Thomas Pynchon Wiki - User contributions [en]

C

2007-01-27T06:51:00Z

Bekah: Crackerjack at the Chicago Fair

'''California Peg''' 
303; ''sous-maîtresse'' of the Silver Orchid in Telluride;

'''''camera lucida''''' 
141; A camera lucida is an optical device used as a drawing aid by artists. It was patented in 1806 by William Hyde Wollaston; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_lucida Wikipedia entry]

'''Camp, Walter (1859-1925)''' 
159; sports writer and football coach known as the "Father of American Football". Along with John Heisman, Amos Alonzo Stagg, and Glenn Scobey Warner, and George Halas, Camp was one of the most significant person in the history of American football. He attended Yale from 1876-1890; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Camp Wikipedia entry]

'''Campanile''' 
454;

'''Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry (1836-1908)''' 
448; British Liberal statesman who served as Prime Minister from December 5, 1905 until resigning due to ill health on April 3, 1908. No previous First Lord of the Treasury had been officially called "Prime Minister"; this term only came into official usage after he took office; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Campbell-Bannerman Wikipedia entry]

'''Canaletto (1697-1768)''' 
576; Giovanni Antonio Canale, better known as Canaletto, was a Venetian artist famous for his landscapes, or ''vedute'' of Venice. He was a son of the painter Bernardo Canale, hence his nickname Canaletto. His nephew Bernardo Bellotto was also a landscape painter; he sometimes used the name of Canaletto to further his own career; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaletto Wikipedia entry]

'''Candlebrow, Mr. Gideon''' 
406;

'''Candlebrow University''' 
130, Dr Vormance on sabbatical; 405; "institute of higher learning in the heartland"; 451;

'''Canon City''' 
261; site of the Colorado State Penitentiary

'''Cantor, Georg (1845-1918)''' 
250; 593-94; German mathematician who is best known as the creator of set theory. Cantor established the importance of one-to-one correspondence between sets, defined infinite and well-ordered sets, and proved that the real numbers are "more numerous" than the natural numbers. In fact, Cantor's theorem implies the existence of an "infinity of infinities." He defined the cardinal and ordinal numbers, and their arithmetic. Cantor's work is of great philosophical interest, a fact of which he was well aware. After his father's death in 1863, Cantor shifted his studies to the University of Berlin, attending lectures by Weierstrass, Kummer, and Kronecker, and befriending his fellow student Hermann Schwarz. He spent a summer at the University of Göttingen, then and later a very important center for mathematical research. In 1867, Berlin granted him the Ph.D. for a thesis on number theory, De aequationibus secundi gradus indeterminatis. After teaching one year in a Berlin girls' school, Cantor took up a position at the University of Halle, where he spent his entire career; "the ''Beast of Halle''" 624;

'''Capitalism''' 
79; and modern chemistry; and the Tsar, 83; 147; collapse of, 415; 419; "mills of Capital," 455; "If it doesn't work with gold, the next step will be lead" 618; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism Wikipedia entry]

'''Capsheaf''' 
492; pal of Cyprian Latewood

'''Capunizer''' 
698; a "caponizer" would be a castrator;

'''Carnal, Reverend Lube''' 
210; "of the Second Lutheran (Missouri Synod) Church"

'''carnival theory''' 
184-185;

'''Cartesian''' 
[[ATD-D#descarte|See Descarte, René]]

'''Case Institute''' 
58; in Cleveland

'''Casas Grandes''' 
923; Casas Grandes (or Paquimé) was a large, influential capital city of the Casas Grandes polity in the state of Chihuahua, northern Mexico (very close to the southern borders of Arizona and New Mexico), considered the third great regional state (the others are Aztec and Toltec) of the American southwest, from about AD 1150-1450. The site of Paquimé is also the largest pueblo known in the US southwest and Mexico, including more than 2000 rooms. [[Casas Grandes|More about Casas Grandes]]

'''Cassidy, Butch (1866-1908?)''' 
172; a notorious train and bank robber.; 180; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butch_Cassidy Wikipedia entry]

'''Cathedral of the Prefiguration''' 
153;

'''Celluloid''' 
86; a thermoplastic compound of cellulose nitrate and camphor, originally developed and patented by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wesley_Hyatt John Wesley Hyatt] as a substitute for ivory in billiard balls. It was later used as the film base for photosensitive emulsion, seminal in the use of photographic plates and especially in motion pictures. Nowadays, it is found principally in ping-pong balls and in some guitar (perhaps also ukelele?) picks and pickguards. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celluloid Wikipedia entry]; 103; 570;

'''Center of the Earth''' 
41;
See also, '''Gravity'''.

