https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/api.php?action=feedcontributions&feedformat=atom&user=BlakeStacey 2026-06-03T23:52:59Z User contributions MediaWiki 1.43.6 https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=User_talk:BlakeStacey&diff=10602 2007-03-06T18:11:05Z

<p>BlakeStacey: </p> <hr /> <div>Hi Blake, I took most of the Boltzmann article you added to the alpha index and moved it to an article. The alpha index entries should be fairly brief. If you go long, as you did, it's better to create an article. See what I did to get the picture. Thanks. [[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 06:54, 6 March 2007 (PST)<br /> :OK. Sadly, I don't have the time to &quot;go long&quot; very often these days, but if I do, I'll go for separate articles. I agree that they're a better idea. [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 10:11, 6 March 2007 (PST)</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Q&diff=10148 2007-02-27T17:40:27Z

<p>BlakeStacey: extra linkage</p> <hr /> <div>&lt;div id=&quot;quaternions&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt;'''Quaternions'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 130; In mathematics, quaternions are a non-commutative extension of complex numbers. They were first described by the Irish mathematician [[H#hamilton|Sir William Rowan Hamilton]] in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space. At first, quaternions were regarded as pathological, because they disobeyed the commutative law ab = ba. Although they have been superseded in most applications by vectors, they still find uses in both theoretical and applied mathematics, in particular for calculations involving three-dimensional rotations. [[ATD-M#maxwell|James Clerk Maxwell]] first published his famous theory describing electricity and magnetism as a set of twenty equations, but he was later able to reformulate it as four equations using quaternions. [[H#heaviside|Heaviside]] translated these into four vector equations, the form typically taught in basic physics classes today. Heaviside's vector version is compatible with [[ATD-E#einstein|Einstein]]'s special relativity, but [http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2007/02/the_jackpot_of_crankery_woo_ph_1.php the quaternion form is not]; 131; 156; &quot;Quaternion-ray weapons&quot; 445; 511; 525; Wars, 526, 548; 533-34; 538-39; Quaternionic Weapon, 542; 557; 564; 590; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternion Wikipedia entry];<br /> [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Quaternion.html Quaternions at MathWorld];<br /> [http://planetmath.org/encyclopedia/QuaternionAlgebra2.html Hamiltonian quaternions at PlanetMath];<br /> [http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/dublin/ Finding the site of Hamilton's inspiration] (by mathematical physicist [http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/ John Baez]); Conspiracy-theory takes on mathematical history [http://www.cheniere.org/techpapers/Precursor%20Engineering1.htm] [http://www.cheniere.org/books/aids/ch4.htm] (by [http://www.randi.org/jr/092702.html Tom Bearden], promotor of a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motionless_Electrical_Generator dubious free energy machine])<br /> <br /> '''Queen Anne's Gate'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 490; an office block in Westminster, London, overlooking St. James's Park. The building was originally built as speculative office development but the Home Office moved for lack of space in its previous headquarters in Whitehall; 496; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Queen_Anne's_Gate Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Querkel'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 45; detective at White City Investigations<br /> <br /> '''Q-weapon'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 542; &quot;intelligence of a Quaternionic Weapon, a means to unloose upon the world energies hitherto unimagined &amp;#151; hidden ... 'innocently,' inside the ''w'' term.; &quot;as if this mysterious Q-weapon were a common firearm and he hoping the seller would allow him a few courtesy ''shots''[emphasis added]&quot; 557; &quot;alive in Woevre's hands&quot; 563; &quot;Kit found himself alone with the enigmatic object, back inside the leather case. He slung it nonchalantly by its strap over one shoulder&quot; 564; technical details, 564-565; [[Q-weapon and Photography|Speculations on the Q-weapon and photography]]<br /> <br /> {{ATD_Alpha_Nav}}</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Q&diff=10137 2007-02-27T17:02:52Z

<p>BlakeStacey: additional link and info about quaternions and Maxwell&#039;s Equations</p> <hr /> <div>&lt;div id=&quot;quaternions&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt;'''Quaternions'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 130; In mathematics, quaternions are a non-commutative extension of complex numbers. They were first described by the Irish mathematician [[ATD-H#hamilton|Sir William Rowan Hamilton]] in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space. At first, quaternions were regarded as pathological, because they disobeyed the commutative law ab = ba. Although they have been superseded in most applications by vectors, they still find uses in both theoretical and applied mathematics, in particular for calculations involving three-dimensional rotations. [[ATD-M#maxwell|James Clerk Maxwell]] first published his famous theory describing electricity and magnetism as a set of twenty equations, but he was later able to reformulate it as four equations using quaternions. [[ATD-H#heaviside|Heaviside]] translated these into four vector equations, the form typically taught in basic physics classes today. Heaviside's vector version is compatible with [[ATD-E#einstein|Einstein]]'s special relativity, but [http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2007/02/the_jackpot_of_crankery_woo_ph_1.php the quaternion form is not]; 131; 156; &quot;Quaternion-ray weapons&quot; 445; 511; 525; Wars, 526, 548; 533-34; 538-39; Quaternionic Weapon, 542; 557; Q-98 weapon, alive in Woevre's hands, 563; 564; 590; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternion Wikipedia entry];<br /> [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Quaternion.html Quaternions at MathWorld];<br /> [http://planetmath.org/encyclopedia/QuaternionAlgebra2.html Hamiltonian quaternions at PlanetMath];<br /> [http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/dublin/ Finding the site of Hamilton's inspiration] (by mathematical physicist [http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/ John Baez]); Conspiracy-theory takes on mathematical history [http://www.cheniere.org/techpapers/Precursor%20Engineering1.htm] [http://www.cheniere.org/books/aids/ch4.htm] (by [http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2007/02/the_jackpot_of_crankery_woo_ph_1.php Tom Bearden], promotor of a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motionless_Electrical_Generator dubious free energy machine])<br /> <br /> '''Queen Anne's Gate'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 490; an office block in Westminster, London, overlooking St. James's Park. The building was originally built as speculative office development but the Home Office moved for lack of space in its previous headquarters in Whitehall; 496; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Queen_Anne's_Gate Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Querkel'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 45; detective at White City Investigations<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> {{ATD_Alpha_Nav}}</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Errata&diff=9262 2007-02-16T14:54:55Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* Errata in first printing (Nov. 2006), first US edition */</p> <hr /> <div>The following list provides '''errata''' for ''[[Against the Day]],'' indicating places where readers have found misspellings, punctuation gaffes or other similar errors. Please note that some of these &quot;mistakes&quot; may be deliberate stylistic choices on the author's part.<br /> <br /> == Errata in first printing (Nov. 2006), first US edition ==<br /> <br /> <br /> [[Against the Day description|Front flap]]: &quot;Nikolai&quot; Tesla, elsewhere (and conventionally) &quot;Nikola&quot;<br /> <br /> Copyright page line 1: &quot;VIKING&quot; (should be &quot;PENGUIN PRESS&quot;)<br /> <br /> Copyright page line 16: &quot;Viking Penguin&quot; (should be &quot;Penguin Press&quot;)<br /> <br /> Page 63 line 14 &quot;Unless,&quot; Ed pointed out, [&quot;]it ''is'' God.&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 82 line 1 &quot;richochets&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 82 line 30 &quot;Cour d'Alene&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 87 line 12 &quot;be&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 87 line 31-32 &quot;ridegerunning&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 92 line 15 &quot;what&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 116 line 39 &quot;de[c]lared&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 236 line 38: &quot;exhiliration&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 240 line 8 &quot;Re[n]frew&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 248 line 18: ''Culo'',[']&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 254 line 31 &quot;recon[n]aissance&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 307 line 14 how about that?[&quot;]<br /> <br /> Page 334 line 19 &quot;of&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 348 line 1 &quot;sixth&quot; should be &quot;Sixth&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 374 line 20 &quot;that&quot; should be &quot;than&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 375 line 10 &quot;what is is&quot; should be &quot;what is&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 380 line 24 &quot;Sergeant, Vasquez&quot; should be &quot;Sergeant Vasquez&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 385 line 34 &quot;knowss&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 399 line 33-34 &quot;were&quot; should be &quot;was&quot; to agree with &quot;band&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 409 line 17 &quot;Wellesianism&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 420 line 28 &quot;opportunit[i]es&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 427 line 7 &quot;esssential&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 440 line 33 &quot;sib[i]lance&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 444 line 8 &quot;Oasi[s]&quot; No typo. Oasi is Italian for Oasis<br /> <br /> Page 490 line 16 &quot;Phil[l]ippa&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 503 line 25 &quot;The cycle, Yashmeen, speculated, might...&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 505 line 1 &quot;momument&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 513 line 11 &quot;smlled&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 515 line 32 &quot;th[r]oughout&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 517 line 15 &quot;''Haupthei[t]zer''&quot; (In this and next 2 entries, consider the possibility that Pynchon used a contemporary source (1890s to 1910s) containing an archaic spelling with the '''tz.''')<br /> <br /> Page 517 line 25 &quot;Oberhaupthei[t]zer&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 519 line 16 &quot;Oberhaupthei[t]zer&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 518 line 1 &quot;off&quot; for &quot;of&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 522 line 17 &quot;alimzah&quot; should be &quot;azlimzah&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 524 line 10 &quot;exhilirated&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 531 Line 13 &quot;rende[z]vous&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 548 line 24 &quot;harbors,&quot; comma should be period<br /> <br /> Page 552 line 10 &quot;is, [is]&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 552 line 23 &quot;be&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 563 line 36 &quot;''mo[d]erskont''&quot; (?)<br /> <br /> Page 590 line 29 That is, is it was ''some smile''.<br /> <br /> Page 616 line 21 dueling transliterations: &quot;Izmeren[i]ye&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 623 line 18 ''Verfluchte[r]''<br /> <br /> Page 636 line 4 &quot;f[r]om&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 652 line 12 &quot;opportunit[i]es&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 680 line 10 &quot;Colonnel&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 782 line 16 &quot;when&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 786 line 5 &quot;th[r]ough&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 790 line 5-6 &quot;interrested&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 790 line 24 &quot;a[r]rival&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 799 line 4 &quot;st[r]eet&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 801 line 12 &quot;susceptib[i]lity&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 831 line 5 &quot;ar[t]ificial&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 880 line 38 &quot;Gradengio&quot; for Gradenigo<br /> <br /> Page 896 line 37 &quot;''Tallis'' Fantasia&quot; [of Vaughan Williams]: misleading italics<br /> <br /> Page 900 line 19 &quot;the&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 915 line 16 &quot;perfo[r]ming&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 943 line 4 &quot;Ou[t]side&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 943 line 36 &quot;unfor[e]seen [variant, 'fore' used elsewhere] <br /> <br /> Page 968 line 27 &quot;every[b]ody&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 971 line 4 &quot;were&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 1000 line 14 final period omitted from L.A.H.D.I.H.D.A[]<br /> <br /> Page 1034 line 7 &quot;Thickbush&quot; [vs. &quot;Thick Bush&quot; at 8.3]<br /> <br /> Page 1036 line 36 &quot;querelans&quot; [vs. &quot;querulans&quot; at 455.16]<br /> <br /> Page 1036 line 22 &quot;'Dick' Counterfly&quot; [vs. double quotation marks on pp. 1034&amp;ndash;35, 1037&amp;ndash;38]<br /> <br /> Page 1037 line 29 &quot;tran[s]parencies&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 1071 line 35 &quot;''Um''&quot; for &quot;''Un''&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 1074 line 26 &quot;...Reef, Stray, and Ljubica returned...&quot; should be Yashmeen, not Stray (Estrella)<br /> <br /> Page 1087 (&quot;ABOUT THE AUTHOR&quot;): lists ''Mason '''and''' Dixon,'' rather than ''Mason '''&amp;''' Dixon'' as given on the &quot;Also by Thomas Pynchon&quot; page in the front matter.<br /> <br /> '''Back Flap:''' ''Mason '''and''' Dixon''<br /> [[Category:ATD]]</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Errata&diff=9010 2007-02-14T03:22:45Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* Errata in first printing (Nov. 2006), first US edition */ &#039;Dick&#039; Counterfly, p. 1036</p> <hr /> <div>The following list provides '''errata''' for ''[[Against the Day]],'' indicating places where readers have found misspellings, punctuation gaffes or other similar errors. Please note that some of these &quot;mistakes&quot; may be deliberate stylistic choices on the author's part.<br /> <br /> == Errata in first printing (Nov. 2006), first US edition ==<br /> <br /> <br /> [[Against the Day description|Front flap]]: &quot;Nikolai&quot; Tesla, elsewhere (and conventionally) &quot;Nikola&quot;<br /> <br /> Copyright page line 1: &quot;VIKING&quot; (should be &quot;PENGUIN PRESS&quot;)<br /> <br /> Copyright page line 16: &quot;Viking Penguin&quot; (should be &quot;Penguin Press&quot;)<br /> <br /> Page 63 line 14 &quot;Unless,&quot; Ed pointed out, [&quot;]it ''is'' God.&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 82 line 1 &quot;richochets&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 82 line 30 &quot;Cour d'Alene&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 87 line 12 &quot;be&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 87 line 31-32 &quot;ridegerunning&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 92 line 15 &quot;what&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 116 line 39 &quot;de[c]lared&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 236 line 38: &quot;exhiliration&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 240 line 8 &quot;Re[n]frew&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 248 line 18: ''Culo'',[']&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 254 line 31 &quot;recon[n]aissance&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 307 line 14 how about that?[&quot;]<br /> <br /> Page 334 line 19 &quot;of&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 348 line 1 &quot;sixth&quot; should be &quot;Sixth&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 374 line 20 &quot;that&quot; should be &quot;than&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 375 line 10 &quot;what is is&quot; should be &quot;what is&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 380 line 24 &quot;Sergeant, Vasquez&quot; should be &quot;Sergeant Vasquez&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 385 line 34 &quot;knowss&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 399 line 33-34 &quot;were&quot; should be &quot;was&quot; to agree with &quot;band&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 409 line 17 &quot;Wellesianism&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 420 line 28 &quot;opportunit[i]es&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 427 line 7 &quot;esssential&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 440 line 33 &quot;sib[i]lance&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 444 line 8 &quot;Oasi[s]&quot; No typo. Oasi is Italian for Oasis<br /> <br /> Page 490 line 16 &quot;Phil[l]ippa&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 503 line 25 &quot;The cycle, Yashmeen, speculated, might...&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 505 line 1 &quot;momument&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 513 line 11 &quot;smlled&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 515 line 32 &quot;th[r]oughout&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 517 line 15 &quot;''Haupthei[t]zer''&quot; (In this and next 2 entries, consider the possibility that Pynchon used a contemporary source (1890s to 1910s) containing an archaic spelling with the '''tz.''')<br /> <br /> Page 517 line 25 &quot;Oberhaupthei[t]zer&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 519 line 16 &quot;Oberhaupthei[t]zer&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 518 line 1 &quot;off&quot; for &quot;of&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 522 line 17 &quot;alimzah&quot; should be &quot;azlimzah&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 524 line 10 &quot;exhilirated&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 531 Line 13 &quot;rende[z]vous&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 548 line 24 &quot;harbors,&quot; comma should be period<br /> <br /> Page 552 line 10 &quot;is, [is]&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 552 line 23 &quot;be&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 563 line 36 &quot;''mo[d]erskont''&quot; (?)<br /> <br /> Page 590 line 29 That is, is it was ''some smile''.<br /> <br /> Page 616 line 21 dueling transliterations: &quot;Izmeren[i]ye&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 636 line 4 &quot;f[r]om&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 652 line 12 &quot;opportunit[i]es&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 680 line 10 &quot;Colonnel&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 782 line 16 &quot;when&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 786 line 5 &quot;th[r]ough&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 790 line 5-6 &quot;interrested&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 790 line 24 &quot;a[r]rival&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 799 line 4 &quot;st[r]eet&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 801 line 12 &quot;susceptib[i]lity&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 831 line 5 &quot;ar[t]ificial&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 880 line 38 &quot;Gradengio&quot; for Gradenigo<br /> <br /> Page 896 line 37 &quot;''Tallis'' Fantasia&quot; [of Vaughan Williams]: misleading italics<br /> <br /> Page 900 line 19 &quot;the&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 915 line 16 &quot;perfo[r]ming&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 943 line 4 &quot;Ou[t]side&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 943 line 36 &quot;unfor[e]seen [variant, 'fore' used elsewhere] <br /> <br /> Page 968 line 27 &quot;every[b]ody&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 971 line 4 &quot;were&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 1000 line 14 final period omitted from L.A.H.D.I.H.D.A[]<br /> <br /> Page 1034 line 7 &quot;Thickbush&quot; [vs. &quot;Thick Bush&quot; at 8.3]<br /> <br /> Page 1036 line 36 &quot;querelans&quot; [vs. &quot;querulans&quot; at 455.16]<br /> <br /> Page 1036 line 22 &quot;'Dick' Counterfly&quot; [vs. double quotation marks on pp. 1034&amp;ndash;35, 1037&amp;ndash;38]<br /> <br /> Page 1037 line 29 &quot;tran[s]parencies&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 1071 line 35 &quot;''Um''&quot; for &quot;''Un''&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 1074 line 26 &quot;...Reef, Stray, and Ljubica returned...&quot; should be Yashmeen, not Stray (Estrella)<br /> <br /> '''Back Flap:''' Lists ''Mason '''and''' Dixon'', instead of ''Mason '''&amp;''' Dixon'' which is how it's listed on the &quot;Also by Thomas Pynchon&quot; page at the front of the book.<br /> <br /> [[Category:ATD]]</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Q&diff=7148 2007-01-23T19:31:20Z

<p>BlakeStacey: add extra link about quaternions and how to find Hamilton&#039;s plaque itself</p> <hr /> <div>&lt;div id=&quot;quaternions&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt;'''Quaternions'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 130; In mathematics, quaternions are a non-commutative extension of complex numbers. They were first described by the Irish mathematician [[ATD-H#hamilton|Sir William Rowan Hamilton]] in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space. At first, quaternions were regarded as pathological, because they disobeyed the commutative law ab = ba. Although they have been superseded in most applications by vectors, they still find uses in both theoretical and applied mathematics, in particular for calculations involving three-dimensional rotations; 131; 156; &quot;Quaternion-ray weapons&quot; 445; 511; 525; Wars, 526, 548; 533-34; 538-39; Quaternionic Weapon, 542; 557; Q-98 weapon, alive in Woevre's hands, 563; 564; 590; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternion Wikipedia entry];<br /> [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Quaternion.html Quaternions at MathWorld];<br /> [http://planetmath.org/encyclopedia/QuaternionAlgebra2.html Hamiltonian quaternions at PlanetMath];<br /> [http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/dublin/ Finding the site of Hamilton's inspiration] (by mathematical physicist [http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/ John Baez]); Conspiracy-theory takes on mathematical history [http://www.cheniere.org/techpapers/Precursor%20Engineering1.htm] [http://www.cheniere.org/books/aids/ch4.htm] (by Tom Bearden, promotor of a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motionless_Electrical_Generator dubious free energy machine])<br /> <br /> '''Queen Anne's Gate'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 490; an office block in Westminster, London, overlooking St. James's Park. The building was originally built as speculative office development but the Home Office moved for lack of space in its previous headquarters in Whitehall; 496; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Queen_Anne's_Gate Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Querkel'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 45; detective at White City Investigations<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> {{ATD_Alpha_Nav}}</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Q&diff=7147 2007-01-23T19:05:53Z

<p>BlakeStacey: </p> <hr /> <div>&lt;div id=&quot;quaternions&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt;'''Quaternions'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 130; In mathematics, quaternions are a non-commutative extension of complex numbers. They were first described by the Irish mathematician [[ATD-H#hamilton|Sir William Rowan Hamilton]] in 1843 and applied to mechanics in three-dimensional space. At first, quaternions were regarded as pathological, because they disobeyed the commutative law ab = ba. Although they have been superseded in most applications by vectors, they still find uses in both theoretical and applied mathematics, in particular for calculations involving three-dimensional rotations; 131; 156; &quot;Quaternion-ray weapons&quot; 445; 511; 525; Wars, 526, 548; 533-34; 538-39; Quaternionic Weapon, 542; 557; Q-98 weapon, alive in Woevre's hands, 563; 564; 590; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternion Wikipedia entry];<br /> [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Quaternion.html Quaternions at MathWorld];<br /> [http://planetmath.org/encyclopedia/QuaternionAlgebra2.html Hamiltonian quaternions at PlanetMath];<br /> Conspiracy-theory takes on mathematical history [http://www.cheniere.org/techpapers/Precursor%20Engineering1.htm] [http://www.cheniere.org/books/aids/ch4.htm] (by Tom Bearden, promotor of a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motionless_Electrical_Generator dubious free energy machine])<br /> <br /> '''Queen Anne's Gate'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 490; an office block in Westminster, London, overlooking St. James's Park. The building was originally built as speculative office development but the Home Office moved for lack of space in its previous headquarters in Whitehall; 496; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Queen_Anne's_Gate Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Querkel'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 45; detective at White City Investigations<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> {{ATD_Alpha_Nav}}</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Thomas_Pynchon&diff=3866 2006-12-15T01:09:50Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* &#039;&#039;The Crying of Lot 49&#039;&#039; */ copy edits</p> <hr /> <div>'''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: ''[[V.]]'' (1963), ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]'' (1966), ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'' (1973), ''[[Vineland]]'' (1990), ''[[Mason &amp; Dixon]]'' (1997), and ''[[Against the Day]]'' (2006). <br /> <br /> 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.<br /> <br /> ==Biography==<br /> 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, [[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 &quot;[[The Secret Integration]]&quot; (1964) and ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]''. <br /> <br /> ===Childhood and education===<br /> Pynchon attended Oyster Bay High School, where he was awarded &quot;student of the year&quot; and contributed short fictional pieces to his school newspaper: &quot;Voice of the Hamster&quot;,&lt;ref&gt;[http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_hamster.html &quot;Voice of the Hamster&quot;]&lt;/ref&gt; &quot;The Boys&quot;,&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_boys.html &quot;The Boys&quot;]&lt;/ref&gt; and &quot;Ye Legend of Sir Stupid and the Purple Knight&quot;.&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_knight.html &quot;Ye Legend of Sir Stupid and the Purple&quot;]&lt;/ref&gt; 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 [[United States Navy|U.S. Navy]]. In 1957, Pynchon returned to Cornell to pursue a degree in English. His first published story, &quot;The Small Rain&quot;, appeared in the ''Cornell Writer'' in May 1959, and narrates an actual experience of a friend who had served in the [[United States Army|army]]; subsequently, however, episodes and characters throughout Pynchon's fiction draw freely upon his own experiences in the navy. <br /> <br /> While at Cornell, Pynchon became a friend of [[Richard Fariña]], and both briefly led what Pynchon has called a &quot;micro-cult&quot; around Oakley Hall's [[1958 in literature|1958]] novel ''[[Warlock (novel)|Warlock]]''. (He later reminisced about his college days in the introduction he wrote in 1983 for Fariña's novel ''[[Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me]],'' first published in 1966.) Pynchon also reportedly attended lectures given by [[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. Pynchon received his BA in June 1959.<br /> <br /> ===''V.''===<br /> 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, Washington|Seattle]], where he compiled safety articles for the ''Bomarc Service News,''&lt;ref&gt;Wisnicki 2000-1&lt;/ref&gt; 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 &quot;[[Yoyodyne]]&quot; corporation in ''[[V.]]'' and ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]],'' and both his background in physics and the technical journalism he undertook at Boeing provided much raw material for ''[[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.<br /> <br /> 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, California|Manhattan Beach]].&lt;ref&gt;Frost 2003&lt;/ref&gt; Pynchon during this period embraced the lifestyle and values of the [[hippie]] [[counterculture]], which he would later make use of in his 1990 novel ''[[Vineland]].''&lt;ref&gt;Gordon 1994&lt;/ref&gt; In 1964, his application to study mathematics as a graduate student at the [[University of California, Berkeley]], was turned down.&lt;ref name=&quot;royster2005&quot;&gt;Royster 2005&lt;/ref&gt; In 1966, he wrote a first-hand report on the aftermath and legacy of the [[Watts riots]] in Los Angeles. Entitled &quot;A Journey Into the Mind of Watts,&quot; the article was published in the ''New York Times Magazine.''&lt;ref&gt;Pynchon 1966&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> 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 &quot;neglected books&quot;, as part of a feature entitled &quot;A Gift of Books&quot; in the December 1965 issue of ''Holiday.''<br /> <br /> ===''The Crying of Lot 49''===<br /> <br /> In April 1964, Pynchon wrote to his agent, Candida Donadio, that he was facing a creative crisis, with four novels in progress, and that &quot;If they come out on paper anything like they are inside my head then it will be the literary event of the millennium.&quot;&lt;ref&gt;Gussow 1998&lt;/ref&gt; 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.&lt;ref&gt;McLemee 2006&lt;/ref&gt; Pynchon called the decision &quot;a moment of temporary insanity,&quot; but noted that he was &quot;too stubborn to let any of them go, let alone all of them.&quot;<br /> <br /> Pynchon's second novel, ''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 &quot;potboiler.&quot; 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. <br /> <br /> ''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 &quot;The Tristero&quot; or &quot;Trystero,&quot; a parody of a [[revenge play|Jacobean revenge drama]] entitled &quot;The Courier's Tragedy,&quot; 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.''<br /> <br /> In 1968, Pynchon was one of 447 signatories to the &quot;Writers and Editors War Tax Protest.&quot; 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 &quot;the proposed 10% income tax surcharge or any war-designated tax increase,&quot; and stated their belief &quot;that American involvement in Vietnam is morally wrong&quot;.&lt;ref&gt;''New York Review of Books'' 1968:9&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ===''Gravity's Rainbow'' and Pynchon's rise to prominence===<br /> Pynchon's most celebrated novel is his third, ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'', published in [[1973 in literature|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 theory|conspiracy]], [[synchronicity]], and [[entropy]], the novel has spawned a wealth of commentary and critical material, including two reader's guides,&lt;ref&gt;Fowler 1980; Weisenburger 1988&lt;/ref&gt; books and scholarly articles, on-line concordances and discussions,&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/ Pynchon HyperArts]&lt;/ref&gt; 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 [[World War II|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 &quot;plot&quot;, 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.<br /> <br /> ''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 &quot;unreadable&quot;, &quot;turgid&quot;, &quot;overwritten&quot;, and in parts &quot;obscene&quot;, and no prize was awarded.&lt;ref&gt;Kihss 1974&lt;/ref&gt; In 1975, Pynchon declined the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.<br /> <br /> ===Post-''Gravity's Rainbow''===<br /> A collection of Pynchon's early short stories, entitled ''[[Slow Learner]]'', was published in 1984, with a lengthy autobiography|autobiographical introduction. In October of the same year, an article entitled &quot;Is It O.K. to Be a Luddite?&quot; 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 &quot;The Heart's Eternal Vow&quot;. Another article, entitled &quot;Nearer, My Couch, to Thee&quot;, 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 &quot;Sloth&quot;. <br /> <br /> ===''Vineland''===<br /> Pynchon's fourth novel, ''[[Vineland]]'', was published in 1990. The novel is set in California in the 1980s and 1960s, and describes the relationship between an [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|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. <br /> <br /> In 1988, he received a MacArthur Fellowship and, since the early 1990s at least, many observers have mentioned Pynchon as a Nobel Prize contender.&lt;ref&gt;See, for example, Grimes 1993, CNN Book News 1999, Ervin 2000&lt;/ref&gt; 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. <br /> <br /> ===''Mason &amp; Dixon''===<br /> Pynchon's fifth novel, ''[[Mason &amp; Dixon]]'', was published in 1997. Pynchon began writing it as early as January 1975.&lt;ref&gt;Gussow&lt;/ref&gt; The meticulously-researched novel is a sprawling saga recounting the lives and careers of the English astronomer, [[Charles Mason]], and his partner, the surveyor [[Jeremiah Dixon]], and the birth of the [[American Revolution|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.<br /> <br /> ===''Against the Day''===<br /> <br /> A variety of rumors pertaining to the subject matter of Pynchon's [[Against the Day|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 &quot;a Russian mathematician [who] studied for [[David Hilbert]] in [[Göttingen]]&quot;, and that the new novel would trace the life and loves of [[Sofia Kovalevskaya]]. <br /> <br /> 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 [[World's Columbian Exposition|1893 Chicago World's Fair]] and the time immediately following [[World War I]]. &quot;With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead,&quot; Pynchon writes in his Book Description, &quot;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.&quot; He promises cameos by [[Nikola Tesla]], [[Bela Lugosi]] and [[Groucho Marx]], as well as &quot;stupid songs&quot; and &quot;strange sexual practices&quot;. Subsequently, the title of the new book was reported as ''[[Against the Day]]'' and a Penguin spokesperson confirmed that the synopsis was Pynchon's.&lt;ref&gt;Patterson 2006b; Italie 2006&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ''[[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.<br /> <br /> ==Themes and influence==<br /> 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 &quot;High&quot; and &quot;low&quot; culture, sometimes interpreted as a &quot;deconstruction&quot;, is seen as one of the defining characteristics of postmodernism.<br /> <br /> 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 [[Ornette Coleman]], [[Charlie Parker]] and [[Thelonious Monk]]. In ''The Crying of Lot 49'', the lead singer of &quot;The Paranoids&quot; sports &quot;a [[The Beatles|Beatle]] haircut&quot; 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 [[The Fool (band)|The Fool]] in the 1960s (having [[Magic realism|magically]] recovered the latter instrument, his &quot;harp&quot;, 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 &quot;Cherokee&quot;, 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 &quot;The Corvairs&quot;, while Isaiah played in a punk band called &quot;Billy Barf and the Vomitones&quot;. In ''Mason &amp; Dixon'', one of the characters plays on the &quot;Clavier&quot; the varsity drinking song which will later become &quot;The Star-Spangled Banner&quot;. <br /> <br /> In his ''[[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 &quot;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.&quot; He is also known to be a fan of Roky Erickson.<br /> <br /> 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 &quot;Introduction&quot; 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 &quot;[[Tommaso Pincio]]&quot; whose pseudonym is an Italian rendering of Pynchon's name.<br /> <br /> 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, &quot;Low-lands&quot; (1960), features a meditation on [[Werner Heisenberg|Heisenberg's]] [[uncertainty principle]] as a metaphor for telling stories about one's own experiences. His next published work, &quot;Entropy&quot; (1960), introduced [[entropy|the concept]] which was to become synonymous with Pynchon's name (though Pynchon later admitted the &quot;shallowness of [his] understanding&quot; of the subject, and noted that choosing an abstract concept first and trying to construct a narrative around it was &quot;a lousy way to go about writing a story&quot;). Another early story, &quot;Under the Rose&quot; (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.'' &quot;The Secret Integration&quot; (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 [[antiderivative|mathematical operation]], the only sense of the word with which they are familiar. <br /> <br /> ''The Crying of Lot 49'' also alludes to entropy and [[communication theory]], and contains scenes and descriptions which parody or appropriate [[calculus]], [[Zeno's paradoxes]], and the thought experiment known as [[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 [[hallucinogen]]s, 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 &amp; Dixon'', explores the scientific, theological, and sociocultural foundations of the [[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.<br /> <br /> 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, 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 &quot;cyberpunk&quot; did not become prevalent until the early 1980s, many readers retroactively include ''Gravity's Rainbow'' in the genre, along with other works&amp;mdash;''e.g.,'' Samuel R. Delany's ''Nova'' and many works of Philip K. Dick&amp;mdash;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 [[hypertext fiction]] movement of the 1990s.&lt;ref&gt;Page 2002; Krämer 2005&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ''Gravity's Rainbow'' and the more recent ''Mason &amp; 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.<br /> <br /> ==Media scrutiny==<br /> 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. <br /> <br /> A review of ''V.'' in the ''New York Times Book Review'' described Pynchon as &quot;a recluse&quot; living in Mexico, thereby introducing the media label which has pursued Pynchon throughout his career.&lt;ref&gt;Plimpton 1963: 5&lt;/ref&gt; 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. <br /> <br /> ===1970s and 1980s===<br /> 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 [[Irwin Corey|&quot;Professor&quot; Irwin Corey]] to accept the prize on Pynchon's behalf.&lt;ref name=&quot;royster2005&quot;/&gt; 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.&lt;ref&gt;Corey 1974&lt;/ref&gt; Towards the end of Corey's address a streaker ran through the hall, adding further to the confusion.<br /> <br /> An article published in the ''Soho Weekly News'' claimed that Pynchon was in fact J. D. Salinger.&lt;ref&gt;Batchelor 1976&lt;/ref&gt; Pynchon's written response to this theory was simple: &quot;Not bad. Keep trying.&quot;&lt;ref&gt; Reported in Tanner 1982&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> 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 &quot;Tom&quot; 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 &quot;[e]very weirdo in the world is on my wavelength&quot;,&lt;ref&gt;Siegel 1977&lt;/ref&gt; 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.<br /> <br /> ===1990s===<br /> 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 &quot;reclusive&quot;. 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, &quot;For Mr. Voss or Occupant&quot; (1991), explains to her daughter that she is writing<br /> :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.&lt;ref&gt;Hospital 1995: 361-2&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> More recently, book critic Arthur Salm has written that<br /> :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&amp;mdash;the circumstances, I admit, are beyond imagining&amp;mdash;the resulting matter/antimatter explosion would vaporize everything from here to Tau Ceti IV.&lt;ref&gt;Salm 2004&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> 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.&lt;ref&gt;Pynchon 1989&lt;/ref&gt; 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 City|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.&lt;ref&gt;Hitchens 1997&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In the early 1990s, Pynchon married his literary agent, Melanie Jackson &amp;mdash; a great-granddaughter of Theodore Roosevelt &amp;mdash; 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 &amp; 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, &quot;My belief is that 'recluse' is a code word generated by journalists ... meaning, 'doesn't like to talk to reporters'.&quot; CNN also quoted him as saying, &quot;Let me be unambiguous. I prefer not to be photographed.&quot;&lt;ref&gt;CNN 1997&lt;/ref&gt; The next year, a reporter for the ''Sunday Times'' managed to snap a photo of him as he was walking with his son.&lt;ref&gt;Bone 1998&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> 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 (&quot;Pandemonium of the Sun&quot;), the novelist apparently vetoed a final scene that called for an extra playing him to be filmed from behind, walking away from shot.&lt;ref&gt;CNN 1997; Glenn 2003&lt;/ref&gt; 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 (&quot;Lunch With Lotion&quot;) for ''Esquire'' in June 1996 in the lead-up to the publication of ''Mason &amp; 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.''&lt;ref&gt;Warner 2001&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> 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 &quot;[[Wanda Tinasky]]&quot; 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. &quot;Literary detective&quot; 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 &quot;Tinasky&quot; letters had been written.&lt;ref&gt;Foster 2000&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> 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 <br /> Morgan Library agree to seal these letters until after Pynchon's death.<br /> <br /> ===2000s===<br /> <br /> &lt;!-- [[Image:Pynchon-Simpsons-001.jpg|right|thumb|200px|Pynchon depicted in ''[[The Simpsons]]'' episode &quot;Diatribe of a Mad Housewife&quot;. His ''Simpsons'' appearances are the only times that Pynchon's voice has been broadcast in the media.]] --&gt;<br /> 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 &quot;Diatribe of a Mad Housewife&quot;, 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: &quot;Here's your quote: Thomas Pynchon loved this book, almost as much as he loves cameras!&quot; He then starts yelling at passing cars: &quot;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!&quot; The second appearance occurs in &quot;All's Fair in Oven War,&quot; which was the sixteenth-season premiere. In this appearance, Pynchon's dialogue consists entirely of [[pun]]s on his novel titles (&quot;These wings are 'V'-licious! I'll put this recipe in 'The Gravity's Rainbow Cookbook', right next to 'The Frying of Latke 49'.&quot;). Pynchon makes a third, non-speaking cameo, when he is seen at the fictional WordLoaf convention in the 18th season (2006) episode, &quot;Moe'N'a Lisa.&quot; 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.<br /> <br /> 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''.<br /> <br /> Shortly before ''Against the Day'' was published, Pynchon's prose appeared in the program for &quot;The Daily Show: Ten Fu@#ing Years (The Concert)&quot;, a retrospective on Jon Stewart's comedy-news broadcast ''The Daily Show.''&lt;ref&gt;Pynchon, Thomas. [http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_dailyshow.html &quot;The Evolution of ''The Daily Show''&quot;]. Printed in program notes (16 November 2006).&lt;/ref&gt; 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,<br /> :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.&lt;ref&gt;Pynchon, Thomas. [http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_mcewan.html &quot;Words for Ian McEwan&quot;] (6 December 2006)&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ==Works==<br /> * ''[[V.]]'' (1963), winner of [[William Faulkner Foundation]] Award<br /> * ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]'' (1966), winner of Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Foundation Award<br /> * ''[[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)<br /> * ''[[Slow Learner]]'' (1984), collection of early short stories<br /> * ''[[Vineland]]'' (1990)<br /> * ''[[Mason &amp; Dixon]]'' (1997)<br /> * ''[[Against the Day]]'' (21 November, 2006)<br /> <br /> 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.<br /> <br /> ==Notes and references==<br /> <br /> :&lt;small&gt;''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&amp;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.]''&lt;/small&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> * Batchelor, J.C. &quot;Thomas Pynchon is not Thomas Pynchon, or, This is End of the Plot Which Has No Name&quot;. ''Soho Weekly News'', 22 April 1976.<br /> * Bone, James. [http://www.suntimes.co.za:80/1998/06/07/lifestyle/life01.htm &quot;Who the hell is he?]&quot; ''Sunday Times'' (South Africa), 7 June 1998.<br /> * CNN. &quot;[http://cgi.cnn.com/US/9706/05/pynchon/ Where's Thomas Pynchon?]&quot; 5 June 1997.<br /> * CNN Book News. &quot;[http://www.cnn.com/books/news/9909/29/nobel.prize/index.html Early Nobel announcement prompts speculation]&quot;. 29 September 1999.<br /> * Corey, Irwin. &quot;[http://www.irwincorey.org/routines.html Transcript of National Book Award acceptance speech]&quot;, delivered 18 April 1974.<br /> * Ervin, Andrew. &quot;[http://citypaper.net/articles/091400/ae.books.shtml Nobel Oblige]&quot;. ''Philadelphia City Paper'' 14&amp;ndash;21 September 2000.<br /> * Foster, Don. ''Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous''. Henry Holt, New York, 2000.<br /> * Fowler, Douglas. ''A Reader's Guide to [[Gravity's Rainbow]]''. Ardis Press, 1980.<br /> * Frost, Garrison. &quot;[http://www.theaesthetic.com/NewFiles/pynchon.html Thomas Pynchon and the South Bay]&quot;. ''The Aesthetic'', 2003.<br /> * Getlin, Josh. &quot;[http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-wk-quick22.3jun22,0,5673134.story?coll=cl-calendar Pynchon Novel Out in December]&quot;. ''LA Times'', 22 June 2006.<br /> * Glenn, Joshua. &quot;[http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2003/10/19/pynchon_and_homer/ Pynchon and Homer]&quot;. ''Boston Globe'', 19 October 2003.<br /> * Gordon, Andrew. &quot;[http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/agordon/pynchon.htm Smoking Dope with Thomas Pynchon: A Sixties Memoir]&quot;.<br /> * Grimes, William. [http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/01/11/home/28957.html &quot;Toni Morrison Is '93 Winner Of Nobel Prize in Literature&quot;]. ''New York Times Book Review'', 8 October 1993.<br /> * Gussow, Mel. ''Pynchon's Letters Nudge His Mask.'' ''New York Times,'' 4 March 1998.<br /> * Hitchens, Christopher. &quot;[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.]&quot; ''The Progressive'', October 1997.<br /> * Hospital, Janette Turner. ''Collected Stories 1970-1995''. University of Queensland Press, 1995.<br /> * Italie, Hillel. &quot;[http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060720/ap_en_ot/books_thomas_pynchon_1 New Thomas Pynchon Novel is on the way]&quot; ''Associated Press'', 20 July 2006.<br /> * Kihss, Peter. &quot;Pulitzer Jurors; His Third Novel&quot;. ''The New York Times'', 8 May 1974, p. 38.<br /> * Krämer, Oliver. &quot;[http://www.sicetnon.org/modules.php?op=modload&amp;name=PagEd&amp;file=index&amp;topic_id=40&amp;page_id=208 Interview mit John M. Krafft, Herausgeber der 'Pynchon Notes']&quot;. ''Sic et Non.''<br /> * McLemee, Scott. ''[http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/11/15/mclemee You Hide, They Seek]'' ''Inside Higher Ed'', 15 November 2006. <br /> * ''New York Review of Books''. &quot;Writers and Editors War Tax Protest&quot; (advertisement). Vol. 10, No. 3, 15 February 1968, p. 9.<br /> * Page, Adrian. &quot;Towards a poetics of hypertext fiction&quot;. 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.<br /> * Patterson, Troy (a). &quot;[http://www.slate.com/id/2146152 Did the master make an appearance on his Amazon page?]&quot; ''Slate'', 20 July 2006.<br /> * Patterson, Troy (b). &quot;[http://www.slate.com/id/2146272 Mystery solved]&quot; ''Slate'', 20 July 2006.<br /> * Plimpton, George. &quot;Mata Hari with a Clockwork Eye, Alligators in the Sewer&quot;. Rev. of ''V.'' ''New York Times Book Review'', 21 April 1963, p. 5.<br /> * Pynchon, Thomas. &quot;[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_watts.html A Journey into the Mind of Watts]&quot;. ''New York Times Magazine'', 12 June 1966, pp. 34-35, 78, 80-82, 84.<br /> * Pynchon, Thomas. &quot;[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_rushdie.html Words for Salman Rushdie]&quot;. ''[[New York Times Book Review]]'', 12 March 1989, p. 29.<br /> * Pynchon, Thomas. [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159420120X/ Editorial review on ''Untitled Thomas Pynchon''], [[Amazon.com]] 14 July 2006.<br /> * Roeder, Bill. &quot;After the Rainbow&quot;. ''Newsweek'' 92, 7 August 1978.<br /> * Royster, Paul. &quot;[http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libraryscience/2/ Thomas Pynchon: A Brief Chronology]&quot;. Faculty Publications, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2005.<br /> * Salm, Arthur. &quot;A screaming comes across the sky (but not a photo)&quot;. San Diego ''Union-Tribune'', 8 February 2004.<br /> * Siegel, Jules. &quot;Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?&quot; ''Playboy'', March 1977.<br /> * Tanner, Tony. ''Thomas Pynchon''. Methuen &amp; Co., 1982.<br /> * Ulin, David. &quot;[http://www.salon.com/april97/media/media970425.html Gravity's End]&quot;. ''Salon'', 25 April 1997.<br /> * Warner, Simon. &quot;[http://www.popmatters.com/books/features/010802-hadju.shtml A king, a queen and two knaves?: An Interview with David Hajdu]&quot;. ''Pop Matters'', 2 August 2001.<br /> * Weisenburger, Steven C. ''A [[Gravity's Rainbow]] Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's Novel''. University of Georgia Press, 1988.<br /> * Wisnicki, Adrian. &quot;A Trove of New Works by Thomas Pynchon? Bomarc Service News Rediscovered.&quot; ''Pynchon Notes'' 46-49 (2000-1), pp. 9-34.<br /> <br /> ==External links==<br /> <br /> :''The following links were last verified on 30 November 2006.''<br /> <br /> * [http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/thomaspynchon/ Official UK publisher's site]<br /> * [http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&amp;UID=3673 Literary Encyclopedia biography]<br /> * [http://www.newenglandancestors.org/education/articles/research/special_guests/gary_boyd_roberts/48_659_448.asp The Ancestry of Novelist Thomas Pynchon]<br /> * [http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/ HyperArts Pynchon Pages]<br /> * [http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/ Pynchon Index]<br /> * [http://waste.org/pynchon-l The Pynchon-L mailing list] <br /> * ''[http://www2.ham.muohio.edu/~krafftjm/pynchon.html Pynchon Notes],'' a journal operated by Miami University in Oxford, Ohio <br /> * [http://pynchonoid.blogspot.com/ pynchonoid.blogspot.com]<br /> * [http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/ San Narciso Pynchon Page], hosted in Claremont, California, &quot;a town that looks a lot, in fact, like [[San Narciso]]&quot;<br /> * [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/index.html Spermatikos Logos]<br /> <br /> <br /> :'''''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.]]'''''</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Thomas_Pynchon_Wiki:About&diff=3504 2006-12-08T22:09:16Z

