War, that "rebellion of thirty years previous," has not yet become a suitable subject for an adventure tale such as the Chums'.

'''absquatulated''' 
Means to move away quickly, usually to avoid capture. Apparently a mock-Latinate formation, "to go off and squat somewhere else." [http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-abs1.htm A brief article] on the history and etymology of "absquatulate." 
The word is used in Vineland.

'''"Crackerjack!" exclaimed Chick.''' 
Cracker Jack, the food, was first sold at the Chicago Exhibition of 1893, though it did not bear its present name. As one word here, however, it is not the candy: "Crackerjack" entered English first as a noun referring to "a person or thing of marked excellence," then as an adjective. The foodstuff gained its present name, according to the [http://www.crackerjack.com/history.php official Cracker Jack website], in 1896. The OED lists the first written use of "crackerjack" as 1895, two years after the present scene. It is by no means impossible, however, that the term would have been current in the spoken language in 1893.

'''to approach the gates of the Penitentiary''' 
A genuine saying. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Quay Matthew Quay,] a political kingmaker of the 1880s and 90s, said of Benjamin Harrison's squeaker victory over Grover Cleveland in 1888 that Harrison would "never know how many Republicans were compelled to approach the gates of the penitentiary to make him president."

'''posse comitatus''' 
What Western movie fans know as a "posse," i.e., citizens conscripted by a sheriff to assist in law enforcement. (See the Wikipedia entry on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_comitatus_(common_law) Posse Comitatus].) Remember that the ''Chums'' author gets paid by the word.

In the 1980s, a radical, violent, right-wing and anti-government movement adopted the name "Posse Comitatus."

==Page 8==

'''a pocketful of specie''' 
Specie means coins as opposed to paper money.

'''the town of Thick Bush''' 
Aside from whether this phrase might apply to some political figure of the past or present, "thick bush" is the literal meaning of the Spanish Matagorda, the name of many towns in Latin America and one on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

'''"which directs us never to interfere with legal customs of any locality down at which we may happen to have touched"''' 
Like the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_directive Prime Directive] in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_trek ''Star Trek'']. Lindsay's fussy syntax echoes Winston Churchill's exasperated "This is the kind of carping criticism up with which I will not put."

'''legal customs''' 
Legal = pertaining to law, in this case lynch law. The Chums are interpreting their Prime Directive pretty broadly here.

'''Katie bar the door''' 
An expression that means that there's trouble brewing. (See [http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-kat1.htm this article] about the expression's etymology.)

'''Ku Klux Klan''' 
Reminiscent of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan Klan] encounter scenes in the Coen Brothers' ''O Brother, Where Art Thou''.

'''tupelo, cypress, and hickory''' 
The trees are no help in locating the town; all three kinds like bottom land and grow all over the South.

'''speed . . . made it nearly invisible from the ground''' 
Few people in 1893 had seen a manmade object moving at 60 miles an hour, and many thought such a speed was lethal anyway. The ''Chums'' author suggests such an outlandish speed would make ''Inconvenience'' just a blur in the sky. Of course you can read the fin numbers on an airliner landing at 150 knots, but he didn't know that.

''Pedantry alert:'' In perfectly transparent air a ship flying a mile off the ground is visible about 125 miles away. If its flight path takes it right over your head, you can follow it for 250 miles. If it is making a groundspeed of 60 miles per hour, it takes 4 hours and change to go from horizon to horizon. In typical "clear" air (visibility say 30 miles), you will see the ship in your sky for a solid hour. These rough figures show how wrong the narrator is about speed.

'''way better than a mile a minute''' 
The Chums' point of departure is unknown, but they arrived in Chicago after catching a southerly wind (pg 3), southerly meaning "wind blowing from the south." The Chums surpass 60 miles an hour here, but as their previous speed was unknown, it's difficult to know where they were leaving from. (New Orleans to Chicago is 834 miles, slightly less than 14 hours at 60 miles/hour, so a possibility.)

==Page 9==

'''locker''' 
On board ship, any cabinet with a door or lid.

'''"Do not imagine, that in coming aboard ''Inconvenience'' you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual..."''' 
This may be Pynchon directly addressing the reader. Given that his [[Against_the_Day_description|book description]] proclaims the world of AtD as "what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two," this paragraph seems to indicate that Pynchon, like all great fantasy or sci-fi writers, does not intend to create a world where anything goes. Rather, he will create a world that differs from ours but then obey the rules and constraints he's already established. 
Cf. Pynchon's own relevant words in the introduction to Slow Learner. He remarks that in non-realistic fiction, he had to learn that not anything went.

A-and it must mean, coming from the commander, that all aboard the ''Inconvenience'' are also subjects to the 'facts' of the world. "The World is All that is the Case", from Wittgenstein, quoted in V.
(in the original German)

'''"Going up is like going north."''' 
Air gets cooler as the ship ascends into higher altitudes, and therefore like travelling northward. This page also suggests some further mystery of the Chums may be revealed to Chick and the reader in time.

:North is not a positive place in Pynchon's world. It is associated with anti-life---coldness as here---compared to the South, a place of light and warmth, such as the tropics. See GR.

:But to go far enough north means heading south again, observes Chick Counterfly--is this one meaning of his name? Then one would be "approaching the surface of another planet, maybe?" asks Chick.

"Not exactly" [answers Randolph] "No. Another 'surface', but an earthly one"
"You'll see. In time, of course". Time is earthly?

'''"Another 'surface'"''' 
In ancient conics the cone is formed by taking a line through a point (the vertex) at a particular angle to a plane and then inscribing a circle on the plane. Two conic surfaces are made by the motion of this line, one below this point and one above. The three conic sections (hyperbola, parabola, and ellipse) are created by slicing the conic surface(s) at different angles.
:huh?[[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:38, 15 January 2007 (PST)
:If you read this for plain meaning, then it's true (or Randolph believes) that there's another earthly surface, to which you can descend by ascending far enough above this one. Surely it is pertinent here that Pynchon's dear friend Richard Fariña (1937-66) titled his novel ''Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me.''

==Page 10==

'''Stockyards''' 
Chicago was, at the time, the meat-packing and slaughtering capital of the United States. The stench from the stockyards below must have been memorable.

'''...looked up at the airship in wonder..." 
The sight of any airship in 1893 must have been rare indeed. 
Our history reports that the first practical airships were built in 1898; [[ATD_429-459#Page_454|the idea or icon was around by 1896, though.]]

'''Beneath the rubbernecking Chums of Chance wheeled streets and alleyways''' 
Optical illusion. As you fly over a grid of streets, you perceive a landmark far away to move slowly while the lateral streets near you just whip past. Your brain interprets that the same way as hub and spokes, i.e., the motion of a wheel. Interesting question, though: If the ''Chums'' author was just making this stuff up, how did he know about the illusion?

'''Cartesian grid''' 
From Rene Descartes, 17th century philosopher and mathematician; see Wikipedia entry, whose most famous argument, "I think therefore I am" and mathematical studies have often lead him to be seen as the first modern philosopher of ultra-rationality. Geometry has 'the Cartesian coordinant system, a grid. Chicago's streets are laid out in a very rational grid arrangement.

Pynchon is reputed to have written 'Gravity's Rainbow' on engineer's grid paper.

In modern mathematics, curves are described only in relation to the two dimensional grid (see previous page). If conic sections are not specifically being thought of here, the theme of dimensionality, at least, is already at play.

'''that unshaped freedom being rationalized into movement only in straight lines''' 
Rationalization is a key sociological concept [from online Dictionary of Social Science]:RATIONALIZATION
This term has two specific meanings in sociology. (1) The concept was developed by German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) who used it in two ways. First, it was the process through which magical, supernatural and religious ideas lose cultural importance in a society and ideas based on science and practical calculation become dominant. For example, in modern societies science has rationalized our understanding of weather patterns. Science explains weather patterns as a result of interaction between physical elements like wind-speed and direction, air and water temperatures, humidity, etc. In some other cultures, weather is thought to express the pleasure or displeasure of gods, or spirits of ancestors. One explanation is rationalized and scientific, the other mysterious and magical. Rationalization also involves the development of forms of social organization devoted to the achievement of precise goals by efficient means. It is this type of rationalization that we see in the development of modern business corporations and of bureaucracy. These are organizations dedicated to the pursuit of defined goals by calculated, systematically administered means. (2) Within symbolic interactionism, rationalization is used more in the everyday sense of the word to refer to providing justifications or excuses for one's actions.

'''"only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor."''' 
From innocent bovines to ...the world? "Single up all lines"....
Stockyards were organized in such a way that the cattle would proceed through a series of chutes and passages, until they arrived alone at the point of death.

"Progressive reduction of choices" also occurred in ''Mason & Dixon''—there were infinitely many wildernesses out to the west until M&D ran the line and rationalized the country into Maryland and Pennsylvania.

==Page 11==

'''plummet''' 
In the real world, this might be bad physics, as closing the valve wouldn't slow the descent. Objects in a fluid medium like air float if their weight is less than the weight of the fluid they displace (hence why one fills a balloon with a light gas such as hydrogen or helium). Once the ''Inconvenience'' loses its buoyancy, it will continue to fall, unless its weight is reduced to what a lesser amount of hydrogen could support. The Inconvenience, however, has a hydrogen producing apparatus that could kick in, slow, and eventually stop their descent.

'''bear a hand''' 
Nautical: help out.

==Page 12==

'''Liverpool Kiss''' 
A head butt.

'''Herr Riemann''' 
Riemann, Georg Friedrich Bernhard (1826-1866) (pronounced REE mahn or in IPA: ['ri:man]) was a German mathematician who made important contributions to analysis and differential geometry, some of them paving the way for the later development of general relativity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann Wikipedia entry].