'''Chandrasekhar, O.D.''' 
63; from Bombay, India; Perhaps a nod to Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-1995), an Indian-American physicist, astrophysicist and mathematician, known to the world as Chandra, who was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics. He calculated and discovered the Chandrasekhar Limit which is the maximum mass possible for a white dwarf star (one of the end stages of stars that have exhausted their fuel) supported by electron degeneracy pressure, and is approximately 3 × 1030 kg, around 1.44 times the mass of the Sun.
The initials O.D.C. refer to the novel "2001: A space odyssey" by Arthur C. Clarke, where [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Chandra Chandra] is the inventor of the HAL computer system.
In ATD p. 63 O.D.Chandrasekhar mentions akasa as the solution for the problems the aetherists have discussing implications of the Michelson-Morley experiment, akasa referring to [http://ignca.nic.in/ps_05013.htm space]in hindu cosmology ,alas O.D. is proposing space itself here as the medium for light.

'''charabanc''' 
53; bus: a vehicle carrying many passengers; used for public transport; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charabanc Wikipedia entry]

'''Chase, Ed''' 
176; "boss of the redlight district" in Denver; 465;

'''Chavalito, Señor''' 
387; what El Ñato calls Frank

'''Cheesely, Thrapston III''' 
367; Reef Traverse's alter-ego - "East Coast nerve case"

'''Chess''' 
543; "war in miniature"; 558; 594; 689;

<div id="chicagofair"></div>'''Chicago World's Fair''' 
21; held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus's "discovery" of America; eulogy, 56; 476; 503; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry]

'''Chinchito''' 
350; "jumped-up circus midget" on the Bowery stage, at R. W. Vibe's party;

'''Chinese Gong Effect''' 
356;

<div id="chirpingdon-groin"></div>'''Chirpingdon-Groin, Ruperta ("Pert")''' 
367; "touring English woman" in Denver; 656; levitation during performance of new work by Ralph Vaughan Williams, 896;

'''Chisholm, Grace''' 
490;

'''chloral hydrate''' 
621; drug of choice at University of Göttingen - ''Mickifests'' - chloralomania

'''Chong''' 
602; Theosophoid at Göttingen

'''Christianity''' 
"Christian faith," 334; "Christmas-pudding controversy," 406; Genesis 14:10, 441; "biblically lurid yellow-gray," 452; 453; born-again, 675;

'''Chthonica, Princess of Plutonia''' 
117; chthonic = "dwelling in or under the earth; also, pertaining to the underworld";
Plutonia? Well, TNT and Plutonia are two "alternate" versions of DooM 2, i.e. they have the same story line as DooM 2, but completely different level designs, and some new music and textures; alternately, there's the Plutonia Dilemma: an eccentric trillionaire gathers 20 people together, and tells them that if one and only one of them sends him a telegram (reverse charges) by noon the next day, that person will receive a billion dollars. If he receives more than one telegram, or none at all, no-one will get any money, and cooperation between players is forbidden. In this situation, the superrational thing to do is to send a telegram with probability 1/20.

'''Chuck''' 
347; harpist at Smokefoot's

'''Chums of Chance''' 
3; "celebrated aeronautics club"; 6, 7; 54; observing the impact of Tesla's Colorado experiments from the Indian Ocean, 107; intercepting the Vormance Expedition, 114-149; "agents of ''extrahuman'' justice" 215; in Murano, 243; retirement, 254; in the Arsenale battle with Padzy, 254; [[Campanile|toppling the Campanile]], 257; in New York City, 397; Upper Command (aka Hierarchy), 398, 407; at Candlebrow University, 407; the anti-Chums, 415; infiltrated by Trespassers, 418; their "Tesla machine" 425; under the sand, 434; in Brussels, 548; recalled, in Venice, 575;