<p>BlakeStacey: wikilinks</p> <hr /> <div>The Pynchon Wiki was inaugurated on November 21, 2006, the same date ''[[Against the Day]]'', [[Thomas Pynchon]]'s sixth novel, was published. It was created by Tim Ware, who also built and maintains [http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon ThomasPynchon.com].<br /> <br /> We are now in the process of establishing wikis for Pynchon's other published works, as well as some &quot;uncollected&quot; works.<br /> <br /> Pynchon Wiki runs on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki MediaWiki], a wiki software package licensed under the GNU General Public License. It is written in PHP and uses either the MySQL or PostgreSQL relational database management system.<br /> <br /> Special thanks go to George Mandella and David Kipen for inspiring, encouraging and helping to facilitate this project, to all the registered users &amp;#151; especially the Early Adopters &amp;#151; for picking up the ball and running with it, to Kasimir Gabert for technical assistance, and finally to the developers and programmers at [http://www.wikimedia.org WikiMedia.org] who created MediaWiki software. [http://en.wikipedia.org Wikipedia] rocks!<br /> <br /> As, of course, a hardy thanks to Mr. Pynchon for the gift that keeps on giving!<br /> <br /> Stay tuned, as always...</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Thomas_Pynchon_Wiki:About&diff=3503 2006-12-08T22:08:45Z

<p>BlakeStacey: insert missing &quot;as&quot;</p> <hr /> <div>The Pynchon Wiki was inaugurated on November 21, 2006, the same date as ''Against the Day'', Thomas Pynchon's sixth novel, was published. It was created by Tim Ware, who also built and maintains [http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon ThomasPynchon.com].<br /> <br /> We are now in the process of establishing wikis for Pynchon's other published works, as well as some &quot;uncollected&quot; works.<br /> <br /> Pynchon Wiki runs on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki MediaWiki], a wiki software package licensed under the GNU General Public License. It is written in PHP and uses either the MySQL or PostgreSQL relational database management system.<br /> <br /> Special thanks go to George Mandella and David Kipen for inspiring, encouraging and helping to facilitate this project, to all the registered users &amp;#151; especially the Early Adopters &amp;#151; for picking up the ball and running with it, to Kasimir Gabert for technical assistance, and finally to the developers and programmers at [http://www.wikimedia.org WikiMedia.org] who created MediaWiki software. [http://en.wikipedia.org Wikipedia] rocks!<br /> <br /> As, of course, a hardy thanks to Mr. Pynchon for the gift that keeps on giving!<br /> <br /> Stay tuned, as always...</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Errata&diff=3502 2006-12-08T22:07:23Z

<p>BlakeStacey: add explanatory introduction</p> <hr /> <div>The following list provides '''errata''' for ''[[Against the Day]],'' indicating places where readers have found misspellings, punctuation gaffes or other similar errors. Please note that some of these &quot;mistakes&quot; may be deliberate stylistic choices on the author's part.<br /> <br /> == Errata in first printing (Nov. 2006), first US edition ==<br /> <br /> <br /> [[Against the Day description|Front flap]]: &quot;Nikolai&quot; Tesla, elsewhere (and conventionally) &quot;Nikola&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 63 line 14 &quot;Unless,&quot; Ed pointed out, [&quot;]it ''is'' God.&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 82 line 1 &quot;richochets&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 87 line 12 &quot;be&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 87 line 31-32 &quot;ridegerunning&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 92 line 15 &quot;what&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 116 line 39 &quot;de[c]lared&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 236 line 38: &quot;exhiliration&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 240 line 8 &quot;Re[n]frew&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 248 line 18: ''Culo'',[']&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 254 line 31 &quot;recon[n]aissance&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 307 line 14 how about that?[&quot;]<br /> <br /> Page 334 line 19 &quot;of&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 348 line 1 &quot;sixth&quot; should be &quot;Sixth&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 385 line 34 &quot;knowss&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 420 line 28 &quot;opportunit[i]es&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 427 line 7 &quot;esssential&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 440 line 33 &quot;sib[i]lance&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 444 line 8 &quot;Oasi[s]&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 503 line 25 &quot;The cycle, Yashmeen, speculated, might...&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 505 line 1 &quot;momument&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 513 line 11 &quot;smlled&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 515 line 32 &quot;th[r]oughout&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 518 line 1 &quot;off&quot; for &quot;of&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 524 line 10 &quot;exhilirated&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 531 Line 13 &quot;rende[z]vous&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 548 line 24 &quot;harbors,&quot; comma should be period<br /> <br /> Page 552 line 22 &quot;be&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 563 line 36 &quot;''mo[d]erskont''&quot; (?)<br /> <br /> Page 590 line 29 That is, is it was ''some smile''.<br /> <br /> Page 616 line 21 dueling transliterations: &quot;Izmeren[i]ye&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 636 line 4 &quot;f[r]om&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 652 line 12 &quot;opportunit[i]es&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 680 line 10 &quot;Colonnel&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 782 line 16 &quot;when&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 786 line 5 &quot;th[r]ough&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 790 line 5-6 &quot;interrested&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 790 line 24 &quot;a[r]rival&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 799 line 4 &quot;st[r]eet&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 801 line 12 &quot;susceptib[i]lity&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 831 line 5 &quot;ar[t]ificial&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 880 line 38 &quot;Gradengio&quot; for Gradenigo<br /> <br /> Page 896 line 37 &quot;''Tallis'' Fantasia&quot; [of Vaughan Williams]: misleading italics<br /> <br /> Page 900 line 19 &quot;the&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 915 line 16 &quot;perfo[r]ming&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 943 line 4 &quot;Ou[t]side&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 943 line 36 &quot;unfor[e]seen [variant, 'fore' used elsewhere] <br /> <br /> Page 968 line 27 &quot;every[b]ody&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 971 line 4 &quot;were&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 1000 line 14 final period omitted from L.A.H.D.I.H.D.A[]<br /> <br /> Page 1034 line 7 &quot;Thickbush&quot; [vs. &quot;Thick Bush&quot; at 8.3]<br /> <br /> Page 1036 line 36 &quot;querelans&quot; [vs. &quot;querulans&quot; at 455.16] <br /> <br /> Page 1037 line 29 &quot;tran[s]parencies&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 1071 line 35 &quot;''Um''&quot; for &quot;''Un''&quot;<br /> <br /> [[Category:ATD]]</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_149-170&diff=3463 2006-12-08T16:00:03Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* Page 167 */ add hyperlink</p> <hr /> <div>:'''&lt;big&gt;Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.&lt;/big&gt;'''&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;<br /> <br /> ==Page 150==<br /> '''Tammanoid creatures, able to deliver votes'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> As in &quot;Tammany Hall&quot;, the often corrupt political machine that played a role in New York City politics for nearly two centuries. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammany_Hall Wikipedia entry]. <br /> ==Pages 154-155==<br /> Hunter Penhallow's escape might be read as a happy ending getaway inversion of the claustrophobic opening sequence of Gravity's Rainbow, where nobody gets saved; &quot;in this world brought low&quot; echoes &quot;the Light that hath brought the Towers low&quot; on the final page of Gravity's Rainbow...&quot;Light&quot; may prefigure Against the Day's treatment of that subject, too.<br /> <br /> ==Page 156==<br /> '''&quot;crimson&quot; is cognate with &quot;worm&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> [http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003873.html Largely true.] The American Heritage Dictionary gives the [http://www.bartleby.com/61/79/W0227900.html etymology for ''worm''] as &quot;Middle English, from Old English ''wurm,'' variant of ''wyrm.''&quot; The root ''wyrm'' in turn derives from the Indo-European base [http://www.bartleby.com/61/roots/IE571.html wer-&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;], meaning to turn or bend. (Words descended from wer-&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; include ''stalwart, weird, vertebra, wrath, wrong, wrestle, briar'' and ''rhapsody.'') The modern word ''crimson'' derives from Middle English ''cremesin,'' which (via one of several alternative pathways) comes from Arabic ''qirmizy,'' a word based on ''qirmiz,'' the kermes insect. This insect, which lives on the Kermes oak (''Quercus coccifera''), was an early source for red dye but fell out of favor after the introduction of [http://www.bell.lib.umn.edu/Products/cochinea.html cochineal]. The Arabic name for this insect probably stems from the Sanskrit ''kṛmi-ja-,'' referring to a red dye produced from worms. The ''-ja'' is from an Indo-European root ''*gene-,'' meaning &quot;to produce&quot; (whence, ultimately, our word &quot;gene&quot; and the ''-gen'' in chemical element names). The other component, ''kṛmi-,'' means &quot;worm&quot;, and takes us back to Indo-European wer-&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;.<br /> <br /> ==Page 167==<br /> '''...it was a time honored principle to do nothing for free [...] Trust me. Buy Rand shares'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> There seems to be a double meaning here. The text implies that Rand is a gold mining company (does anyone know if this is/was a real company?). Regardless, Yitzhak and Fleetwood are talking about South Africa, where the ''rand'' is the currency, the Kruger''rand'' is a gold coin, and the Witwaters''rand'' is the ridge upon which Johannesburg is built. On another level, however, it seems as though Pynchon is mocking the philosophy of Ayn Rand, which is often characterized as a defense of selfishness or strong individualism. Pynchon [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0277-335X(198201)47%3A1%3C62%3ALATWWO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W previously parodied] Ayn Rand and her Theory of Objectivism as &quot;Mafia Winsome&quot; and her &quot;Theory of Heroic Love&quot; in ''V.''<br /> <br /> ==Page 168==<br /> <br /> &quot;like Baku with giraffes&quot;<br /> <br /> Gravity's Rainbow mentions Baku by name three times, according to the Pynchon Pages index (http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/alpha/b.html):<br /> <br /> 352; seaport capital of Azerbaydzhanskaya SSR, Soviet Union, on the west coast of the Caspian Sea; 353; Blobadjian &quot;pursued through the black end of Baku by a passel of screaming Arabists&quot; 354<br /> <br /> After reading this section, and the oddly-separated text of Fleetwood's reverie about his pursuit of wealth in the Transvaal, and his murder of the Kaffir, the family name struck me, &quot;Vibe&quot; = &quot;V&quot; I be. Certainly this section brings back the African horror of &quot;V.&quot;<br /> <br /> ==Annotation Index==<br /> {{ATD PbP}}</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_149-170&diff=3462 2006-12-08T15:55:18Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* Pages 154-155 */ crimson and worm, via Mark Liberman Language Log</p> <hr /> <div>:'''&lt;big&gt;Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.&lt;/big&gt;'''&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;<br /> <br /> ==Page 150==<br /> '''Tammanoid creatures, able to deliver votes'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> As in &quot;Tammany Hall&quot;, the often corrupt political machine that played a role in New York City politics for nearly two centuries. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammany_Hall Wikipedia entry]. <br /> ==Pages 154-155==<br /> Hunter Penhallow's escape might be read as a happy ending getaway inversion of the claustrophobic opening sequence of Gravity's Rainbow, where nobody gets saved; &quot;in this world brought low&quot; echoes &quot;the Light that hath brought the Towers low&quot; on the final page of Gravity's Rainbow...&quot;Light&quot; may prefigure Against the Day's treatment of that subject, too.<br /> <br /> ==Page 156==<br /> '''&quot;crimson&quot; is cognate with &quot;worm&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> [http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003873.html Largely true.] The American Heritage Dictionary gives the [http://www.bartleby.com/61/79/W0227900.html etymology for ''worm''] as &quot;Middle English, from Old English ''wurm,'' variant of ''wyrm.''&quot; The root ''wyrm'' in turn derives from the Indo-European base [http://www.bartleby.com/61/roots/IE571.html wer-&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;], meaning to turn or bend. (Words descended from wer-&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; include ''stalwart, weird, vertebra, wrath, wrong, wrestle, briar'' and ''rhapsody.'') The modern word ''crimson'' derives from Middle English ''cremesin,'' which (via one of several alternative pathways) comes from Arabic ''qirmizy,'' a word based on ''qirmiz,'' the kermes insect. This insect, which lives on the Kermes oak (''Quercus coccifera''), was an early source for red dye but fell out of favor after the introduction of [http://www.bell.lib.umn.edu/Products/cochinea.html cochineal]. The Arabic name for this insect probably stems from the Sanskrit ''kṛmi-ja-,'' referring to a red dye produced from worms. The ''-ja'' is from an Indo-European root ''*gene-,'' meaning &quot;to produce&quot; (whence, ultimately, our word &quot;gene&quot; and the ''-gen'' in chemical element names). The other component, ''kṛmi-,'' means &quot;worm&quot;, and takes us back to Indo-European wer-&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;.<br /> <br /> ==Page 167==<br /> '''...it was a time honored principle to do nothing for free [...] Trust me. Buy Rand shares'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> There seems to be a double meaning here. The text implies that Rand is a gold mining company (does anyone know if this is/was a real company?). Regardless, Yitzhak and Fleetwood are talking about South Africa, where the ''rand'' is the currency, the Kruger''rand'' is a gold coin, and the Witwaters''rand'' is the ridge upon which Johannesburg is built. On another level, however, it seems as though Pynchon is mocking the philosophy of Ayn Rand, which is often characterized as a defense of selfishness or strong individualism. Pynchon previously parodied Ayn Rand and her Theory of Objectivism as &quot;Mafia Winsome&quot; and her &quot;Theory of Heroic Love&quot; in ''V.''<br /> ==Page 168==<br /> <br /> &quot;like Baku with giraffes&quot;<br /> <br /> Gravity's Rainbow mentions Baku by name three times, according to the Pynchon Pages index (http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/alpha/b.html):<br /> <br /> 352; seaport capital of Azerbaydzhanskaya SSR, Soviet Union, on the west coast of the Caspian Sea; 353; Blobadjian &quot;pursued through the black end of Baku by a passel of screaming Arabists&quot; 354<br /> <br /> After reading this section, and the oddly-separated text of Fleetwood's reverie about his pursuit of wealth in the Transvaal, and his murder of the Kaffir, the family name struck me, &quot;Vibe&quot; = &quot;V&quot; I be. Certainly this section brings back the African horror of &quot;V.&quot;<br /> <br /> ==Annotation Index==<br /> {{ATD PbP}}</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=User:BlakeStacey&diff=3442 2006-12-08T00:15:30Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* Science and mathematics topics to expand */</p> <hr /> <div>Greetings. My name is '''Blake Stacey.''' I hail from the Greater MIT Metropolitan Area and have been a member of the Pynchonista since the fall of 2001. My first useful contribution in these parts was this &lt;nowiki&gt;{{&lt;/nowiki&gt;[[Template:Spoiler|spoiler template]]&lt;nowiki&gt;}}&lt;/nowiki&gt;.<br /> <br /> ==Science and mathematics topics to expand==<br /> This is downright intimidating. All of the following science and mathematics topics have either no entry beyond the bare name or the merest nubbin of an entry, usually copied from the Wikipedia. All of them deserve more. I will provide what I can, rooting through the entropy generator laughably known as my memory and leaning heavily upon my trusty library. Please let me know if new science topics appear in the Alpha Index, or if someone else takes care of an entry. Many thanks, [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 16:03, 7 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-A]]===<br /> ===[[ATD-B]]===<br /> '''Bohr, Niels (Henrik David) (1885-1962)'''<br /> <br /> &lt;s&gt;'''Boltzmann, Ludwig (1844&amp;ndash;1906)'''&lt;/s&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;s&gt;'''Brownian movement'''&lt;/s&gt;<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-C]]===<br /> '''Crookes, Sir William (1832-1919)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-D]]===<br /> '''De Forest, Lee'''<br /> <br /> '''Descartes, René (1596-1650)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-E]]===<br /> '''Edison, Thomas Alva (1847-1931)'''<br /> <br /> '''Einstein, Albert'''<br /> <br /> '''Euler, Leonhard (1707-1783)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-F]]===<br /> '''Faraday, Michael, FRS (1791-1867)'''<br /> <br /> '''fractals'''<br /> <br /> '''Freud, Sigmund'''<br /> <br /> '''Frobenius, Ferdinand Georg (1849-1917)'''<br /> <br /> '''Fuchs, Lazarus (1833-1902)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-G]]===<br /> '''Galois, Evariste'''<br /> <br /> '''Gibbs, Professor Willard'''<br /> <br /> '''Grassmann, Hermann (1809-1877)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-H]]===<br /> '''Hadamard, Jacques (1865-1963)'''<br /> <br /> '''Halley, Edmond (1656-1742)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hamilton, Sir William Rowan (1805-1865)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hardy, Godfrey Harold &quot;G. H.&quot; (1877-1947)'''<br /> <br /> '''Heaviside, Oliver (1850-1925)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hertz, Heinrich Rudolf (1857-1894)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hilbert, David (1862-1943)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hollow Earth'''<br /> <br /> '''Hypatia (c. 370-415)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-I]]===<br /> '''Iamblichus of Chalcis (ca 245 - ca 325)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-J]]===<br /> ===[[ATD-K]]===<br /> '''Kepler, Johannes'''<br /> <br /> '''Klein, Felix (1849-1925)'''<br /> <br /> '''Kronecker, Leopold'''<br /> <br /> '''Kovalevskaia, Sofia'''<br /> ===[[ATD-L]]===<br /> '''Lines of force'''<br /> <br /> '''Lobatchevskian'''<br /> <br /> '''Lodge, Sir Oliver Joseph (1851-1940)'''<br /> <br /> '''Lombroso, Dr. Cesare (1835-1909)'''<br /> <br /> '''Lorentz, Hendrik Antoon (1853-1928)'''<br /> ===[[ATD-M]]===<br /> ===[[ATD-N]]===<br /> '''Nansen, Fridtjof (1861-1930)'''<br /> <br /> '''Nicol prism'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-O]]===<br /> '''Ouspensky, Peter D. (1878-1947)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-P]]===<br /> '''perpetual-motion machine'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-Q]]===<br /> '''Quaternions'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-R]]===<br /> '''Ramanujan'''<br /> <br /> '''Rayleigh, Lord'''<br /> <br /> '''Riemann, Georg Friedrich Bernhard (1826-1866)'''<br /> <br /> '''Russell, Bertrand'''<br /> ===[[ATD-S]]===<br /> '''Schwarz, Hermann Amandus (1843&amp;ndash;1921)'''<br /> <br /> '''Skip''' &amp;mdash; Ball lightning<br /> ===[[ATD-T]]===<br /> '''Tait, Peter Guthrie (P. G.) (1831-1901)'''<br /> <br /> '''Tesla, Nikola (1856-1943)'''<br /> <br /> '''Tesseract'''<br /> <br /> '''Thucydides'''<br /> <br /> '''Tunguska Event'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-U]]===<br /> ===[[ATD-V]]===<br /> '''Vector'''<br /> <br /> '''Von Waltershausen, Baron Wolfgang Sartorius'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-W]]===<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-XYZ]]===<br /> '''Zodiac'''</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=User:BlakeStacey&diff=3440 2006-12-08T00:03:14Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* Science and mathematics topics to expand */</p> <hr /> <div>Greetings. My name is '''Blake Stacey.''' I hail from the Greater MIT Metropolitan Area and have been a member of the Pynchonista since the fall of 2001. My first useful contribution in these parts was this &lt;nowiki&gt;{{&lt;/nowiki&gt;[[Template:Spoiler|spoiler template]]&lt;nowiki&gt;}}&lt;/nowiki&gt;.<br /> <br /> ==Science and mathematics topics to expand==<br /> This is downright intimidating. All of the following science and mathematics topics have either no entry beyond the bare name or the merest nubbin of an entry, usually copied from the Wikipedia. All of them deserve more. I will provide what I can, rooting through the entropy generator laughably known as my memory and leaning heavily upon my trusty library. Please let me know if new science topics appear in the Alpha Index, or if someone else takes care of an entry. Many thanks, [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 16:03, 7 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-A]]===<br /> ===[[ATD-B]]===<br /> '''Bohr, Niels (Henrik David) (1885-1962)'''<br /> <br /> '''Boltzmann, Ludwig (1844&amp;ndash;1906)'''<br /> <br /> Austrian physicist who made pivotal contributions to thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, inventing several of the key notions of the latter field. The son of a taxation official, Boltzmann attended the University of Vienna and in 1866 earned a doctorate under the tutelage of Josef Stefan (1835&amp;ndash;1893), whose empirical work on blackbody radiation Boltzmann would later put on a firm thermodynamic grounding. (Consequently, the statement that the total radiation from a blackbody goes as the fourth power of its temperature is today known as the Stefan&amp;ndash;Boltzmann law.) After Stefan's death, Boltzmann took over his position as theoretical physics chair, but soon quit Vienna due to personal conflicts with the new chair of history and philosophy of science, Ernst Mach (1838&amp;ndash;1916). He moved to Leipzig in 1900, where disputes over his theories led him to attempt suicide, unsuccessfully. Boltzmann returned to Vienna the following year, after Mach retired for health reasons, and in fact gained renown for his philosophy lectures &amp;mdash; teaching the very class taught by Mach shortly before. In 1904, he traveled the United States, visiting the World's Fair in St. Louis; however, after his return to Europe, the attacks on his statistical mechanics work continued. Boltzmann committed suicide in Trieste, during a family vacation.<br /> <br /> It is unknown whether Boltzmann's eventual suicide resulted from the scientific community's hostility to his work, a history of mental illness and melancholy, or some combination of both. [http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Boltzmann.html (MacTutor biography)]<br /> <br /> Today, Boltzmann is renowned for having established a mathematical foundation of statistical physics, the study of large quantities of particles (such as atoms in a gas). To make calculations possible, Boltzmann devised the concept of an &quot;ensemble&quot;, a set of many systems prepared in the same way. Thinking in terms of ensembles, one could calculate probabilities by working out what fraction of the ensemble's systems will exist in a given state. Each member of an ensemble satisfies the same macroscopic conditions; for example, they each have the same total energy. However, there are many different ways the atoms in a gas can move and still have the same total energy. Many ''microstates'' can be part of a single ''macrostate.'' The ensemble approach gave the first real understanding of what ''entropy'' means in statistical terms: the entropy of a macrostate is, up to a multiplicative factor, the logarithm of its number of microstates. (The multiplicative factor, known as Boltzmann's constant, sets the size of the degree marks on the temperature scale.)<br /> <br /> Boltzmann also studied the way in which the entropy of a system rises with time. His mathematical deduction known as the ''H''-theorem provided the first way to understand the Second Law of Thermodynamics in terms of individual atoms in motion.<br /> <br /> '''Brownian movement'''<br /> The random motion of small particles, such as dust specks or pollen grains, suspended in a fluid. Because the atoms in the fluid are constantly jostling with thermal energy &amp;mdash; ''heat'' being nothing but the kinetic energy of atoms in random movement &amp;mdash; the larger objects floating in the fluid are bombarded this way and that, like a beach ball being attacked on all sides by peashooters. First observed by the British botanist Robert Brown (1773&amp;ndash;1858) in 1827, this jittery behavior provided the first direct evidence that atoms existed. The [http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/great1.htm young Albert Einstein] (1879&amp;ndash;1955) worked out the [http://lorentz.phl.jhu.edu/AnnusMirabilis/AeReserveArticles/ed_brownian.pdf theory behind Brownian motion,] producing in 1905 an equation which gave the size of atoms in terms of quantities one could observe about Brownian motion. In 1908, the French physicist Jean-Baptiste Perrin (1870&amp;ndash;1942) succeeded in measuring these variables, discovering that atoms are roughly one ten-billionth of a meter in diameter.<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-C]]===<br /> '''Crookes, Sir William (1832-1919)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-D]]===<br /> '''De Forest, Lee'''<br /> <br /> '''Descartes, René (1596-1650)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-E]]===<br /> '''Edison, Thomas Alva (1847-1931)'''<br /> <br /> '''Einstein, Albert'''<br /> <br /> '''Euler, Leonhard (1707-1783)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-F]]===<br /> '''Faraday, Michael, FRS (1791-1867)'''<br /> <br /> '''fractals'''<br /> <br /> '''Freud, Sigmund'''<br /> <br /> '''Frobenius, Ferdinand Georg (1849-1917)'''<br /> <br /> '''Fuchs, Lazarus (1833-1902)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-G]]===<br /> '''Galois, Evariste'''<br /> <br /> '''Gibbs, Professor Willard'''<br /> <br /> '''Grassmann, Hermann (1809-1877)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-H]]===<br /> '''Hadamard, Jacques (1865-1963)'''<br /> <br /> '''Halley, Edmond (1656-1742)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hamilton, Sir William Rowan (1805-1865)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hardy, Godfrey Harold &quot;G. H.&quot; (1877-1947)'''<br /> <br /> '''Heaviside, Oliver (1850-1925)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hertz, Heinrich Rudolf (1857-1894)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hilbert, David (1862-1943)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hollow Earth'''<br /> <br /> '''Hypatia (c. 370-415)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-I]]===<br /> '''Iamblichus of Chalcis (ca 245 - ca 325)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-J]]===<br /> ===[[ATD-K]]===<br /> '''Kepler, Johannes'''<br /> <br /> '''Klein, Felix (1849-1925)'''<br /> <br /> '''Kronecker, Leopold'''<br /> <br /> '''Kovalevskaia, Sofia'''<br /> ===[[ATD-L]]===<br /> '''Lines of force'''<br /> <br /> '''Lobatchevskian'''<br /> <br /> '''Lodge, Sir Oliver Joseph (1851-1940)'''<br /> <br /> '''Lombroso, Dr. Cesare (1835-1909)'''<br /> <br /> '''Lorentz, Hendrik Antoon (1853-1928)'''<br /> ===[[ATD-M]]===<br /> ===[[ATD-N]]===<br /> '''Nansen, Fridtjof (1861-1930)'''<br /> <br /> '''Nicol prism'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-O]]===<br /> '''Ouspensky, Peter D. (1878-1947)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-P]]===<br /> '''perpetual-motion machine'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-Q]]===<br /> '''Quaternions'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-R]]===<br /> '''Ramanujan'''<br /> <br /> '''Rayleigh, Lord'''<br /> <br /> '''Riemann, Georg Friedrich Bernhard (1826-1866)'''<br /> <br /> '''Russell, Bertrand'''<br /> ===[[ATD-S]]===<br /> '''Schwarz, Hermann Amandus (1843&amp;ndash;1921)'''<br /> <br /> '''Skip''' &amp;mdash; Ball lightning<br /> ===[[ATD-T]]===<br /> '''Tait, Peter Guthrie (P. G.) (1831-1901)'''<br /> <br /> '''Tesla, Nikola (1856-1943)'''<br /> <br /> '''Tesseract'''<br /> <br /> '''Thucydides'''<br /> <br /> '''Tunguska Event'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-U]]===<br /> ===[[ATD-V]]===<br /> '''Vector'''<br /> <br /> '''Von Waltershausen, Baron Wolfgang Sartorius'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-W]]===<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-XYZ]]===<br /> '''Zodiac'''</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=B&diff=3439 2006-12-08T00:03:02Z