'''''Mr.'' Noseworth''' 
Lindsay insisting on proper naval forms: an ensign, lieutenant (junior grade), lieutenant or lieutenant commander in the U.S. navy is correctly addressed as "Mister Surname."

'''"topological genius"''' 
Riemann's differential geometry goes beyond the Cartesian grid. See conic sections and dimensionality above, page 10.

==Page 13==

'''There was an "eager stampede" to the rail''' 
Why is eager stampede in quotation marks? The sentence reads fine without it. Does it seem to show ironic knowingness on the part of the narrator? If so, why and who is the narrator?
: I suspect this is a stylistic device from the turn of the century light literature that Pynchon is emulating-- placing a novel term in quotation marks. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 01:35, 23 December 2006 (PST)

:insightfully true, I suspect, but it still shows 'narratorial knowingness', yes?

: Cf. Flaubert's use of quotations in ''Madame Bovary'' to isolate what he deemed the contemptible argot of the bourgeoisie.

::Apparently not a cliche: [http://books.google.com//books?num=100&q=eager.stampede&as_brr=0 GoogleBooks]

'''"...among the brighter star-shapes of exploded ballast bags..."''' 
Recalls the opening line of ''Mason & Dixon'': "Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr‘d the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins..."

'''"...quite as if were some giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinizing from above, in a spirit of constructive censure."''' 
This is strikingly reminiscent of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odilon_Redon Odilon Redon's] 1882 Lithograph ''L'Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l'infini (The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity).'' [http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A2&page_number=4&template_id=1&sort_order=1 At MoMa's Online Collection]
Notice that society = censure, if constructive. Gamboling nude on a summer day was OK until the ''Inconvenience'', as eyeball, appeared.

:The Odilon Redon lithograph appears on the cover of the 1998 Vintage paperback edition of Ian McEwan's Enduring Love, whose first unforgettable chapter triggers the novel with a ballooning incident leaving the reader dangling over the edge of suspense and suspension.

==Page 14==

'''charmed into docility''' 
If it took only one small lad to moor the ship, she was indeed docile. A wiki contributor once saw a Goodyear blimp in Houston, Texas, landing. The craft had half a dozen long falls of rope hanging from her nose, and a ground crew of nearly two dozen men ready to take hold of them. The blimp approached nose-low, the crew took the ropes, and a gust of wind suddenly moved the ship. The crew chief gave a safety command and all the men let loose their ropes at once. On the third pass, all hands working together managed to stop the ship and get her moored. If ''Inconvenience'' was a fraction as changeable and hard to control, Darby made a great job of getting the ship staked out by himself.

'''Jacob's-ladder''' 
Used here as "a marine ladder of rope or chain with wooden or iron rungs" (Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged) but is suggestive of Jacob's ladder in Genesis:

Genesis 28:12 And he [Jacob] dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. (King James version)

'''a giant sack of soiled laundry''' 
Perhaps ''freshly'' soiled during the great hydrogen valve disaster.

'''''vol-à-voile''''' 
The narrator has turned the French phrase ''vol-à-voiles'' (gliding) into a verb (removing the ''s'').

'''gold-beaters' skin''' 
Very thin vellum (membrane taken from the caecum or blind stomach of an ox). To prepare gold for gilding, it was placed between sheets of vellum and hammered thin.

'''Evening Quarters''' 
Naval practice of mustering the crew at the end of the day's work.

==Page 15==

'''ukulelist''' 
Ukuleles also appear in ''Gravity's Rainbow'', ''Vineland'', and ''Mason & Dixon''. According to Jules Siegel's article, "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?", Pynchon himself played the ukulele in college.

'''Fronting with a Nine Inch Nails edge''' 
The song performed by the Chums of Chance reflects the Rock and Roll attitude of the group towards the groundworld upon arrival: 
:: '''''For we're the''''' 
:: '''''Aces of the Altitudes''''' 
:: '''''Vagabonds of the Void...''''' 
:: '''''When some folks shrink with terror, say,''''' 
:: '''''We scarcely get annoyed.''''' 
It's also the first time in the book we truly encounter the hipness of the group.

[[image:Macassar-Oil.jpg|thumb|175px|''Macassar Oil. An Oily Puff for Soft Heads''|right]]'''Beaufort Scale''' 
A scale for measuring wind strength, developed 1805.

'''"...forty-four buttons...one for each State of the Union." 
Wyoming was the 44th state admitted to the union in 1890.

'''port section of the crew''' 
The half of the crew permitted to go freely ashore this time. The other half tomorrow. "Port" and "starboard": are these simply either/or words that sailors remember easily?

'''Macassar oil''' 
Macassar oil is an oil used primarily by men in Victorian and Edwardian times to smooth their hair. It was advertised as containing oil from Macassar, which is the former name of Ujung Pandang, a district on the island of Celebes in Indonesia. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macassar_oil Wikipedia entry]

==Page 16==

'''About the fringes,' Randolph reminded the liberty-goers, 'of any gathering on the scale of this Exposition, are apt to lurk vicious and debased elements, whose sole aim is to take advantage of the unwary.''' 
Indeed, the Chicago World's Fair was haunted by one of America's more prolific and original serial killers, H.H. Holmes. Born in 1861, Holmes came to Chicago as a pharmacist and built an office building that was eventually dubbed 'The Castle'. Consisting of commercial stores on the first floor, and offices and apartments on the upper floors, the building also housed hidden rooms where Holmes murdered his victims, chutes that conveyed the bodies to the basement, and a chamber of horrors in the basement where he destroyed the corpses. Holmes took advantage of the World's Columbian Exposition to lure victims, primarily females who had come unaccompanied to Chicago, to the Castle for torture and murder. It is estimated that he killed over 200 people at the Castle while the Exposition was in operation. Two very good books about Holmes are The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson and Depraved by Harold Schechter. It is doubtful that Pynchon was thinking explicitly of Holmes when he wrote this passage, although he must be aware of the story. Randolph could not have known about Holmes since Holmes was not captured until after the Fair was over. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._H.H._Holmes Wikipedia entry]

'''tension of the gas''' 
I.e., the pressure in the bag.

==Page 17==

'''"as if it were something the stripling had only read about, in some boys' book of adventures...as if that page of their chronicles lay turned and done"''' 
The narrator makes us aware that Darby's adventures are as if/will be written down...the 'reality' of almost killing all of them is now just words on a page...as is this book, ATD?...Again a Pynchonian theme: no book is the reality.

'''"and the order 'About-face' had been uttered by some potent though invisible Commandant of Earthly Days, toward whom Darby, in amiable obedience, had turned again."''' 
Is this just a metaphor from the narrator to describe what it is like for Darby, or is it also self-referential to
all the adventures of the Chums?. Another Q: Is the Commandant of Earthly Days the invisible presence from whom the chums get their orders? Cf. earthly surface, p.9
:Related Q: Do the Chums receive their orders from the author of their books?

'''we were usually out the door and on the main road''' 
Dick and Chick knew the judge was more likely to order them out of town than into the lockup.

'''Chinese foofooraw''' 
Also spelled foofaraw, a great deal of fuss, or useless frills. Cf folderol. However, why Chinese?
:Chick's father tried to sell Mississippi to a Chinese syndicate.

'''cubeb''' 
The name for the berry and for the oil obtained from the unripe berry of the East Indian climbing shrub ''P. cubeba''. The dried fruits are sometimes used as a condiment or are ground and smoked in cigarette form as an herbal remedy. [http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/pepper The Free Dictionary] Also appears in ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' page 118.

'''"...goldurn Keeley Cure"''' 
A treatment for alcohol, nicotine and narcotic addiction involving injections of "bichloride" or "double chloride" of gold, and also known as the "gold cure". Named for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Keeley Dr. Leslie E. Keeley,] who opened the first of many Keeley Institutes in [http://www.dwighthigh.k12.il.us/dwight/dwight.htm Dwight, Illinois], not far from Chicago, in 1879.

==Page 18==

'''headgear''' 
Description vaguely reminiscent of "Madame Bovary". [http://robotwisdom.com/flaubert/bovary/bovary1.html [notes]]

'''eclipse green''' 
Apparently an actual shade. [http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/DIO_DRO/DIRECT.html [cite]]

'''Bindlestiffs of the Blue A.C.''' 
Bindlestiff means hobo; hence, the Hoboes of the Sky Aeronautical Club.

'''("Penny") Black''' 
The Penny Black was the world's first official adhesive postage stamp, issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1840. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black [Wikipedia]]

'''Tzigane''' 
French for "gypsy". Also a piece by Ravel. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzigane_(Ravel) [Wikipedia]]

'''Egypt''' 
Little Egypt is the southern area of the state of Illinois in the United States of America. Named so because it has a considerable river delta and a metropolis called Cairo (KAY-roe). The region is and was sometimes called simply "Egypt," especially in the 19th century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Egypt_(region) [Wikipedia]]

==Page 19==

'''goin all blue from the light of that electric fluid''' 
Their ship was beset by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elmo%27s_fire St. Elmo's fire,] a low-energy electrical discharge often seen on surface vessels and occasionally on aircraft. Electric charge does behave in some respects like a fluid and was long described in such terms.

'''Voices calling out together''' 
There is no reason to doubt they heard the voices, but an aural hallucination is not out of the question: a chorus of voices is one of the easiest effects to produce with a synthesizer.

[[image:balloons-paris.jpg|thumb|200px|Garçons de '71|right]]'''Garçons de '71''' 
French: The Boys of '71; During the Siege of Paris in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War Franco-Prussian War], 1870-1871, balloons were manufactured within railroad stations in Paris. The balloons were used to get mail and passengers out of Paris. The ''Garçons de '71'' are a (probably) fictional cadre of young men who operated such balloons [[Garçons de '71|Read on...]]

'''a condition of ''permanent siege''''' 
Surely no one has failed to notice what a "wartime president" is allowed to get away with. "No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

'''pétroleurs de Paris''' 
An early form of Molotov cocktail thrower during the Siege of Paris. There were pétroleurs and pétroleuses.