'''Chums of Chance books''' 
''Chums of Chance and The Evil Halfwit'', 5; ''Chums of Chance and The Curse of the Great Kahuna'', 5; ''Chums of Chance at Krakatoa'', 6; ''Chums of Chance Search for Atlantis'', 6; ''Chums of Chance in Old Mexico'', 7; ''Chums of Chance and the Bowels of the Earth'', 117; ''The Chums of Chance and the Ice Pirates'', 123; ''The Chums of Chance Nearly Crash into the Kremlin'', 123; ''Chums of Chance at the Ends of the Earth'', read by Reef Traverse, 214; ''Chums of Chance and the Caged Women of Yokahama'', 411;

'''Cinema / Film''' 
"Dreamtime Movy" (theater), 450; and Time, 451; "movie audience and crowds at tent-meetings," 450; 456-57;

'''City''' 
"mythic cities at the horizon," 394;

'''Clarabella''' 
249; Dally's doll

'''Cleveland''' 
455;

'''Clifford''' 
632; invisible

'''climber''' 
131; 167;

'''Coeur d'Alene''' 
333; 362; 463; 
History of miners' disputes in:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coeur_d%27Alene_miners%27_dispute Wikipedia entry] 

'''Coffee''' 
102; 103; 235; 394; 464;

'''Cold Harbor''' 
101; 335;

'''Coleman Smith, Pamela (1878-1951)''' 
186;225; artist, illustrator, and writer best known for designing the Rider-Waite deck (also known as the Rider-Waite-Smith, Waite-Smith, Waite-Colman Smith or Rider deck) of tarot cards for Arthur Edward Waite in 1910. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_Colman_Smith Wikipedia entry]

<div id="buffalo"></div>'''Cody, Buffalo Bill (1845-1917)''' 
22; William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody was an American soldier, buffalo hunter and showman. He was born in the American state of Iowa, near Le Claire. He was one of the most colorful figures of the Old West, and mostly famous for the shows he organized with cowboy themes; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Bill Wikipedia entry]; 53;

'''Colonel, the''' 
699; in Leopoldstadt, in the Jewish quarter north of the Prater, in Vienna; solicits Sado-Masochistic sex from Cyprian Latewood; 704; surveilled by the Russians, 711;

'''Colonialism''' 
527; in the Belgian Congo;