<p>BlakeStacey: expand Ludwig Boltzmann and Brownian Movement</p> <hr /> <div>'''Bagdad Railway Concession'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 228; In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Ottoman Empire planned to construct a Baghdad Railway under German control. It became a source of international tension and played some role in the origins of the First World War; 238; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Railway Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Baku'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 441; Located on the Caspian Sea, Baku or Baky (Baki), capital and largest city of Azerbaijan. Since 1873 an oil belt of Baku began to be formed which was known as a Black City. Within a short period of time departments and representations of Swiss, English, French, Belgian, German and American firms were established in Baku, among them were the firms of the Nobels and Rothschilds. By the beginning of the 20th century almost half of the oil reserves in the world had been extracted in Baku; 631; &quot;with skeeters&quot; 639; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baku Wikipedia entry] [[Discussion]]<br /> <br /> '''Bakunin, Mikhail (1814-1876)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 373; well-known Russian revolutionary, and often considered one of the fathers of modern anarchism; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakunin Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> &lt;div id=&quot;balaam&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt;'''Balaam's ass'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 432; From the Bible, Numbers Chapter 22, wherein Balaam, a seer and Gentile, is sent by Balak, King of Moab, to confront the Israelites who, after 40 years in the desert, were camped on the plains of Moab. An angel, invisible to Balaam but visible to the ass, blocks the road and the ass won't proceed. Balaam repeatedly whips the ass until, by divine intervention, the ass is given the power of speech and speaks to Balaam, asking him why he treats him so badly. Balaam is taken aback and then sees the angel with sword drawn and falls to the ground, contrite. But the angel, instead of stopping him from his journey, tells Balaam to proceed on his mission. When Balaam reaches the top of a hill and sees the Israelites camped out below, a blessing unexpectedly issues from his lips. Two things here: 1) it's possible for a non-Hebrew to be a prophet and 2) this is one of only two instances in the Bible where animals speak, the other being the serpent in the Garden of Eden. [http://www.trivia-library.com/a/origins-of-the-term-balaam-ass.htm More from the Trivia Library]<br /> <br /> '''Balkin ''komitadji'''''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 557; Komitadji, Comitadji or Komitaji (Turkish: Komitacı, &quot;a rebel, member of a secret revolutionary society&quot;) is a member of a guerrilla band in Macedonia or the Balkan countries.<br /> <br /> '''Ball in Hand'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 405; saloon where Dr. Zoot met Meatman; on West Symmes Street, 410;<br /> <br /> '''[[Basnight, Lewis (&quot;Lew&quot;)]]'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 36-51; a &quot;spotter&quot; from White City Investigations; &quot;couldn't remember what he 'd done, or hadn't done, or even when&quot;, Upstate-Downstate Beast, 37; &quot;a kind of ''waking swoon''&quot; 38; &quot;a condition he had no memory of having sought, which he later came to think of as grace&quot;, &quot;a luminosity new to him&quot;, &quot;things were exactly what they were&quot;, 42; extraordinary ability of noticing things, 42; &quot;a keen sympathy for the invisible&quot; 43; &quot;the side of the day&quot; 44; transfer to Denver, 51; 171; Cryptomite trip, 182; emergence out of explosion, 221; 496; at Chunxton Crescent &quot;Gus Swallowfield, Senior Underwriter&quot; 611;<br /> <br /> '''Basnight, Troth'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 38; Lew's wife, who leaves him;<br /> <br /> '''Battle of Puebla'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 315; The Battle of Puebla took place on May 5, 1862 near the city of Puebla, Mexico, during the French intervention in Mexico. It was a major Mexican victory, and is commemorated every year as Cinco de Mayo; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Puebla Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Bauer, Gr&amp;uuml;newald'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 136;<br /> <br /> '''Beaufort Scale'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 15; a scale to measure wind speed; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort_scale Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Beaver Saloon'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 193; <br /> <br /> '''&quot;Beavers of the Brain&quot;'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 183; song by the beings inhabiting Lew Basright's steak<br /> <br /> '''Becker, Mr.'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 1076; Jesse Traverse's school teacher, and possibly his future father-in-law; see the [[Traverse Family Tree]]<br /> <br /> '''Belgian nihilists'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 527; &quot;Eugénie, Fatou, Denis, and Policarpe, styling themselves 'Young Congo'&quot;<br /> <br /> '''Bengal lights'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 144; A steady bright blue light; formerly used as a signal but now a firework.<br /> <br /> '''Beppo'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 576; Dally's alter-ego; Beppo is the subject of the poem &quot;Beppo&quot; by Lord Byron; [[Beppo|Read the poem]]<br /> <br /> '''Berlin Conference of 1878'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 226; The Congress of Berlin was a meeting of the European Great Powers' and the Ottoman Empire's leading statesmen in Berlin in 1878. In the wake of the Russo-Turkish War, 1877–78, the meeting's aim was to reorganize conditions in the Balkans. Otto von Bismarck, who led the Congress, undertook to balance the distinct interests of Great Britain, Russia and Austria-Hungary. As a consequence, however, differences between Russia and Austria-Hungary intensified, as did the nationality question in the Balkans; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congress_of_Berlin Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Bible'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 86; Second Corinthians, 32; 223; St. Mark, 250; &quot;Let there be light&quot; 354; Judas Iscariot, 377; 413; [[#balaam|Balaam's ass]], 432; Sodom and Gomorrah, 441; 441; 452; Jonah and Agadir, 521; Judas Priest, 525; Lot's wife, 550; Lucifer, 575; Infancy Gospel of Thomas, 579; Pentacost story from Acts of the Apostles (Jesus and the dyes), 579-80; <br /> <br /> '''Big Billy's'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 260; <br /> <br /> [[Image:Billy-the-Kid.jpg|thumb|Billy the Kid, painting by Jacques Moitoret|right]]'''Billy the Kid (1859-1881)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 263; Henry McCarty, better known as Billy the Kid, but also known by the aliases Henry Antrim and William Harrison Bonney, was a 19th century American frontier outlaw and gunmen who was a participant in the Lincoln County War. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_the_Kid Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''bilocation'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 143; the ability (said of certain Roman Catholic saints) to exist simultaneously in two locations; &quot;there are two distinct versions of 'Asia' out there&quot; 249; Estrella, double of Stray Briggs, 393; Chums of Chance and the Marching Academy Harmonica Band, 418-24; &quot;enough to divide a fellow into two&quot; 464; two Agadirs, 521-22; ''Stupendica'', 514; Dally, 524; doubling, 564; multiple identities, 570; sawed-in-half folks, 571-72; Principessa Spongiatosta, 583; Werfner/Renfrew, 683, 685; Orphic and Pythagorean religionns, 686; Lew Basright, 688, 690; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilocation Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Bindlestiffs of the Blue A.C.'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 18; aeronautical club from Oregon (&quot;A.C.&quot; for alternating current?); a bindelstiff is a hobo, especially one who carries a bedroll.<br /> <br /> '''Bing, Liu'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 345; &quot;tong warrior's girlfriend&quot;<br /> <br /> '''Biometric Institute of Neuropathy'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 433;<br /> <br /> '''Black Gang'''&lt;br/&gt;<br /> 517; the stokers; 519;<br /> <br /> '''Black Hundreds'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 595; pogrom<br /> <br /> '''Black, Miss Penelope (&quot;Penny&quot;)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 18; distaff member of the Bindlestiffs of the Blue A.C.<br /> <br /> '''Blanca, La'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 287; &quot;local name&quot; for [[ATD-M#meldrum|Bob Meldrum's]] wife;<br /> <br /> '''Blaskó, Béla'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 915; the original name of the Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi (1882-1956) whose most famous role was that of Dracula; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bela_lugosi Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Blavatsky, Madame''' (1831-1891)&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 219; Helena Petrovna Hahn (also Hélène), better known as Helena Blavatsky (Russian: Елена Блаватская) or Madame Blavatsky, born Helena von Hahn, was a founder of the Theosophical Society; &quot;working for the Tsarist secret service&quot; aka Third Section, aka Okhrana, 631; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Blavatsky Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Blitz Instruments'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 53; Blitz is a manufacturer of musical instruments and accessories<br /> <br /> '''Bloggins'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 446;<br /> <br /> '''Blope, Dr. Templeton'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 131; of the University of the Outer Hebrides<br /> <br /> '''Blue Ivory'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 125;<br /> <br /> '''Blundell, Miles'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 4; Handyman Apprentice aboard the ''Inconvenience''; 107; nonsense speaking, 110-13; the Book, 251; 417; &quot;temporarily lapsing into English&quot; 427; recognizes the Trespassers, Mr. Ace, 417; &quot;extra-temporal excursions&quot; 443; and Pugnax, 550; &quot;prefiguration of the Holy City&quot; 551; <br /> <br /> '''Bly, Nellie (1864-1922)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 37; Born May 5, 1864, to Judge Michael Cochran and Mary Jane Kennedy Cochran, part of the large Cochran family of Apollo, Pennsylvania, Elizabeth Jane Cochrane revolutionized journalism for women. She is better known by her pen name, &quot;Nellie Bly,&quot; which she adapted from the Stephen Foster song, &quot;Nelly Bly.&quot; Daring and innovative, she gained world fame when she beat Jules Verne's fictional character Phileas Fogg's record for traveling around the world in 80 days by more than a week, departing on November 14, 1889 and returning to New York on January 25, 1890; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bly Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Bobrikoff, General'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 83; &quot;evil viceroy&quot; of Russian Tsar<br /> <br /> '''Bodine, O. I. C. (Officer in Charge)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 517; American stoker aboard the ''Stupendica''; 519;<br /> <br /> '''Bohr, Niels (Henrik David) (1885-1962)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 412; Danish physicist who made fundamental contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics. Bohr is widely considered one of the greatest physicists of the twentieth century. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Bohr Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Boilster, Eugene'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 477; sheriff of Wall o' Death;<br /> <br /> '''Boilster, Tace'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 479; Eugene's wife;<br /> <br /> '''Boilster, Roy Mickey'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 480; Tace's brother;<br /> <br /> '''Boilster, Chloe'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 485; Eugene's &amp; Tace's daughter<br /> <br /> '''Boll Weevil Lounge'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 47;<br /> <br /> '''''Bol'shaia Igra'''''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 122; Padzhy's ship, at the North Pole; in Venice, 245;<br /> <br /> '''Boltzmann, Ludwig (1844&amp;ndash;1906)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 596; Austrian physicist who made pivotal contributions to thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, inventing several of the key notions of the latter field. The son of a taxation official, Boltzmann attended the University of Vienna and in 1866 earned a doctorate under the tutelage of Josef Stefan (1835&amp;ndash;1893), whose empirical work on blackbody radiation Boltzmann would later put on a firm thermodynamic grounding. (Consequently, the statement that the total radiation from a blackbody goes as the fourth power of its temperature is today known as the Stefan&amp;ndash;Boltzmann law.) After Stefan's death, Boltzmann took over his position as theoretical physics chair, but soon quit Vienna due to personal conflicts with the new chair of history and philosophy of science, Ernst Mach (1838&amp;ndash;1916). He moved to Leipzig in 1900, where disputes over his theories led him to attempt suicide, unsuccessfully. Boltzmann returned to Vienna the following year, after Mach retired for health reasons, and in fact gained renown for his philosophy lectures &amp;mdash; teaching the very class taught by Mach shortly before. In 1904, he traveled the United States, visiting the World's Fair in St. Louis; however, after his return to Europe, the attacks on his statistical mechanics work continued. Boltzmann committed suicide in Trieste, during a family vacation.<br /> <br /> It is unknown whether Boltzmann's eventual suicide resulted from the scientific community's hostility to his work, a history of mental illness and melancholy, or some combination of both. [http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Boltzmann.html (MacTutor biography)]<br /> <br /> Today, Boltzmann is renowned for having established a mathematical foundation of statistical physics, the study of large quantities of particles (such as atoms in a gas). To make calculations possible, Boltzmann devised the concept of an &quot;ensemble&quot;, a set of many systems prepared in the same way. Thinking in terms of ensembles, one could calculate probabilities by working out what fraction of the ensemble's systems will exist in a given state. Each member of an ensemble satisfies the same macroscopic conditions; for example, they each have the same total energy. However, there are many different ways the atoms in a gas can move and still have the same total energy. Many ''microstates'' can be part of a single ''macrostate.'' The ensemble approach gave the first real understanding of what ''entropy'' means in statistical terms: the entropy of a macrostate is, up to a multiplicative factor, the logarithm of its number of microstates. (The multiplicative factor, known as Boltzmann's constant, sets the size of the degree marks on the temperature scale.)<br /> <br /> Boltzmann also studied the way in which the entropy of a system rises with time. His mathematical deduction known as the ''H''-theorem provided the first way to understand the Second Law of Thermodynamics in terms of individual atoms in motion.<br /> <br /> '''Bonnet, Charles (1720-1793)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 307; Swiss naturalist and philosophical writer who first described what became known as the Charles Bonnet syndrome (or CBS for short), a term used to describe the situation when people with sight problems start to see things which they know aren't real. Sometimes called visual hallucinations, the things people see can take all kinds of forms from simple patterns of straight lines to detailed -pictures of people or buildings. These can be enjoyable or sometimes upsetting; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bonnet Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Boot Hill'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 648;<br /> <br /> Bopfli&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 669; 670;<br /> <br /> '''Borrasca'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 364; Reef's colt;<br /> <br /> '''Borowicz, Professor Bogoslaw'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 343; at McVeety's Theater &quot;Floor Shows&quot;<br /> <br /> '''Bosanquet, Bernard James Tindal (1877-1936)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 237; &quot;this Middlesex spinner&quot;; an English cricketer, perhaps most renowned as the inventor of the googly (sometimes called the Bosie or, in Australia, the Wrong'un ), born in Bull's Cross, Enfield, Middlesex; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Bosanquet_(cricketer) Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Bosch'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 554; the artist<br /> <br /> '''Boulanger, General Georges Ernest Jean-Marie (April 29, 1837 – September 30, 1891)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 543; anniversary of his suicide and the Chums of Chance; Boulanger was a French general and reactionary politician. Very popular with the military, He rose through the ranks to general, and began his own political movement, an ecclectic one that capitalized on the frustrations of French conservatism, advocating the three principles of ''Revanche'' (Revenge on Germany), ''Révision'' (Revision of the Constitution), ''Restauration'' (the return to monarchy). The common reference to it has become ''Boulangisme'', a term used by its partisans and adversaries alike. A failed coup began his downfall. He was charged with conspiracy and treason and a warrant for his death was issued. He committed suicide by a bullet to the head on the grave of his mistress. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Boulanger Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Bounce, Roswell'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 60; photographer; Hypop Apparatus, 425; Scarsdale Vibe trial in Cleveland, 455; Hercules, 455;<br /> <br /> '''''boutonniere'''''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 33; A boutonniere, also buttonhole, is a flower or floral decoration pushed or pinned through the button hole of a lapel of a suit.<br /> <br /> '''Boyne'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 231;<br /> <br /> '''brambled guttie'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 603; gutta-percha ball (a golf ball), a brambled spheroid<br /> <br /> '''Breedlove, &quot;Dope&quot;'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 369; &quot;and his Merry Coons&quot; - houseband at Maman Tant Gras Hall in New Orleans;<br /> <br /> '''Breguet'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 457; the tourbillion<br /> <br /> '''Briggs, Estrella (Stray)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 200; in Nochecita; Aunt Adelina; at a &quot;small ranch outside Fickle Creek&quot; 462; 920-921; <br /> <br /> '''Briggs, Willow'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 361; Stray's sister; husband Holt, 367;<br /> <br /> '''British craving for the dark and shiny'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 678; Perhaps an [[Dark and Shiny|Orwellian reference?]]<br /> <br /> '''Brocken'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 632;<br /> <br /> '''Brownian Movement'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 587; The random motion of small particles, such as dust specks or pollen grains, suspended in a fluid. Because the atoms in the fluid are constantly jostling with thermal energy &amp;mdash; ''heat'' being nothing but the kinetic energy of atoms in random movement &amp;mdash; the larger objects floating in the fluid are bombarded this way and that, like a beach ball being attacked on all sides by peashooters. First observed by the British botanist Robert Brown (1773&amp;ndash;1858) in 1827, this jittery behavior provided the first direct evidence that atoms existed. The [http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/great1.htm young Albert Einstein] (1879&amp;ndash;1955) worked out the [http://lorentz.phl.jhu.edu/AnnusMirabilis/AeReserveArticles/ed_brownian.pdf theory behind Brownian motion,] producing in 1905 an equation which gave the size of atoms in terms of quantities one could observe about Brownian motion. In 1908, the French physicist Jean-Baptiste Perrin (1870&amp;ndash;1942) succeeded in measuring these variables, discovering that atoms are roughly one ten-billionth of a meter in diameter.<br /> <br /> '''Brownie'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 277; Kodak camera introduced in 1900 for one dollar<br /> <br /> '''Browning'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 578; the poet<br /> <br /> '''Brueghel'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 554; <br /> <br /> '''Brugere's power'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 529; Brugere's powder uses '''picric acid''' which, when ignited, burns quietly with a smoky flame and is very difficult to detonate by percussion; its salts, however, are more readily detonated. Part of the picric family, Brugere's powder is a mixture of 54 parts of ammonium picrate and 45 parts of saltpetre; '''Designolle's powder''', composed of potassium picrate, saltpetre and charcoal is also a member of this family of explosives. [[Picric Acid|More on picric acid]]<br /> <br /> '''Bruno'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 101; Scarsdale Vibe's bodyguard<br /> <br /> '''buck-and-wing artist'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 303; &quot;buck-and-wing&quot; is a solo tap dance emphasizing sharp taps<br /> <br /> '''Buffalo Bill'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> [[ATD-C#buffalo|See Cody, Buffalo Bill]]<br /> <br /> '''Burchell, Mrs.'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 228; medium at Stead s&amp;eacute;ance; her &quot;prophetic account of the Serbian outrage&quot; 719;<br /> <br /> '''Burgess'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> a sheriff Reef argues with; Laureen, his wife;<br /> <br /> '''Buri'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 142; &quot;grandfather of Odin and the first gods&quot;<br /> <br /> '''Busted Flush'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 313; Jimmy Drop's hangout in Telluride<br /> <br /> '''Byng, Admiral'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 545; <br /> <br /> '''Byron's Pool'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 490; where Yashmeen bathed nude;<br /> <br /> {{ATD_Alpha_Nav}}</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=User:BlakeStacey&diff=3437 2006-12-07T23:57:29Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* ATD-B */ add link</p> <hr /> <div>Greetings. My name is '''Blake Stacey.''' I hail from the Greater MIT Metropolitan Area and have been a member of the Pynchonista since the fall of 2001. My first useful contribution in these parts was this &lt;nowiki&gt;{{&lt;/nowiki&gt;[[Template:Spoiler|spoiler template]]&lt;nowiki&gt;}}&lt;/nowiki&gt;.<br /> <br /> ==Science and mathematics topics to expand==<br /> This is downright intimidating. All of the following science and mathematics topics have either no entry beyond the bare name or the merest nubbin of an entry, usually copied from the Wikipedia. All of them deserve more.<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-A]]===<br /> ===[[ATD-B]]===<br /> '''Boltzmann, Ludwig (1844&amp;ndash;1906)'''<br /> <br /> Austrian physicist who made pivotal contributions to thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, inventing several of the key notions of the latter field. The son of a taxation official, Boltzmann attended the University of Vienna and in 1866 earned a doctorate under the tutelage of Josef Stefan (1835&amp;ndash;1893), whose empirical work on blackbody radiation Boltzmann would later put on a firm thermodynamic grounding. (Consequently, the statement that the total radiation from a blackbody goes as the fourth power of its temperature is today known as the Stefan&amp;ndash;Boltzmann law.) After Stefan's death, Boltzmann took over his position as theoretical physics chair, but soon quit Vienna due to personal conflicts with the new chair of history and philosophy of science, Ernst Mach (1838&amp;ndash;1916). He moved to Leipzig in 1900, where disputes over his theories led him to attempt suicide, unsuccessfully. Boltzmann returned to Vienna the following year, after Mach retired for health reasons, and in fact gained renown for his philosophy lectures &amp;mdash; teaching the very class taught by Mach shortly before. In 1904, he traveled the United States, visiting the World's Fair in St. Louis; however, after his return to Europe, the attacks on his statistical mechanics work continued. Boltzmann committed suicide in Trieste, during a family vacation.<br /> <br /> It is unknown whether Boltzmann's eventual suicide resulted from the scientific community's hostility to his work, a history of mental illness and melancholy, or some combination of both. [http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Boltzmann.html (MacTutor biography)]<br /> <br /> Today, Boltzmann is renowned for having established a mathematical foundation of statistical physics, the study of large quantities of particles (such as atoms in a gas). To make calculations possible, Boltzmann devised the concept of an &quot;ensemble&quot;, a set of many systems prepared in the same way. Thinking in terms of ensembles, one could calculate probabilities by working out what fraction of the ensemble's systems will exist in a given state. Each member of an ensemble satisfies the same macroscopic conditions; for example, they each have the same total energy. However, there are many different ways the atoms in a gas can move and still have the same total energy. Many ''microstates'' can be part of a single ''macrostate.'' The ensemble approach gave the first real understanding of what ''entropy'' means in statistical terms: the entropy of a macrostate is, up to a multiplicative factor, the logarithm of its number of microstates. (The multiplicative factor, known as Boltzmann's constant, sets the size of the degree marks on the temperature scale.)<br /> <br /> Boltzmann also studied the way in which the entropy of a system rises with time. His mathematical deduction known as the ''H''-theorem provided the first way to understand the Second Law of Thermodynamics in terms of individual atoms in motion.<br /> <br /> '''Brownian movement'''<br /> The random motion of small particles, such as dust specks or pollen grains, suspended in a fluid. Because the atoms in the fluid are constantly jostling with thermal energy &amp;mdash; ''heat'' being nothing but the kinetic energy of atoms in random movement &amp;mdash; the larger objects floating in the fluid are bombarded this way and that, like a beach ball being attacked on all sides by peashooters. First observed by the British botanist Robert Brown (1773&amp;ndash;1858) in 1827, this jittery behavior provided the first direct evidence that atoms existed. The [http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/great1.htm young Albert Einstein] (1879&amp;ndash;1955) worked out the [http://lorentz.phl.jhu.edu/AnnusMirabilis/AeReserveArticles/ed_brownian.pdf theory behind Brownian motion,] producing in 1905 an equation which gave the size of atoms in terms of quantities one could observe about Brownian motion. In 1908, the French physicist Jean-Baptiste Perrin (1870&amp;ndash;1942) succeeded in measuring these variables, discovering that atoms are roughly one ten-billionth of a meter in diameter.<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-C]]===<br /> '''Crookes, Sir William (1832-1919)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-D]]===<br /> '''De Forest, Lee'''<br /> <br /> '''Descartes, René (1596-1650)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-E]]===<br /> '''Edison, Thomas Alva (1847-1931)'''<br /> <br /> '''Einstein, Albert'''<br /> <br /> '''Euler, Leonhard (1707-1783)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-F]]===<br /> '''Faraday, Michael, FRS (1791-1867)'''<br /> <br /> '''fractals'''<br /> <br /> '''Freud, Sigmund'''<br /> <br /> '''Frobenius, Ferdinand Georg (1849-1917)'''<br /> <br /> '''Fuchs, Lazarus (1833-1902)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-G]]===<br /> '''Galois, Evariste'''<br /> <br /> '''Gibbs, Professor Willard'''<br /> <br /> '''Grassmann, Hermann (1809-1877)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-H]]===<br /> '''Hadamard, Jacques (1865-1963)'''<br /> <br /> '''Halley, Edmond (1656-1742)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hamilton, Sir William Rowan (1805-1865)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hardy, Godfrey Harold &quot;G. H.&quot; (1877-1947)'''<br /> <br /> '''Heaviside, Oliver (1850-1925)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hertz, Heinrich Rudolf (1857-1894)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hilbert, David (1862-1943)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hollow Earth'''<br /> <br /> '''Hypatia (c. 370-415)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-I]]===<br /> '''Iamblichus of Chalcis (ca 245 - ca 325)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-J]]===<br /> ===[[ATD-K]]===<br /> '''Kepler, Johannes'''<br /> <br /> '''Klein, Felix (1849-1925)'''<br /> <br /> '''Kronecker, Leopold'''<br /> <br /> '''Kovalevskaia, Sofia'''<br /> ===[[ATD-L]]===<br /> '''Lines of force'''<br /> <br /> '''Lobatchevskian'''<br /> <br /> '''Lodge, Sir Oliver Joseph (1851-1940)'''<br /> <br /> '''Lombroso, Dr. Cesare (1835-1909)'''<br /> <br /> '''Lorentz, Hendrik Antoon (1853-1928)'''<br /> ===[[ATD-M]]===<br /> ===[[ATD-N]]===<br /> '''Nansen, Fridtjof (1861-1930)'''<br /> <br /> '''Nicol prism'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-O]]===<br /> '''Ouspensky, Peter D. (1878-1947)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-P]]===<br /> '''perpetual-motion machine'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-Q]]===<br /> '''Quaternions'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-R]]===<br /> '''Ramanujan'''<br /> <br /> '''Rayleigh, Lord'''<br /> <br /> '''Riemann, Georg Friedrich Bernhard (1826-1866)'''<br /> <br /> '''Russell, Bertrand'''<br /> ===[[ATD-S]]===<br /> '''Schwarz, Hermann Amandus (1843&amp;ndash;1921)'''<br /> <br /> '''Skip''' &amp;mdash; Ball lightning<br /> ===[[ATD-T]]===<br /> '''Tait, Peter Guthrie (P. G.) (1831-1901)'''<br /> <br /> '''Tesla, Nikola (1856-1943)'''<br /> <br /> '''Tesseract'''<br /> <br /> '''Thucydides'''<br /> <br /> '''Tunguska Event'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-U]]===<br /> ===[[ATD-V]]===<br /> '''Vector'''<br /> <br /> '''Von Waltershausen, Baron Wolfgang Sartorius'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-W]]===<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-XYZ]]===<br /> '''Zodiac'''</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=User:BlakeStacey&diff=3436 2006-12-07T23:56:08Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* ATD-B */</p> <hr /> <div>Greetings. My name is '''Blake Stacey.''' I hail from the Greater MIT Metropolitan Area and have been a member of the Pynchonista since the fall of 2001. My first useful contribution in these parts was this &lt;nowiki&gt;{{&lt;/nowiki&gt;[[Template:Spoiler|spoiler template]]&lt;nowiki&gt;}}&lt;/nowiki&gt;.<br /> <br /> ==Science and mathematics topics to expand==<br /> This is downright intimidating. All of the following science and mathematics topics have either no entry beyond the bare name or the merest nubbin of an entry, usually copied from the Wikipedia. All of them deserve more.<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-A]]===<br /> ===[[ATD-B]]===<br /> '''Boltzmann, Ludwig (1844&amp;ndash;1906)'''<br /> <br /> Austrian physicist who made pivotal contributions to thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, inventing several of the key notions of the latter field. The son of a taxation official, Boltzmann attended the University of Vienna and in 1866 earned a doctorate under the tutelage of Josef Stefan (1835&amp;ndash;1893), whose empirical work on blackbody radiation Boltzmann would later put on a firm thermodynamic grounding. (Consequently, the statement that the total radiation from a blackbody goes as the fourth power of its temperature is today known as the Stefan&amp;ndash;Boltzmann law.) After Stefan's death, Boltzmann took over his position as theoretical physics chair, but soon quit Vienna due to personal conflicts with the new chair of history and philosophy of science, Ernst Mach (1838&amp;ndash;1916). He moved to Leipzig in 1900, where disputes over his theories led him to attempt suicide, unsuccessfully. Boltzmann returned to Vienna the following year, after Mach retired for health reasons, and in fact gained renown for his philosophy lectures &amp;mdash; teaching the very class taught by Mach shortly before. In 1904, he traveled the United States, visiting the World's Fair in St. Louis; however, after his return to Europe, the attacks on his statistical mechanics work continued. Boltzmann committed suicide in Trieste, during a family vacation.<br /> <br /> It is unknown whether Boltzmann's eventual suicide resulted from the scientific community's hostility to his work, a history of mental illness and melancholy, or some combination of both. [http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Boltzmann.html (MacTutor biography)]<br /> <br /> Today, Boltzmann is renowned for having established a mathematical foundation of statistical physics, the study of large quantities of particles (such as atoms in a gas). To make calculations possible, Boltzmann devised the concept of an &quot;ensemble&quot;, a set of many systems prepared in the same way. Thinking in terms of ensembles, one could calculate probabilities by working out what fraction of the ensemble's systems will exist in a given state. Each member of an ensemble satisfies the same macroscopic conditions; for example, they each have the same total energy. However, there are many different ways the atoms in a gas can move and still have the same total energy. Many ''microstates'' can be part of a single ''macrostate.'' The ensemble approach gave the first real understanding of what ''entropy'' means in statistical terms: the entropy of a macrostate is, up to a multiplicative factor, the logarithm of its number of microstates. (The multiplicative factor, known as Boltzmann's constant, sets the size of the degree marks on the temperature scale.)<br /> <br /> Boltzmann also studied the way in which the entropy of a system rises with time. His mathematical deduction known as the ''H''-theorem provided the first way to understand the Second Law of Thermodynamics in terms of individual atoms in motion.<br /> <br /> '''Brownian movement'''<br /> The random motion of small particles, such as dust specks or pollen grains, suspended in a fluid. Because the atoms in the fluid are constantly jostling with thermal energy &amp;mdash; ''heat'' being nothing but the kinetic energy of atoms in random movement &amp;mdash; the larger objects floating in the fluid are bombarded this way and that, like a beach ball being attacked on all sides by peashooters. First observed by the British botanist Robert Brown (1773&amp;ndash;1858) in 1827, this jittery behavior provided the first direct evidence that atoms existed. The [http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/great1.htm young Albert Einstein] (1879&amp;ndash;1955) worked out the theory behind Brownian motion, producing in 1905 an equation which gave the size of atoms in terms of quantities one could observe about Brownian motion. In 1908, the French physicist Jean-Baptiste Perrin (1870&amp;ndash;1942) succeeded in measuring these variables, discovering that atoms are roughly one ten-billionth of a meter in diameter.<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-C]]===<br /> '''Crookes, Sir William (1832-1919)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-D]]===<br /> '''De Forest, Lee'''<br /> <br /> '''Descartes, René (1596-1650)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-E]]===<br /> '''Edison, Thomas Alva (1847-1931)'''<br /> <br /> '''Einstein, Albert'''<br /> <br /> '''Euler, Leonhard (1707-1783)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-F]]===<br /> '''Faraday, Michael, FRS (1791-1867)'''<br /> <br /> '''fractals'''<br /> <br /> '''Freud, Sigmund'''<br /> <br /> '''Frobenius, Ferdinand Georg (1849-1917)'''<br /> <br /> '''Fuchs, Lazarus (1833-1902)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-G]]===<br /> '''Galois, Evariste'''<br /> <br /> '''Gibbs, Professor Willard'''<br /> <br /> '''Grassmann, Hermann (1809-1877)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-H]]===<br /> '''Hadamard, Jacques (1865-1963)'''<br /> <br /> '''Halley, Edmond (1656-1742)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hamilton, Sir William Rowan (1805-1865)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hardy, Godfrey Harold &quot;G. H.&quot; (1877-1947)'''<br /> <br /> '''Heaviside, Oliver (1850-1925)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hertz, Heinrich Rudolf (1857-1894)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hilbert, David (1862-1943)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hollow Earth'''<br /> <br /> '''Hypatia (c. 370-415)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-I]]===<br /> '''Iamblichus of Chalcis (ca 245 - ca 325)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-J]]===<br /> ===[[ATD-K]]===<br /> '''Kepler, Johannes'''<br /> <br /> '''Klein, Felix (1849-1925)'''<br /> <br /> '''Kronecker, Leopold'''<br /> <br /> '''Kovalevskaia, Sofia'''<br /> ===[[ATD-L]]===<br /> '''Lines of force'''<br /> <br /> '''Lobatchevskian'''<br /> <br /> '''Lodge, Sir Oliver Joseph (1851-1940)'''<br /> <br /> '''Lombroso, Dr. Cesare (1835-1909)'''<br /> <br /> '''Lorentz, Hendrik Antoon (1853-1928)'''<br /> ===[[ATD-M]]===<br /> ===[[ATD-N]]===<br /> '''Nansen, Fridtjof (1861-1930)'''<br /> <br /> '''Nicol prism'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-O]]===<br /> '''Ouspensky, Peter D. (1878-1947)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-P]]===<br /> '''perpetual-motion machine'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-Q]]===<br /> '''Quaternions'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-R]]===<br /> '''Ramanujan'''<br /> <br /> '''Rayleigh, Lord'''<br /> <br /> '''Riemann, Georg Friedrich Bernhard (1826-1866)'''<br /> <br /> '''Russell, Bertrand'''<br /> ===[[ATD-S]]===<br /> '''Schwarz, Hermann Amandus (1843&amp;ndash;1921)'''<br /> <br /> '''Skip''' &amp;mdash; Ball lightning<br /> ===[[ATD-T]]===<br /> '''Tait, Peter Guthrie (P. G.) (1831-1901)'''<br /> <br /> '''Tesla, Nikola (1856-1943)'''<br /> <br /> '''Tesseract'''<br /> <br /> '''Thucydides'''<br /> <br /> '''Tunguska Event'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-U]]===<br /> ===[[ATD-V]]===<br /> '''Vector'''<br /> <br /> '''Von Waltershausen, Baron Wolfgang Sartorius'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-W]]===<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-XYZ]]===<br /> '''Zodiac'''</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=User:BlakeStacey&diff=3412 2006-12-07T20:20:46Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* Science and mathematics topics to expand */</p> <hr /> <div>Greetings. My name is '''Blake Stacey.''' I hail from the Greater MIT Metropolitan Area and have been a member of the Pynchonista since the fall of 2001. My first useful contribution in these parts was this &lt;nowiki&gt;{{&lt;/nowiki&gt;[[Template:Spoiler|spoiler template]]&lt;nowiki&gt;}}&lt;/nowiki&gt;.<br /> <br /> ==Science and mathematics topics to expand==<br /> This is downright intimidating. All of the following science and mathematics topics have either no entry beyond the bare name or the merest nubbin of an entry, usually copied from the Wikipedia. All of them deserve more.<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-A]]===<br /> ===[[ATD-B]]===<br /> '''Boltzmann, Ludwig'''<br /> <br /> '''Brownian movement'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-C]]===<br /> '''Crookes, Sir William (1832-1919)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-D]]===<br /> '''De Forest, Lee'''<br /> <br /> '''Descartes, René (1596-1650)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-E]]===<br /> '''Edison, Thomas Alva (1847-1931)'''<br /> <br /> '''Einstein, Albert'''<br /> <br /> '''Euler, Leonhard (1707-1783)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-F]]===<br /> '''Faraday, Michael, FRS (1791-1867)'''<br /> <br /> '''fractals'''<br /> <br /> '''Freud, Sigmund'''<br /> <br /> '''Frobenius, Ferdinand Georg (1849-1917)'''<br /> <br /> '''Fuchs, Lazarus (1833-1902)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-G]]===<br /> '''Galois, Evariste'''<br /> <br /> '''Gibbs, Professor Willard'''<br /> <br /> '''Grassmann, Hermann (1809-1877)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-H]]===<br /> '''Hadamard, Jacques (1865-1963)'''<br /> <br /> '''Halley, Edmond (1656-1742)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hamilton, Sir William Rowan (1805-1865)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hardy, Godfrey Harold &quot;G. H.&quot; (1877-1947)'''<br /> <br /> '''Heaviside, Oliver (1850-1925)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hertz, Heinrich Rudolf (1857-1894)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hilbert, David (1862-1943)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hollow Earth'''<br /> <br /> '''Hypatia (c. 370-415)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-I]]===<br /> '''Iamblichus of Chalcis (ca 245 - ca 325)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-J]]===<br /> ===[[ATD-K]]===<br /> '''Kepler, Johannes'''<br /> <br /> '''Klein, Felix (1849-1925)'''<br /> <br /> '''Kronecker, Leopold'''<br /> <br /> '''Kovalevskaia, Sofia'''<br /> ===[[ATD-L]]===<br /> '''Lines of force'''<br /> <br /> '''Lobatchevskian'''<br /> <br /> '''Lodge, Sir Oliver Joseph (1851-1940)'''<br /> <br /> '''Lombroso, Dr. Cesare (1835-1909)'''<br /> <br /> '''Lorentz, Hendrik Antoon (1853-1928)'''<br /> ===[[ATD-M]]===<br /> ===[[ATD-N]]===<br /> '''Nansen, Fridtjof (1861-1930)'''<br /> <br /> '''Nicol prism'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-O]]===<br /> '''Ouspensky, Peter D. (1878-1947)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-P]]===<br /> '''perpetual-motion machine'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-Q]]===<br /> '''Quaternions'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-R]]===<br /> '''Ramanujan'''<br /> <br /> '''Rayleigh, Lord'''<br /> <br /> '''Riemann, Georg Friedrich Bernhard (1826-1866)'''<br /> <br /> '''Russell, Bertrand'''<br /> ===[[ATD-S]]===<br /> '''Schwarz, Hermann Amandus (1843&amp;ndash;1921)'''<br /> <br /> '''Skip''' &amp;mdash; Ball lightning<br /> ===[[ATD-T]]===<br /> '''Tait, Peter Guthrie (P. G.) (1831-1901)'''<br /> <br /> '''Tesla, Nikola (1856-1943)'''<br /> <br /> '''Tesseract'''<br /> <br /> '''Thucydides'''<br /> <br /> '''Tunguska Event'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-U]]===<br /> ===[[ATD-V]]===<br /> '''Vector'''<br /> <br /> '''Von Waltershausen, Baron Wolfgang Sartorius'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-W]]===<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-XYZ]]===<br /> '''Zodiac'''</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=User:BlakeStacey&diff=3409 2006-12-07T20:11:35Z