==Page 20==

'''they'll fly wherever they're needed''' 
While the Chums obey orders from above, the Garçons de '71 follow a different imperative.

'''energy we could feel, directed personally at us''' 
Someone may be trying to influence what the Bindlestiffs do, or keep them away from the Garçons' work of mercy.

==Page 21==

'''admissions gate''' 
Apparently a break in the fence, capitalized on by freelance impresarios.

'''fifty-cent pieces''' 
Odd. According to [http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html this remarkable Columbian Exposition site,] regular admission was just half a dollar. Maybe Lindsay and Miles could have negotiated with the midget.

==Page 22==

'''Kodaks''' 
The word Kodak was trademarked in 1888, and the first Kodak camera was sold with the slogan, "You press the button - we do the rest." In 1891, the company released the first daylight-loading camera, so film could be changed without a darkroom. Kodaks would have been a novelty at the fair in 1893.

'''half-light . . . in the interests of mercy . . . the safety of the lights''' 
Interesting contrast suggesting a tradeoff between comfort/solace in the shadows and safety in the bright light.

'''Isandhlwana''' 
Isandlwana is an isolated hill in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. On January 22, 1879, it was the site of the Battle of Isandlwana, where over 20,000 Zulu warriors defeated a contingent of British soldiers in the first engagement of the Anglo-Zulu War. Almost the entire column of about 1,200 British soldiers was killed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isandhlwana [Wikipedia]] You will find a chapter on Isandhlwana in any book that has the words "military" and "blunders" in the title.

==Page 23==

'''Tarahumara''' 
Indian tribe of Northern New Mexico, in the Sierra Madres, known for cave-dwelling in the late 19th century. [[Tarahumare_Indians|About the Tarahumara]]. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarahumara [Wikipedia]]

'''"geek"''' 
A geek's act comprised things no one would do who had not sunk all the way to the bottom of the carnie world: eating live creatures, throwing fits, and so forth. Much like the television show "Fear Factor," but sad rather than stultifying.

'''monte''' 
Three-card monte.

==Page 24==

'''the curse of Scotland''' 
A term used in poker, bridge and various other card games for the nine of diamonds. Dates from 1710. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Scotland [Wikipedia]]

'''like the electricity coming on... how everything fits together, connects. It doesn't last long, though.''' 
From something as random as calling out a card trick comes this extremely profound quote by Miles Blundell (full quote edited here). The heart of this quote/thought seems to be crucial.

What Miles describes is also the symptoms of a mild seizure - could he be epileptic? Epileptics were often credited with shamanic or prophetic powers, and many sightings of religious figures have been attributed to seizures. On page 4, Miles is also said to suffer from "confusion in his motor processes", which may be related.

'''Cracker Jack''' 
First sold at the at the first Chicago World's Fair in 1893. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_Jack [Wikipedia]]

'''New Levee district''' 
Chicago's redlight district c1890. [http://www.ipsn.org/genesis.htm [cite]]

'''Epworth League''' 
A Methodist youth organization founded in 1889. [http://www.southernmethodistchurch.org/id48.htm [cite]]

==Page 25==

'''Haymarket bomb''' 
The Haymarket Riot on May 4, 1886, in Chicago may be the origin of international May Day observances and in popular literature inspired the caricature of "a bomb-throwing anarchist." The causes of the incident are still controversial, although deeply polarized attitudes separating the business class and the working class in late 19th century Chicago are generally acknowledged as having precipitated the tragedy and its aftermath. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_bombing Wikipedia entry].

'''if the Governor decides to pardon that gang of anarchistic murderers''' 
In May of 1886, 350,000 workers, including 70,000 in Chicago were taking to the streets to rally for the eight hour work day. After four workers were killed by the police on May 3, the anarchist leaders in Chicago called for a meeting in Haymarket Square. Although the rally was peaceful, the police came in on horseback to break it up and an unknown individual in the crowd hurled a homemade bomb into the air. After the explosion, which killed a policeman, the police opened fire on the crowd. Subsequently, the anarchist leaders deemed responsible for the rally were arrested and tried for the murder of the policeman. The Eight men were convicted of the bombing and seven of them sentenced to death. Governor Richard J. Oglesby commuted two death sentences to life. Four were hanged and a fifth committed suicide. A later governor, John P. Altgeld, pardoned the three survivors on June 26, 1893, concluding that all eight of them were innocent. The last words of anarchist August Spies before he was hanged were 'The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.' Two very good books on the Haymarket Riot and the events surrounding it include The Haymarket Tragedy by Paul Avrich and Death In The Haymarket by James Green.

'''mixture of contempt and pity''' 
This is ''definitely'' not from one of the Chums' adventure stories.

'''embonpoint''' 
Convexity of body; what used to be called a "prosperous" look.

'''duck soup''' 
Meaning "an easy task," but also the name of a Marx Bros. movie. Perhaps relevant, given the cameo by Groucho promised on the book sleeve. Many of the Marx Brothers early movies had animal references in the title: Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup. The titles usually had nothing at all to do with the plot, although they contributed to the lunatic nature of the comedy. The expression 'Horse Feathers' is used a few times later on in Against The Day.

==References==
<references />

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}

ATD 1-25

2007-09-20T22:40:40Z

Adrianboyd: /* Page 4 */ add-on

:'''<big>Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.</big>''' 

==cover text==
The black text and its drop shadows are in different typefaces. It may be worth noting, from a conceptual point of view, that we can infer from the angle of the drop shadows that the light source is any individual holding the book—that is, the reader or a potential reader.

==cover seal==
The seal appears to be written in Tibetan language, according to somebody who posts regularly to Pynchon-l under the name "Ya Sam", who reports:

I contacted the Tibetan Cultural Centre with the request to translate
the mysterious legend on the AtD seal. They were kind enough to forward my
request to the Tibetan tranlsator Tenzin Namgyal to whose generosity we
owe the solution of one more ATD related mystery.

It is the Tibetan language, alright, and it means ...... Tibetan
Government Chamber of Commerce.

Read their response below:

:Dear Ya Sam, 
:I showed the seal you sent to our Tibetan translator, Tenzin Namgyal. He says the word to word translation is: Tibetan Government Commerce Chamber in other words: Tibetan Government Chamber of commerce. Why Pynchon has chosen to place this on the cover of his book is anyones guess. Reading the book reviews gave no insight into the reason. Perhaps after one has read it?

:Best wishes,

:Sandy Belth 
:Tibetan Cultural Center

Also of interest: the coin bears a striking resemblance to the doubloon in ''Moby-Dick'' that Ahab nails to the mainmast as a prize to the first crew member to sight the white whale. Melville's description runs thus:

:It so chanced that the doubloon of the Pequod was a most wealthy example of these things. On its round border it bore the letters, REPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a country planted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator, and named after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes, in the unwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw the likeness of three Andes' summits; from one a flame; a tower on another; on the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of the partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual cabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at Libra. (Ch.99, "The Doubloon")

==copyright page==
The copyright page states that ''Against the Day'' is published by Viking Penguin, but on the title page and elsewhere we can read that the book is published by Penguin Press. The copyright pages of other books from Penguin Press state "Penguin Press" as the publisher, as could be expected, and it seems likely that the substitution of "Penguin Press" with "Viking" is one of many typographical errors in the book (see [[errata]]).
I have confirmed from inside Penguin Press that this is a copyediting mistake. Here is a direct e-mail answer about the Viking Penguin listing: "this was a copyediting mistake that will be corrected. There was never a Viking contract for this book."

==Dedication==
Most of Pynchon's novels contain dedications-- ''Mason & Dixon'' ("For Melanie, and for Jackson") , ''Vineland'' ("For my mother and father"), and ''Gravity's Rainbow'' ("For Richard Fariña")-- but not so ''Against the Day,'' as published. Advance reading copies of the book did contain the words "Dedication TK" in italics, but this is simply [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Come publisher-speak] for "dedication to come." It is unknown whether Pynchon ever considered inclusion of a dedication or whether the publisher simply left the page open just in case, but the ultimate lack of a dedication may suggest that Pynchon feels he's thanked everyone he needs to thank.

==Epigraph==
"It's always night, or we wouldn't need light." - Thelonious Monk 
Jazz and particularly bebop seem to be a lifelong interest of Pynchon’s, appearing in some form in all his works and what biographical snippets exist. As a college student, Pynchon “spent a lot of time in jazz clubs, nursing the two-beer minimum,” by his own admission (''Slow Learner'', Introduction). The Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/that-thelonious-monk-epigraph.html notes] that: 1) in his youth, Pynchon allegedly referred to Monk as a "God"; 2) the character McClintic Sphere in ''V''. takes Monk's middle name, Sphere; and 3) "It's always night, or we wouldn't need light" was apparently something Monk was given to saying, rather than something he once said. For more on McClintic Sphere and Monk, see Charles Hollander's essay [http://www.howardm.net/tsmonk/pynchon.php Does McClintic Sphere in ''V.'' stand for Thelonious Monk?]. On [[ATD_724-747#Page 732|page 732]]: "...daylit America ... its steadfast denial of night."

==Page 1==

'''The Light Over the Ranges''' 
Range is defined in the Oxford American Dictionary as "a line or series of mountains or hills : the coastal ranges of the northwest," so "range" or "ranges" can be used to denote a number of mountains. 

'Ranges' may also refer to farms, homesteads and ranches in 1893 America. America was predominantly that in 1893. Cf. "Home, home on the range". 

"celebrating in song the wider range of life..." Thomas Pynchon on
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Waddell Helen Waddell's]
''The Wandering Scholars'', p. 8, Introduction to[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Learner ''Slow Learner], 1984.

A range is also a group of diverse objects. 