'''color''' 
"summer uniform of red-and-white striped blazer and trousers of sky-blue," "'White City,'" "green," 3; "yellow," 9; "sepia," 10; "eclipse green," 18; "vivid magenta," 26; "attractive little girl of four or five with flaming red hair" (Dally), 27; "orange phosphate," 47; "flowers in bells and clusters, purple and white or yellow as butter," "red berries," 70; "Red Mountain Pass," 81; "colorless," 109; "pale blue radiance," 115; "Blue Ivory," 125; "green ice," "sheer green walls of ice, the greenness nearest the water," "green and yellow," "gray slatework," 127; "vivid cream," "Payne's gray and Naples yellow," "an unfaded spectrum of tropical colors," 129; "silver-gray," "sky was more neutral-density gray than blue," "shadowless green . . . sea-green sea, the ice-green, glass-green sea," 134; ""various colors and intensities," "strange yellowis green," 141; "levels of gray," "color, not the fashionable shades of daytime but blood reds, morgue yellows, poison greens," "accuracy of colors," 153; "red Zouave-style hats and trousers," "fire-reddened light," 145; "an abstract array of moving multicolored lights against a blue, somehow maritime, darkness," 154; "rust-red and yellowish," 155; "rival school hues," 156; "'crimson' is cognate with 'worm,'" 157; 160; "colors of doubtful taste," "Scarsdale's in gray tones, Edwarda's in mauve. Puce sometimes," 162; "screamin Red threat," "a range of colors," 182; "red liquor," 196; "red adobe towers," 198; "valley fog the same color as the snow," "luminous shades of gray," 200; "country was so red that the sagebrush appeared to float above it as in a stereopticon view, almost colorless, pale as a cloud, luminous day and night," 209; "blue laws," 210; "disturbing ''colors''," "daytime blue," "aquamarine and mauve," 211; "dark, blood-red wall," 214; "mossy greens," "the Order of the Golden Dawn;" 219; "mauve," "pale blue", 226; "silver-streaked," 227; "'pinky,'" 233; "queer purple liquid that Lew could swear was glowing,"," 234; "violet dusk," "luminous green liquids," 235; "purple," "logwood," "vivid, unmistakable turquoise," 236; "red-clay chimneys," "ancient sepia . . . more optimistic red," 243; "'Purple Thanksgiving,'" "white and red vini frizzanti," "'Red blood,'" 247; "pale blue albatross cloth," 266; "Sloat was partial to the color green," "shade of green," "'never could see green, bein a mauve man myself,'" "blood-red dirt," 269; "vivid red," 297; "multicolored flashes of light," 322; "lighter colors," 337; "aquamarine," 340; "suit of acid magenta and saffron" 342; Erlys? 347; "wine-colored plush," "orange Tiffany orchid brooches vivid as flames," 348; "Congo violet" 349; "gray," "Red" (nickname for Dally), "blindingly pomaded gray hair and a gigantic emerald ring on his pinky," 350; "perfect black velvet and multicolored silk brocade," 351; "Sunsets tended to be purple firestorms, with blinding orange streaks running through," 364; "Madame Aubergine," "scarlet", 367; "silver and lapis," 368; "the Red Onion," "the red-light district," 371; "green volcanic islands," 372; "red-brown mountainside," 377; "brown," 380; "silver," 381; "earth tones," 384; "indigo," 386; "red bandannas," 390; "peculiar colors," 392; "whirling colors including magenta, low-brilliancy turquoise, and a peculiarly pale, wriggling violet," 394; "checked in indigo and custard yellow, topped off with pearl-gray bowlers," 399; "bluish electric lights blooming," 401; "violent blue sparks," 402; "color-coded tickets of identification," "patriotically colored Smegmo crock," "dark brown light," 408; "reddish liquid," "magenta-and-green aura," 410; "apricot and aquamarine," 412; "Chinese red and indigo," 418; "sunny verdigris campus," "green mist of budding," "closely maintained white mustache and gold teeth," "red sweatshirts bearing the golden crest of the Academy," 421; "green fields," "moistly violet," 422; "'don't be blue, pal,'" 424; "succession of colors," 434; "red-brown color," 439; "unearthly green," 443; "shiny green suit," 445; "yellow," "lemon-white neon," "purple clover," 451; "biblically lurid yellow-gray," 452; yellowish, 455; "red whiskey," 462; "blue Excelsior," 464; heliotrope, 493; green, white and mauve, 501; Coronation Red, 497; claret and blue, 503; indigoes and aquas, 526; Chinese red, 526; blue, taupe, Chinese red, 532; "analine teal and a bright though sour orange" 533; 537; pale violet, 544; taupe and damaged rose, 551; 568; duck-green, 574; Jesus, 580; 584; 585; orpiment yellow, scarlet vermilion, Nürnberg violet, 586; 608; Foley Walker's suit, 619; 625; green and magenta, 633; 689; 715;
:See also, N. Katherine Hayles and Mary B. Eiser's article, "Coloring ''Gravity's Rainbow''," originally published in ''Pynchon Notes'', Vol. 16, available as a free, downloadable .pdf file [http://www.ham.muohio.edu/~krafftjm/pn/pn016.pdf here].

'''Colorado''' 
83; commenting on its shape;

'''Columbian Exposition of 1893''' 
3; See [[#chicagofair|Chicago World's Fair]]; 10; 397;

'''Commandant of Earthly Days''' 
17; a "potent though invisible" entity that dictates human behavior

'''"commonwealth of toil that is to be"''' 
361; from the song "The Commonwealth of Toil" written by Ralph Chaplin in 1905 and included in the International Workers of the World Little Red Songbook - [[The Commonwealth of Toil|The Lyrics...]] [http://staff.science.uva.nl/~sgenseme/music/RedPlanet/commonwe.mp3 A recording...]

'''Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits''' 
567; Carlson Wagonlit is a chain of travel agencies. The company was founded in Belgium in 1876 by Georges Nagelmackers as the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits (the International Sleeping-Car Company). Originally, the company deployed sleeping- and dining-cars in Europe. In 1883 the company started with a service to Constantinople, now Istanbul in Turkey, called the Orient Express; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compagnie_Internationale_des_Wagons-Lits Wikipedia entry]

'''''Comptes Rendus''''' 
532; ''Comptes rendus de l'Académie des sciences'', or simply ''Comptes rendus'', is a French scientific journal which has been published since 1835. It is the proceedings of the French Academy of Sciences. It is currently split into seven sections, published by the Academy and Elsevier: Mathematique, Mecanique, Physique, Geoscience, Palevol, Chimie, and Biologies; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comptes_rendus Wikipedia entry]

'''Cone Amor''' 
468; Mayva's ice-cream parlor, a quite common name for ice-cream parlors, as it turns out, being a pun on ''con amor'', Spanish for "with love"...