<p>BlakeStacey: </p> <hr /> <div>Greetings. My name is '''Blake Stacey.''' I hail from the Greater MIT Metropolitan Area and have been a member of the Pynchonista since the fall of 2001. My first useful contribution in these parts was this &lt;nowiki&gt;{{&lt;/nowiki&gt;[[Template:Spoiler|spoiler template]]&lt;nowiki&gt;}}&lt;/nowiki&gt;.<br /> <br /> ==Science and mathematics topics to expand==<br /> ===[[ATD-A]]===<br /> ===[[ATD-B]]===<br /> '''Boltzmann, Ludwig'''<br /> <br /> '''Brownian movement'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-C]]===<br /> '''Crookes, Sir William (1832-1919)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-D]]===<br /> '''De Forest, Lee'''<br /> <br /> '''Descartes, René (1596-1650)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-E]]===<br /> '''Edison, Thomas Alva (1847-1931)'''<br /> <br /> '''Einstein, Albert'''<br /> <br /> '''Euler, Leonhard (1707-1783)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-F]]===<br /> '''Faraday, Michael, FRS (1791-1867)'''<br /> <br /> '''fractals'''<br /> <br /> '''Freud, Sigmund'''<br /> <br /> '''Frobenius, Ferdinand Georg (1849-1917)'''<br /> <br /> '''Fuchs, Lazarus (1833-1902)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-G]]===<br /> '''Galois, Evariste'''<br /> <br /> '''Gibbs, Professor Willard'''<br /> <br /> '''Grassmann, Hermann (1809-1877)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-H]]===<br /> '''Hadamard, Jacques (1865-1963)'''<br /> <br /> '''Halley, Edmond (1656-1742)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hamilton, Sir William Rowan (1805-1865)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hardy, Godfrey Harold &quot;G. H.&quot; (1877-1947)'''<br /> <br /> '''Heaviside, Oliver (1850-1925)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hertz, Heinrich Rudolf (1857-1894)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hilbert, David (1862-1943)'''<br /> <br /> '''Hollow Earth'''<br /> <br /> '''Hypatia (c. 370-415)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-I]]===<br /> '''Iamblichus of Chalcis (ca 245 - ca 325)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-J]]===<br /> ===[[ATD-K]]===<br /> '''Kepler, Johannes'''<br /> <br /> '''Klein, Felix (1849-1925)'''<br /> <br /> '''Kronecker, Leopold'''<br /> <br /> '''Kovalevskaia, Sofia'''<br /> ===[[ATD-L]]===<br /> '''Lines of force'''<br /> <br /> '''Lobatchevskian'''<br /> <br /> '''Lodge, Sir Oliver Joseph (1851-1940)'''<br /> <br /> '''Lombroso, Dr. Cesare (1835-1909)'''<br /> <br /> '''Lorentz, Hendrik Antoon (1853-1928)'''<br /> ===[[ATD-M]]===<br /> ===[[ATD-N]]===<br /> '''Nansen, Fridtjof (1861-1930)'''<br /> <br /> '''Nicol prism'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-O]]===<br /> '''Ouspensky, Peter D. (1878-1947)'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-P]]===<br /> '''perpetual-motion machine'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-Q]]===<br /> '''Quaternions'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-R]]===<br /> '''Ramanujan'''<br /> <br /> '''Rayleigh, Lord'''<br /> <br /> '''Riemann, Georg Friedrich Bernhard (1826-1866)'''<br /> <br /> '''Russell, Bertrand'''<br /> ===[[ATD-S]]===<br /> '''Schwarz, Hermann Amandus (1843&amp;ndash;1921)'''<br /> <br /> '''Skip''' &amp;mdash; Ball lightning<br /> ===[[ATD-T]]===<br /> '''Tait, Peter Guthrie (P. G.) (1831-1901)'''<br /> <br /> '''Tesla, Nikola (1856-1943)'''<br /> <br /> '''Tesseract'''<br /> <br /> '''Thucydides'''<br /> <br /> '''Tunguska Event'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-U]]===<br /> ===[[ATD-V]]===<br /> '''Vector'''<br /> <br /> '''Von Waltershausen, Baron Wolfgang Sartorius'''<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-W]]===<br /> <br /> ===[[ATD-XYZ]]===<br /> '''Zodiac'''</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=H&diff=3406 2006-12-07T19:54:10Z