A-And range is a word full of its own meaning. Below is a partial list from one good word reference site on the web. 
The more this reader
tries to understand Against the Day, by rereading it and Pynchon's whole oeuvre, the more he feels 'range as diversity'--lost--lies behind TRP's opening chapter title. Especially once one knows how 'Light' is a major subject and theme in ATD.[[User:MKOHUT|MKOHUT]] 13:41, 28 May 2007 (PDT)MKohut
*scope: an area in which something acts or operates or has power or control: "the range of a supersonic jet"; "the ambit of municipal legislation"; "within the compass of this article"; "within the scope of an investigation"; "outside the reach of the law"; "in the political orbit of a world power" 

*change or be different within limits; "Estimates for the losses in the earthquake range as high as $2 billion"; "Interest rates run from 5 to 10 percent"; "The instruments ranged from tuba to cymbals"; "My students range from very bright to dull" 

*the limits within which something can be effective; "range of motion"; "he was beyond the reach of their fire" 

*a large tract of grassy open land on which livestock can graze; "they used to drive the cattle across the open range every spring"; "he dreamed of a home on the range" 

*roll: move about aimlessly or without any destination, often in search of food or employment; 

*have a range; be capable of projecting over a certain distance, as of a gun; "This gun ranges over two miles" 

*a series of hills or mountains; "the valley was between two ranges of hills"; "the plains lay just beyond the mountain range" 

*a place for shooting (firing or driving) projectiles of various kinds; "the army maintains a missile range in the desert"; "any good golf club will have a range where you can practice" 

*range or extend over; occupy a certain area; "The plants straddle the entire state" 

*lay out orderly or logically in a line or as if in a line; "lay out the clothes"; "lay out the arguments" 

*the limits of the values a function can take; "the range of this function is the interval from 0 to 1"

*a variety of different things or activities; "he answered a range of questions"; "he was impressed by the range and diversity of the collection" 

*crop: feed as in a meadow or pasture; "the herd was grazing" 

*compass: the limit of capability; "within the compass of education"

*let eat; "range the animals in the prairie"

[wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn wordnet]

==Page 3==

'''"Now single up all lines!"''' 
Pynchon was in the Navy for a spell and "single up all lines" is a common nautical term. Ships are docked with lines doubled -- that is, with two sets of ropes or chains holding the vessel to the dock. To "single up all lines" is to remove the redundant second lines in preparation to make way.

But the opening line has many possible connotations.
:The Modern Word's Quail [http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/pynchon_atd.html writes] that "it is simultaneously a self-directive and a call to the reader; suggesting that ''Against the Day'' is a culmination of his previous work, and also charging the reader to find meaning within its twisting labyrinth. It may also be a sly, preemptive joke on the book’s initial critics, as the novel begins with the launch of a bloated gasbag bearing a somewhat provocative name."

:"Single up all lines" is used in its normal nautical context in ''V.'', 11; ''COL49'', 31; ''Gravity's Rainbow'', 489; and ''Mason & Dixon'', 258, 260. Perhaps we can understand this "line" as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but ''Vineland''?)--in preparation for a voyage to...?

'''"Cheerly now...handsomely...very well!!"''' 
Cheerly means "heartily," and was traditionally used as cry of encouragement among sailors. Handsomely (in nautical context): carefully, in good order, unhurriedly.

:Pynchon served in the Navy and uses nautical language in most of his novels. ''Mason & Dixon'': "Cheerly. Cheerly, then, Lads..." (54).

'''"Windy City, here we come!"''' 
The nickname for Chicago, of course, but in 1893 the use meant city of braggarts more than it did wind. The earliest known references to the "Windy City" are from 1876, and involve Chicago's rivalry with Cincinnati. A popular myth states that "Windy City" was first used by New York Sun editor Charles Dana in the bidding for the 1893 Columbian Exposition. The popularity of the nickname has endured, even after the Cincinnati rivalry and the Columbian Exposition both ended. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windy_City,_Origin_of_Name_(Chicago)| Origin of name "Windy City" at Wikipedia]

'''Randolph St. Cosmo, the ship commander''' 
[[image:ex-voti-isernia.jpg|thumb|175px|Ex voti of Wax, from Isernia|right]]Historically, there are two versions of the 3rd century CE figure St. Cosmo (aka St. Cosmas): the "randy" St. Cosmo, aka the "modern Priapus," and the saintly martyred St. Cosmo of Church lore. Pynchon, it seems, is connecting Randolph St. Cosmo to the former. "Randy," as astute observers will note, is an adjective which means, well, "horny." There's a distinct sexual thread woven throughout ''Against the Day'' [[Basnight%2C_Lewis_%28%22Lew%22%29|(See the ''beginnings'' of exploring this angle...]]) a-and Heartsease, St. Cosmo's mate, is the first to get pregnant! so this seems to fit right in. [[St. Cosmo|Read more about the historical St. Cosmo...]]; and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sts._Cosmas_and_Damian Wikipedia entry]

In [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=V#veery ''Mason & Dixon''], Pynchon has the Veery brothers, Cosmo and Damian, who are professional effigy makes in Philadelphia! And, just to make it interesting, "He's a rare Wax Artist, our Cosmo is." (p. 290) (Note: Wax phallus effigies were offered by the women to St. Cosmo at the festivals held in his name, as shown above.)

'''Now secure the Special Sky Detail''' 
When a naval vessel is departing from port or returning to port, a specially trained team is put in charge of the complicated process. The command is, [http://tpub.com/content/administration/12968a/css/12968a_41.htm "Now set the Special Sea Detail."] ''Inconvenience'' is run along fairly strict naval lines—given the age of the officers and crew, you might say she is a tot ship—and the beginning of the book was preceded by an analogous "Now set the Special Sky Detail." Once the ship is aloft and clear of ground obstructions, the command comes, "Now secure the Special Sky Detail," meaning disband the team for the time being and all return to regular duties. The language, tasks and customs aboard the skyship will show parallels to navy usage throughout the book.

'''summer uniform of red-and-white-striped blazer and trousers of sky blue''' 
Calls to mind the color scheme of Ned Land's (Kirk Douglas) costume in Disney's 1954 film version of ''20,000 Leagues under the Sea''. 

Also calls to mind the colors of the American flag.

'''"scuttlebutt" . . . thousand . . . wonders''' 
A most vigorous campaign [to host the Columbian Exposition] was then inaugurated, the three other cities making a common cause against Washington, whose claim was based on the fact that the proposed exposition was to be held under auspices of the national government, and hence that the capital was the most appropriate place.... By each of the claimants every advantage was urged, and by each of their rivals every defect was exaggerated. Congressional committees accorded a hearing to the several delegations, that of Chicago being represented, among others, by DeWitt C. Cregier, Thomas B. Bryan, and Edward T. Jeffery. from "Book of the Fair" by Hubert Bancroft, 1893.
:"Scuttlebutt" is a very close equivalent to "water-cooler gossip." [http://www.jacksjoint.com/sailor_terminology.htm Here is a glossary] of nautical terms with some of the etymologies.

'''''Inconvenience''''' 
Pynchon's fictional navy includes the USS Scaffold and the Susanna Squaducci (''V.''), and the John E. Badass (''GR''). Chumps of Choice blog [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html notes] that the British Royal Navy has a long tradition of warships with names like Impulsive, Incendiary, Inconstant, Indignant, etc. Impulsive is the name of the ship Ploy, who loses all his teeth in V., gets transferred to.
Inconvenience is an apt name for the Chums' adventures in 'reality'. They are an inconvenience; they are inconvenienced. (In having to take on Chick Counterfly, for example). 

Pynchon uses the word ''inconvenience'' in a possibly thematic, connected way in ''Mason & Dixon'' and in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. In ''Mason & Dixon'', the word is applied to the difficulties of an Other, other human beings as we act, interact. See citations at the ''M & D'' wiki. Here is the clearest relevant use for understanding for the Chums' airship, perhaps: from ''Gravity's Rainbow'': "the gift of Daedalus that allowed him [Pokler] to put as much labyrinth as required between himself and the
''inconveniences of caring''. [Italics mine] They had sold him convenience, so much of it, all on credit, and now They were collecting."
page 435, Penguin paperback edition with the Frank Miller cover.

In addition, if we take the Latinate roots of in-con-ven-(ience) and willfully misread the "in" as adverbial "in" (as e.g. "in-come") rather than the privative "not" (as e.g. "in-cred-ible"), we get "the arriving-in-together"; the "inconvenience", then, is essentially a tongue-in-cheek "vehicle". 
I do not think it illuminating to "willfully misread"!?! We are trying to
willfully read possible meanings and resonances. [[User:MKOHUT|MKOHUT]] 06:01, 2 August 2007 (PDT)

Also, recall Fender-Belly Bodine, in [http://masondixon.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=I#inconvenience ''Mason & Dixon'']: "Back on old H.M.S. ''Inconvenience'', we wasted many a Day and Night watching that fancy Counter get smaller by the minute..." (p.28)

'''patriotic bunting''' 
TRP reminds again that this is a very American skyship. 
AtD has many echoes of Doctorow's "Ragtime": Doctorow fictionalises the same era, including anarchists, bombings, and early Hollywood.

'''aeronautics''' 
It has been suggested that Pynchon relied to the Britannica 11th as a major reference for his treatment of early aeronautics. [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Aeronautics|Brittanica 11th on Aeronautics]

'''five-lad crew''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo (ship commander), Lindsay Noseworth (master-at-arms), Miles Blundell (handyman apprentice), Darby Suckling (factotum and mascot), and Chick Counterfly. The commander's name evokes Randolph St., a main thoroughfare in Chicago. Perhaps also saint(liness) and cosmos?