'''Consuelo''' 
161; ''bandida'' in ''Mischief in Mexico''

'''Control''' 
34; Rational Systems of;

'''Cooper''' 
202; at Stray's, courting Sage

'''Counter''' 
"counterfactual," 9; "counterfactual," 304; "counter-Crusade," 437; "counter-time," 454; "counter-City," 585;
:See also '''Counterfly, Chick''' and '''Counterfly, Richard "Dick,"''' below.

'''Counterfly, Chick''' 
4; member of the Chums of Chance; 108; now "Dr. Counterfly", 139;

'''Counterfly, Richard "Dick"''' 
7; father of Chick Counterfly; 17

'''couple-three''' 
193; 206; 511;

'''''Courage'', Camille''' 
345; "Courage Camille" is a game in which three players are required. Two of the players face each other and lock hands. The third person stiffens and falls backwards into their arms. This should be done several times, with the person falling farther backwards each time (the players locking their hands should lower them each time). Other players can then try. 
Also, a line masterfully delivered by Bob Hope as radio personality and craven muckraker Lawrence Lawrence Lawrence in the 1940 horror-comedy [http://eric.b.olsen.tripod.com/break.html ''The Ghost Breakers''].

'''Cowboy poets''' 
463

'''Cowboy's Christmas''' 
81;

'''Coxey's Army''' 
79; Coxey's Army was a protest march by unemployed workers from the United States, led by the populist Jacob Coxey. They marched on Washington D.C. in 1894, the second year of a four-year economic depression that was the worst in United States history to that time. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coxey's_Army Wikipedia entry]

'''Crack of Doom''' 
12; The phrase at the crack of doom, meaning "at the striking of the fateful hour", is derived from Macbeth by William Shakespeare and has entered common usage. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_of_Doom Wikipedia entry]

'''Cracker Jack''' 
24; caramel-coated popcorn and peanuts. Trademarked to describe this kind of popcorn from the 1890's--start of ATD--but the word 'crackerjack' was in use with other meanings since the late 19th Century. Chick Counterfly says 'crackerjack' on page 8. From Merrriam-Webster: The late 19th-century pairing of "crack" and "jack" to form "crackerjack" topped off a long history for those words. "Cracker" is an elongation of "crack," an adjective meaning "expert" or "superior" that dates from 1793. Prior to that, "crack" was a noun meaning "something superior" and a verb meaning "to boast." (The verb use evolved from the expression "to crack a boast," which came from the sense of "crack" meaning "to make a loud sharp sound.") "Jack" has been used for "man" since the mid-1500s, as in "jack-of-all-trades." "Crackerjack" entered English first as a noun referring to "a person or thing of marked excellence," then as an adjective. You may also know "Cracker Jack" as a snack of candied popcorn and peanuts. That trademarked name dates from the 1890s.
In 1893, according to legend, a unique popcorn, peanuts and molasses confection which was the forerunner to Cracker Jack caramel coated popcorn and peanuts was introduced by F.W. Rueckheim and Brother, at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago's first World's Fair. [http://www.crackerjack.com/history.php] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_Jack]

'''Crayke''' 
492; fond of Shetland ponies

'''Creation'''
457;

'''Creede''' 
650;

'''Cripple Creek''' 
82; in Colorado - strike for an 8-hour day;

'''Crookes, Sir William (1832-1919)''' 
228; English chemist and physicist. Sir William attended the Royal College of Chemistry, in London, and worked on spectroscopy; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Crookes Wikipedia entry]

'''Crusades''' 
436; counter-Crusades, 437;

'''Crystal''' 
473; 565;