<p>BlakeStacey: merge two entries for Godfrey Harold Hardy</p> <hr /> <div>'''Hadamard, Jacques (1865-1963)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 590; French mathematician best known for his proof of the prime number theorem in 1896; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Hadamard Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Hadley, Dr. Edgar'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 311; at Miners' Hospital<br /> <br /> '''Halfcourt, Lietenant-Colonel G. Auberon'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 222; &quot;formerly a squadron commander in the Eighteenth Hussars&quot;; stationed in Kashgar (&quot;spiritual capital of Inner Asia&quot;), 630;<br /> <br /> '''Halfcourt, Yashmeen'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 221-222; at T.W.I.T., and daughter of G. Auberon Halfcourt; 489; aka &quot;Pinky&quot; 493; discussing G&amp;ouml;ttingen with Cyprian Latewood, 499; to G&amp;ouml;ttingen, 503; in G&amp;ouml;ttingen, 589; parents were Russian, 595; &quot;''she'' is the world&quot; 596; inspiration for Hilbert-P&amp;oacute;ya Conjecture, 604; &quot;grandiose coat of arms&quot; 677; encounters Cyprian in Vienna, 716; &quot;bedeviled by two or three powers at once&quot; 717-18; letter to her father, 748-750;<br /> <br /> '''Halley, Edmond (1656-1742)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 115; English astronomer, geophysicist, mathematician, meteorologist, and physicist who proposed, in 1692, that the earth was hollow; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_Halley Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Hamilton, Maria Bayley'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 560; Sir Hamilton's wife;<br /> <br /> &lt;div id=&quot;hamilton&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt;'''Hamilton, Sir William Rowan (1805-1865)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 99; Sir Hamilton was an Irish mathematician, physicist, and astronomer who made important contributions to the development of optics, dynamics, and algebra. His discovery of [[ATD-Q#quaternions|quaternions]] is perhaps his best known investigation; his illumination &quot;at [[Brougham_Bridge|Brougham Bridge]] in Ireland in 1845, 99; 132; 526; 535; Quaternions discover ''him'', 560-61; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rowan_Hamilton Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Hardy, Godfrey Harold &quot;G. H.&quot; (1877-1947)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 239, 438; a prominent English mathematician, known for his achievements in number theory and mathematical analysis. He was called &quot;Harold&quot; by a few close friends, and otherwise &quot;G. H.&quot;; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._H._Hardy Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Harald the Ruthless (1015-1066)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 127; Norwegian Harald Hardraade, or Hardråde king of Norway (1045–66). His harsh suppression of lesser Norwegian chieftains cost him their military support in his unsuccessful struggle to conquer Denmark (1045–62). The son of Sigurd Sow (Syr), a chieftain in eastern Norway, and of Estrid, mother of the Norwegian king Olaf II Haraldsson (St. Olaf), Harald fought at the age of 15 against the Danes.<br /> <br /> '''Harriman, Brother'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 130; works for Scarsdale Vibe<br /> '''<br /> <br /> '''Hatch'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 646;<br /> <br /> '''''Hausknochen'''''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 589; 592;<br /> <br /> '''Hawaii'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 69; South Sea islands tattoo artists; volcano, 411; [[ATD-U#uke|See also Ukuleles]]<br /> <br /> '''Haymarket Bomb'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 25; The Haymarket Riot on May 4, 1886, in Chicago is the origin of international May Day observances and in popular literature inspired the caricature of &quot;a bomb-throwing anarchist.&quot; 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; 111; 176; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_bombing Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Headingly'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 236; Should be spelled Headingley, at least in this world. Suburb of Leeds, England. Headingley is home to the Yorkshire cricket team and a venue for international cricket matches since 1899. <br /> <br /> '''Headingly bomb'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 608; and Lew Basright;<br /> <br /> '''''head of Jochanaan'''''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 626; from the opera &quot;Salome&quot; by Richard Strauss, the head of John the Baptist; Salome, who demanded of King Herod, who lusted after her, John the Baptist's head on a platter as the price for her allowing him to have her; Salome had desired John the Baptist, but had been rebuffed.<br /> <br /> '''Heavenly City, The'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 165;<br /> <br /> '''Heaviside, Oliver (1850-1925)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 98; English electrical engineer who adapted complex numbers to the study of electrical circuits, and was co-discoverer of the rate of energy transfer by an electromagnetic field; ''Electromagnetic Theory'' (1893); 533; &quot;Walt Whitman of English Physics&quot; 535; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside Wikipedia entry]; [[Heaviside|A good article on Heaviside]]<br /> <br /> '''Heden, Sven'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 436;<br /> <br /> '''Hegel'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 538;<br /> <br /> '''Heinrich'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 597; Gunther von Quassel's &quot;intimate&quot;<br /> <br /> '''Held, Anna'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 334;<br /> <br /> '''Helgustaðir'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 126; Located in East Iceland, one of the world's best-known sources of Icelandic spar.<br /> [http://giantcrystals.strahlen.org/europe/helgustadir.htm| web page about the site, with photos]<br /> <br /> '''Henry, Emile (1872-1894)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 87; French anarchist, who on February 12, 1894 detonated a bomb at the Café Terminus in the Parisian Gare Saint-Lazare killing one person and wounding twenty; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emile_Henry Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Herbert, Victory'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 512;<br /> <br /> '''Herman'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 182; bartender at Anarchists' Saloon<br /> <br /> '''Hershel'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 39; bellman at the Esthonia Hotel<br /> <br /> '''Hertz, Heinrich Rudolf (1857-1894)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 121; &quot;extra Hertzian rays&quot;; German physicist and mechanician for whom the hertz, an SI unit, is named. In 1888, he was the first to demonstrate the existence of electromagnetic radiation by building an apparatus to produce UHF radio waves; 318; 330; 438; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Rudolf_Hertz Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Hierarchy'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 417; Chums of Chance's invisible superiors<br /> <br /> '''High Albedo'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 493; A property of a surface that describes its ability to reflect and reject heat. High albedo surfaces have both a light color (high solar reflectance) and a high emmittance (can reject heat back to the environment).<br /> <br /> '''high-grading'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 196; In mining, high grading is the theft and concealement of valuable ore by miners for personal profit. Common during the United States gold rush, high graders would usually conceal gold ore in a pocket or lunch pail, or internally within the body, and later attempt to fence it on the black market; 486;<br /> <br /> '''Hilbert, Dr. David (1862-1943)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 324; German mathematician, recognized as one of the most influential and universal mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. He invented or developed a broad range of fundamental ideas, in invariant theory, the axiomatization of geometry, and with the notion of Hilbert space, one of the foundations of functional analysis. Among the students of Hilbert, there were Hermann Weyl, the champion of chess Emanuel Lasker, Ernst Zermelo, and Carl Gustav Hempel. John von Neumann was his assistant. At the University of Göttingen, Hilbert was surrounded by a social circle of some of the most important mathematicians of the 20th century, such as Emmy Noether and Alonzo Church; &quot;Spectral Theory&quot; 499; 600; 625; 633; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hilbert Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Hill, Joe (1879-1915)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 216; born Joel Emmanuel Hägglund, and also known as Joseph Hillström, Joe Hill was a radical songwriter, labor activist and member of the Industrial Workers of the World, also known as the Wobblies. He was executed for murder after a controversial trial. After his death, he became the subject of a folksong; 463; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Hill Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Hindoo Shuffle'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 357; magic trick<br /> <br /> '''Hinton, C. Howard'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 591;<br /> <br /> '''Hip Sing'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 340; rival tong of On Leong, New York City<br /> <br /> '''History'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 223; 373; 559;<br /> <br /> '''H.M.S. ''Megaera'''''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 108; frigate; Megaera (Greek: Μεγαιρα, &quot;the jealous one&quot;) is one of the Erinyes in Greek Mythology. She is the cause of jealousy and envy, and causes people to commit crimes, especially marital infidelity. Like her sisters Alecto and Tisiphone, she was born of the blood of Uranus when Cronus castrated him.<br /> <br /> '''hole card'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 684; In blackjack, the facedown card that the dealer gets. In stud and hold ‘em poker, the facedown cards dealt to each player.<br /> <br /> '''Hole-in-the-Wall Gang'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 287; name given to a gang in the American Wild West, which took its name from the Hole-in-the-Wall Pass in Johnson County, Wyoming, where several outlaw gangs had their hideouts. The Gang was not simply one large organized gang of outlaws, but rather was made up of several separate gangs, all operating out of the Hole-in-the-Wall Pass, using it as their base of operations. The gangs formed a coalition, each planning and carrying out its own robberies with very little interaction with the other gangs. At times, members of one gang would ride along with other gangs, but usually each gang operated separately, meeting up only when they were each at the hideout at the same time; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hole_in_the_Wall_Gang Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Holliday, Doc (1851-1887)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 25; John Henry &quot;Doc&quot; Holliday was an American dentist, gambler and gunfighter of the Old West frontier, who is usually remembered for his associations with Wyatt Earp and the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral; &quot;rejoinder to Frank McLaury at the O.K. Corral&quot; 647-48; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doc_Holliday Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Hollow Earth'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 115; Chums of Chance's journey into, 115; H. Penhallow's journey, 155; 274; 327; hoosegow in Guanojuana, 380; 391; &quot;hidden cave of rainwater&quot; 393; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_earth Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Holmes, Sherlock'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 689;<br /> <br /> '''Hotel Borealis'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 129; where Vormance Expedition set up headquarters;<br /> <br /> '''Hotel Noctambulo'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 462; where insomnia prevails, in Fickle Creek<br /> <br /> '''Hotel Neue Mutzenbacher'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 702, aka &quot;The Mutzi&quot; in Vienna &quot;near the Imperial Stables&quot;<br /> <br /> '''Houdini, Harry'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 355;<br /> <br /> '''Hour of the Rat'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 675; according to the [[Time_in_OldJapan|time keeping in pre-modern Japan]], the Hour of the Rat was from 11pm till 1am.<br /> <br /> '''Hsiang-Chiao'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 260; Deuce Kindred's &quot;on-again-off-again romance with&quot;<br /> <br /> '''Huerta, General'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 376; &quot;brutal heart, bloody mind&quot;; &quot;goes after Yaquis or Mayas&quot; 389;[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoriano_Huerta Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Humfried'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 588; at G&amp;ouml;ttingen; 592; 597; muttering in strange language, 622;<br /> <br /> '''Hungarians'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 46;<br /> <br /> '''Hypatia (AD 370(?)-415)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 717; Hypatia of Alexandria was a Greek mathematician, astronomer, teacher, and head of the Platonist school at Alexandria about AD 400. Hypatia wrote commentaries on the astronomical canon of Ptolemy and did work on conic sections . Her works are lost, but are referred to in the Suda lexicon. She was the daughter of the mathematician and philosopher Theon of Alexandria (he was also the last head of the Museum at Alexandria); [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia/ Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''hypodermic syringe'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 23; [[hypodermic syringe | DISCUSSION ]]<br /> <br /> '''Hypopsammotic Survival Apparatus'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 425; invented by Roswell Bounce, &quot;providing a practical way to submerge oneself beneath the sands and still be able to breath, walk around, and so forth&quot;<br /> <br /> {{ATD_Alpha_Nav}}</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_1-25&diff=3403 2006-12-07T19:34:08Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* Page 11 */</p> <hr /> <div>:'''&lt;big&gt;Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.&lt;/big&gt;'''&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;<br /> <br /> '''Copyright page'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> 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 &quot;Penguin Press&quot; as the publisher, as could be expected, and it seems likely that the substitution of &quot;Penguin Press&quot; with &quot;Viking&quot; is one of many typographical errors in the book (see [[errata]]). <br /> <br /> '''Dedication'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Most of Pynchon's novels contain dedications-- ''Mason &amp; Dixon'' (&quot;For Melanie, and for Jackson&quot;) , ''Vineland'' (&quot;For my mother and father&quot;), and ''Gravity's Rainbow'' (&quot;For Richard Fariña&quot;)-- but not so ''Against the Day,'' as published. Advance reading copies of the book did contain the words &quot;Dedication TK&quot; in italics, but this is simply [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Come publisher-speak] for &quot;dedication to come.&quot; 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. <br /> <br /> '''&quot;It's always night, or we wouldn't need light.&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Epigraph by 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).<br /> <br /> ==Page 1==<br /> <br /> '''The Light Over the Ranges'''&lt;br&gt; <br /> The singular 'range' seems called for-- so why plural here?<br /> :Range is defined in the Oxford American Dictionary as &quot;a line or series of mountains or hills : the coastal ranges of the northwest,&quot; so perhaps &quot;range&quot; or &quot;ranges&quot; can be used to denote a number of mountains.<br /> <br /> ==Page 3==<br /> <br /> '''&quot;Now single up all lines!&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Docked ships normally use doubled lines, then remove them in two stages when leaving the port. Pynchon was in the Navy for a spell and &quot;single up all lines&quot; is a common enough nautical term. But the opening line has many possible connotations. The Modern Word's Quail [http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/pynchon_atd.html writes] that &quot;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.&quot; For more on lines, see page 146. One may also want to pay attention to sections on 'vectors' (represented by arrows). &quot;Single up all lines&quot; is used in its normal nautical context in ''V.'', 11; ''COL49'', 31; ''Gravity's Rainbow'', 489; and ''Mason &amp; Dixon'', 258, 260. Perhaps we can understand this &quot;line&quot; as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but ''Vineland''?)--in preparation for a voyage to . . . .?<br /> <br /> '''&quot;Cheerly now...handsomely...very well!!&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Cheerly means cheerily. Just as 'single up all lines' is used in nautical context in ''V.'', so 'cheerly' appears on page 54 of ''Mason &amp; Dixon'' (&quot;Cheerly. Cheerly, then, Lads...&quot;).<br /> <br /> '''''Inconvenience'''''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Pynchon's fictional navy includes the USS Scaffold and the Susanna Squaducci (V), and the John E. Badass (GR).<br /> <br /> '''patriotic bunting'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> AtD has many echoes of Doctorow's &quot;Ragtime&quot;: Doctorow fictionalises the same era, including anarchists, bombings, and early Hollywood.<br /> <br /> '''five-lad crew'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Randolph St. Cosmo (ship commander), Lindsay Noseworth (master-at-arms), Miles Blundell (handyman apprentice), Darby Suckling (factotum and mascot), and Chick Counterfly. 'Lad' suggests all are under 18 years old. <br /> : &quot;lad&quot; can also mean a young man (not necessarily under 18) and, in general, be used by a commanding officer toward his underlings of many ages.<br /> <br /> '''The Chums of Chance'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> To be chummy with chance might mean lucky, fond of gambling, fond of chaos, irrational, or anarchist. 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, &quot;The Boys.&quot; <br /> <br /> '''World's Columbian Exposition'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> 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. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry].<br /> <br /> ==Page 5==<br /> <br /> '''Pugnax'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> The name meaning, in Latin, &quot;likes to fight.&quot; Pugnax's fantastic intelligence recalls another intelligent dog, the Learned English Dog in ''Mason &amp; Dixon''. His manner of speech is also reminiscent of the mystery-solving cartoon dog Scooby-Doo, and [http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&amp;month=0612&amp;msg=112507&amp;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.<br /> <br /> '''&quot;...during a confidential assignment in Our Nation's Capitol (see ''The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit'')...&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> This could be seen as a criticism of American Presidents present or past, or perhaps the Vietnam War, which Pynchon himself opposed.<br /> <br /> May also refer to President Bush, considering the Pynchon-authored [[Against the Day description|Amazon.com book description]] which included &quot;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.&quot;<br /> <br /> ==Page 6==<br /> <br /> '''''Princess Casamassima'''''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Published 1886. [http://www.henryjames.org.uk/pcasa/home.htm etext]<br /> <br /> '''''Krakatoa'''''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Erupted 1883.<br /> <br /> '''Heino Vanderjuice'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Hey no wonderjuice???<br /> <br /> '''&quot;...anemometer of the Robinson's type&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Cup anemometer invented in 1846 by 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.<br /> <br /> ==Page 7==<br /> <br /> '''Porfirio Diaz'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> President of Mexico 1876-1880, 1884-1911. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porfirio_D%C3%ADaz Wikipedia]<br /> <br /> '''&quot;'Dick' Counterfly had absquatulated....&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Means to move away quickly, usually to avoid capture. Apparently a mock-Latinate formation, &quot;to go off and squat somewhere else.&quot; Great verb!<br /> <br /> ==Page 8==<br /> <br /> '''&quot;which directs us never to interfere with legal customs of any locality down at which we may happen to have touched&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Like the Prime Directive in ''Star Trek''.<br /> <br /> '''way better than a mile a minute'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> New Orleans to Chicago is 834 miles, slightly less than 14 hours at 60 miles/hour.<br /> <br /> ==Page 9==<br /> <br /> '''&quot;Do not imagine, that in coming aboard ''Inconvenience'' you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual...&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> This may be Pynchon directly addressing the reader. Given that his introductory blurb 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.<br /> <br /> '''&quot;Going up is like going north.&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> 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.<br /> <br /> ==Page 11==<br /> <br /> '''plummet'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Bad physics here&amp;mdash;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.<br /> <br /> ==Page 12==<br /> <br /> '''Liverpool Kiss'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> A head butt.<br /> <br /> '''Herr Riemann'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> 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].<br /> <br /> ==Page 13==<br /> '''&quot;...quite as if were some giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinizing from above, in a spirit of constructive censure.&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> 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&amp;page_number=4&amp;template_id=1&amp;sort_order=1 At MoMa's Online Collection]<br /> <br /> Reference also to ATD Pg. 51 and &quot;The Unsleeping Eye&quot;, an apparent reference to Pinkerton's competing PI agency.<br /> <br /> ==Page 14==<br /> <br /> '''Jacob's-ladder'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Used here as &quot;a marine ladder of rope or chain with wooden or iron rungs&quot; (Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged) but is suggestive of Jacob's ladder in Genesis:<br /> <br /> 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)<br /> <br /> ==Page 15==<br /> <br /> '''ukulelist'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Ukuleles also appear in ''Gravity's Rainbow'' and ''Vineland''. According to Jules Siegel's article, &quot;Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?&quot;, Pynchon himself played the ukulele in college.<br /> <br /> '''Beaufort Scale'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Developed 1805.<br /> <br /> ==Page 17==<br /> <br /> '''cubeb'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 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] Also appears in ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' page 118.<br /> <br /> '''&quot;...goldurn Keeley Cure&quot;'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> A treatment for alcohol, nicotine and narcotic addiction involving injections of &quot;bichloride&quot; or &quot;double chloride&quot; of gold, and also known as the &quot;gold cure&quot;. Named for Dr. Leslie E. Keeley, who opened the first of many Keeley Institutes in 1879.<br /> <br /> ==Page 18==<br /> <br /> '''headgear'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Description vaguely reminiscent of &quot;Madame Bovary&quot;. [http://robotwisdom.com/flaubert/bovary/bovary1.html [notes]]<br /> <br /> '''eclipse green'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Apparently an actual shade. [http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/DIO_DRO/DIRECT.html [cite]]<br /> <br /> '''A.C.'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Athletic Club.<br /> <br /> '''(&quot;Penny&quot;) Black'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> The first postage stamp (1840) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black [Wikipedia]]<br /> <br /> '''Tzigane'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Meaning &quot;gypsy&quot;. Also a piece by Ravel. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzigane_(Ravel) [Wikipedia]]<br /> <br /> '''Egypt'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Or Little Egypt. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Egypt_(region) [Wikipedia]]<br /> <br /> ==Page 22==<br /> <br /> '''Isandhlwana'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> 1879 battle. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isandhlwana [Wikipedia]]<br /> <br /> ==Page 23==<br /> <br /> '''Tarahumara'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> See also page 388ff. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarahumara [Wikipedia]]<br /> <br /> ==Page 24==<br /> <br /> '''the curse of Scotland'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Dates from 1710. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Scotland [Wikipedia]]<br /> <br /> '''Cracker Jack'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Introduced at 1893 Expo. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_Jack [Wikipedia]]<br /> <br /> '''New Levee district'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Chicago's redlight district c1890. [http://www.ipsn.org/genesis.htm [cite]]<br /> <br /> '''Epworth League'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> A Methodist youth organization founded in 1889. [http://www.southernmethodistchurch.org/id48.htm [cite]]<br /> <br /> ==Page 25==<br /> <br /> '''Haymarket bomb'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> 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 &quot;a bomb-throwing anarchist.&quot; 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].<br /> <br /> '''duck soup'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Meaning &quot;an easy task,&quot; but also the name of a Marx Bros. movie. Perhaps relevant, given the cameo by Groucho promised on the book sleeve.<br /> <br /> ==Annotation Index==<br /> {{ATD PbP}}</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_1-25&diff=3402 2006-12-07T19:30:24Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* Page 5 */ Pugnax as Gromit?</p> <hr /> <div>:'''&lt;big&gt;Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.&lt;/big&gt;'''&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;<br /> <br /> '''Copyright page'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> 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 &quot;Penguin Press&quot; as the publisher, as could be expected, and it seems likely that the substitution of &quot;Penguin Press&quot; with &quot;Viking&quot; is one of many typographical errors in the book (see [[errata]]). <br /> <br /> '''Dedication'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Most of Pynchon's novels contain dedications-- ''Mason &amp; Dixon'' (&quot;For Melanie, and for Jackson&quot;) , ''Vineland'' (&quot;For my mother and father&quot;), and ''Gravity's Rainbow'' (&quot;For Richard Fariña&quot;)-- but not so ''Against the Day,'' as published. Advance reading copies of the book did contain the words &quot;Dedication TK&quot; in italics, but this is simply [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Come publisher-speak] for &quot;dedication to come.&quot; 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. <br /> <br /> '''&quot;It's always night, or we wouldn't need light.&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Epigraph by 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).<br /> <br /> ==Page 1==<br /> <br /> '''The Light Over the Ranges'''&lt;br&gt; <br /> The singular 'range' seems called for-- so why plural here?<br /> :Range is defined in the Oxford American Dictionary as &quot;a line or series of mountains or hills : the coastal ranges of the northwest,&quot; so perhaps &quot;range&quot; or &quot;ranges&quot; can be used to denote a number of mountains.<br /> <br /> ==Page 3==<br /> <br /> '''&quot;Now single up all lines!&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Docked ships normally use doubled lines, then remove them in two stages when leaving the port. Pynchon was in the Navy for a spell and &quot;single up all lines&quot; is a common enough nautical term. But the opening line has many possible connotations. The Modern Word's Quail [http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/pynchon_atd.html writes] that &quot;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.&quot; For more on lines, see page 146. One may also want to pay attention to sections on 'vectors' (represented by arrows). &quot;Single up all lines&quot; is used in its normal nautical context in ''V.'', 11; ''COL49'', 31; ''Gravity's Rainbow'', 489; and ''Mason &amp; Dixon'', 258, 260. Perhaps we can understand this &quot;line&quot; as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but ''Vineland''?)--in preparation for a voyage to . . . .?<br /> <br /> '''&quot;Cheerly now...handsomely...very well!!&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Cheerly means cheerily. Just as 'single up all lines' is used in nautical context in ''V.'', so 'cheerly' appears on page 54 of ''Mason &amp; Dixon'' (&quot;Cheerly. Cheerly, then, Lads...&quot;).<br /> <br /> '''''Inconvenience'''''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Pynchon's fictional navy includes the USS Scaffold and the Susanna Squaducci (V), and the John E. Badass (GR).<br /> <br /> '''patriotic bunting'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> AtD has many echoes of Doctorow's &quot;Ragtime&quot;: Doctorow fictionalises the same era, including anarchists, bombings, and early Hollywood.<br /> <br /> '''five-lad crew'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Randolph St. Cosmo (ship commander), Lindsay Noseworth (master-at-arms), Miles Blundell (handyman apprentice), Darby Suckling (factotum and mascot), and Chick Counterfly. 'Lad' suggests all are under 18 years old. <br /> : &quot;lad&quot; can also mean a young man (not necessarily under 18) and, in general, be used by a commanding officer toward his underlings of many ages.<br /> <br /> '''The Chums of Chance'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> To be chummy with chance might mean lucky, fond of gambling, fond of chaos, irrational, or anarchist. 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, &quot;The Boys.&quot; <br /> <br /> '''World's Columbian Exposition'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> 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. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry].<br /> <br /> ==Page 5==<br /> <br /> '''Pugnax'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> The name meaning, in Latin, &quot;likes to fight.&quot; Pugnax's fantastic intelligence recalls another intelligent dog, the Learned English Dog in ''Mason &amp; Dixon''. His manner of speech is also reminiscent of the mystery-solving cartoon dog Scooby-Doo, and [http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&amp;month=0612&amp;msg=112507&amp;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.<br /> <br /> '''&quot;...during a confidential assignment in Our Nation's Capitol (see ''The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit'')...&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> This could be seen as a criticism of American Presidents present or past, or perhaps the Vietnam War, which Pynchon himself opposed.<br /> <br /> May also refer to President Bush, considering the Pynchon-authored [[Against the Day description|Amazon.com book description]] which included &quot;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.&quot;<br /> <br /> ==Page 6==<br /> <br /> '''''Princess Casamassima'''''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Published 1886. [http://www.henryjames.org.uk/pcasa/home.htm etext]<br /> <br /> '''''Krakatoa'''''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Erupted 1883.<br /> <br /> '''Heino Vanderjuice'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Hey no wonderjuice???<br /> <br /> '''&quot;...anemometer of the Robinson's type&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Cup anemometer invented in 1846 by 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.<br /> <br /> ==Page 7==<br /> <br /> '''Porfirio Diaz'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> President of Mexico 1876-1880, 1884-1911. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porfirio_D%C3%ADaz Wikipedia]<br /> <br /> '''&quot;'Dick' Counterfly had absquatulated....&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Means to move away quickly, usually to avoid capture. Apparently a mock-Latinate formation, &quot;to go off and squat somewhere else.&quot; Great verb!<br /> <br /> ==Page 8==<br /> <br /> '''&quot;which directs us never to interfere with legal customs of any locality down at which we may happen to have touched&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Like the Prime Directive in ''Star Trek''.<br /> <br /> '''way better than a mile a minute'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> New Orleans to Chicago is 834 miles, slightly less than 14 hours at 60 miles/hour.<br /> <br /> ==Page 9==<br /> <br /> '''&quot;Do not imagine, that in coming aboard ''Inconvenience'' you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual...&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> This may be Pynchon directly addressing the reader. Given that his introductory blurb 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.<br /> <br /> '''&quot;Going up is like going north.&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> 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.<br /> <br /> ==Page 11==<br /> <br /> '''plummet'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Bad physics here-- closing the valve wouldn't slow the descent. (As hydrogen escapes, the weight increases, and the speed of descent increases, but when the valve is closed the weight can't decrease, so the speed is unchanged.)<br /> <br /> ==Page 12==<br /> <br /> '''Liverpool Kiss'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> A head butt.<br /> <br /> '''Herr Riemann'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> 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].<br /> <br /> ==Page 13==<br /> '''&quot;...quite as if were some giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinizing from above, in a spirit of constructive censure.&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> 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&amp;page_number=4&amp;template_id=1&amp;sort_order=1 At MoMa's Online Collection]<br /> <br /> Reference also to ATD Pg. 51 and &quot;The Unsleeping Eye&quot;, an apparent reference to Pinkerton's competing PI agency.<br /> <br /> ==Page 14==<br /> <br /> '''Jacob's-ladder'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Used here as &quot;a marine ladder of rope or chain with wooden or iron rungs&quot; (Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged) but is suggestive of Jacob's ladder in Genesis:<br /> <br /> 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)<br /> <br /> ==Page 15==<br /> <br /> '''ukulelist'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Ukuleles also appear in ''Gravity's Rainbow'' and ''Vineland''. According to Jules Siegel's article, &quot;Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?&quot;, Pynchon himself played the ukulele in college.<br /> <br /> '''Beaufort Scale'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Developed 1805.<br /> <br /> ==Page 17==<br /> <br /> '''cubeb'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 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] Also appears in ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' page 118.<br /> <br /> '''&quot;...goldurn Keeley Cure&quot;'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> A treatment for alcohol, nicotine and narcotic addiction involving injections of &quot;bichloride&quot; or &quot;double chloride&quot; of gold, and also known as the &quot;gold cure&quot;. Named for Dr. Leslie E. Keeley, who opened the first of many Keeley Institutes in 1879.<br /> <br /> ==Page 18==<br /> <br /> '''headgear'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Description vaguely reminiscent of &quot;Madame Bovary&quot;. [http://robotwisdom.com/flaubert/bovary/bovary1.html [notes]]<br /> <br /> '''eclipse green'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Apparently an actual shade. [http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/DIO_DRO/DIRECT.html [cite]]<br /> <br /> '''A.C.'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Athletic Club.<br /> <br /> '''(&quot;Penny&quot;) Black'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> The first postage stamp (1840) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black [Wikipedia]]<br /> <br /> '''Tzigane'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Meaning &quot;gypsy&quot;. Also a piece by Ravel. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzigane_(Ravel) [Wikipedia]]<br /> <br /> '''Egypt'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Or Little Egypt. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Egypt_(region) [Wikipedia]]<br /> <br /> ==Page 22==<br /> <br /> '''Isandhlwana'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> 1879 battle. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isandhlwana [Wikipedia]]<br /> <br /> ==Page 23==<br /> <br /> '''Tarahumara'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> See also page 388ff. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarahumara [Wikipedia]]<br /> <br /> ==Page 24==<br /> <br /> '''the curse of Scotland'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Dates from 1710. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Scotland [Wikipedia]]<br /> <br /> '''Cracker Jack'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Introduced at 1893 Expo. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_Jack [Wikipedia]]<br /> <br /> '''New Levee district'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Chicago's redlight district c1890. [http://www.ipsn.org/genesis.htm [cite]]<br /> <br /> '''Epworth League'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> A Methodist youth organization founded in 1889. [http://www.southernmethodistchurch.org/id48.htm [cite]]<br /> <br /> ==Page 25==<br /> <br /> '''Haymarket bomb'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> 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 &quot;a bomb-throwing anarchist.&quot; 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].<br /> <br /> '''duck soup'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Meaning &quot;an easy task,&quot; but also the name of a Marx Bros. movie. Perhaps relevant, given the cameo by Groucho promised on the book sleeve.<br /> <br /> ==Annotation Index==<br /> {{ATD PbP}}</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_1-25&diff=3366 2006-12-07T01:53:31Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* Page 5 */ wikilink</p> <hr /> <div>:'''&lt;big&gt;Please keep these annotations SPOILER-FREE by not revealing information from later pages in the novel.&lt;/big&gt;'''&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;<br /> <br /> '''Copyright page'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> 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 &quot;Penguin Press&quot; as the publisher, as could be expected, and it seems likely that the substitution of &quot;Penguin Press&quot; with &quot;Viking&quot; is one of many typographical errors in the book (see [[errata]]). <br /> <br /> '''Dedication'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Most of Pynchon's novels contain dedications-- ''Mason &amp; Dixon'' (&quot;For Melanie, and for Jackson&quot;) , ''Vineland'' (&quot;For my mother and father&quot;), and ''Gravity's Rainbow'' (&quot;For Richard Fariña&quot;)-- but not so ''Against the Day,'' as published. Advance reading copies of the book did contain the words &quot;Dedication TK&quot; in italics, but this is simply [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Come publisher-speak] for &quot;dedication to come.&quot; 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. <br /> <br /> '''&quot;It's always night, or we wouldn't need light.&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Epigraph by 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).<br /> <br /> ==Page 1==<br /> <br /> '''The Light Over the Ranges'''&lt;br&gt; <br /> The singular 'range' seems called for-- so why plural here?<br /> :Range is define in the Oxford American Dictionary as &quot;a line or series of mountains or hills : the coastal ranges of the northwest,&quot; so perhaps &quot;range&quot; or &quot;ranges&quot; can be used to denote a number of mountains.<br /> <br /> ==Page 3==<br /> <br /> '''&quot;Now single up all lines!&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Docked ships normally use doubled lines, then remove them in two stages when leaving the port. Pynchon was in the Navy for a spell and &quot;single up all lines&quot; is a common enough nautical term. But the opening line has many possible connotations. The Modern Word's Quail [http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/pynchon_atd.html writes] that &quot;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.&quot; For more on lines, see page 146. One may also want to pay attention to sections on 'vectors' (represented by arrows). &quot;Single up all lines&quot; is used in its normal nautical context in ''V.'', 11; ''COL49'', 31; ''Gravity's Rainbow'', 489; and ''Mason &amp; Dixon'', 258, 260. Perhaps we can understand this &quot;line&quot; as a text-string linking Pynchon's novels together (all but ''Vineland''?)--in preparation for a voyage to . . . .?<br /> <br /> '''&quot;Cheerly now...handsomely...very well!!&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Cheerly means cheerily. Just as 'single up all lines' is used in nautical context in ''V.'', so 'cheerly' appears on page 54 of ''Mason &amp; Dixon'' (&quot;Cheerly. Cheerly, then, Lads...&quot;).<br /> <br /> '''''Inconvenience'''''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Pynchon's fictional navy includes the USS Scaffold and the Susanna Squaducci (V), and the John E. Badass (GR).<br /> <br /> '''patriotic bunting'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> AtD has many echoes of Doctorow's &quot;Ragtime&quot;: Doctorow fictionalises the same era, including anarchists, bombings, and early Hollywood.<br /> <br /> '''five-lad crew'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Randolph St. Cosmo (ship commander), Lindsay Noseworth (master-at-arms), Miles Blundell (handyman apprentice), Darby Suckling (factotum and mascot), and Chick Counterfly. 'Lad' suggests all are under 18 years old. <br /> : &quot;lad&quot; can also mean a young man (not necessarily under 18) and, in general, be used by a commanding officer toward his underlings of many ages.<br /> <br /> '''The Chums of Chance'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> To be chummy with chance might mean lucky, fond of gambling, fond of chaos, irrational, or anarchist. 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, &quot;The Boys.&quot; <br /> <br /> '''World's Columbian Exposition'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> 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. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_Columbian_Exposition Wikipedia entry].<br /> <br /> ==Page 5==<br /> <br /> '''Pugnax'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> The name meaning, in Latin, &quot;likes to fight.&quot; Pugnax's fantastic intelligence recalls another intelligent dog, the Learned English Dog in ''Mason &amp; Dixon''. Pugnax's manner of speech is also reminiscent of the mystery-solving cartoon dog &quot;Scooby-Doo.&quot;<br /> <br /> '''&quot;...during a confidential assignment in Our Nation's Capitol (see ''The Chums of Chance and the Evil Halfwit'')...&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> This could be seen as a criticism of American Presidents present or past, or perhaps the Vietnam War, which Pynchon himself opposed.<br /> <br /> May also refer to President Bush, considering the Pynchon-authored [[Against the Day description|Amazon.com book description]] which included &quot;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.&quot;<br /> <br /> ==Page 6==<br /> <br /> '''''Princess Casamassima'''''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Published 1886. [http://www.henryjames.org.uk/pcasa/home.htm etext]<br /> <br /> '''''Krakatoa'''''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Erupted 1883.<br /> <br /> '''Heino Vanderjuice'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Hey no wonderjuice???<br /> <br /> '''&quot;...anemometer of the Robinson's type&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Cup anemometer invented in 1846 by 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.<br /> <br /> ==Page 7==<br /> <br /> '''Porfirio Diaz'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> President of Mexico 1876-1880, 1884-1911. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porfirio_D%C3%ADaz Wikipedia]<br /> <br /> '''&quot;'Dick' Counterfly had absquatulated....&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Means to move away quickly, usually to avoid capture. Apparently a mock-Latinate formation, &quot;to go off and squat somewhere else.&quot; Great verb!<br /> <br /> ==Page 8==<br /> <br /> '''&quot;which directs us never to interfere with legal customs of any locality down at which we may happen to have touched&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Like the Prime Directive in ''Star Trek''.<br /> <br /> '''way better than a mile a minute'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> New Orleans to Chicago is 834 miles, slightly less than 14 hours at 60 miles/hour.<br /> <br /> ==Page 9==<br /> <br /> '''&quot;Do not imagine, that in coming aboard ''Inconvenience'' you have escaped into any realm of the counterfactual...&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> This may be Pynchon directly addressing the reader. Given that his introductory blurb 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.<br /> <br /> '''&quot;Going up is like going north.&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> 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.<br /> <br /> ==Page 11==<br /> <br /> '''plummet'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Bad physics here-- closing the valve wouldn't slow the descent. (As hydrogen escapes, the weight increases, and the speed of descent increases, but when the valve is closed the weight can't decrease, so the speed is unchanged.)<br /> <br /> ==Page 12==<br /> <br /> '''Liverpool Kiss'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> A head butt.<br /> <br /> '''Herr Riemann'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> 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].<br /> <br /> ==Page 13==<br /> '''&quot;...quite as if were some giant eyeball, perhaps that of Society itself, ever scrutinizing from above, in a spirit of constructive censure.&quot;'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> 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&amp;page_number=4&amp;template_id=1&amp;sort_order=1 At MoMa's Online Collection]<br /> <br /> Reference also to ATD Pg. 51 and &quot;The Unsleeping Eye&quot;, an apparent reference to Pinkerton's competing PI agency.<br /> <br /> ==Page 14==<br /> <br /> '''Jacob's-ladder'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Used here as &quot;a marine ladder of rope or chain with wooden or iron rungs&quot; (Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged) but is suggestive of Jacob's ladder in Genesis:<br /> <br /> 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)<br /> <br /> ==Page 15==<br /> <br /> '''ukulelist'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Ukuleles also appear in ''Gravity's Rainbow'' and ''Vineland''. According to Jules Siegel's article, &quot;Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?&quot;, Pynchon himself played the ukulele in college.<br /> <br /> '''Beaufort Scale'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Developed 1805.<br /> <br /> ==Page 17==<br /> <br /> '''cubeb'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 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] Also appears in ''Gravity's Rainbow,'' page 118.<br /> <br /> '''&quot;...goldurn Keeley Cure&quot;'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> A treatment for alcohol, nicotine and narcotic addiction involving injections of &quot;bichloride&quot; or &quot;double chloride&quot; of gold, and also known as the &quot;gold cure&quot;. Named for Dr. Leslie E. Keeley, who opened the first of many Keeley Institutes in 1879.<br /> <br /> ==Page 18==<br /> <br /> '''headgear'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Description vaguely reminiscent of &quot;Madame Bovary&quot;. [http://robotwisdom.com/flaubert/bovary/bovary1.html [notes]]<br /> <br /> '''eclipse green'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Apparently an actual shade. [http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/DIO_DRO/DIRECT.html [cite]]<br /> <br /> '''A.C.'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Athletic Club.<br /> <br /> '''(&quot;Penny&quot;) Black'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> The first postage stamp (1840) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Black [Wikipedia]]<br /> <br /> '''Tzigane'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Meaning &quot;gypsy&quot;. Also a piece by Ravel. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzigane_(Ravel) [Wikipedia]]<br /> <br /> '''Egypt'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Or Little Egypt. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Egypt_(region) [Wikipedia]]<br /> <br /> ==Page 22==<br /> <br /> '''Isandhlwana'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> 1879 battle. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isandhlwana [Wikipedia]]<br /> <br /> ==Page 23==<br /> <br /> '''Tarahumara'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> See also page 388ff. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarahumara [Wikipedia]]<br /> <br /> ==Page 24==<br /> <br /> '''the curse of Scotland'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Dates from 1710. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_Scotland [Wikipedia]]<br /> <br /> '''Cracker Jack'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Introduced at 1893 Expo. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_Jack [Wikipedia]]<br /> <br /> '''New Levee district'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Chicago's redlight district c1890. [http://www.ipsn.org/genesis.htm [cite]]<br /> <br /> '''Epworth League'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> A Methodist youth organization founded in 1889. [http://www.southernmethodistchurch.org/id48.htm [cite]]<br /> <br /> ==Page 25==<br /> <br /> '''Haymarket bomb'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> 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 &quot;a bomb-throwing anarchist.&quot; 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].<br /> <br /> '''duck soup'''&lt;br&gt;<br /> Meaning &quot;an easy task,&quot; but also the name of a Marx Bros. movie. Perhaps relevant, given the cameo by Groucho promised on the book sleeve.</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=P&diff=3365 2006-12-07T01:44:46Z

<p>BlakeStacey: expand entry on Pythagoras</p> <hr /> <div>'''Packer's Inn'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 31;<br /> <br /> '''Paco'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 375; trumpet player<br /> <br /> '''Padzhitnoff, Igor (&quot;Padzy&quot;)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 123; Randolph St. Cosmo's &quot;mysterious Russian counterpart&quot;. c.f. Alexy Pazhitnov, inventor of Tetris.<br /> <br /> '''''Palacio del Cristal, El'''''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 378; in Guanajuato;<br /> <br /> '''Palmer House'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 30; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_House Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''pantechnicon'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 611;<br /> <br /> '''Paramorphoscope'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 435; 436; ''paramorfico'', 568; used to view map of Shambhala, 609;<br /> <br /> '''Paranoia'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 33; &quot;counter-transformer&quot; 34; 54; 94; &quot;Something&quot; 132; 180; paranoia querulans ([[Paranoia Querulans|litigious paranoia]]), 455; Ostend as &quot;western anchors of a continental system&quot; 567; &quot;silent army of operatives&quot; from Hell, 586; 624; 681;<br /> <br /> '''Paris Commune'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 372;<br /> <br /> '''Parry, Hubert'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 49; Blake's ''Jerusalem'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Parry Wikpedia Entry]<br /> <br /> '''Parsons-Short Auxetophone'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 228; used to record &quot;all T.W.I.T.-sanctioned sittings&quot;<br /> <br /> '''Patio Method'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 374; silver extraction method<br /> <br /> '''Pearl Street'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 333; location of Vibe Corp.<br /> <br /> '''Peary, Robert Edwin (1856-1920)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 149; Peary was an American explorer who claimed to have been the first person, on April 6, 1909, to reach the geographic North Pole; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Peary Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''''pelota'' games'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 7; Pelota (in Basque and Catalan, pilota; in French pelote, from Latin pila) is a name for a variety of court sports played with a ball using one's hand, a racket, a wooden bat (pala), or a basket propulsor, against a wall (frontón in Spanish, frontoi in Basque, frontó in Catalan) or, more traditionally, with two teams face to face separated by a line on the ground or a net.<br /> <br /> '''Penhallow, Constance'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 127; Iceland spar magnates, in Iceland; Hallow means to reserve as holy.<br /> <br /> '''Penhallow, Hunter'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 127; grandson of Constance; witnessing Tunguska, 154; &quot;English painter type&quot; 575; one of the Trespassers? 576; switch to nocturnes, 580;<br /> <br /> '''''permanent siege'''''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 19;<br /> <br /> '''perpetual-motion machine'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 6; Perpetual motion refers to a condition in which an object continues to move indefinitely without being driven by an external source of energy. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Peter and Paul Fortress'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 595; in Russia<br /> <br /> '''''p&amp;eacute;troleurs'' of Paris'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 19;<br /> <br /> '''P.E.T.N.'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 182; PETN (''Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate'', also known as ''Penthrite'') is one of the strongest known high explosives, with a relative effectiveness factor (R.E. factor) of 1.66. It is more sensitive to shock or friction than TNT or tetryl, and it is never used alone as a booster; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PETN Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Peychaud, Monsieur'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 368; It is said that the Sazerac drink was invented by Antoine Amadie Peychaud, a Creole apothecary who moved to New Orleans from the West Indies and set up shop in the French Quarter in the early 1800s. He dispensed a proprietary mix of aromatic bitters from an old family recipe, to relieve the ails of his clients (Peychaud's Bitters are still made in New Orleans and sold today, and are an essential component of any truly complete bar), and around the 1830s he became famous for a toddy he made for his friends. It consisted of French brandy mixed with his secret blend of bitters, a splash of water and a bit of sugar. According to legend he served his drink in the large end of an egg cup that was called a coquetier in French, and some say that the Americanized pronunciation of this as &quot;cocktail&quot; gave this type of drink its name (unlikely as that may be); ([http://www.gumbopages.com/food/beverages/sazerac.html From The Gumbo Pages. Read on...])<br /> <br /> '''Philippe'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 655; in Swiss Alps, drilling with Reef; alumnus of Petit Roquette child's prison, 658;<br /> <br /> '''Philosopher's Stone'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 77; The philosopher's stone, in Latin ''philosophi lapis'', is a legendary substance that supposedly could turn inexpensive metals such as lead into gold (&quot;chrysopoeia&quot;) and/or create an elixir that would make humans younger, thus delaying death. It was a longtime &quot;holy grail&quot; of Western alchemy; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher's_stone Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Philosophic Mercury'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 77; Mercury minus &quot;everything not essential&quot;<br /> <br /> '''Piggot's'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 678;<br /> <br /> '''Pigs'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> &quot;pigs can fly&quot; 427; &quot;'''P'''itch '''I'''ntegrity '''G'''uard&quot; 421;<br /> <br /> '''Pike's Peak'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 112; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike%27s_Peak Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Pinkerton, Allan (1819-1884)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 43; Allan Pinkerton was a U.S. detective and spy, best known for creating the Pinkerton Agency, the first detective agency.; &quot;The Unsleeping Eye&quot; 51; 112; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Pinkerton Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''''Plafond Luminex'''''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 687;<br /> <br /> '''plasmic hysteresis'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 555;<br /> <br /> '''P.L.M.'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 381;<br /> <br /> '''''podpol'niki'''''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 663; &quot;underground men&quot; in Russia<br /> <br /> '''Polo, Marco (1254-1324)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 432; the Venetian, greatest of medieval travellers. Venetian genealogies and traditions of uncertain value trace the Polo family to Sebenico in Dalmatia, and before the end of the 11th century one Domenico Polo is found in the great council of the republic (1094). But the ascertained line of the traveller begins only with his grandfather.<br /> <br /> Polo was the first traveller to trace a route across the whole longitude of Asia, naming and describing kingdom after kingdom which he had seen; the first to speak of the new and brilliant court which had been established at Peking; the first to reveal China in all its wealth and vastness, and to tell of the nations on its borders; the first to tell more of Tibet than its name, to speak of Burma, of Laos, of Siam, of Cochin-China, of Japan, of Java, of Sumatra and of other islands of the archipelago, of the Nicobar and Andaman Islands, of Ceylon and its sacred peak, of India but as a country seen and partially explored; the first in medieval times to give any distinct account of the secluded Christian Empire of Abyssinia, and of the semi-Christian island of Sokotra, and to speak, however dimly, of Zanzibar, and of the vast and distant Madagascar; whilst he carries us also to the remotely opposite region of Siberia and the Arctic shores, to speak of dog-sledges, white bears and reindeerriding Tunguses; [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Marco_Polo From the 11th Edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica]; 569;<br /> <br /> '''Ponghill, Brad'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 174; youngest brother of Burke<br /> <br /> '''Ponghill, Buddy'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 174; brother of Burke<br /> <br /> '''Ponghill, Burke'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 172; Editor of the ''Lodazal Weekly Tidings''<br /> <br /> '''''Poussin'''''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 590;<br /> <br /> '''Poutine'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 468; little girl in Mayva's ice-cream parlor, Cone Amor; also the name of a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poutine French-Canadian dish].<br /> <br /> '''Prandtl, Ludwig'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 603; Bavarian physicist (1875&amp;ndash;1953) who made key contributions to aerodynamics, most famously the discovery of the &quot;boundary layer&quot; (an zone of still air around a moving object, the physical phenomenon behind the dust which accumulates on fan blades).<br /> <br /> '''Priest, Judas'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 656;<br /> <br /> '''Prime Number Theorem'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 590, 597; a theorem giving an approximation to the number of prime numbers less than any given integer ''N.'' The specific theorem most commonly invoked under this name is the result by Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777&amp;ndash;1855), who in an 1849 letter to Johann Franz Encke (1791&amp;ndash;1865) proved that the number of primes less than ''N'' is approximately given by the integral from 2 to ''N'' of 1 over the natural logarithm of ''x.'' (Earlier, at the age of 15, Gauss had proposed that the number of primes less than ''N'' was approximately ''N'' divided by the natural logarithm of ''N.'') Jacques Hadamard (1865&amp;ndash;1963) and Charles De la Vallée Poussin (1866&amp;ndash;1962) both proved this result independently in 1896. Knowing this result, one can prove that the ''N''th prime number is roughly ''N'' log ''N,'' for sufficiently large ''N.'' The Riemann hypothesis is equivalent to the assertion that the difference between Gauss's later estimate and the true value is never greater than ''cN''&lt;sup&gt;1/2&lt;/sup&gt;log ''N,'' for some number ''c.'' [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PrimeNumberTheorem.html Wolfram MathWorld entry]<br /> <br /> '''''Princess Casamassima, The'''''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 6; an Italian Romance; ''The Princess Casamassima'' is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in ''The Atlantic Monthly'' in 1885-1886 and then as a book in 1886. It is the story of an intelligent but confused young London bookbinder, Hyacinth Robinson, who becomes involved in radical politics and a terrorist assassination plot. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_Casamassima Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Privett, Nate'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 24; White City Investigations, 43; in Denver, 179;<br /> <br /> '''Propaganda of Deed'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 81; Propaganda of the deed is an anarchist doctrine that promotes the practical application of anarchist ideas in hopes that such actions will set an example and inspire others. A violent variant of the concept was popular around the world in the late 19th century. According to the 19th century take, it was thought that a spectacular action, such as a political assassination, would ignite a revolutionary fervor among the working classes. Peter Kropotkin, an early proponent of propaganda by the deed, wrote that &quot;A single deed is better propaganda than a thousand pamphlets.&quot; [http://www.infoshop.org/wiki/index.php/Propaganda_of_the_deed From the InfoShop Open Wiki]<br /> <br /> '''Provecho, Dwayne'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 379; in cell with Frank Traverse and Ewball; in Mexico, 642;<br /> <br /> '''Provenance, Wren'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> anthropologist...922; <br /> <br /> '''Pugnax'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 5; (Latin: ''pugnax'' = fond of fighting) sentient canine aboard ''The Inconvenience''; 17; Also, there's a bird called the Ruff (''Philomachus pugnax'') which is a medium-sized wader; cuisine, 111; 143; Buddha nature, 412; &quot;sophisticated defensive system&quot; 550;<br /> <br /> '''Pullman Strike'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 177; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_strike Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Pythagoras'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 500; Pythagoreans, 633; mathematician, philosopher and mystic (c. 569 BCE&amp;ndash;c. 475 BCE). Born in Samos, Ionia, he traveled in Egypt and eventually founded a school in Croton, located in what is now southern Italy. He is the earliest person known to have given a systematic proof of the geometrical proposition now called the Pythagorean Theorem; he or his close followers discovered the irrational numbers and the three-dimensional shape called the [http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/dodecahedron/ dodecahedron]. Furthermore, Pythagoras coined the term ''cosmos'' to express the order and patterning of nature, was the first to give observations showing that the Earth is spherical, and performed significant early experiments in judging how humans perceive sound. Any of these accomplishments would have earned Pythagoras an honorable place in the history of science, but his behavior and that of his followers contained &quot;deep ironies and contradictions,&quot; to use Carl Sagan's phrase. Pythagorean doctrine taught that knowledge should be kept secret from the masses, and moreover that the only way to understand the Cosmos was inner contemplation of mathematical ideas without observation or experiment. This attitude stands in stark contrast to the practical approach of Thales (c. 624 BCE&amp;ndash;c. 547), Democritus (c. 460 BCE&amp;ndash;c. 370 BCE) and other Ionians who grounded their speculations much more fully in observation. Elaborated and immortalized by Plato (c. 428 BCE&amp;ndash;c. 348 BCE), the Pythagorean doctrine became a font of anti-rationalism. [http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Pythagoras.html MacTutor biography]<br /> <br /> {{ATD_Alpha_Nav}}</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=P&diff=3364 2006-12-07T01:20:22Z