'''The [[Chums of Chance]]''' 
To be chummy with chance might mean lucky, fond of gambling, fond of chaos, irrational, or anarchist. Or maybe they became chums by accident. The "chance" may also be that of the winds that carry them in directions not always intended.
:The American philospher Charles Sanders Peirce, who set down his most important ideas in the late 1800's, argued that 'Chance' was a feature of the universe that can refute all determinisms.

"The certainty of chance" is a Surrealist slogan. We learned from ''Slow Learner'' that Pynchon was influenced early by Surrealism.
The slogan is quoted in this obit of a real life
character out of Pynchon, George Melly, Jazz singer, writer, anarchist and polymorphous lover.[http://www.economist.com/search/search.cfm?rv=2&qr=melly&area=1&x=6&y=7]

Cameraderie and isolation are two recurring topics in Pynchon's works. The Chums are a band of heroes like those commonly featured in the 19th century boys' fiction that Pynchon evokes, but also recall Pynchon's high school fictions, [http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_hamster.html Voice of the Hamster] and [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_boys.html The Boys], in which the teenage Pynchon lovingly portrayed his group of high school chums, known as, simply, "The Boys."

[[image:dart-explorigator.jpg|thumb|120px|right]]The Chums are reminiscent of two comics of the early 20th century, [[Little Nemo|''Little Nemo in Slumberland'']], by Windsor McCay, and ''The Explorigator'', by Harry Grant Dart. "The Explorigator" was the name of a fantastic airship that traversed the universe. It was manned by Admiral Fudge, a youthful adventurer and inventor, accompanied by a group of friends, also children his age (around nine or ten): Detective Rubbersole, Maurice Mizzentop, Nicholas Nohooks, Grenadier Shift, Teddy Typewriter, and Ah Fergetitt. ''The Explorigator'' ran for 14 weeks in 1908 and made an impression for its imaginative and visual creativity. [[The Explorigator|More on ''The Explorigator'']] <ref>[http://lambiek.net/artists/d/dart_harry_grant.htm Lambiek Comiclopedia]</ref>

The names of the Chums may also be derived from famous Jazz musicians: Miles (Davis), Chick (Corea), Darby (Hicks), (Boots) Randolph, and (Vachel) Lindsay (a stretch here?), notes the [http://chumpsofchoice.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-single-up-all-lines.html#c116587978292060684 Chumps of Choice blog].

The creativity of Pynchon's naming of the Chums, as other characters, shows yet again his Dickensian influence.

Note that there's five Chums, the number of chapters of the book (a-and the number of letters in "Chums"!).

'''Chicago''' 
It has been suggested that Pynchon relied on the [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/ 1911 Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica] as a major reference for his treatment of 1890s Chicago. [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Chicago 1911 Britannica entry on Chicago]

Also, The band Chicago's third hit song "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" deals with how one faces living in a world under constraints of time [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Does_Anybody_Really_Know_What_Time_It_Is%3F]. The opening lyrics are:

Does anybody really know what time it is?
Does anybody really care?
About Time...

'''World's Columbian Exposition''' 
also called The Chicago World's Fair, was held in Chicago in 1893, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. Chicago bested New York City, Washington, D.C. and St. Louis, Missouri, for the honor of hosting the fair. The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self image and American industrial optimism. The International Exposition was held in a building which for the first time was devoted to electrical exhibits. It was a historical moment and the beginning of a revolution, as Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse introduced the public to electrical power by providing alternating current to illuminate the Exposition. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry]. This World's Fair was enveloped in optimism for the future. "The thousand or more such wonders which awaited [the Chums] there." p.3

'''lifelines''' 
Called "manropes" on sailing ships. Ropes running fore-and-aft above the gunwales to prevent sailors getting blown overboard. They were held up by short stanchions inserted into holes in the rails. Source: ''The Ashley Book of Knots,'' 1944.

'''as my faithful readers will remember''' 
Pynchon here is immediately inserting this story into a larger canon of Chums of Chance fictions, titles of which are mentioned in subsequent pages.

'''mascotte''' 
The English word 'mascot' has its origin in the late 19th cent.: from French mascotte. The spelling may also be a tribute to the Dutch brand of rolling papers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mascotte_%28rolling_papers%29 [Wikipedia]]

==Page 4==

'''Professor''' 
Randolph St. Cosmo is called Professor.
"Professor" was a common title for early hot-air balloonists. [EC]

'''"Turn to"''' 
Evokes the "Go to!" of Majistral and compatriots, ''V.'', chapter eleven. "Turn to" is also a shipboard expression, "put your back into it" or something of the kind.

'''Perhaps its familiarity... rendered it temporarily invisible to you." 
Perhaps an admonition from the author that familiar things will be easily overlooked?
I think the fact that they were picnic baskets matters...TRP perhaps saying, as he seems to suggest elsewhere, that we overlook the simple pleasures too often.

'''Miles Davis''' 
''for Miles, while possessed of good intentions and the kindest heart in the little band, suffered at times from a confusion in his motor processes, often producing lively results, yet as frequently compromising the crew's physical safety.''

'''Chick Counterfly''' 
Three possibilities: (1) A counter fly is an annoyance in (say) the butcher's shop. (2) Chick always speaks "counter" to anyone else's "flight" of imagery. (3) The only non-''AtD''-related uses of this word that I've found came in patents describing mechanisms; "the counterfly direction" means contrary to the direction everything else is flying in, hence this character counters the flying of the craft?

He is the only Chum we know who was "rescued" from the "real" world. Meaning there? To be counter to flying is to be earthbound, where he started and he is the one with whom the conversation about relanding
on a different "earth" happens.

Like Suckling's name suggesting a relationship to another Pynchon character (Pig Bodine), Pynchon winks at a relationship between Counterfly and Tyrone Slothrop. In Counterfly´s first utterance in the book, “Ha ha,” cried young Counterfly, “say, but if you ain’t the most slob-footed chap I ever seen!” you can derive "Tyrone Slothrop" from an anagram of Counterfly and "slob-footed chap."

:Huh? That's a pretty sloppy anagram, ain't it? What about that "b" and that"d" ... this is ''way'' too much of a stretch. There's something to these names, perhaps, but I don't think you're close here, friend.

==Page 5==

'''"all tableware with Chums of Chance Insignia is Organizational property"''' 
The organization in question is the Chums of Chance themselves, here considered as an institution rather than as a collection of individuals.

'''picklesome''' 
Having the nature of a pickle, i.e, a boy who is inclined to mischief.

A word not much seen since the nineteenth century.

'''Pugnax''' 
I suspect that, in keeping with a very strong [[Birds|"bird" theme]] (the original aeronauts!) in ''Against the Day'', Pynchon may have named Pugnax after a bird called the Ruff (''Philomachus pugnax'') which is a medium-sized wader. Note that Pugnax's first "utterance" is "Rr Rff-rff Rr-rr-rff-rrf-rrf"...

There are a number of characters named after birds or bird sounds: Linnet Dawes, "Pert" Chirpingdon-Groin (there is a pert bird), and Wren Provenance immediately come to mind, but I'm sure there are others, and there are myriad bird references and metaphors (the Sodality of Ǣtheronauts and their mechanical wings); I just haven't had the time to explore it deeply, but others may... (Just read [[Birds|the bit about birds]] from ''Homage to Pythagoras''...

You can even make a semiserious case that the Aeronauts are named for a bird, the white-throated swift, ''Aeronautes saxatalis'' [[ATD_243-272#Page_266|(mentioned on p. 266)]].

The name meaning, in Latin, "likes to fight" (i.e. one who is pugnacious). Pugnax's fantastic intelligence recalls another intelligent Pynchon dog, the Learned English Dog in ''Mason & Dixon''. His manner of speech is somewhat reminiscent of the mystery-solving cartoon dog Scooby-Doo, and [http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0612&msg=112507&sort=date members of PYNCHON-L] have speculated that his eyebrows and reading habits allude to Gromit, from the [http://www.wallaceandgromit.com/ Wallace and Gromit] claymation films.

Could this name be an homage to the dog in the Asterix comics, Idéfix in French; Dogmatix in English? Many of the character in the Asterix comics have names ending in "x".

'''"...during a confidential assignment in Our Nation's Capitol (see ''The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit'')..."''' 
This could be seen as a criticism of an American President, present or past. President Bush is a candidate, considering the Pynchon-authored [[Against the Day description|Amazon.com book description]] which included "With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

The Chums "rescued Pugnax, then but a pup"--an innocent, a child creature--"from a furious encounter..between rival packs of the city's wild dogs".
The wild dogs equal both political parties?

'''lavatorial assaults''' 
"from the sky, which no one can "begin to try to record, much less coordinate reports of" recall the V-2 rockets which are linked to Slothrop's erections in ''Gravity's Rainbow''. That is, pee from the sky is "folklore, superstition, or perhaps...the religious" in ATD compared to rockets screaming across the sky and the destruction in GR.

This also recalls jokes and urban legends regarding frozen waste from leaky airplane lavatories (i.e., "you can still be hit by an icy B.M.")

==Page 6==

'''''Princess Casamassima''''' 
Published 1886 (James had published two others by 1893), a classic dealing with terrorists, anarchists, and bombings. [http://www.henryjames.org.uk/pcasa/home.htm Full text] Sequel to "Roderick Hudson". It's the only Henry James novel in which he takes on such overtly political subjects, the only one which deals with violent extremes of human behavior. 
:Thematically, it's reactionary, the opposite of AtD. 
:ATD is not reactionary but also not the opposite of Princess Casamassima thematically, it can be easily argued.

Pugnax prefers in his reading "sentimental tales about his own species [rather] than those exhibiting extremes of human behavior, which he appeared to find a bit lurid." It seems Pynchon is slyly commenting on James' Princess Casamassima here in that that James novel DID deal with 'extremes of human behaviour' yet Pugnax prefers 'sentimental tales'! As many who have had dogs know, often when raised from puppyhood with loving owners, they 'think they are human'. Pugnax learns where to pee off the gondola - a pretty natural function for a dog - "like the rest of the crew".