'''cubeb''' 
17; 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 a catarrh remedy. The oil is used medicinally and also in soap manufacture. The masticated roots of kava, P. methysticum, widely grown in its native Pacific islands, are made into a beverage called kavakava, which contains soporific alkaloids. It is an integral part of religious and social life there. A preparation of kava for commerce, also called kavakava, is sold widely as an herbal remedy for anxiety and insomnia. -- From [http://columbia.thefreedictionary.com/pepper The Free Dictionary] 
And let us not forget, part of the Disgusting English Candy Drill: "turns out to be luscious pepsin–flavored nougat, chock–full of tangy candied cubeb berries, and a chewy camphor–gum center" (GR, 118)

'''Culpepper, Madge and Mia''' 
60; worked at the Hamilton Street establishment of Nelly Lowry; 66;

'''Curly''' 
183; Waiter at a Chicago hotel;

'''Custozza''' 
661; the summer of;

'''Cyclomite''' 
182-185; combo of cyclopropane plus dynamite, and psychotropic; "reality-modifying explosive" 233; 683;[[Cyclomite|DISCUSSION]]

'''Czolgosz, Leon (1873-1901)''' 
372; assassin of President McKinley;
Leon Czolgosz As a young man, Leon Czolgosz worked in a wire mill in Cleveland, Ohio. He was a good employee, retaining his job even through an economic depression. In 1898 he suffered a breakdown, and returned to the family farm. He made trips to hear the anarchist leader Emma Goldman speak, and approached several anarchist groups, who rebuffed him. In 1901, Czolgosz moved to Buffalo, New York, site of the Pan American Exposition. There, in a receiving line on September 6, he shot President McKinley two times. Czolgosz who gave his name to police as Fred Nieman, or Fred Nobody later stated in reference to his decision to assassinate McKinley, "I didn't believe one man should have so much service, and another man have none." After a brief trial, Czolgosz was convicted. He was executed on October 29, 1901.

{{ATD_Alpha_Nav}}

ATD 26-56

2006-11-25T02:03:29Z

Bekah: /* Page 44 */

==Page 26==

'''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 28==

'''''Imbottigliata!''''' Italian for "bottled"?

'''Dahlia Rideout''' 
A child who drinks and the unexpectedly sexual nature of her father and Chick's discussion of her recall Bianca from ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' another child given certain adult characteristics.

==Page 29==

'''a l'étouffée''' 
French, meaning a dish fried in a pan. So, pan-fried alligator meat.

'''Khartoum... Mahdi's army... Oltre Giubba, instead of down in Alex''' 
Khartoum is the capital of Sudan. The Mahdi army 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].

==Page 36==

'''Lew Basnight''' 
"Bas" is French for "low."

==Page 39==

'''kazoos''' 
This silly instrument appears in many (all?) Pynchon novels.

'''"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 44==

'''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, we would have been 30, and his two passions throughout young adulthood and his 20s were hunting and travel. Wikipedia makes no mention of whether he visited America, but he traveled to Egypt, Turkey, and other exotic locales and 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].

Ferdinand did indeed attend the Chicago Exposition.
THE BOOK OF THE FAIR by Hubert Howe Bancroft 
Chicago, San Francisco: The Bancroft Company, 1893: pg 956 
[http://columbus.iit.edu/bookfair/ch27.html] 

==Page 45==

'''"have a lawyer explain civil liability to you"''' 
Again, law. Pynchon must have boned up on legal jargon (or perhaps he got sued?).

'''trabants''' 
Unsure whether "trabants" (German for 'satellites') ever signified Imperial Austrian bodyguards, but Trabant is the name of the iconical small, crappy East German cars found throughout Eastern Europe during the Soviet era.

==Page 46==

'''"Hungarians are the lowest level of brute existence"''' 
It is unclear whether this shocking sentiment (especially to Hungarians!) expressed by the Archduke is more fictitious than factual. Hungary had become an equal partner in the Austro-Hungarian empire by the 1890s, and Empress Elizabeth herself spoke the Hungarian language and loved its country and people, visiting and residing there often. Pynchon's portrayal of Franz seems to indicate, however, that despite the historic nature of his assassination, he deserved it...!

==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].

==Page 48==

'''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.

==Page 49==

'''Kinsley's''' 
A famous steakhouse at 105-107 Adams St. in downtown Chicago. The building was erected in 1885.

'''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].

'''Moss Gatlin''' 
A fictional character.

'''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. 

==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==

'''"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 prophesy of a future America?

'''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.

==Page 53==

'''cause and effect''' 
A major theme in ''Gravity's Rainbow''.