<p>BlakeStacey: more on the Prime Number Theorem</p> <hr /> <div>'''Packer's Inn'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 31;<br /> <br /> '''Paco'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 375; trumpet player<br /> <br /> '''Padzhitnoff, Igor (&quot;Padzy&quot;)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 123; Randolph St. Cosmo's &quot;mysterious Russian counterpart&quot;. c.f. Alexy Pazhitnov, inventor of Tetris.<br /> <br /> '''''Palacio del Cristal, El'''''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 378; in Guanajuato;<br /> <br /> '''Palmer House'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 30; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_House Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''pantechnicon'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 611;<br /> <br /> '''Paramorphoscope'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 435; 436; ''paramorfico'', 568; used to view map of Shambhala, 609;<br /> <br /> '''Paranoia'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 33; &quot;counter-transformer&quot; 34; 54; 94; &quot;Something&quot; 132; 180; paranoia querulans ([[Paranoia Querulans|litigious paranoia]]), 455; Ostend as &quot;western anchors of a continental system&quot; 567; &quot;silent army of operatives&quot; from Hell, 586; 624; 681;<br /> <br /> '''Paris Commune'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 372;<br /> <br /> '''Parry, Hubert'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 49; Blake's ''Jerusalem'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Parry Wikpedia Entry]<br /> <br /> '''Parsons-Short Auxetophone'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 228; used to record &quot;all T.W.I.T.-sanctioned sittings&quot;<br /> <br /> '''Patio Method'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 374; silver extraction method<br /> <br /> '''Pearl Street'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 333; location of Vibe Corp.<br /> <br /> '''Peary, Robert Edwin (1856-1920)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 149; Peary was an American explorer who claimed to have been the first person, on April 6, 1909, to reach the geographic North Pole; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Peary Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''''pelota'' games'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 7; Pelota (in Basque and Catalan, pilota; in French pelote, from Latin pila) is a name for a variety of court sports played with a ball using one's hand, a racket, a wooden bat (pala), or a basket propulsor, against a wall (frontón in Spanish, frontoi in Basque, frontó in Catalan) or, more traditionally, with two teams face to face separated by a line on the ground or a net.<br /> <br /> '''Penhallow, Constance'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 127; Iceland spar magnates, in Iceland; Hallow means to reserve as holy.<br /> <br /> '''Penhallow, Hunter'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 127; grandson of Constance; witnessing Tunguska, 154; &quot;English painter type&quot; 575; one of the Trespassers? 576; switch to nocturnes, 580;<br /> <br /> '''''permanent siege'''''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 19;<br /> <br /> '''perpetual-motion machine'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 6; Perpetual motion refers to a condition in which an object continues to move indefinitely without being driven by an external source of energy. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Peter and Paul Fortress'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 595; in Russia<br /> <br /> '''''p&amp;eacute;troleurs'' of Paris'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 19;<br /> <br /> '''P.E.T.N.'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 182; PETN (''Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate'', also known as ''Penthrite'') is one of the strongest known high explosives, with a relative effectiveness factor (R.E. factor) of 1.66. It is more sensitive to shock or friction than TNT or tetryl, and it is never used alone as a booster; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PETN Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Peychaud, Monsieur'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 368; It is said that the Sazerac drink was invented by Antoine Amadie Peychaud, a Creole apothecary who moved to New Orleans from the West Indies and set up shop in the French Quarter in the early 1800s. He dispensed a proprietary mix of aromatic bitters from an old family recipe, to relieve the ails of his clients (Peychaud's Bitters are still made in New Orleans and sold today, and are an essential component of any truly complete bar), and around the 1830s he became famous for a toddy he made for his friends. It consisted of French brandy mixed with his secret blend of bitters, a splash of water and a bit of sugar. According to legend he served his drink in the large end of an egg cup that was called a coquetier in French, and some say that the Americanized pronunciation of this as &quot;cocktail&quot; gave this type of drink its name (unlikely as that may be); ([http://www.gumbopages.com/food/beverages/sazerac.html From The Gumbo Pages. Read on...])<br /> <br /> '''Philippe'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 655; in Swiss Alps, drilling with Reef; alumnus of Petit Roquette child's prison, 658;<br /> <br /> '''Philosopher's Stone'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 77; The philosopher's stone, in Latin ''philosophi lapis'', is a legendary substance that supposedly could turn inexpensive metals such as lead into gold (&quot;chrysopoeia&quot;) and/or create an elixir that would make humans younger, thus delaying death. It was a longtime &quot;holy grail&quot; of Western alchemy; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher's_stone Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Philosophic Mercury'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 77; Mercury minus &quot;everything not essential&quot;<br /> <br /> '''Piggot's'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 678;<br /> <br /> '''Pigs'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> &quot;pigs can fly&quot; 427; &quot;'''P'''itch '''I'''ntegrity '''G'''uard&quot; 421;<br /> <br /> '''Pike's Peak'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 112; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike%27s_Peak Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Pinkerton, Allan (1819-1884)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 43; Allan Pinkerton was a U.S. detective and spy, best known for creating the Pinkerton Agency, the first detective agency.; &quot;The Unsleeping Eye&quot; 51; 112; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Pinkerton Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''''Plafond Luminex'''''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 687;<br /> <br /> '''plasmic hysteresis'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 555;<br /> <br /> '''P.L.M.'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 381;<br /> <br /> '''''podpol'niki'''''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 663; &quot;underground men&quot; in Russia<br /> <br /> '''Polo, Marco (1254-1324)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 432; the Venetian, greatest of medieval travellers. Venetian genealogies and traditions of uncertain value trace the Polo family to Sebenico in Dalmatia, and before the end of the 11th century one Domenico Polo is found in the great council of the republic (1094). But the ascertained line of the traveller begins only with his grandfather.<br /> <br /> Polo was the first traveller to trace a route across the whole longitude of Asia, naming and describing kingdom after kingdom which he had seen; the first to speak of the new and brilliant court which had been established at Peking; the first to reveal China in all its wealth and vastness, and to tell of the nations on its borders; the first to tell more of Tibet than its name, to speak of Burma, of Laos, of Siam, of Cochin-China, of Japan, of Java, of Sumatra and of other islands of the archipelago, of the Nicobar and Andaman Islands, of Ceylon and its sacred peak, of India but as a country seen and partially explored; the first in medieval times to give any distinct account of the secluded Christian Empire of Abyssinia, and of the semi-Christian island of Sokotra, and to speak, however dimly, of Zanzibar, and of the vast and distant Madagascar; whilst he carries us also to the remotely opposite region of Siberia and the Arctic shores, to speak of dog-sledges, white bears and reindeerriding Tunguses; [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Marco_Polo From the 11th Edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica]; 569;<br /> <br /> '''Ponghill, Brad'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 174; youngest brother of Burke<br /> <br /> '''Ponghill, Buddy'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 174; brother of Burke<br /> <br /> '''Ponghill, Burke'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 172; Editor of the ''Lodazal Weekly Tidings''<br /> <br /> '''''Poussin'''''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 590;<br /> <br /> '''Poutine'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 468; little girl in Mayva's ice-cream parlor, Cone Amor; also the name of a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poutine French-Canadian dish].<br /> <br /> '''Prandtl, Ludwig'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 603; Bavarian physicist (1875&amp;ndash;1953) who made key contributions to aerodynamics, most famously the discovery of the &quot;boundary layer&quot; (an zone of still air around a moving object, the physical phenomenon behind the dust which accumulates on fan blades).<br /> <br /> '''Priest, Judas'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 656;<br /> <br /> '''Prime Number Theorem'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 590, 597; a theorem giving an approximation to the number of prime numbers less than any given integer ''N.'' The specific theorem most commonly invoked under this name is the result by Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777&amp;ndash;1855), who in an 1849 letter to Johann Franz Encke (1791&amp;ndash;1865) proved that the number of primes less than ''N'' is approximately given by the integral from 2 to ''N'' of 1 over the natural logarithm of ''x.'' (Earlier, at the age of 15, Gauss had proposed that the number of primes less than ''N'' was approximately ''N'' divided by the natural logarithm of ''N.'') Jacques Hadamard (1865&amp;ndash;1963) and Charles De la Vallée Poussin (1866&amp;ndash;1962) both proved this result independently in 1896. The Riemann hypothesis is equivalent to the assertion that the difference between Gauss's later estimate and the true value is never greater than ''cN''&lt;sup&gt;1/2&lt;/sup&gt;log ''N,'' for some number ''c.'' [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PrimeNumberTheorem.html Wolfram MathWorld entry]<br /> <br /> '''''Princess Casamassima, The'''''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 6; an Italian Romance; ''The Princess Casamassima'' is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in ''The Atlantic Monthly'' in 1885-1886 and then as a book in 1886. It is the story of an intelligent but confused young London bookbinder, Hyacinth Robinson, who becomes involved in radical politics and a terrorist assassination plot. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_Casamassima Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Privett, Nate'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 24; White City Investigations, 43; in Denver, 179;<br /> <br /> '''Propaganda of Deed'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 81; Propaganda of the deed is an anarchist doctrine that promotes the practical application of anarchist ideas in hopes that such actions will set an example and inspire others. A violent variant of the concept was popular around the world in the late 19th century. According to the 19th century take, it was thought that a spectacular action, such as a political assassination, would ignite a revolutionary fervor among the working classes. Peter Kropotkin, an early proponent of propaganda by the deed, wrote that &quot;A single deed is better propaganda than a thousand pamphlets.&quot; [http://www.infoshop.org/wiki/index.php/Propaganda_of_the_deed From the InfoShop Open Wiki]<br /> <br /> '''Provecho, Dwayne'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 379; in cell with Frank Traverse and Ewball; in Mexico, 642;<br /> <br /> '''Provenance, Wren'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> anthropologist...922; <br /> <br /> '''Pugnax'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 5; (Latin: ''pugnax'' = fond of fighting) sentient canine aboard ''The Inconvenience''; 17; Also, there's a bird called the Ruff (''Philomachus pugnax'') which is a medium-sized wader; cuisine, 111; 143; Buddha nature, 412; &quot;sophisticated defensive system&quot; 550;<br /> <br /> '''Pullman Strike'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 177; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_strike Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Pythagoras'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 500; Pythagoreans, 633; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> {{ATD_Alpha_Nav}}</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=T&diff=3343 2006-12-06T19:34:41Z

<p>BlakeStacey: last name, first name</p> <hr /> <div>'''Tabor, Horace Austin Warner (&quot;Haw&quot;)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 274; Became mayor of Leadville in 1878, the year of the Colorado Silver Boom, in which he made his fortune. Owned the Matchless silver mine, which, after his death in 1899, his widow, [http://www.babydoe.org/babydoe.htm Elizabeth &quot;Baby Doe&quot; Tabor] maintained for 36 years. She lived in a shack beside the mine until she froze to death in 1935. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAW_Tabor Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> <br /> [[image:Tait.jpg|thumb|P. G. Tait|right]]'''Tait, Peter Guthrie (P. G.) (1831-1901)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 324; Scottish mathematician who helped formulate [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/knot_theory knot theory] (the study of the way a closed curve can be embedded in three dimensional space without intersecting itself. Intuitively, one may &quot;make a knot&quot; by tying a knot in an ordinary piece of string and then fusing together the free ends of the string. Associated with any knot is its knot group which is the fundamental group of the space obtained by removing the knot from the R3 in which it is embedded). He studied at the University of Edinburgh where he studied with [[ATD-M#maxwell|James Clerk Maxwell]]. Beginning in 1854, he taught at Queen's College, Belfast. When [[ATD-H#hamilton|Hamilton]] died in 1865, Tait took over the crusade to give quaternions a leading role in mathematical physics. [http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Tait.html Biography of P. G. Tait]; [[Tait Discussion|DISCUSSION]]<br /> <br /> '''Taklamakan War'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 444; The Taklamakan (also Taklimakan) is a desert of Central Asia, in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. It is known as the largest sand-only desert in the world. Some references fancifully state that Taklamakan means &quot;if you go in, you won't come out&quot;; others state that it means &quot;Desert of Death&quot; or &quot;Place of No Return&quot;. &quot;Makan&quot; is a Turkic word meaning &quot;place&quot;, of Arabic origin: the word may mean something different if treated as original pre-Islamic native Turkic; It is crossed at its northern and at its southern edge by two branches of the Silk Road; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taklamakan Wikpedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Talking Creatures'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> Parrot, 385, 387; rabbits, 579; reindeer, 785; dog, 969;<br /> <br /> '''Tammanoid'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 150; creatures, 150; Tammany Hall was the name given to the Democratic Party political machine that played a major role in New York City politics from the 1790s to the 1960s. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammany_Hall Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Tancredi, Andrea'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 584; Anarchist in Venice, and painter; the &quot;infernal machine&quot; 586;<br /> <br /> Tancredi is a time-traveling character in ''City of Death'', a four-part serial in the British science fiction television series ''Dr. Who'' which involves time travel and bilocation. Tancredi is the sole survivor of the Jagaroth race, an evil people who destroyed themselves in a war some 400 million years ago. Tancredi explains that a few escaped in a dilapidated spacecraft and found Earth in a primeval, lifeless stage of its development. The ship disintegrated upon takeoff and [[Scaroth]] tells of how he was fractured in time, splinters of his being were scattered across time and space, all identical, none complete. Whereas, in ''City of Death'', Tancredi, one of the Scaroff &quot;splinters&quot; living in Renaissance Italy, is plotting to create multiple Mona Lisa's for fraudulent purposes, ''Against the Day'''s Tancredi is fighting art fraud. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Death Read the synopsis of ''City of Death'']; The name &quot;Andrea&quot; ''could'' be a reference to the protagonist Andrea Marsh, a time-traveler in the 1889 novel, ''Timeless Love'' by Judy Hinson ([[Timeless Love|synopsis]]).<br /> <br /> '''''tantum dic verbo'''''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 447; typically translated to English as the imperative &quot;only say the word,&quot; appears in the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgate Vulgate] [http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/vul/mat008.htm Matthew 8] (the Centurion's response to Christ) as well as during the [http://www.catholicliturgy.com/index.cfm/FuseAction/Text/Index/4/SubIndex/67/ContentIndex/11/Start/9 Liturgy of the Eucharist] (at least in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_liturgy Catholic Liturgy].) <br /> <br /> '''Tarahumare Indians'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 23; Indian tribe of Northern New Mexico, in the Sierra Madres; 388; [[Tarahumare Indians|About the Tarahumare Indians]]; [http://www.native-languages.org/tarahumara.htm more].<br /> <br /> '''Tarot'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 186; 253; Hanged Man (XII), 605-06; &quot;Number XV, The Devil&quot; 686;<br /> <br /> '''Tate, Professor'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 131; three dimensions<br /> <br /> '''Tatzelwurm'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 655; a stubby cryptid, a rumored animal two to six feet in length, possessing two front legs, while the rest of the body resembles that of a snake. Local folklore says the creature breathes deadly fumes that can kill a person. The creature has been said to exist for hundreds of years in tales of the Alps of Austria, Bavaria and Switzerland; &quot;a snake with paws&quot; 655; speaks, 659; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatzelwurm Wikpedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Tavernier-Gravet slide rules'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 497; Tavernier-Gravet were preeminent Parisian makers of logarithmic slide rules (an analog computer) in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Originally Lenoir, the firm became Gravet-Lenoir, then Tavernier-Gravet.<br /> <br /> '''Tawil Balak'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 521; bar in Morocco<br /> <br /> '''Tears of Job'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> &quot;sky-pale translucent seeds&quot; 394;<br /> <br /> '''Teatro Malibran'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 355; in Venice<br /> <br /> '''Telluric Interior'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 114;<br /> <br /> '''Ten-Day Miner'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 302; The terms &quot;ten-day miner,&quot; &quot;ten-day man,&quot; &quot;ten-dayer&quot; and &quot;ten-day stiff&quot; are common names for the &quot;hobo miner,&quot; who worked in a camp only long enough to get a roadstake before setting out for the next camp. Such miners are also commonly referred to as &quot;boomers,&quot; &quot;ramblers,&quot; and &quot;floaters,&quot; and less commonly as &quot;grubstakers.&quot; An older designation, dating from the early mining history of the West ... is &quot;Overlander.&quot; From &quot;The Folklore, Customs, and Traditions of the Butte Miner&quot; by Wayland D. Hand, ''California Folk Quaterly'', Vol. 5, No.1 (Jan 1946), pp.1-25.<br /> <br /> '''Tennyson'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 535;<br /> <br /> '''Terapia'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 570;<br /> <br /> '''Teresa'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 87; girl Webb fancies on his way to Colorado<br /> <br /> '''Terrorism'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 85; &quot;monsters that Did the Deed&quot; 85; innocent victims, 87; &quot;radius of annihilation&quot; 95;<br /> <br /> '''Tesla, Dr. Nikola''' (1856-1943)&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 33; 97 - &quot;Tesla logged in his diary on July 3, 1899 that a separate resonance transformer tuned to the same high frequency as a larger high-voltage resonance transformer would transceive energy from the larger coil, acting as a transmitter of wireless energy, which was used to confirm Tesla's patent for radio during later disputes in the courts. These air core high-frequency resonate coils were the predecessors of systems from radio to radar and medical magnetic resonance imaging devices.&quot; [http://www.crystalinks.com/tesla.html from this nice Tesla page] - This information was later used to confirm his patent for radio which he received posthumously in 1946, 3 years after his death - [http://www.resonanceresearch.com/nikola-tesla-coils-picture-colorado-1899-labratory.htm from this Tesla page]; Kit Traverse working for, 97; 326; tower, 401; 425; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla Wikipedia entry]; [[Tesla's_Death_Ray|Read this article about Tesla's Death Ray and the Tunguska Event...]]<br /> <br /> '''Tesseract'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 633; four-dimensional analog of a cube; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesseract Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Theign, Derrick'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 701; &quot;tall and careworn fuctionary&quot; in Vienna; In Henry James' novel ''The Outcry'', there's a widowed Lord Theign, who to cover the gambling debts of his daughter Kitty Imber, is planning to sell his beautiful painting ''Duchess of Waterbridge'' by Sir Joshua Reynolds to American billionaire Breckinridge Bender; code name &quot;Good Shepherd&quot; in Vienna, 705; Cyprian Latewood's &quot;field advisor&quot; 705; <br /> <br /> '''Theosophy'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 630; &quot;A formal definition from the Concise Oxford Dictionary describes Theosophy as 'any of various philosophies professing to achieve a knowledge of God by spiritual ecstasy, direct intuition, or special individual revelation; esp. a modern movement following Hindu and Buddhist teachings, and seeking universal brotherhood.' Madame Blavatsky's theosophy would, however, not fall under this definiton, as it is non-theistic.&quot; -from the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theosophy Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''They'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 410; 483; 719;<br /> <br /> '''Thick Bush'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 8; town where Chick Counterfly was recognized as the son of &quot;Dick&quot; Counterfly<br /> <br /> '''Thorn, Ryder'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 553; &quot;one of the Trespassers&quot; at ukulele workshop; Mr. Ace and &quot;his people&quot; 415; what if they are not benign? 416; <br /> <br /> '''Thorvald'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 453; recurring sentient tornado at Candlebrow;<br /> <br /> '''Throyle, Hastings'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 131; collegial nemesis of T. Blope<br /> <br /> '''Thucydides'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 493; &quot;ancient Greek historian, and the author of the History of the Peloponnesian War, which recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BCE. This is widely considered the first work of scientific history, describing the human world as produced by men acting from ordinary motives, without the intervention of the gods.&quot; --from the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Time'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 33; 54; 111; colonizing, 131; &quot;at right angles to the flow of&quot; 132; 143; 252, 256; 355; time travel, 398; Nasotemporal Travel, 408; &quot;Chronoclipses, Asimov Transeculars, Tempomorph Q-98s&quot; 409; River of Time, 410; 415; wave functions, 426; &quot;our fate, our lord, our destroyer&quot; 427; 428; conference at Candlebrow, 452; time machine, 453; bazaar of Time, 454; clock-wise/one-way time, 457; and gravity, 457; and ukuleles, 552; time-travel, 577; 602; 612; 616; &quot;future, past, and present &lt;nowiki&gt;[...]&lt;/nowiki&gt; all together&quot; 617; 623; 636; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel Wikipedia Time Travel entry]; [[Time in Old Japan|Time in Old Japan]]<br /> <br /> [[image:Tintoretto_St-Mark.jpg|thumb|''The Abduction of the Body of St. Mark''|right]]'''Tintoretto (1518-1594)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 579; Tintoretto (real name Jacopo Robusti) was one of the greatest painters of the Venetian school and probably the last great painter of the Italian Renaissance; ''Abduction of the Body of St. Mark'', 579; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintoretto Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Tiny'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 399; bouncer at Lollipop Lounge;<br /> <br /> '''Titian'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 579; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titian Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Toadflax, Captain Q. Zane'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 425; '''Saksaul''' frigate, 434;<br /> <br /> '''Toilet Travel'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 422;<br /> <br /> '''tommyknocker'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 391; Tommyknockers are the spirit creatures of the underground. No one knows exactly when or where these tales began. They were present by medieval times in the area that is now Germany and Austria. Germans call them ''Berggeister'' or ''Bergmännlein'', meaning “mountain ghosts” or “little miners.” They watch over the earth’s precious ores and metals. They look like men, but are two feet tall or less. They wear the traditional miner’s outfit. They are believed to be active in gold, silver, and other metal mines. These spirits can be good or bad, helping or hurting miners. [http://www.blm.gov/heritage/HE_Kids/tommy_knock.htm More BLM info on Tommyknockers]<br /> <br /> '''tong war'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 340; in Chinatown in New York City; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tong_%28organization%29 Wikipedia entry for Tong]<br /> <br /> '''toroidal dispensation'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 128;<br /> <br /> '''Tonio'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 581; in Venice, hitting on Dally<br /> <br /> '''Tovarishchi Slutchainyi'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 123; Russian counterparts to the Chums of Chance<br /> <br /> [[image:topler-influence-machine.jpg|thumb|T&amp;ouml;pler Influence Machine|right]]'''T&amp;ouml;pler Influence Machine'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 58; An electric machine consisting of the combination of two materials, which when rubbed together produce static electricity, and of a third material or object which acts as a collector for the charges. August Joseph Ignaz T&amp;ouml;pler (1836-1912) was a German physicist known for his experiments in electrostatics. In 1864 he applied Foucault's knife-edge test for telescope mirrors to the analysis of fluid flow and the shock wave. He developed the Toepler machine, an electrostatic influence machine, in 1865 for use in X-ray photography. Improved versions were produced by Wilhelm Holtz, Roger and J. Robert Voss; [[Töpler influence machine]]<br /> <br /> '''Toy, Yup'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 367; &quot;ice-girl&quot; in Denver<br /> <br /> '''Trabants'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 45; German: ''satellite''; The Trabant was an automobile formerly produced by East German auto maker VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke Zwickau in Zwickau (today in Saxony). It was the most common vehicle in East Germany, and was also exported to other socialist countries. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''tragedy at Mayerling'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 681; refers to the double suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf and his mistress at Mayerling in Austria. [[ATD-R#rudolf|See Rudolf, Archduke, Crown Prince of Austria.]]<br /> <br /> '''Traverse family tree'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> It seems certain that the Traverses of ''Against the Day'' are the progenitors of the Traverses of ''Vineland'', described therein: &quot;These were old, proud and strong union people, surviving in one of the world's worst antinunion environments - spool tenders, zooglers, water bucks and bull punchers [all logging jobs, btw] some had fought in the Everett mill wars, others from the Becker side had personally known [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Hill Joe Hill], and had not mourned, and organized......&quot; [[Traverse Family Tree|More on the Traverse Family Tree...]]<br /> <br /> '''Traverse, Cooley'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 105; Webb's father<br /> <br /> '''Traverse, Frank'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 90; Webb's son; 374; working at Empresas Oustianas, S.A.,376; dreams of a counterpart, 377; 380; shoots Sloat Fresno, 395; in Nochecita, &quot;his own ghost&quot; 461; back in Denver, 465; and Dally, 512; working out of Tampico, Mexico, 637; recurring dream of Webb, 649;<br /> <br /> '''Traverse, Jesse'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 360; son of Reef and Stray (and a character in Vineland); with Willow and Holt, 646; 650; <br /> <br /> '''Traverse, Kit'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 90; Webb's youngest son who goes to Yale; vectorist, 97; 156; at Vibe Corp., 330; on ''Stupendica'' to Germany, and Dally, 510; to Bruges with Pino and Rocco, 562; attacked by Woevre, 563; dueling G&amp;uuml;nther, 600-01; in the ''Klapsm&amp;uuml;hle'', 626-27; meets Reef in Switzerland, 664; seance, 671;<br /> <br /> '''Traverse, Lake'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 90; Webb's daughter; and Deuce, 472; Child of the Storm, 487;<br /> <br /> '''Traverse, Mayva'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 480; conversing with animals<br /> <br /> '''Traverse, Reef'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 89; Webb's first-born son; Stray and Reef (now a card sharp) drifting from town to town, 358-61; dynamiting, 361; in Denver, 367; seen in New Orleans by W.T. Rooney, 646; with Flaco in Austria, 652; <br /> <br /> '''Traverse, Webb'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 76; &quot;sort of mine engineer in Colorado&quot; 76; from South Pennsylvania, 87; [[Traverse Family Tree]]<br /> <br /> '''Trespassers'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 424; time-travellers from The Future;<br /> <br /> '''Trilby hat'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 185; &quot;a soft felt men's hat with a narrow brim and a deeply indented crown. It is traditionally made from rabbit fur felt, but may also be made of other materials such as tweed&quot; -from the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilby Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Trouv&amp;eacute;'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 28; screw unit;<br /> <br /> '''Trumper's'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 224; Gentleman's barbers. &quot;Established 1875 in Curzon Street, Mayfair, by Mr George Trumper, the business has served the needs of London gentlemen and members of the Royal Court for over 125 years, and has been honoured with the Royal Warrant of Queen Victoria and five subsequent monarchs.&quot; [http://www.trumpers.com/ Website]<br /> <br /> '''Tsangpo-Brahmaputra'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 130; The Yarlung Tsangpo/Brahmaputra river drains a large portion of the eastern Himalaya and southern Tibetan plateau as well as the eastern Himalayan syntaxis, one of the most tectonically active areas of the globe.<br /> <br /> '''Tsurigane, Miss Umeki'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 531; female Quaternionist; 560;<br /> <br /> '''Tubby'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 161; trained pig<br /> <br /> '''Tubsmith, Root'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 511; mathematician on Stupendica; in Ostend, 535; <br /> <br /> '''Tucker, Benjamin'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 370; wrote of Land League;<br /> <br /> '''Tungus Reindeer herders'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 23;<br /> <br /> &lt;div id=&quot;tunguska&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt;'''Tunguska Event'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 145, 782, 792, passim; an explosion that occurred at 60°55′N 101°57′E, near the Podkamennaya (Under Rock) Tunguska River in what is now Evenk Autonomous Okrug, at 7:17 AM on June 30, 1908. The event is sometimes referred to as the great Siberian explosion. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_Event Wikipedia entry]; [[Tesla's_Death_Ray|Read this article about Tesla's Death Ray and the Tunguska Event...]]<br /> <br /> '''Turkish Corner'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 431;<br /> <br /> '''Turner, Freddie'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 52; professor at Harvard. It turns out that there is a present-day academic with the name Fred Turner ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Turner_%28academic%29 Wikipedia entry]<br /> ) who used to teach Communication at Harvard's JFK School of Government between 1989-2000, before moving to MIT and Stanford. Interestingly enough, he is the author of a book titled ''From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism''.&lt;br /&gt;<br /> <br /> '''Turner, Frederick Jackson (1861-1932)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> Unlike Freddie, Frederick Jackson Turner didn't make it to Harvard until 1910. Nonetheless, FJT did deliver his famous [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Thesis &quot;frontier thesis&quot;] in a paper to the American Historical Association on July 12, 1893, during the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_Exposition Columbian Exposition] and on the site of the present-day Art Institute of Chicago, a scant couple of blocks away from the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_House Palmer House]. The apocalyptic tone of the Inconvenience's tour of the Chicago stockyards fits well with Turner's claim that the closure of the frontier marks an end of America&amp;#x2014;or at least the end of a first period of American history&amp;#x2014;as well as the virtuous individualism, democracy, and freedom of movement that defined that America.&lt;br /&gt; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Jackson_Turner Frederick Jackson Turner Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Turner, Joseph Mallord William (1775-1851)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 578; English Romantic landscape painter and watercolourist, whose style can be said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._M._W._Turner Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Turnstone, Willis'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> and Lake Traverse, 262;<br /> <br /> '''Twin Vibes, The'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 102; Foley Walker and Scarsdale Vibe &quot;in matching sport ensembles of a certain canary-and-indigo check&quot;<br /> <br /> '''T.W.I.T.'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 219; True Worshippers of the Ineffable Tetractys, headquartered in London, north of Hyde Park; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetractys The Tetractys] is a triangular figure consisting of ten points arranged in four rows: one, two, three, and four points in each row. As a mystical symbol, it was very important to the followers of the secret worship of the Pythagoreans; 591; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetractys Wikpedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''''Tzigane'''''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 18; (French: ''gypsy'') Bindelstiffs of the Blue A.C.'s balloon-ship<br /> <br /> <br /> {{ATD_Alpha_Nav}}</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:ATD_1-25&diff=3342 2006-12-06T19:31:53Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* Navigation */</p> <hr /> <div>11-30-06. Have added the tilda (˜) over the n in Richard Fariña's name in the dedication comment. That tilda makes the ñ a completely different letter and pronunciation than the 'n.' It's important to get all the diacritical marks right for Pynchon's sake (he obsesses over these, like he did over things like the shape of the ampersand on the Mason &amp; Dixon cover)--and also because Fariña's name is Spanish, not the English word for a kind of finely ground breakfast cereal. --[[User:Pschmid1|Pschmid1]] 19:59, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> : no need to add sucha discussion to the talk page: just change it. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:24, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==Cut contribs- let's talk about them==<br /> <br /> OK, these are some cuts I made in accordance with the Spoiler policy. Basically, gently referencing a later page is OK but these page-by-page annotations are meant to be followed along through the first reading of the book. The first cut below runs counter to that policy-- the reader has no idea on the first page what The Light Over the Ranges will come to refer to, and we don't want to tell them before they've encountered that information themselves. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:22, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> 1) '''The Light Over the Ranges'''&lt;br&gt; <br /> - This exact phrase recurs on page 198 (Book 2) seen by Webb. It also suggests Tesla's 03 July 1899 'vision'. (The singular 'range' seems called for-- so why plural here?)<br /> <br /> :At least move it to the notes for 198.--[[User:Robot|Robot]] 13:31, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> ::OK, it's moved. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 13:52, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> 2) 'Lad' implies all are under 18 years old.<br /> : This was cut not for spoiler reasons, but b/c &quot;lad&quot; can also mean a young man (not necessarily under 18) and, in general, be used by a commanding officer toward his underlings of many ages. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:22, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> ::placed this discussion back in. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 13:52, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> 3) '''southerly wind'''&lt;br&gt; <br /> - Blowing from the south to the north. Most likely they're leaving from the New Orleans area (see eg page 29).<br /> <br /> : This is minor-- it could go back in, if anyone wants. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:22, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> 4) -''recently opened'''&lt;br&gt; <br /> - 01 May 1893. But page 52 makes it sound later.<br /> <br /> : Again, a minor one. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:22, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> 5) Page 4:<br /> <br /> '''Professor'''&lt;br&gt; <br /> - On page 10 this is repeated in quotes.<br /> <br /> : I stick by this cut. It's a minor point, but especially on page 10 we want a reader following along with the guide to feel that the guide is not getting ahead of him, which could ruin the experience and make him abandon use fo the guide. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:22, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> 6) Page 5:<br /> <br /> '''perpetual-motion machine'''&lt;br&gt; <br /> - We'll learn on page 8 that it generates its own hydrogen, but how this is powered is not explained.<br /> <br /> :Agains, let's put this on page 8, then. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:22, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ::Feeling like someone is looking for excuses to trim your work makes one much less enthusiastic about bothering. So don't trim things unless you really believe they degrade the enterprise.--[[User:Robot|Robot]] 13:36, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> :::Robot, your contribs are great! please just keep within the spoiler-free spirit of the Page-by-Page and there will never be a problem. Also, if you'd like to add analysis that doesn't need to worry about spoilers, you can add them in the Alpha guide. Thanks, [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 13:43, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> :::I feel the same way about editing. Err on the side of keeping it pretty open. Also, I suggest communicating directly with someone you're about to trim. I've only been reformatting -- making things work correctly or look prettier -- and allowing the info to flow. But if there's a dispute about anything, just communicate directly.<br /> <br /> :::Also, re spoilers, I don't think we should get *too* hung up on them. Frankly, I can't really imagine anyone saying anything about what's coming later in the novel that would compromise my enjoyment. Pynchon, for me, is way more about the journey. I wouldn't want someone laying out exactly how it ends, or saying something like, When Frank kills Lake..., or When the Chums of Chance die in a horrible crash, but the subtler things, stuff that might ruin a mystery novel or a heavily plot-driven novel, I'm personally not too concerned about and I don't we should expend too much emotional capital on avoiding them, beyond what's reasonable [[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 13:50, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> :I disagree. When i saw a comment *ON PAGE 1* of the Page by Page that said Webb was gonna be killed i was furious. If I were using this wiki for the first time, I would probably never return to it. That said, the spoiler warning at the top will hopefully set the tone. I don't wanna be a Nazi about this, but it's why the Page by Page section was created. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 14:01, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ::Man, I hope these are hypothetical examples: &quot;...I wouldn't want someone laying out exactly how it ends, or saying something like, When Frank kills Lake..., or When the Chums of Chance die in a horrible crash...&quot;<br /> <br /> :::Well, maybe they are and maybe they're not. You'll just have to wait &amp; see :) [[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 14:45, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> :Wow, discussion gets very long very quick. Let me say as a final comment that I apologize if I've offended you, Robot. This whole wiki process is still anarchy, still the wild west and I, like you, am still learning how to best get things done around here. I hope I haven't discouraged you from the wiki cause you've been a valuable contributor so far! [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]]<br /> <br /> ==Ragtime==<br /> <br /> Doctorow fictionalises the same era, including anarchists, bombings, early Hollywood.--[[User:Robot|Robot]] 13:31, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==Navigation==<br /> <br /> I wonder if there isn't some way to connect the annotations by page, perhaps with a little navigation box at the bottom of each set of pages that allows you to go back and forth without having to go back to the main 'Annotations by Page' page and select the next set of pages?<br /> <br /> One could just add this at the end with the usual double-equals section header, but then it'd show up in the table of contents at the top. Maybe not a bad thing, but I figured I'd bring it up here and see what folks thought before trying it. -- [[User:Cswingle|cswingle]] Wed Dec 6 09:28:52 AKST 2006<br /> <br /> :The template [[Template:ATD PbP|ATD PbP]] inserts the following into an article when you type &lt;code&gt;&lt;nowiki&gt;{{ATD PbP}}&lt;/nowiki&gt;&lt;/code&gt;:<br /> <br /> :<br /> {|id=&quot;pages&quot;<br /> |-<br /> !Part One:&lt;br /&gt;The Light Over the Ranges<br /> |<br /> [[ATD 1-25|1-25]],<br /> [[ATD 26-56|26-56]],<br /> [[ATD 57-80|57-80]],<br /> [[ATD 81-96|81-96]],<br /> [[ATD 97-118|97-118]]<br /> |-<br /> !Part Two:&lt;br /&gt;Iceland Spar<br /> |<br /> [[ATD 119-148|119-148]],<br /> [[ATD 149-170|149-170]],<br /> [[ATD 171-198|171-198]],<br /> [[ATD 199-218|199-218]],<br /> [[ATD 219-242|219-242]],<br /> [[ATD 243-272|243-272]],<br /> [[ATD 273-295|273-295]],<br /> [[ATD 296-317|296-317]],<br /> [[ATD 318-335|318-335]],<br /> [[ATD 336-357|336-357]],<br /> [[ATD 358-373|358-373]],<br /> [[ATD 374-396|374-396]],<br /> [[ATD 397-428|397-428]]<br /> |-<br /> !Part Three:&lt;br /&gt;Bilocations<br /> |<br /> [[ATD 429-459|429-459]],<br /> [[ATD 460-488|460-488]],<br /> [[ATD 489-524|489-524]],<br /> [[ATD 525-556|525-556]],<br /> [[ATD 557-587|557-587]],<br /> [[ATD 588-614|588-614]],<br /> [[ATD 615-643|615-643]],<br /> [[ATD 644-677|644-677]],<br /> [[ATD 678-694|678-694]]<br /> |-<br /> !Part Four:&lt;br /&gt;Against the Day<br /> |<br /> pages coming soon<br /> |-<br /> !Part Five:&lt;br /&gt;Rue de Départ<br /> |<br /> pages coming soon<br /> |-<br /> |}<br /> <br /> :[[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 11:31, 6 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> == Spoiler template ==<br /> <br /> I threw together a spoiler warning template which might be useful for demarcating sections of pages which have spoilers in later parts but not in all. Use &lt;code&gt;&lt;nowiki&gt;{{spoiler}}&lt;/nowiki&gt;&lt;/code&gt; to get the following:<br /> <br /> &lt;div class=&quot;notice metadata spoiler&quot; id=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;'''Spoiler warning: ''Plot and/or ending details follow.'''''&lt;/div&gt;<br /> <br /> [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 11:20, 6 December 2006 (PST)</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page&diff=3341 2006-12-06T19:29:18Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* Alphabetical Index */</p> <hr /> <div>[[Image:Campanile.jpg|250px|thumb|right]]&lt;big&gt;'''Welcome to the ''Against the Day'' Wiki'''&lt;/big&gt;<br /> <br /> To become a contributor/editor, [http://pynchonwiki.com/mycaptcha/captcha-page.php '''Create an account.'''] <br /> <br /> :[http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&amp;location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FAgainst-Day-Thomas-Pynchon%2Fdp%2F159420120X%2Fsr%3D8-1%2Fqid%3D1164267006%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks&amp;tag=hyperartspynchon&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325'''Order ''Against the Day''''']<br /> <br /> This is the newly created Wiki for [[Thomas Pynchon]]'s ''Against the Day'', which will eventually expand to include the guides to Pynchon's other &quot;big&quot; novels, ''V.'', ''Gravity's Rainbow'' and ''Mason &amp; Dixon'', currently hosted at [http://www.thomaspynchon.com/ ThomasPynchon.com]. In time, all the novels will be migrated here so that registered users of this wiki can create pages and make changes for those novels' guides.<br /> <br /> You can take a look at the [[ATD cover|cover]], read the [[Against the Day description|book description]] written by Pynchon himself, read the [[ATD Reviews|reviews]], or [[Against the Day Title|entertain some theories on the source of the title]].<br /> <br /> ==How to Use this Wiki==<br /> <br /> There are two major ways to use this wiki. The first is the '''''Against the Day'' Alphabetical Index''', used to keep track of the myriad characters, real and imagined, as well as events, arcana, and lots of other stuff. The second is the '''Spoiler-Free Annotations by Page''', which allows the reader to look up and contribute allusions and references while reading the book, in a convenient and spoiler-free manner. These two sections are so far almost entirely different, but we're working on integrating them.<br /> <br /> Apart from those, it's up to you!<br /> <br /> ==Alphabetical Index==<br /> Information on the characters, events, and everything else in ''Against the Day'', organized alphabetically:{{ATD_Alpha_Nav}}<br /> &lt;p&gt;<br /> &lt;br&gt;<br /> <br /> ==Spoiler-free Annotations by Page==<br /> An alternate form of commentary on the text. The guiding principle of these annotations is to remain spoiler-free, so that readers can follow along without the fear that later parts of the book will be revealed.<br /> <br /> {{ATD PbP}}<br /> <br /> == Pynchon Wiki Help and Contributor Guidelines==<br /> <br /> [[Help:Contents|'''Click here for help with editing and creating pages.''']]<br /> <br /> We have a few conventions we ask that you follow:<br /> <br /> * When creating a new page, first check to make sure a page/article about what you want to write about hasn't already been created, by '''[[Special:Allpages|checking the list of all Wiki pages on Pynchon Wiki]]'''. If a page already exists, please modify that one.<br /> <br /> * When creating a new page, if its information pertains to one (and only one) specific Pynchon novel, please categorize it with the appropriate identifier. For example, a page pertaining to ''Against the Day'' (currently the only novel being annotated here), should use the syntax &lt;code&gt;&lt;nowiki&gt;[[Category:ATD]]&lt;/nowiki&gt;&lt;/code&gt;.<br /> <br /> * To open a discussion on an individual listing of the Alpha Index, create one using the [[ATD-T|entry on Peter Tait]] as an example. Basically, give it a name that identifies the alpha listing (eg &lt;nowiki&gt;[[Name Discussion|DISCUSSION]]&lt;/nowiki&gt;) and notice that the visible name will be &quot;DISCUSSION&quot; in full caps, so it stands out a bit.<br /> <br /> * [[Help:Contents|More help for this wiki available here.]]<br /> <br /> ==External Links==<br /> <br /> * [http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/thomaspynchon/ Random House UK ATD Page]<br /> * [http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/ ThomasPynchon.com]<br /> * [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/ The Modern Word Pynchon page]<br /> : [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/countingdown.html The Modern Word: counting down to ATD]<br /> : [http://z11.invisionfree.com/thefictionalwoods/index.php The Fictional Woods] - a Pynchon forum<br /> * [http://pynchonoid.blogspot.com/ Pynchonoid Blog]<br /> * [http://www.sporadikos-logos.org/against-the-day/ ATD Blog]<br /> * [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_the_Day Wikipedia ATD page]<br /> <br /> ==Featured Article==<br /> [[Image:MarilynMonroe.jpg|150px|thumb|Pynchon writing on Marilyn Monroe's death|left]]<br /> <br /> '''The World is at Fault'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> A letter that Pynchon wrote to his former Cornell roommate Jules Siegel in the early 1960s, featuring a thematic connection to a scene in ''Against the Day''.<br /> <br /> :''&quot;When Marilyn Monroe got out of the game, I wrote something like, 'Southern California's special horror notwithstanding, if the world offered nothing, nowhere to support or make bearable whatever her private grief was, then it is that world, and not she, that is at fault.'<br /> :I wrote that in the first few shook-up minutes after hearing the bulletin...&quot;''<br /> <br /> ([[The_World_is_at_Fault | more...]])<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> &lt;div style=&quot;clear:both;&quot;&gt;&lt;/div&gt;<br /> <br /> ==Gallery==<br /> Below are some of the images you will find on Pynchon Wiki. {{Special:Newimages}}<br /> <br /> <br /> We will be providing more support for using this wiki in the coming weeks. Feel free to contact us (admin at pynchonwiki dot com) with any questions.<br /> <br /> Thanks, and enjoy...</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Template:ATD_PbP&diff=3340 2006-12-06T19:28:12Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* Spoiler-Free Annotations by Page */ inclusion tweaks to make template more useful</p> <hr /> <div>&lt;noinclude&gt;== Spoiler-Free Annotations by Page ==<br /> An alternate form of commentary on the text. The guiding principle of these annotations is to remain spoiler-free, so that readers can follow along without the fear that later parts of the book will be revealed.<br /> &lt;/noinclude&gt;<br /> {|id=&quot;pages&quot;<br /> |-<br /> !Part One:&lt;br /&gt;The Light Over the Ranges<br /> |<br /> [[ATD 1-25|1-25]],<br /> [[ATD 26-56|26-56]],<br /> [[ATD 57-80|57-80]],<br /> [[ATD 81-96|81-96]],<br /> [[ATD 97-118|97-118]]<br /> |-<br /> !Part Two:&lt;br /&gt;Iceland Spar<br /> |<br /> [[ATD 119-148|119-148]],<br /> [[ATD 149-170|149-170]],<br /> [[ATD 171-198|171-198]],<br /> [[ATD 199-218|199-218]],<br /> [[ATD 219-242|219-242]],<br /> [[ATD 243-272|243-272]],<br /> [[ATD 273-295|273-295]],<br /> [[ATD 296-317|296-317]],<br /> [[ATD 318-335|318-335]],<br /> [[ATD 336-357|336-357]],<br /> [[ATD 358-373|358-373]],<br /> [[ATD 374-396|374-396]],<br /> [[ATD 397-428|397-428]]<br /> |-<br /> !Part Three:&lt;br /&gt;Bilocations<br /> |<br /> [[ATD 429-459|429-459]],<br /> [[ATD 460-488|460-488]],<br /> [[ATD 489-524|489-524]],<br /> [[ATD 525-556|525-556]],<br /> [[ATD 557-587|557-587]],<br /> [[ATD 588-614|588-614]],<br /> [[ATD 615-643|615-643]],<br /> [[ATD 644-677|644-677]],<br /> [[ATD 678-694|678-694]]<br /> |-<br /> !Part Four:&lt;br /&gt;Against the Day<br /> |<br /> pages coming soon<br /> |-<br /> !Part Five:&lt;br /&gt;Rue de Départ<br /> |<br /> pages coming soon<br /> |-<br /> |}</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:ATD_1-25&diff=3339 2006-12-06T19:20:38Z