Or: it is a theme in GR, that the book, writing itself, is an abstraction from experience and not, of course, the thing itself. Noseworth, "who placed upon the word 'book' . . . contempt" did, however, know the subject matter of 'Princess Casamassima.' He, Noseworth, hopes they will "suffer no occasion for exposure more immediate than that to be experienced, as with Pugnax at this moment, safely within the leaves of some book." It matters that the Chums ARE also characters in books of their adventures.

It should also be noted that the Princess Casamassima is one of the rare characters in James' novels who appears in more than one work. She was originally a character in the 1875 novel Roderick Hudson, where her name was, quite fittingly, Christina Light.

'''Placing . . . an emphasis''' 
Lapse of authorial control? Surely the creator of the ''Chums'' novels would not write such a Pynchonian sentence fragment!

'''Pugnax sniffed . . . as always this scent eluded him''' 
If Pugnax doesn't detect a human scent, that suggests Lindsay is not human. Not human, Master-at-Arms, speaks in hyper-constructed prose, has a notably short fuse . . . he's Lieutenant Worf of ''Star Trek, the Next Generation.''

'''''Krakatoa''''' 
Erupted 1883. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa Wikipedia entry.]

'''Heino Vanderjuice of New Haven''' 
Scientist who designed the ''Inconvenience's'' hydrogen engine. "Vanderjuice" suggests both "wonder juice" and "wander juice," fitting since his engine allows the Chums to wander and is wondrous insofar as it apparently violates the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics second law of thermodynamics]. "Heino" (HIE-no) is a man's given name [http://www.behindthename.com/php/view.php?name=heino meaning 'home'] in German, Finnish, and Estonian. Perhaps an allusion to the German pop star, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heino Heino].

:Um, a quibble: ''Vanderjuice'' is some kind of corrupted Dutch, and in Dutch the name Heino would be pronounced HAY-no. He is not an immigrant, though, and American speakers no doubt say HIGH-no.

Jules Verne influence? Vanderjuice a red herring, pointing to Dutch origin and electrical ("juice") background? Or does one try to parse the name into eg "Fond O' Juice"?

'''no better than a perpetual-motion machine''' 
A perpetual-motion machine is not just one that runs forever, but one that ''performs work'' forever without any input of energy. All PM machines ever invented have been either hoaxes ("secret free energy source the government doesn't want you to know about") or mistakes. The hydrogen generator/engine is neither, which is why the disdainful phrase "no better than" is crucial.

By the way, how does one generate hydrogen? In high school chem lab we used zinc filings and hydrochloric acid, but that seems unsuitable with Miles around. Is it possible Vanderjuice has invented a photovoltaic electrolysis cell?

'''Miles, with his marginal gifts of coördination, and Chick, with a want of alacrity fully as perceptible''' 
Like the old gag: The food in this restaurant isn't any good, but the service is awful.

'''ratlines and shrouds''' 
''Inconvenience'' is rigged like a sailing ship of the period, though it's hard to see why she needs to be. Shrouds fan out from a masthead down to a rail; ratlines run horizontally to join them. The whole affair serves the sailors as a ladder.

'''". . . anemometer of the Robinson's type"''' 
Cup anemometer invented in 1846 by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Thomas_Romney_Robinson Dr. John Thomas Romney Robinson]. Cup anemometers are still commonly used to measure wind speed because of their simplicity and reliability in a variety of environmental conditions. [http://www.arm.ac.uk/annrep/annrep2000/node13.html pic]

'''how rapidly the ship was proceeding''' 
But you can't measure the craft's progress by measuring wind speed at a point on the craft itself. All you get from the anemometer is a speed relative to the air, which is in variable motion. Since the craft is moving at the speed of the wind plus the speed of its propulsion device, the speed found by the anemometer is basically useless.

==Page 7==

'''Porfirio Díaz''' 
President of Mexico 1876-1880, 1884-1911. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porfirio_D%C3%ADaz Wikipedia]

In most countries, the Interior Ministry (Ministry of Internal Affairs, Home Office, etc.) ran programs like secret police. Are the Chums working for forces of conservativism?

'''"beside a black-water river of the Deep South". 
Blackwater River is in lower central Florida, pretty deep south; but there are numerous rivers in swampy areas that run black with organic matter.

'''a bitter and unresolved "piece of business"''' 
Rather than give a proper reason for the Chums to be in the Deep South, the narrator cops out by pleading that it's "not advisable" to specify.

'''"the Rebellion of thirty years previous"''' 
The Civil War was not called such during the time it was occurring; the South called it "the war between the states" to emphasize both their right to secede from the union and that this was a war between sovereign states; the North called it "the Rebellion of 1861" or, after termination of hostilities, "the Rebellion of 1861-1865," appellations that did not recognize the South's right to secede.

'''"one still not advisable to set upon one's page"''' 
The American Civil War, that "rebellion of thirty years previous," has not yet become a suitable subject for an adventure tale such as the Chums'.

'''absquatulated''' 
Means to move away quickly, usually to avoid capture. Apparently a mock-Latinate formation, "to go off and squat somewhere else." [http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-abs1.htm A brief article] on the history and etymology of "absquatulate." 
The word is used in Vineland.

'''"Crackerjack!" exclaimed Chick.''' 
Cracker Jack, the food, was first sold at the Chicago Exhibition of 1893, though it did not bear its present name. As one word here, however, it is not the candy: "Crackerjack" entered English first as a noun referring to "a person or thing of marked excellence," then as an adjective. The foodstuff gained its present name, according to the [http://www.crackerjack.com/history.php official Cracker Jack website], in 1896. The OED lists the first written use of "crackerjack" as 1895, two years after the present scene. It is by no means impossible, however, that the term would have been current in the spoken language in 1893.

'''to approach the gates of the Penitentiary''' 
A genuine saying. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Quay Matthew Quay,] a political kingmaker of the 1880s and 90s, said of Benjamin Harrison's squeaker victory over Grover Cleveland in 1888 that Harrison would "never know how many Republicans were compelled to approach the gates of the penitentiary to make him president."

'''posse comitatus''' 
What Western movie fans know as a "posse," i.e., citizens conscripted by a sheriff to assist in law enforcement. (See the Wikipedia entry on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_comitatus_(common_law) Posse Comitatus].) Remember that the ''Chums'' author gets paid by the word.

In the 1980s, a radical, violent, right-wing and anti-government movement adopted the name "Posse Comitatus."

==Page 8==

'''a pocketful of specie''' 
Specie means coins as opposed to paper money.

'''the town of Thick Bush''' 
Aside from whether this phrase might apply to some political figure of the past or present, "thick bush" is the literal meaning of the Spanish Matagorda, the name of many towns in Latin America and one on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

'''"which directs us never to interfere with legal customs of any locality down at which we may happen to have touched"''' 
Like the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_directive Prime Directive] in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_trek ''Star Trek'']. Lindsay's fussy syntax echoes Winston Churchill's exasperated "This is the kind of carping criticism up with which I will not put."

'''legal customs''' 
Legal = pertaining to law, in this case lynch law. The Chums are interpreting their Prime Directive pretty broadly here.

'''Katie bar the door''' 
An expression that means that there's trouble brewing. (See [http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-kat1.htm this article] about the expression's etymology.)

'''Ku Klux Klan''' 
Reminiscent of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan Klan] encounter scenes in the Coen Brothers' ''O Brother, Where Art Thou''.

'''tupelo, cypress, and hickory''' 
The trees are no help in locating the town; all three kinds like bottom land and grow all over the South.

'''speed . . . made it nearly invisible from the ground''' 
Few people in 1893 had seen a manmade object moving at 60 miles an hour, and many thought such a speed was lethal anyway. The ''Chums'' author suggests such an outlandish speed would make ''Inconvenience'' just a blur in the sky. Of course you can read the fin numbers on an airliner landing at 150 knots, but he didn't know that.

''Pedantry alert:'' In perfectly transparent air a ship flying a mile off the ground is visible about 125 miles away. If its flight path takes it right over your head, you can follow it for 250 miles. If it is making a groundspeed of 60 miles per hour, it takes 4 hours and change to go from horizon to horizon. In typical "clear" air (visibility say 30 miles), you will see the ship in your sky for a solid hour. These rough figures show how wrong the narrator is about speed.

'''way better than a mile a minute''' 
The Chums' point of departure is unknown, but they arrived in Chicago after catching a southerly wind (pg 3), southerly meaning "wind blowing from the south." The Chums surpass 60 miles an hour here, but as their previous speed was unknown, it's difficult to know where they were leaving from. (New Orleans to Chicago is 834 miles, slightly less than 14 hours at 60 miles/hour, so a possibility.)

==Page 9==

'''locker''' 
On board ship, any cabinet with a door or lid.

'''"Do not imagine, that in coming aboard ''Inconvenience'' you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual..."''' 
This may be Pynchon directly addressing the reader. Given that his [[Against_the_Day_description|book description]] proclaims the world of AtD as "what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two," this paragraph seems to indicate that Pynchon, like all great fantasy or sci-fi writers, does not intend to create a world where anything goes. Rather, he will create a world that differs from ours but then obey the rules and constraints he's already established. 
Cf. Pynchon's own relevant words in the introduction to Slow Learner. He remarks that in non-realistic fiction, he had to learn that not anything went.

A-and it must mean, coming from the commander, that all aboard the ''Inconvenience'' are also subjects to the 'facts' of the world. "The World is All that is the Case", from Wittgenstein, quoted in V.
(in the original German)

'''"Going up is like going north."''' 
Air gets cooler as the ship ascends into higher altitudes, and therefore like travelling northward. This page also suggests some further mystery of the Chums may be revealed to Chick and the reader in time.