<p>BlakeStacey: Spoiler template</p> <hr /> <div>11-30-06. Have added the tilda (˜) over the n in Richard Fariña's name in the dedication comment. That tilda makes the ñ a completely different letter and pronunciation than the 'n.' It's important to get all the diacritical marks right for Pynchon's sake (he obsesses over these, like he did over things like the shape of the ampersand on the Mason &amp; Dixon cover)--and also because Fariña's name is Spanish, not the English word for a kind of finely ground breakfast cereal. --[[User:Pschmid1|Pschmid1]] 19:59, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> : no need to add sucha discussion to the talk page: just change it. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:24, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==Cut contribs- let's talk about them==<br /> <br /> OK, these are some cuts I made in accordance with the Spoiler policy. Basically, gently referencing a later page is OK but these page-by-page annotations are meant to be followed along through the first reading of the book. The first cut below runs counter to that policy-- the reader has no idea on the first page what The Light Over the Ranges will come to refer to, and we don't want to tell them before they've encountered that information themselves. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:22, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> 1) '''The Light Over the Ranges'''&lt;br&gt; <br /> - This exact phrase recurs on page 198 (Book 2) seen by Webb. It also suggests Tesla's 03 July 1899 'vision'. (The singular 'range' seems called for-- so why plural here?)<br /> <br /> :At least move it to the notes for 198.--[[User:Robot|Robot]] 13:31, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> ::OK, it's moved. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 13:52, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> 2) 'Lad' implies all are under 18 years old.<br /> : This was cut not for spoiler reasons, but b/c &quot;lad&quot; can also mean a young man (not necessarily under 18) and, in general, be used by a commanding officer toward his underlings of many ages. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:22, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> ::placed this discussion back in. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 13:52, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> 3) '''southerly wind'''&lt;br&gt; <br /> - Blowing from the south to the north. Most likely they're leaving from the New Orleans area (see eg page 29).<br /> <br /> : This is minor-- it could go back in, if anyone wants. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:22, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> 4) -''recently opened'''&lt;br&gt; <br /> - 01 May 1893. But page 52 makes it sound later.<br /> <br /> : Again, a minor one. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:22, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> 5) Page 4:<br /> <br /> '''Professor'''&lt;br&gt; <br /> - On page 10 this is repeated in quotes.<br /> <br /> : I stick by this cut. It's a minor point, but especially on page 10 we want a reader following along with the guide to feel that the guide is not getting ahead of him, which could ruin the experience and make him abandon use fo the guide. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:22, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> 6) Page 5:<br /> <br /> '''perpetual-motion machine'''&lt;br&gt; <br /> - We'll learn on page 8 that it generates its own hydrogen, but how this is powered is not explained.<br /> <br /> :Agains, let's put this on page 8, then. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:22, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ::Feeling like someone is looking for excuses to trim your work makes one much less enthusiastic about bothering. So don't trim things unless you really believe they degrade the enterprise.--[[User:Robot|Robot]] 13:36, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> :::Robot, your contribs are great! please just keep within the spoiler-free spirit of the Page-by-Page and there will never be a problem. Also, if you'd like to add analysis that doesn't need to worry about spoilers, you can add them in the Alpha guide. Thanks, [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 13:43, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> :::I feel the same way about editing. Err on the side of keeping it pretty open. Also, I suggest communicating directly with someone you're about to trim. I've only been reformatting -- making things work correctly or look prettier -- and allowing the info to flow. But if there's a dispute about anything, just communicate directly.<br /> <br /> :::Also, re spoilers, I don't think we should get *too* hung up on them. Frankly, I can't really imagine anyone saying anything about what's coming later in the novel that would compromise my enjoyment. Pynchon, for me, is way more about the journey. I wouldn't want someone laying out exactly how it ends, or saying something like, When Frank kills Lake..., or When the Chums of Chance die in a horrible crash, but the subtler things, stuff that might ruin a mystery novel or a heavily plot-driven novel, I'm personally not too concerned about and I don't we should expend too much emotional capital on avoiding them, beyond what's reasonable [[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 13:50, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> :I disagree. When i saw a comment *ON PAGE 1* of the Page by Page that said Webb was gonna be killed i was furious. If I were using this wiki for the first time, I would probably never return to it. That said, the spoiler warning at the top will hopefully set the tone. I don't wanna be a Nazi about this, but it's why the Page by Page section was created. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 14:01, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ::Man, I hope these are hypothetical examples: &quot;...I wouldn't want someone laying out exactly how it ends, or saying something like, When Frank kills Lake..., or When the Chums of Chance die in a horrible crash...&quot;<br /> <br /> :::Well, maybe they are and maybe they're not. You'll just have to wait &amp; see :) [[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 14:45, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> :Wow, discussion gets very long very quick. Let me say as a final comment that I apologize if I've offended you, Robot. This whole wiki process is still anarchy, still the wild west and I, like you, am still learning how to best get things done around here. I hope I haven't discouraged you from the wiki cause you've been a valuable contributor so far! [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]]<br /> <br /> ==Ragtime==<br /> <br /> Doctorow fictionalises the same era, including anarchists, bombings, early Hollywood.--[[User:Robot|Robot]] 13:31, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==Navigation==<br /> <br /> I wonder if there isn't some way to connect the annotations by page, perhaps with a little navigation box at the bottom of each set of pages that allows you to go back and forth without having to go back to the main 'Annotations by Page' page and select the next set of pages?<br /> <br /> One could just add this at the end with the usual double-equals section header, but then it'd show up in the table of contents at the top. Maybe not a bad thing, but I figured I'd bring it up here and see what folks thought before trying it. -- [[User:Cswingle|cswingle]] Wed Dec 6 09:28:52 AKST 2006<br /> <br /> == Spoiler template ==<br /> <br /> I threw together a spoiler warning template which might be useful for demarcating sections of pages which have spoilers in later parts but not in all. Use &lt;code&gt;&lt;nowiki&gt;{{spoiler}}&lt;/nowiki&gt;&lt;/code&gt; to get the following:<br /> <br /> &lt;div class=&quot;notice metadata spoiler&quot; id=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;'''Spoiler warning: ''Plot and/or ending details follow.'''''&lt;/div&gt;<br /> <br /> [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 11:20, 6 December 2006 (PST)</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=P&diff=3338 2006-12-06T18:47:05Z