:North is not a positive place in Pynchon's world. It is associated with anti-life---coldness as here---compared to the South, a place of light and warmth, such as the tropics. See GR.

:But to go far enough north means heading south again, observes Chick Counterfly--is this one meaning of his name? Then one would be "approaching the surface of another planet, maybe?" asks Chick.

"Not exactly" [answers Randolph] "No. Another 'surface', but an earthly one"
"You'll see. In time, of course". Time is earthly?

'''"Another 'surface'"''' 
In ancient conics the cone is formed by taking a line through a point (the vertex) at a particular angle to a plane and then inscribing a circle on the plane. Two conic surfaces are made by the motion of this line, one below this point and one above. The three conic sections (hyperbola, parabola, and ellipse) are created by slicing the conic surface(s) at different angles.
:huh?[[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:38, 15 January 2007 (PST)
:If you read this for plain meaning, then it's true (or Randolph believes) that there's another earthly surface, to which you can descend by ascending far enough above this one. Surely it is pertinent here that Pynchon's dear friend Richard Fariña (1937-66) titled his novel ''Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me.''

==Page 10==

'''Stockyards''' 
Chicago was, at the time, the meat-packing and slaughtering capital of the United States. The stench from the stockyards below must have been memorable.

'''...looked up at the airship in wonder..." 
The sight of any airship in 1893 must have been rare indeed. 
Our history reports that the first practical airships were built in 1898; [[ATD_429-459#Page_454|the idea or icon was around by 1896, though.]]

'''Beneath the rubbernecking Chums of Chance wheeled streets and alleyways''' 
Optical illusion. As you fly over a grid of streets, you perceive a landmark far away to move slowly while the lateral streets near you just whip past. Your brain interprets that the same way as hub and spokes, i.e., the motion of a wheel. Interesting question, though: If the ''Chums'' author was just making this stuff up, how did he know about the illusion?

'''Cartesian grid''' 
From Rene Descartes, 17th century philosopher and mathematician; see Wikipedia entry, whose most famous argument, "I think therefore I am" and mathematical studies have often lead him to be seen as the first modern philosopher of ultra-rationality. Geometry has 'the Cartesian coordinant system, a grid. Chicago's streets are laid out in a very rational grid arrangement.

Pynchon is reputed to have written 'Gravity's Rainbow' on engineer's grid paper.

In modern mathematics, curves are described only in relation to the two dimensional grid (see previous page). If conic sections are not specifically being thought of here, the theme of dimensionality, at least, is already at play.

'''that unshaped freedom being rationalized into movement only in straight lines''' 
Rationalization is a key sociological concept [from online Dictionary of Social Science]:RATIONALIZATION
This term has two specific meanings in sociology. (1) The concept was developed by German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) who used it in two ways. First, it was the process through which magical, supernatural and religious ideas lose cultural importance in a society and ideas based on science and practical calculation become dominant. For example, in modern societies science has rationalized our understanding of weather patterns. Science explains weather patterns as a result of interaction between physical elements like wind-speed and direction, air and water temperatures, humidity, etc. In some other cultures, weather is thought to express the pleasure or displeasure of gods, or spirits of ancestors. One explanation is rationalized and scientific, the other mysterious and magical. Rationalization also involves the development of forms of social organization devoted to the achievement of precise goals by efficient means. It is this type of rationalization that we see in the development of modern business corporations and of bureaucracy. These are organizations dedicated to the pursuit of defined goals by calculated, systematically administered means. (2) Within symbolic interactionism, rationalization is used more in the everyday sense of the word to refer to providing justifications or excuses for one's actions.

'''"only in straight lines and at right angles and a progressive reduction of choices, until the final turn through the final gate that led to the killing-floor."''' 
From innocent bovines to ...the world? "Single up all lines"....
Stockyards were organized in such a way that the cattle would proceed through a series of chutes and passages, until they arrived alone at the point of death.

"Progressive reduction of choices" also occurred in ''Mason & Dixon''—there were infinitely many wildernesses out to the west until M&D ran the line and rationalized the country into Maryland and Pennsylvania.

==Page 11==

'''plummet''' 
In the real world, this might be bad physics, as closing the valve wouldn't slow the descent. Objects in a fluid medium like air float if their weight is less than the weight of the fluid they displace (hence why one fills a balloon with a light gas such as hydrogen or helium). Once the ''Inconvenience'' loses its buoyancy, it will continue to fall, unless its weight is reduced to what a lesser amount of hydrogen could support. The Inconvenience, however, has a hydrogen producing apparatus that could kick in, slow, and eventually stop their descent.

'''bear a hand''' 
Nautical: help out.

==Page 12==

'''Liverpool Kiss''' 
A head butt.

'''Herr Riemann''' 
Riemann, Georg Friedrich Bernhard (1826-1866) (pronounced REE mahn or in IPA: ['ri:man]) was a German mathematician who made important contributions to analysis and differential geometry, some of them paving the way for the later development of general relativity. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riemann Wikipedia entry].

'''''Mr.'' Noseworth''' 
Lindsay insisting on proper naval forms: an ensign, lieutenant (junior grade), lieutenant or lieutenant commander in the U.S. navy is correctly addressed as "Mister Surname."

'''"topological genius"''' 
Riemann's differential geometry goes beyond the Cartesian grid. See conic sections and dimensionality above, page 10.

==Page 13==

'''There was an "eager stampede" to the rail''' 
Why is eager stampede in quotation marks? The sentence reads fine without it. Does it seem to show ironic knowingness on the part of the narrator? If so, why and who is the narrator?
: I suspect this is a stylistic device from the turn of the century light literature that Pynchon is emulating-- placing a novel term in quotation marks. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 01:35, 23 December 2006 (PST)

:insightfully true, I suspect, but it still shows 'narratorial knowingness', yes?

: Cf. Flaubert's use of quotations in ''Madame Bovary'' to isolate what he deemed the contemptible argot of the bourgeoisie.

::Apparently not a cliche: [http://books.google.com//books?num=100&q=eager.stampede&as_brr=0 GoogleBooks]

'''"...among the brighter star-shapes of exploded ballast bags..."''' 
Recalls the opening line of ''Mason & Dixon'': "Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr‘d the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins..."

'''"...quite as if were some giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinizing from above, in a spirit of constructive censure."''' 
This is strikingly reminiscent of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odilon_Redon Odilon Redon's] 1882 Lithograph ''L'Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l'infini (The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity).'' [http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3ADE%3AI%3A2&page_number=4&template_id=1&sort_order=1 At MoMa's Online Collection]
Notice that society = censure, if constructive. Gamboling nude on a summer day was OK until the ''Inconvenience'', as eyeball, appeared.

:The Odilon Redon lithograph appears on the cover of the 1998 Vintage paperback edition of Ian McEwan's Enduring Love, whose first unforgettable chapter triggers the novel with a ballooning incident leaving the reader dangling over the edge of suspense and suspension.

==Page 14==

'''charmed into docility''' 
If it took only one small lad to moor the ship, she was indeed docile. A wiki contributor once saw a Goodyear blimp in Houston, Texas, landing. The craft had half a dozen long falls of rope hanging from her nose, and a ground crew of nearly two dozen men ready to take hold of them. The blimp approached nose-low, the crew took the ropes, and a gust of wind suddenly moved the ship. The crew chief gave a safety command and all the men let loose their ropes at once. On the third pass, all hands working together managed to stop the ship and get her moored. If ''Inconvenience'' was a fraction as changeable and hard to control, Darby made a great job of getting the ship staked out by himself.

'''Jacob's-ladder''' 
Used here as "a marine ladder of rope or chain with wooden or iron rungs" (Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged) but is suggestive of Jacob's ladder in Genesis:

Genesis 28:12 And he [Jacob] dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. (King James version)

'''a giant sack of soiled laundry''' 
Perhaps ''freshly'' soiled during the great hydrogen valve disaster.

'''''vol-à-voile''''' 
The narrator has turned the French phrase ''vol-à-voiles'' (gliding) into a verb (removing the ''s'').

'''gold-beaters' skin''' 
Very thin vellum (membrane taken from the caecum or blind stomach of an ox). To prepare gold for gilding, it was placed between sheets of vellum and hammered thin.

'''Evening Quarters''' 
Naval practice of mustering the crew at the end of the day's work.

==Page 15==

'''ukulelist''' 
Ukuleles also appear in ''Gravity's Rainbow'', ''Vineland'', and ''Mason & Dixon''. According to Jules Siegel's article, "Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?", Pynchon himself played the ukulele in college.

[[image:Macassar-Oil.jpg|thumb|175px|''Macassar Oil. An Oily Puff for Soft Heads''|right]]'''Beaufort Scale''' 
A scale for measuring wind strength, developed 1805.

'''"...forty-four buttons...one for each State of the Union." 
Wyoming was the 44th state admitted to the union in 1890.

'''port section of the crew''' 
The half of the crew permitted to go freely ashore this time. The other half tomorrow. "Port" and "starboard": are these simply either/or words that sailors remember easily?

'''Macassar oil''' 
Macassar oil is an oil used primarily by men in Victorian and Edwardian times to smooth their hair. It was advertised as containing oil from Macassar, which is the former name of Ujung Pandang, a district on the island of Celebes in Indonesia. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macassar_oil Wikipedia entry]

==Page 16==

'''About the fringes,' Randolph reminded the liberty-goers, 'of any gathering on the scale of this Exposition, are apt to lurk vicious and debased elements, whose sole aim is to take advantage of the unwary.''' 
Indeed, the Chicago World's Fair was haunted by one of America's more prolific and original serial killers, H.H. Holmes. Born in 1861, Holmes came to Chicago as a pharmacist and built an office building that was eventually dubbed 'The Castle'. Consisting of commercial stores on the first floor, and offices and apartments on the upper floors, the building also housed hidden rooms where Holmes murdered his victims, chutes that conveyed the bodies to the basement, and a chamber of horrors in the basement where he destroyed the corpses. Holmes took advantage of the World's Columbian Exposition to lure victims, primarily females who had come unaccompanied to Chicago, to the Castle for torture and murder. It is estimated that he killed over 200 people at the Castle while the Exposition was in operation. Two very good books about Holmes are The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson and Depraved by Harold Schechter. It is doubtful that Pynchon was thinking explicitly of Holmes when he wrote this passage, although he must be aware of the story. Randolph could not have known about Holmes since Holmes was not captured until after the Fair was over. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._H.H._Holmes Wikipedia entry]

'''tension of the gas''' 
I.e., the pressure in the bag.

==Page 17==

'''"as if it were something the stripling had only read about, in some boys' book of adventures...as if that page of their chronicles lay turned and done"''' 
The narrator makes us aware that Darby's adventures are as if/will be written down...the 'reality' of almost killing all of them is now just words on a page...as is this book, ATD?...Again a Pynchonian theme: no book is the reality.

'''"and the order 'About-face' had been uttered by some potent though invisible Commandant of Earthly Days, toward whom Darby, in amiable obedience, had turned again."''' 
Is this just a metaphor from the narrator to describe what it is like for Darby, or is it also self-referential to
all the adventures of the Chums?. Another Q: Is the Commandant of Earthly Days the invisible presence from whom the chums get their orders? Cf. earthly surface, p.9
:Related Q: Do the Chums receive their orders from the author of their books?

'''we were usually out the door and on the main road''' 
Dick and Chick knew the judge was more likely to order them out of town than into the lockup.

'''Chinese foofooraw''' 
Also spelled foofaraw, a great deal of fuss, or useless frills. Cf folderol. However, why Chinese?
:Chick's father tried to sell Mississippi to a Chinese syndicate.

'''cubeb''' 
The name for the berry and for the oil obtained from the unripe berry of the East Indian climbing shrub ''P. cubeba''. The dried fruits are sometimes used as a condiment or are ground and smoked in cigarette form as an herbal remedy. [http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/pepper The Free Dictionary] Also appears in ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' page 118.

'''"...goldurn Keeley Cure"''' 
A treatment for alcohol, nicotine and narcotic addiction involving injections of "bichloride" or "double chloride" of gold, and also known as the "gold cure". Named for [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Keeley Dr. Leslie E. Keeley,] who opened the first of many Keeley Institutes in [http://www.dwighthigh.k12.il.us/dwight/dwight.htm Dwight, Illinois], not far from Chicago, in 1879.

==Page 18==

'''headgear''' 
Description vaguely reminiscent of "Madame Bovary". [http://robotwisdom.com/flaubert/bovary/bovary1.html [notes]]

'''eclipse green''' 
Apparently an actual shade. [http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/DIO_DRO/DIRECT.html [cite]]

'''Bindlestiffs of the Blue A.C.''' 
Bindlestiff means hobo; hence, the Hoboes of the Sky Aeronautical Club.

'''("Penny") Black''' 
The Penny Black was the world's first official adhesive postage stamp, issued by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1840. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black [Wikipedia]]

'''Tzigane''' 
French for "gypsy". Also a piece by Ravel. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzigane_(Ravel) [Wikipedia]]

'''Egypt''' 
Little Egypt is the southern area of the state of Illinois in the United States of America. Named so because it has a considerable river delta and a metropolis called Cairo (KAY-roe). The region is and was sometimes called simply "Egypt," especially in the 19th century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Egypt_(region) [Wikipedia]]

==Page 19==

'''goin all blue from the light of that electric fluid''' 
Their ship was beset by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elmo%27s_fire St. Elmo's fire,] a low-energy electrical discharge often seen on surface vessels and occasionally on aircraft. Electric charge does behave in some respects like a fluid and was long described in such terms.

'''Voices calling out together''' 
There is no reason to doubt they heard the voices, but an aural hallucination is not out of the question: a chorus of voices is one of the easiest effects to produce with a synthesizer.

[[image:balloons-paris.jpg|thumb|200px|Garçons de '71|right]]'''Garçons de '71''' 
French: The Boys of '71; During the Siege of Paris in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War Franco-Prussian War], 1870-1871, balloons were manufactured within railroad stations in Paris. The balloons were used to get mail and passengers out of Paris. The ''Garçons de '71'' are a (probably) fictional cadre of young men who operated such balloons [[Garçons de '71|Read on...]]

'''a condition of ''permanent siege''''' 
Surely no one has failed to notice what a "wartime president" is allowed to get away with. "No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred."

'''pétroleurs de Paris''' 
An early form of Molotov cocktail thrower during the Siege of Paris. There were pétroleurs and pétroleuses.

==Page 20==

'''they'll fly wherever they're needed''' 
While the Chums obey orders from above, the Garçons de '71 follow a different imperative.

'''energy we could feel, directed personally at us''' 
Someone may be trying to influence what the Bindlestiffs do, or keep them away from the Garçons' work of mercy.

==Page 21==

'''admissions gate''' 
Apparently a break in the fence, capitalized on by freelance impresarios.

'''fifty-cent pieces''' 
Odd. According to [http://users.vnet.net/schulman/Columbian/columbian.html this remarkable Columbian Exposition site,] regular admission was just half a dollar. Maybe Lindsay and Miles could have negotiated with the midget.

==Page 22==

'''Kodaks''' 
The word Kodak was trademarked in 1888, and the first Kodak camera was sold with the slogan, "You press the button - we do the rest." In 1891, the company released the first daylight-loading camera, so film could be changed without a darkroom. Kodaks would have been a novelty at the fair in 1893.

'''half-light . . . in the interests of mercy . . . the safety of the lights''' 
Interesting contrast suggesting a tradeoff between comfort/solace in the shadows and safety in the bright light.

'''Isandhlwana''' 
Isandlwana is an isolated hill in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. On January 22, 1879, it was the site of the Battle of Isandlwana, where over 20,000 Zulu warriors defeated a contingent of British soldiers in the first engagement of the Anglo-Zulu War. Almost the entire column of about 1,200 British soldiers was killed. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isandhlwana [Wikipedia]] You will find a chapter on Isandhlwana in any book that has the words "military" and "blunders" in the title.

==Page 23==

'''Tarahumara''' 
Indian tribe of Northern New Mexico, in the Sierra Madres, known for cave-dwelling in the late 19th century. [[Tarahumare_Indians|About the Tarahumara]]. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarahumara [Wikipedia]]

'''"geek"''' 
A geek's act comprised things no one would do who had not sunk all the way to the bottom of the carnie world: eating live creatures, throwing fits, and so forth. Much like the television show "Fear Factor," but sad rather than stultifying.

'''monte''' 
Three-card monte.

==Page 24==

'''the curse of Scotland''' 
A term used in poker, bridge and various other card games for the nine of diamonds. Dates from 1710. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Scotland [Wikipedia]]

'''like the electricity coming on... how everything fits together, connects. It doesn't last long, though.''' 
From something as random as calling out a card trick comes this extremely profound quote by Miles Blundell (full quote edited here). The heart of this quote/thought seems to be crucial.

What Miles describes is also the symptoms of a mild seizure - could he be epileptic? Epileptics were often credited with shamanic or prophetic powers, and many sightings of religious figures have been attributed to seizures. On page 4, Miles is also said to suffer from "confusion in his motor processes", which may be related.

'''Cracker Jack''' 
First sold at the at the first Chicago World's Fair in 1893. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_Jack [Wikipedia]]

'''New Levee district''' 
Chicago's redlight district c1890. [http://www.ipsn.org/genesis.htm [cite]]

'''Epworth League''' 
A Methodist youth organization founded in 1889. [http://www.southernmethodistchurch.org/id48.htm [cite]]

==Page 25==

'''Haymarket bomb''' 
The Haymarket Riot on May 4, 1886, in Chicago may be the origin of international May Day observances and in popular literature inspired the caricature of "a bomb-throwing anarchist." The causes of the incident are still controversial, although deeply polarized attitudes separating the business class and the working class in late 19th century Chicago are generally acknowledged as having precipitated the tragedy and its aftermath. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_bombing Wikipedia entry].

'''if the Governor decides to pardon that gang of anarchistic murderers''' 
In May of 1886, 350,000 workers, including 70,000 in Chicago were taking to the streets to rally for the eight hour work day. After four workers were killed by the police on May 3, the anarchist leaders in Chicago called for a meeting in Haymarket Square. Although the rally was peaceful, the police came in on horseback to break it up and an unknown individual in the crowd hurled a homemade bomb into the air. After the explosion, which killed a policeman, the police opened fire on the crowd. Subsequently, the anarchist leaders deemed responsible for the rally were arrested and tried for the murder of the policeman. The Eight men were convicted of the bombing and seven of them sentenced to death. Governor Richard J. Oglesby commuted two death sentences to life. Four were hanged and a fifth committed suicide. A later governor, John P. Altgeld, pardoned the three survivors on June 26, 1893, concluding that all eight of them were innocent. The last words of anarchist August Spies before he was hanged were 'The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.' Two very good books on the Haymarket Riot and the events surrounding it include The Haymarket Tragedy by Paul Avrich and Death In The Haymarket by James Green.

'''mixture of contempt and pity''' 
This is ''definitely'' not from one of the Chums' adventure stories.

'''embonpoint''' 
Convexity of body; what used to be called a "prosperous" look.

'''duck soup''' 
Meaning "an easy task," but also the name of a Marx Bros. movie. Perhaps relevant, given the cameo by Groucho promised on the book sleeve. Many of the Marx Brothers early movies had animal references in the title: Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup. The titles usually had nothing at all to do with the plot, although they contributed to the lunatic nature of the comedy. The expression 'Horse Feathers' is used a few times later on in Against The Day.

==References==
<references />

==Annotation Index==
{{ATD PbP}}