<p>BlakeStacey: Prandtl and Prime Number Theorem</p> <hr /> <div>'''Packer's Inn'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 31;<br /> <br /> '''Paco'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 375; trumpet player<br /> <br /> '''Padzhitnoff, Igor (&quot;Padzy&quot;)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 123; Randolph St. Cosmo's &quot;mysterious Russian counterpart&quot;. c.f. Alexy Pazhitnov, inventor of Tetris.<br /> <br /> '''''Palacio del Cristal, El'''''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 378; in Guanajuato;<br /> <br /> '''Palmer House'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 30; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_House Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''pantechnicon'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 611;<br /> <br /> '''Paramorphoscope'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 435; 436; ''paramorfico'', 568; used to view map of Shambhala, 609;<br /> <br /> '''Paranoia'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 33; &quot;counter-transformer&quot; 34; 54; 94; &quot;Something&quot; 132; 180; paranoia querulans ([[Paranoia Querulans|litigious paranoia]]), 455; Ostend as &quot;western anchors of a continental system&quot; 567; &quot;silent army of operatives&quot; from Hell, 586; 624; 681;<br /> <br /> '''Paris Commune'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 372;<br /> <br /> '''Parry, Hubert'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 49; Blake's ''Jerusalem'' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Parry Wikpedia Entry]<br /> <br /> '''Parsons-Short Auxetophone'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 228; used to record &quot;all T.W.I.T.-sanctioned sittings&quot;<br /> <br /> '''Patio Method'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 374; silver extraction method<br /> <br /> '''Pearl Street'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 333; location of Vibe Corp.<br /> <br /> '''Peary, Robert Edwin (1856-1920)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 149; Peary was an American explorer who claimed to have been the first person, on April 6, 1909, to reach the geographic North Pole; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Peary Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''''pelota'' games'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 7; Pelota (in Basque and Catalan, pilota; in French pelote, from Latin pila) is a name for a variety of court sports played with a ball using one's hand, a racket, a wooden bat (pala), or a basket propulsor, against a wall (frontón in Spanish, frontoi in Basque, frontó in Catalan) or, more traditionally, with two teams face to face separated by a line on the ground or a net.<br /> <br /> '''Penhallow, Constance'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 127; Iceland spar magnates, in Iceland; Hallow means to reserve as holy.<br /> <br /> '''Penhallow, Hunter'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 127; grandson of Constance; witnessing Tunguska, 154; &quot;English painter type&quot; 575; one of the Trespassers? 576; switch to nocturnes, 580;<br /> <br /> '''''permanent siege'''''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 19;<br /> <br /> '''perpetual-motion machine'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 6; Perpetual motion refers to a condition in which an object continues to move indefinitely without being driven by an external source of energy. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Peter and Paul Fortress'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 595; in Russia<br /> <br /> '''''p&amp;eacute;troleurs'' of Paris'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 19;<br /> <br /> '''P.E.T.N.'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 182; PETN (''Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate'', also known as ''Penthrite'') is one of the strongest known high explosives, with a relative effectiveness factor (R.E. factor) of 1.66. It is more sensitive to shock or friction than TNT or tetryl, and it is never used alone as a booster; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PETN Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Peychaud, Monsieur'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 368; It is said that the Sazerac drink was invented by Antoine Amadie Peychaud, a Creole apothecary who moved to New Orleans from the West Indies and set up shop in the French Quarter in the early 1800s. He dispensed a proprietary mix of aromatic bitters from an old family recipe, to relieve the ails of his clients (Peychaud's Bitters are still made in New Orleans and sold today, and are an essential component of any truly complete bar), and around the 1830s he became famous for a toddy he made for his friends. It consisted of French brandy mixed with his secret blend of bitters, a splash of water and a bit of sugar. According to legend he served his drink in the large end of an egg cup that was called a coquetier in French, and some say that the Americanized pronunciation of this as &quot;cocktail&quot; gave this type of drink its name (unlikely as that may be); ([http://www.gumbopages.com/food/beverages/sazerac.html From The Gumbo Pages. Read on...])<br /> <br /> '''Philippe'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 655; in Swiss Alps, drilling with Reef; alumnus of Petit Roquette child's prison, 658;<br /> <br /> '''Philosopher's Stone'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 77; The philosopher's stone, in Latin ''philosophi lapis'', is a legendary substance that supposedly could turn inexpensive metals such as lead into gold (&quot;chrysopoeia&quot;) and/or create an elixir that would make humans younger, thus delaying death. It was a longtime &quot;holy grail&quot; of Western alchemy; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher's_stone Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Philosophic Mercury'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 77; Mercury minus &quot;everything not essential&quot;<br /> <br /> '''Piggot's'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 678;<br /> <br /> '''Pigs'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> &quot;pigs can fly&quot; 427; &quot;'''P'''itch '''I'''ntegrity '''G'''uard&quot; 421;<br /> <br /> '''Pike's Peak'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 112; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike%27s_Peak Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Pinkerton, Allan (1819-1884)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 43; Allan Pinkerton was a U.S. detective and spy, best known for creating the Pinkerton Agency, the first detective agency.; &quot;The Unsleeping Eye&quot; 51; 112; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Pinkerton Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''''Plafond Luminex'''''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 687;<br /> <br /> '''plasmic hysteresis'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 555;<br /> <br /> '''P.L.M.'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 381;<br /> <br /> '''''podpol'niki'''''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 663; &quot;underground men&quot; in Russia<br /> <br /> '''Polo, Marco (1254-1324)'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 432; the Venetian, greatest of medieval travellers. Venetian genealogies and traditions of uncertain value trace the Polo family to Sebenico in Dalmatia, and before the end of the 11th century one Domenico Polo is found in the great council of the republic (1094). But the ascertained line of the traveller begins only with his grandfather.<br /> <br /> Polo was the first traveller to trace a route across the whole longitude of Asia, naming and describing kingdom after kingdom which he had seen; the first to speak of the new and brilliant court which had been established at Peking; the first to reveal China in all its wealth and vastness, and to tell of the nations on its borders; the first to tell more of Tibet than its name, to speak of Burma, of Laos, of Siam, of Cochin-China, of Japan, of Java, of Sumatra and of other islands of the archipelago, of the Nicobar and Andaman Islands, of Ceylon and its sacred peak, of India but as a country seen and partially explored; the first in medieval times to give any distinct account of the secluded Christian Empire of Abyssinia, and of the semi-Christian island of Sokotra, and to speak, however dimly, of Zanzibar, and of the vast and distant Madagascar; whilst he carries us also to the remotely opposite region of Siberia and the Arctic shores, to speak of dog-sledges, white bears and reindeerriding Tunguses; [http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Marco_Polo From the 11th Edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica]; 569;<br /> <br /> '''Ponghill, Brad'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 174; youngest brother of Burke<br /> <br /> '''Ponghill, Buddy'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 174; brother of Burke<br /> <br /> '''Ponghill, Burke'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 172; Editor of the ''Lodazal Weekly Tidings''<br /> <br /> '''''Poussin'''''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 590;<br /> <br /> '''Poutine'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 468; little girl in Mayva's ice-cream parlor, Cone Amor; also the name of a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poutine French-Canadian dish].<br /> <br /> '''Prandtl, Ludwig'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 603; Bavarian physicist (1875&amp;ndash;1953) who made key contributions to aerodynamics, most famously the discovery of the &quot;boundary layer&quot; (an zone of still air around a moving object, the physical phenomenon behind the dust which accumulates on fan blades).<br /> <br /> '''Priest, Judas'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 656;<br /> <br /> '''Prime Number Theorem'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 590; a theorem giving an approximation to the number of prime numbers less than any given integer ''N.'' The specific theorem most commonly invoked under this name is the result by Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777&amp;ndash;1855), who in an 1849 letter to Johann Franz Encke (1791&amp;ndash;1865) proved that the number of primes less than ''N'' is approximately given by the integral from 2 to ''N'' of 1 over the natural logarithm of ''x.'' Earlier, at the age of 15, Gauss had proposed that the number of primes less than ''N'' was approximately ''N'' divided by the natural logarithm of ''N.'' The Riemann hypothesis is equivalent to the assertion that the difference between Gauss's later estimate and the true value is never greater than ''cN''&lt;sup&gt;1/2&lt;/sup&gt;log ''N,'' for some number ''c.'' [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PrimeNumberTheorem.html Wolfram MathWorld entry]<br /> <br /> '''''Princess Casamassima, The'''''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 6; an Italian Romance; ''The Princess Casamassima'' is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in ''The Atlantic Monthly'' in 1885-1886 and then as a book in 1886. It is the story of an intelligent but confused young London bookbinder, Hyacinth Robinson, who becomes involved in radical politics and a terrorist assassination plot. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Princess_Casamassima Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Privett, Nate'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 24; White City Investigations, 43; in Denver, 179;<br /> <br /> '''Propaganda of Deed'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 81; Propaganda of the deed is an anarchist doctrine that promotes the practical application of anarchist ideas in hopes that such actions will set an example and inspire others. A violent variant of the concept was popular around the world in the late 19th century. According to the 19th century take, it was thought that a spectacular action, such as a political assassination, would ignite a revolutionary fervor among the working classes. Peter Kropotkin, an early proponent of propaganda by the deed, wrote that &quot;A single deed is better propaganda than a thousand pamphlets.&quot; [http://www.infoshop.org/wiki/index.php/Propaganda_of_the_deed From the InfoShop Open Wiki]<br /> <br /> '''Provecho, Dwayne'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 379; in cell with Frank Traverse and Ewball; in Mexico, 642;<br /> <br /> '''Provenance, Wren'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> anthropologist...922; <br /> <br /> '''Pugnax'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 5; (Latin: ''pugnax'' = fond of fighting) sentient canine aboard ''The Inconvenience''; 17; Also, there's a bird called the Ruff (''Philomachus pugnax'') which is a medium-sized wader; cuisine, 111; 143; Buddha nature, 412; &quot;sophisticated defensive system&quot; 550;<br /> <br /> '''Pullman Strike'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 177; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_strike Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> '''Pythagoras'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> 500; Pythagoreans, 633; [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras Wikipedia entry]<br /> <br /> {{ATD_Alpha_Nav}}</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Thomas_Pynchon&diff=3336 2006-12-06T18:10:55Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* 1990s and 2000s */ Daily Show and Ian McEwan</p> <hr /> <div>'''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: ''[[V.]]'' (1963), ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]'' (1966), ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'' (1973), ''[[Vineland]]'' (1990), ''[[Mason &amp; Dixon]]'' (1997), and ''[[Against the Day]]'' (2006). <br /> <br /> 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.<br /> <br /> ==Biography==<br /> 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, [[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 &quot;[[The Secret Integration]]&quot; (1964) and ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]''. <br /> <br /> ===Childhood and education===<br /> Pynchon attended Oyster Bay High School, where he was awarded &quot;student of the year&quot; and contributed short fictional pieces to his school newspaper: &quot;Voice of the Hamster&quot;,&lt;ref&gt;[http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_hamster.html &quot;Voice of the Hamster&quot;]&lt;/ref&gt; &quot;The Boys&quot;,&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_boys.html &quot;The Boys&quot;]&lt;/ref&gt; and &quot;Ye Legend of Sir Stupid and the Purple Knight&quot;.&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_knight.html &quot;Ye Legend of Sir Stupid and the Purple&quot;]&lt;/ref&gt; 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 [[United States Navy|U.S. Navy]]. In 1957, Pynchon returned to Cornell to pursue a degree in English. His first published story, &quot;The Small Rain&quot;, appeared in the ''Cornell Writer'' in May 1959, and narrates an actual experience of a friend who had served in the [[United States Army|army]]; subsequently, however, episodes and characters throughout Pynchon's fiction draw freely upon his own experiences in the navy. <br /> <br /> While at Cornell, Pynchon became a friend of [[Richard Fariña]], and both briefly led what Pynchon has called a &quot;micro-cult&quot; around Oakley Hall's [[1958 in literature|1958]] novel ''[[Warlock (novel)|Warlock]]''. (He later reminisced about his college days in the introduction he wrote in 1983 for Fariña's novel ''[[Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me]],'' first published in 1966.) Pynchon also reportedly attended lectures given by [[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. Pynchon received his BA in June 1959.<br /> <br /> ===Early career===<br /> 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, Washington|Seattle]], where he compiled safety articles for the ''Bomarc Service News,''&lt;ref&gt;Wisnicki 2000-1&lt;/ref&gt; 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 &quot;[[Yoyodyne]]&quot; corporation in ''[[V.]]'' and ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]],'' and both his background in physics and the technical journalism he undertook at Boeing provided much raw material for ''[[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.<br /> <br /> 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, California|Manhattan Beach]].&lt;ref&gt;Frost 2003&lt;/ref&gt; Pynchon during this period embraced the lifestyle and values of the [[hippie]] [[counterculture]], which he would later make use of in his 1990 novel ''[[Vineland]].''&lt;ref&gt;Gordon 1994&lt;/ref&gt; In 1964, his application to study mathematics as a graduate student at the [[University of California, Berkeley]], was turned down.&lt;ref name=&quot;royster2005&quot;&gt;Royster 2005&lt;/ref&gt; In 1966, he wrote a first-hand report on the aftermath and legacy of the [[Watts riots]] in Los Angeles. Entitled &quot;A Journey Into the Mind of Watts,&quot; the article was published in the ''New York Times Magazine.''&lt;ref&gt;Pynchon 1966&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> 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 &quot;neglected books&quot;, as part of a feature entitled &quot;A Gift of Books&quot; in the December 1965 issue of ''Holiday.''<br /> <br /> Pynchon's second novel, ''The Crying of Lot 49,'' is also set in California. It was published in 1966, and won the Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Foundation Award. Although more concise and linear in its structure than Pynchon's other novels, its labyrinthine plot features an ancient, underground mail service known as &quot;The Tristero&quot; or &quot;Trystero,&quot; a parody of a [[revenge play|Jacobean revenge drama]] entitled &quot;The Courier's Tragedy,&quot; 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.''<br /> <br /> In 1968, Pynchon was one of 447 signatories to the &quot;Writers and Editors War Tax Protest.&quot; 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 &quot;the proposed 10% income tax surcharge or any war-designated tax increase,&quot; and stated their belief &quot;that American involvement in Vietnam is morally wrong&quot;.&lt;ref&gt;''New York Review of Books'' 1968:9&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ===''Gravity's Rainbow'' and Pynchon's rise to prominence===<br /> Pynchon's most celebrated novel is his third, ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'', published in [[1973 in literature|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 theory|conspiracy]], [[synchronicity]], and [[entropy]], the novel has spawned a wealth of commentary and critical material, including two reader's guides,&lt;ref&gt;Fowler 1980; Weisenburger 1988&lt;/ref&gt; books and scholarly articles, on-line concordances and discussions,&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/ Pynchon HyperArts]&lt;/ref&gt; 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 [[World War II|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 &quot;plot&quot;, 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.<br /> <br /> ''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 &quot;unreadable&quot;, &quot;turgid&quot;, &quot;overwritten&quot;, and in parts &quot;obscene&quot;, and no prize was awarded.&lt;ref&gt;Kihss 1974&lt;/ref&gt; In 1975, Pynchon declined the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.<br /> <br /> ===Post-''Gravity's Rainbow''===<br /> A collection of Pynchon's early short stories, entitled ''[[Slow Learner]]'', was published in 1984, with a lengthy autobiography|autobiographical introduction. In October of the same year, an article entitled &quot;Is It O.K. to Be a Luddite?&quot; 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 &quot;The Heart's Eternal Vow&quot;. Another article, entitled &quot;Nearer, My Couch, to Thee&quot;, 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 &quot;Sloth&quot;. <br /> <br /> Pynchon's fourth novel, ''[[Vineland]]'', was published in 1990. The novel is set in California in the 1980s and 1960s, and describes the relationship between an [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|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. <br /> <br /> In 1988, he received a MacArthur Fellowship and, since the early 1990s at least, many observers have mentioned Pynchon as a Nobel Prize contender.&lt;ref&gt;See, for example, Grimes 1993, CNN Book News 1999, Ervin 2000&lt;/ref&gt; 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. <br /> <br /> Pynchon's fifth novel is ''[[Mason &amp; Dixon]]'', a work which had been in the pipeline since 1978 at least.&lt;ref&gt;Roeder 1978; see also Ulin 1997&lt;/ref&gt; Published in 1997, the meticulously-researched novel is a sprawling saga recounting the lives and careers of the English astronomer, [[Charles Mason]], and his partner, the surveyor [[Jeremiah Dixon]], and the birth of the [[American Revolution|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.<br /> <br /> ===''Against the Day''===<br /> <br /> A variety of rumors pertaining to the subject matter of Pynchon's [[Against the Day|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 &quot;a Russian mathematician [who] studied for [[David Hilbert]] in [[Göttingen]]&quot;, and that the new novel would trace the life and loves of [[Sofia Kovalevskaya]]. <br /> <br /> 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 [[World's Columbian Exposition|1893 Chicago World's Fair]] and the time immediately following [[World War I]]. &quot;With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead,&quot; Pynchon writes in his Book Description, &quot;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.&quot; He promises cameos by [[Nikola Tesla]], [[Bela Lugosi]] and [[Groucho Marx]], as well as &quot;stupid songs&quot; and &quot;strange sexual practices&quot;. Subsequently, the title of the new book was reported as ''[[Against the Day]]'' and a Penguin spokesperson confirmed that the synopsis was Pynchon's.&lt;ref&gt;Patterson 2006b; Italie 2006&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ''[[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.<br /> <br /> ==Themes and influence==<br /> 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 &quot;High&quot; and &quot;low&quot; culture, sometimes interpreted as a &quot;deconstruction&quot;, is seen as one of the defining characteristics of postmodernism.<br /> <br /> 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 [[Ornette Coleman]], [[Charlie Parker]] and [[Thelonious Monk]]. In ''The Crying of Lot 49'', the lead singer of &quot;The Paranoids&quot; sports &quot;a [[The Beatles|Beatle]] haircut&quot; 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 [[The Fool (band)|The Fool]] in the 1960s (having [[Magic realism|magically]] recovered the latter instrument, his &quot;harp&quot;, 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 &quot;Cherokee&quot;, 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 &quot;The Corvairs&quot;, while Isaiah played in a punk band called &quot;Billy Barf and the Vomitones&quot;. In ''Mason &amp; Dixon'', one of the characters plays on the &quot;Clavier&quot; the varsity drinking song which will later become &quot;The Star-Spangled Banner&quot;. <br /> <br /> In his ''[[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 &quot;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.&quot; He is also known to be a fan of Roky Erickson.<br /> <br /> 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 &quot;Introduction&quot; 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 &quot;[[Tommaso Pincio]]&quot; whose pseudonym is an Italian rendering of Pynchon's name.<br /> <br /> 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, &quot;Low-lands&quot; (1960), features a meditation on [[Werner Heisenberg|Heisenberg's]] [[uncertainty principle]] as a metaphor for telling stories about one's own experiences. His next published work, &quot;Entropy&quot; (1960), introduced [[entropy|the concept]] which was to become synonymous with Pynchon's name (though Pynchon later admitted the &quot;shallowness of [his] understanding&quot; of the subject, and noted that choosing an abstract concept first and trying to construct a narrative around it was &quot;a lousy way to go about writing a story&quot;). Another early story, &quot;Under the Rose&quot; (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.'' &quot;The Secret Integration&quot; (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 [[antiderivative|mathematical operation]], the only sense of the word with which they are familiar. <br /> <br /> ''The Crying of Lot 49'' also alludes to entropy and [[communication theory]], and contains scenes and descriptions which parody or appropriate [[calculus]], [[Zeno's paradoxes]], and the thought experiment known as [[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 [[hallucinogen]]s, 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 &amp; Dixon'', explores the scientific, theological, and sociocultural foundations of the [[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.<br /> <br /> 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, 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 &quot;cyberpunk&quot; did not become prevalent until the early 1980s, many readers retroactively include ''Gravity's Rainbow'' in the genre, along with other works&amp;mdash;''e.g.,'' Samuel R. Delany's ''Nova'' and many works of Philip K. Dick&amp;mdash;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 [[hypertext fiction]] movement of the 1990s.&lt;ref&gt;Page 2002; Krämer 2005&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ''Gravity's Rainbow'' and the more recent ''Mason &amp; 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.<br /> <br /> ==Media scrutiny==<br /> 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. <br /> <br /> A review of ''V.'' in the ''New York Times Book Review'' described Pynchon as &quot;a recluse&quot; living in Mexico, thereby introducing the media label which has pursued Pynchon throughout his career.&lt;ref&gt;Plimpton 1963: 5&lt;/ref&gt; 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. <br /> <br /> ===1970s and 1980s===<br /> 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 [[Irwin Corey|&quot;Professor&quot; Irwin Corey]] to accept the prize on Pynchon's behalf.&lt;ref name=&quot;royster2005&quot;/&gt; 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.&lt;ref&gt;Corey 1974&lt;/ref&gt; Towards the end of Corey's address a streaker ran through the hall, adding further to the confusion.<br /> <br /> An article published in the ''Soho Weekly News'' claimed that Pynchon was in fact J. D. Salinger.&lt;ref&gt;Batchelor 1976&lt;/ref&gt; Pynchon's written response to this theory was simple: &quot;Not bad. Keep trying.&quot;&lt;ref&gt; Reported in Tanner 1982&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> 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 &quot;Tom&quot; 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 &quot;[e]very weirdo in the world is on my wavelength&quot;,&lt;ref&gt;Siegel 1977&lt;/ref&gt; 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.<br /> <br /> ===1990s and 2000s===<br /> 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 &quot;reclusive&quot;. 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, &quot;For Mr. Voss or Occupant&quot; (1991), explains to her daughter that she is writing<br /> :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.&lt;ref&gt;Hospital 1995: 361-2&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> More recently, book critic Arthur Salm has written that<br /> :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&amp;mdash;the circumstances, I admit, are beyond imagining&amp;mdash;the resulting matter/antimatter explosion would vaporize everything from here to Tau Ceti IV.&lt;ref&gt;Salm 2004&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> 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.&lt;ref&gt;Pynchon 1989&lt;/ref&gt; 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 City|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.&lt;ref&gt;Hitchens 1997&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In the early 1990s, Pynchon married his literary agent, Melanie Jackson &amp;mdash; a great-granddaughter of Theodore Roosevelt &amp;mdash; 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 &amp; 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, &quot;My belief is that 'recluse' is a code word generated by journalists ... meaning, 'doesn't like to talk to reporters'.&quot; CNN also quoted him as saying, &quot;Let me be unambiguous. I prefer not to be photographed.&quot;&lt;ref&gt;CNN 1997&lt;/ref&gt; The next year, a reporter for the ''Sunday Times'' managed to snap a photo of him as he was walking with his son.&lt;ref&gt;Bone 1998&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> 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 (&quot;Pandemonium of the Sun&quot;), the novelist apparently vetoed a final scene that called for an extra playing him to be filmed from behind, walking away from shot.&lt;ref&gt;CNN 1997; Glenn 2003&lt;/ref&gt; 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 (&quot;Lunch With Lotion&quot;) for ''Esquire'' in June 1996 in the lead-up to the publication of ''Mason &amp; 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.''&lt;ref&gt;Warner 2001&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> 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 &quot;[[Wanda Tinasky]]&quot; 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. &quot;Literary detective&quot; 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 &quot;Tinasky&quot; letters had been written.&lt;ref&gt;Foster 2000&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;!-- [[Image:Pynchon-Simpsons-001.jpg|right|thumb|200px|Pynchon depicted in ''[[The Simpsons]]'' episode &quot;Diatribe of a Mad Housewife&quot;. His ''Simpsons'' appearances are the only times that Pynchon's voice has been broadcast in the media.]] --&gt;<br /> 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 &quot;Diatribe of a Mad Housewife&quot;, 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: &quot;Here's your quote: Thomas Pynchon loved this book, almost as much as he loves cameras!&quot; He then starts yelling at passing cars: &quot;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!&quot; The second appearance occurs in &quot;All's Fair in Oven War,&quot; which was the sixteenth-season premiere. In this appearance, Pynchon's dialogue consists entirely of [[pun]]s on his novel titles (&quot;These wings are 'V'-licious! I'll put this recipe in 'The Gravity's Rainbow Cookbook', right next to 'The Frying of Latke 49'.&quot;). Pynchon makes a third, non-speaking cameo, when he is seen at the fictional WordLoaf convention in the 18th season (2006) episode, &quot;Moe'N'a Lisa.&quot; 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.<br /> <br /> 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''.<br /> <br /> Shortly before ''Against the Day'' was published, Pynchon's prose appeared in the program for &quot;The Daily Show: Ten Fu@#ing Years (The Concert)&quot;, a retrospective on Jon Stewart's comedy-news broadcast ''The Daily Show.''&lt;ref&gt;Pynchon, Thomas. [http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_dailyshow.html &quot;The Evolution of ''The Daily Show''&quot;]. Printed in program notes (16 November 2006).&lt;/ref&gt; 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,<br /> :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.&lt;ref&gt;Pynchon, Thomas. [http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_mcewan.html &quot;Words for Ian McEwan&quot;] (6 December 2006)&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ==Works==<br /> * ''[[V.]]'' (1963), winner of [[William Faulkner Foundation]] Award<br /> * ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]'' (1966), winner of Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Foundation Award<br /> * ''[[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)<br /> * ''[[Slow Learner]]'' (1984), collection of early short stories<br /> * ''[[Vineland]]'' (1990)<br /> * ''[[Mason &amp; Dixon]]'' (1997)<br /> * ''[[Against the Day]]'' (21 November, 2006)<br /> <br /> 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.<br /> <br /> ==Notes and references==<br /> <br /> :&lt;small&gt;''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&amp;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.]''&lt;/small&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> * Batchelor, J.C. &quot;Thomas Pynchon is not Thomas Pynchon, or, This is End of the Plot Which Has No Name&quot;. ''Soho Weekly News'', 22 April 1976.<br /> * Bone, James. [http://www.suntimes.co.za:80/1998/06/07/lifestyle/life01.htm &quot;Who the hell is he?]&quot; ''Sunday Times'' (South Africa), 7 June 1998.<br /> * CNN. &quot;[http://cgi.cnn.com/US/9706/05/pynchon/ Where's Thomas Pynchon?]&quot; 5 June 1997.<br /> * CNN Book News. &quot;[http://www.cnn.com/books/news/9909/29/nobel.prize/index.html Early Nobel announcement prompts speculation]&quot;. 29 September 1999.<br /> * Corey, Irwin. &quot;[http://www.irwincorey.org/routines.html Transcript of National Book Award acceptance speech]&quot;, delivered 18 April 1974.<br /> * Ervin, Andrew. &quot;[http://citypaper.net/articles/091400/ae.books.shtml Nobel Oblige]&quot;. ''Philadelphia City Paper'' 14&amp;ndash;21 September 2000.<br /> * Foster, Don. ''Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous''. Henry Holt, New York, 2000.<br /> * Fowler, Douglas. ''A Reader's Guide to [[Gravity's Rainbow]]''. Ardis Press, 1980.<br /> * Frost, Garrison. &quot;[http://www.theaesthetic.com/NewFiles/pynchon.html Thomas Pynchon and the South Bay]&quot;. ''The Aesthetic'', 2003.<br /> * Getlin, Josh. &quot;[http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-wk-quick22.3jun22,0,5673134.story?coll=cl-calendar Pynchon Novel Out in December]&quot;. ''LA Times'', 22 June 2006.<br /> * Glenn, Joshua. &quot;[http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2003/10/19/pynchon_and_homer/ Pynchon and Homer]&quot;. ''Boston Globe'', 19 October 2003.<br /> * Gordon, Andrew. &quot;[http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/agordon/pynchon.htm Smoking Dope with Thomas Pynchon: A Sixties Memoir]&quot;.<br /> * Grimes, William. [http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/01/11/home/28957.html &quot;Toni Morrison Is '93 Winner Of Nobel Prize in Literature&quot;]. ''New York Times Book Review'', 8 October 1993.<br /> * Hitchens, Christopher. &quot;[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.]&quot; ''The Progressive'', October 1997.<br /> * Hospital, Janette Turner. ''Collected Stories 1970-1995''. University of Queensland Press, 1995.<br /> * Italie, Hillel. &quot;[http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060720/ap_en_ot/books_thomas_pynchon_1 New Thomas Pynchon Novel is on the way]&quot; ''Associated Press'', 20 July 2006.<br /> * Kihss, Peter. &quot;Pulitzer Jurors; His Third Novel&quot;. ''The New York Times'', 8 May 1974, p. 38.<br /> * Krämer, Oliver. &quot;[http://www.sicetnon.org/modules.php?op=modload&amp;name=PagEd&amp;file=index&amp;topic_id=40&amp;page_id=208 Interview mit John M. Krafft, Herausgeber der 'Pynchon Notes']&quot;. ''Sic et Non.''<br /> * ''New York Review of Books''. &quot;Writers and Editors War Tax Protest&quot; (advertisement). Vol. 10, No. 3, 15 February 1968, p. 9.<br /> * Page, Adrian. &quot;Towards a poetics of hypertext fiction&quot;. 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.<br /> * Patterson, Troy (a). &quot;[http://www.slate.com/id/2146152 Did the master make an appearance on his Amazon page?]&quot; ''Slate'', 20 July 2006.<br /> * Patterson, Troy (b). &quot;[http://www.slate.com/id/2146272 Mystery solved]&quot; ''Slate'', 20 July 2006.<br /> * Plimpton, George. &quot;Mata Hari with a Clockwork Eye, Alligators in the Sewer&quot;. Rev. of ''V.'' ''New York Times Book Review'', 21 April 1963, p. 5.<br /> * Pynchon, Thomas. &quot;[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_watts.html A Journey into the Mind of Watts]&quot;. ''New York Times Magazine'', 12 June 1966, pp. 34-35, 78, 80-82, 84.<br /> * Pynchon, Thomas. &quot;[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_rushdie.html Words for Salman Rushdie]&quot;. ''[[New York Times Book Review]]'', 12 March 1989, p. 29.<br /> * Pynchon, Thomas. [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159420120X/ Editorial review on ''Untitled Thomas Pynchon''], [[Amazon.com]] 14 July 2006.<br /> * Roeder, Bill. &quot;After the Rainbow&quot;. ''Newsweek'' 92, 7 August 1978.<br /> * Royster, Paul. &quot;[http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libraryscience/2/ Thomas Pynchon: A Brief Chronology]&quot;. Faculty Publications, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2005.<br /> * Salm, Arthur. &quot;A screaming comes across the sky (but not a photo)&quot;. San Diego ''Union-Tribune'', 8 February 2004.<br /> * Siegel, Jules. &quot;Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?&quot; ''Playboy'', March 1977.<br /> * Tanner, Tony. ''Thomas Pynchon''. Methuen &amp; Co., 1982.<br /> * Ulin, David. &quot;[http://www.salon.com/april97/media/media970425.html Gravity's End]&quot;. ''Salon'', 25 April 1997.<br /> * Warner, Simon. &quot;[http://www.popmatters.com/books/features/010802-hadju.shtml A king, a queen and two knaves?: An Interview with David Hajdu]&quot;. ''Pop Matters'', 2 August 2001.<br /> * Weisenburger, Steven C. ''A [[Gravity's Rainbow]] Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's Novel''. University of Georgia Press, 1988.<br /> * Wisnicki, Adrian. &quot;A Trove of New Works by Thomas Pynchon? Bomarc Service News Rediscovered.&quot; ''Pynchon Notes'' 46-49 (2000-1), pp. 9-34.<br /> <br /> ==External links==<br /> <br /> :''The following links were last verified on 30 November 2006.''<br /> <br /> * [http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/thomaspynchon/ Official UK publisher's site]<br /> * [http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&amp;UID=3673 Literary Encyclopedia biography]<br /> * [http://www.newenglandancestors.org/education/articles/research/special_guests/gary_boyd_roberts/48_659_448.asp The Ancestry of Novelist Thomas Pynchon]<br /> * [http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/ HyperArts Pynchon Pages]<br /> * [http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/ Pynchon Index]<br /> * [http://waste.org/pynchon-l The Pynchon-L mailing list] <br /> * ''[http://www2.ham.muohio.edu/~krafftjm/pynchon.html Pynchon Notes],'' a journal operated by Miami University in Oxford, Ohio <br /> * [http://pynchonoid.blogspot.com/ pynchonoid.blogspot.com]<br /> * [http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/ San Narciso Pynchon Page], hosted in Claremont, California, &quot;a town that looks a lot, in fact, like [[San Narciso]]&quot;<br /> * [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/index.html Spermatikos Logos]<br /> <br /> <br /> :'''''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.]]'''''</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:Main_Page&diff=3297 2006-12-06T00:52:22Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* Referencing */</p> <hr /> <div>==Added Annotation by Page==<br /> <br /> Hey, I've started to add a different type of annotation that the Alphabetical Index. I like this method because it gives the reader all the references on the page, as he reads, in a non-spoilerish fashion. No idea if this will take off aside from my contributions, and also no idea how to integrate it with the Alphabetical Index, but these problems I leave to future Pynchonwiki contributors as well as my future self. <br /> <br /> I also have not followed the naming guidelines on the main page, for the simple reason that I don't know how...! These pages can be renamed and moved by whoever knows how to do so.<br /> <br /> [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 08:51, 22 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> : I would name the page-by-page pages eg: ATD 1-25, etc. Ultimately, all Pynchon's works will be in the Wiki, so it's important to establish this convention. I have moved the three pages you created to reflect this naming.<br /> <br /> : I changed the page number headers to a 2nd level from a 1st level, to reflect semantically their heirarchy on the page (they appeared at the same level as &quot;Pages 1-25&quot;; thus, for example, I changed<br /> <br /> ::&lt;nowiki&gt;=Page 1=&lt;/nowiki&gt;<br /> <br /> ::to<br /> <br /> ::&lt;nowiki&gt;==Page1==&lt;/nowiki&gt;<br /> <br /> : I would suggest that eventually we have a link to the ToC for the page-by-page, as it will be a '''very long''' ToC!<br /> <br /> :[[User:WikiAdmin|Tim]] November 22, 2006<br /> <br /> :::good call! I'll handle that ToC soon. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:26, 23 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> I think the page-by-page (can we now call that the PbP?) is a lot more fun to edit, since it follows the way I am reading the book.<br /> --[[User:Fblau|Fblau]] 09:03, 25 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> == PbP Annotations added to sidebar - 11/30/06==<br /> This should make things a bit easier, nav-wise. I set up a template that can be accessed by entering in the search box &quot;Template:ATD PbP&quot; - so that's where all the edits get made.<br /> <br /> [[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 18:22, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==What can the Pynchonwiki do better than Amazon.com full text search?==<br /> <br /> I note that Amazon.com's full text search of Pynchon's novels does exactly the same thing as one function of Thomaspynchon.com's previous guides: giving the page numbers where a given character or thing is mentioned. That said, I think we need to articulate what the guides and Pynchon wiki do ''in addition'' to justify all the human labor involved, and then communicate that to potential wiki contributors. (also, Amazon doesn't do this for AtD yet, but since it's available for all his other works, I assume it's just a matter of time). Thoughts? [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:26, 23 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==Change of logo/cover image==<br /> <br /> Shouldn't we change the cover image/logo for Pynchon wiki (upper left corner) to the final version of the cover? And, for accuracy's sake, shouldn't we include the white border around the cover? [[User:Torerye|Torerye]] 01:21, 24 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> :agreed-- Tim will have to take care of that, though. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 14:17, 24 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> '''Tim sez:'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> This brings up the general branding of this site. I would like to have Wikis for all the works, and use the Category namespace to separate them. Having them all in this wiki means that a user can search in all the novels.<br /> <br /> So, I'm thinking I just create a &quot;logo&quot; image that's general, for &quot;Pynchon Wiki&quot;.<br /> <br /> I'd surely love to hear anyone's thoughts on this so we can brainstorm the best decision. Email me directly at tim (at) hyperarts (dot com).<br /> <br /> --[[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 15:00, 24 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==Missing caption?==<br /> <br /> Um, was the picture caption removed as a spoiler, or what? [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 22:49, 27 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> : No, I just took it off to free up the image, jettisoning signifiers. As I looked at it, I just thought it worked better if the reader just sort of recognizes it as that Chums of Chance bit without being too literal.<br /> <br /> : [[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 23:28, 27 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> == The impending anarchist miracle ==<br /> <br /> :''The following is copied from [http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&amp;month=0611&amp;msg=111809&amp;sort=date A. A.'s message on PYNCHON-L].''<br /> <br /> Jasper Fidget &lt;jasper.fidget@[omitted]&gt; wrote:<br /> &gt; [...] I anticipate the wiki turning into a junkyard full of people's <br /> &gt; half-baked opinions and<br /> &gt; Kinbote-esque commentary (i.e. worse than useless).<br /> <br /> In reply to which, pynchonoid &lt;pynchonoid@[omitted]&gt; wrote:<br /> &gt; That's Pynchon-l you're describing, certainly.<br /> &gt;<br /> &gt; I think you're wrong about the potential for<br /> &gt; http://pynchonwiki.com. So far, it is nothing like<br /> &gt; your description and is instead a useful resource that<br /> &gt; will grow more so as more people contribute useful<br /> &gt; information.<br /> &gt;<br /> <br /> And in reply to the above, I say:<br /> <br /> First of all, Kinbote's commentary isn't &quot;worse than useless&quot;. His digressions on Zembla have blasted little to do with John Shade's Appalachia, but leaving aside the value of the Forward (which gives the reader their first brush with Shade and, in some respects, a more complete visual impression), the Commentary and Index provide a counterpart and complement to the 999 lines of the poem itself. The book in its entirety is an artifice, deceptive and illuminating; if pynchonwiki.com produces anything like ''Pale Fire,'' its authors would have every right to be proud.<br /> <br /> &quot;[http://burks.brighton.ac.uk/burks/foldoc/6/51.htm Ha ha, only serious.]&quot;<br /> <br /> Second, the pynchonwiki has the potential to become something I wished Wikipedia could provide: a place to provide factual material of scholarly use, backed up with pointers to papers and books, ''plus'' the opportunity to generate new literary talk with kindred folks. You can't do that over at WP. Even applying the bread-and-butter methods of lit-crit one learns in the undergraduate years is a sin, or in the argot, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research Original Research]. In WP territory, you can't discuss a new book, even with old methods, only report what other people have said about old books. This is appropriate for an encyclopedia, but it can't constitute the whole of discourse.<br /> <br /> Human behavior implies some basic facts about wiki life. Foremost is the under-acknowledged issue that in any situation where the wiki grows by people contributing their free time, the majority of edits will be minor ones, affecting (and affected by) only their immediate environment. Lists can grow item by item, for example, much more easily than entire articles can be overhauled. Thus, even in cases where a page contains all the ''facts'' one needs, the organization will often be poor. Also, ensuring coordination among multiple pages can be difficult and tiresome to achieve.<br /> <br /> These societal traits make wikis a good repository for things like lists of typos, catalogs of character names and so forth. In these cases, small edits ''can'' build a workable and useful whole by incremental additions. However, there is an unhappy flipside. Most of the really good articles on WP (say, those listed in &quot;Featured Articles&quot;) are the work of one person or a small group, say a couple-three editors, who assemble a clear and thorough exposition of a topic which interests them. Remarkably often, such people can do a really terrific job. They push the article up to Featured status (I<br /> did this five times &amp;mdash; all it takes is energy and care), where it can sit and bask in the glory. . . . And attract a stream of well-meaning editors who come along, adding their favorite tidbit of information, little drops of this or that which may well be completely accurate but which don't fit into the scheme painfully worked out by the original authors.<br /> <br /> After this goes on for long enough, the original authors or others with a like-minded sense of dedication have to go through and clean up the cruft.<br /> <br /> I saw several cycles of this happen with the article ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_and_Hobbes Calvin and Hobbes]''. Everybody has their own favorite ''Calvin and Hobbes'' strip, and damn if they don't want to talk about it! This sort of thing is a big reason why WP has &quot;Featured Article Review&quot;, a mechanism for forcing cruft patrol and, if necessary, taking pages off the honor roll.<br /> <br /> If pynchonwiki is to be a going concern, it'll need mechanisms for keeping track of good content. Somebody will also have to institute ground rules for keeping debate fair and dealing with the inevitable hotheads and trolls (trust me, no subject is too obscure to attract crackpottery). Otherwise, we're just prayin' for that anarchist miracle.<br /> <br /> Pirate Prentice wrote:<br /> <br /> &gt; There's basically 3 things the wiki does at the moment: 1) straight up<br /> &gt; reference (what was the Chicago World's Fair and when did it happen?),<br /> &gt; 2) connections to other Pynchon novels (&quot;single up all lines&quot; also<br /> &gt; appears on these pages of GR and V., &quot;entropy&quot; was a major theme in<br /> &gt; GR, etc), and 3) interpretation.<br /> <br /> I think that any work people do on #3 (which is what Wikipediphiles call &quot;original research&quot;) should be credited to the people who do it, since it is after all value generated by labor. To an extent, #2 shades into #3, depending upon how much one has to squint to draw the connections. The many avatars of Pig Bodine are less subtle than the postage-stamp references in ATD, for example.<br /> <br /> [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 15:44, 29 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> :What do we do about interpretation? As you say, the Pynchonwiki differs from Wikipedia in that there's room for people to add their own interpretations. Jasper on Pynchon-L warned that this could easily turn into a BS free-for-all, and maybe he's right. Who knows? This is one grand experiment! I foresee that someday, perhaps soon, we will need to agree on some hard and fast rules regarding opinions/interpretation (i.e. should users sign their opinions, do we keep interpretation in the discussion pages, etc), but for now, I for one say let's just sit back and see what the 125+ registered users we've got come up with. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 19:58, 29 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ::I floated an idea on PYNCHON-L which seems reasonable, at first glance. What if we institute a rule like Wikipedia's &quot;No original research&quot; policy for the articles themselves, allow a free-for-all on the ''discussion'' side, and then host periodic debates on issues of interest? We pick a topic relating to ATD, people who want to throw lit-crit around write their positions, and after a week, the moderator (''i.e.,'' a screwball with scholarly pretensions and too much free time) writes up the debate's &quot;greatest hits&quot; as an article. Giving proper attribution to all participants, naturally. This way, we can cover whatever issues arise naturally in close-reading ATD, letting everyone who wants to rant do so, while making sure important ideas don't get lost. [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 08:37, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> :::[[User:Ande|Ande]]+++Not quite sure how to &quot;discuss&quot; here yet---but since I stirred the pot on the pynchon-l site, I will try to move my musings here. As always with Wikipedia and actually anything (see recent gatt.org hacks of WTO, news stories about faked research at the university level, etc.) Reader Beware! It seems that when speculating, there is speculating language properly employed (wiggle words like &quot;seems to me, mayhaps, IMHO--if you are partial to internet convention) that can signal departure from fact to opinion. But the &quot;facts&quot; are only so good too--there is nothing to stop me from presenting myself as a scholar of esoteric Sanskrit calligraphy and providing translation of the text of the seal, nefariously if I wish, to promote some pet close reading. On the other hand, part of the joy of reading,esp reading Pynchon, is the unexpected depth gained by digging just a bit-- I'm not a WWI naval buff--my experience being limited to loving __Riddle of the Sands__ and a quick read of __Dreadnought__, so my initial read of 'dazzle painting'(AtD 122) had more Star Trek NG-Romulan Ships appearing off the aft deck-type connotations, but I marked it, looked it up, found it to be fascinating (esp when you consider that the periscopes looking at the painted patterns were made of Iceland Spar), and found that the wiki was a great place to share my discovery--without feeling too shy about the &quot;well duh, of course everyone knows that...&quot; responses that one might subject oneself to in an open forum...<br /> <br /> :::As to attribution, I started this discussion of speculation on the wiki on the P-List, because I found an off-hand comment I made in the course of (what I had assumed) was a less than serious discussion, suddenly &quot;attributed&quot; to me on the wiki--now, I understand that I can &quot;edit&quot; said attribution into wiki oblivion (or into a wiki war) but last vestiges of my Mother's WASPish upbringing cause me to hesitate to disturb the work of others...I could just retreat into politeness and not talk to strangers at all.<br /> <br /> :::So, as to the issue of No. 3--Interpretation--I agree with A.A., No.2 will bleed into No. 3, attribution is essential--and such posts should include a signature--preferably not just the digital signature available if you dig in the wiki history. We may even want to create a system so that people can discreetly mark posts as 1, 2 or 3, if they forget to use speculative language. And in the meantime, I would ask that until we have a moderated discussion, where Ideas are tempered in the furnace of debate, we be careful about &quot;attributing&quot; passing thoughts as &quot;original research.&quot; Ande [[User:Ande|Ande]] 10:49, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ::::Quick hints about the mechanics of wiki-work: you can indent paragraphs by using colons, ''italicize text'' by using double apostrophes (&lt;nowiki&gt;''&lt;/nowiki&gt;), '''bold text''' by using triple apostrophes (&lt;nowiki&gt;'''&lt;/nowiki&gt;), sign your name by using four tildes (&lt;nowiki&gt;~~~~&lt;/nowiki&gt; for me gives [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 10:10, 30 November 2006 (PST)) and make &quot;wikilinks&quot; to other pages by using double square brackets. &lt;nowiki&gt;[[Thomas Pynchon]]&lt;/nowiki&gt;, for example, gives [[Thomas Pynchon]]. Wikipedia has a &quot;[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cheatsheet Cheatsheet]&quot; on these matters; all of those tricks should work the same here. Best wishes, [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 10:10, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> <br /> :::I think Ande's ideas are all good ones, and particularly like the idea of keeping separate the discussion and annotation sections. &lt;br&gt;Of course, with Pynchon, there's plenty to draw connections with, and I think it's worthwhile to bracket non-obvious connections with contingent language. Not only does this indicate their interprative nature, it also more fully allows the possiblity of other readings.[[User:Ahpsp|Ahpsp]] 10:42, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> '''Tim sez:'''<br /> I already laid out on the home page, under &quot;Pynchon Wiki Help and Contributor Guidelines&quot;, how to handle discussion:<br /> <br /> :To open a discussion on an individual listing of the Alpha Index, [[ATD-T|see the page on Tait]]. Basically, give it a name that identifies the alpha listing (eg &lt;nowiki&gt;[[Subject Discussion|DISCUSSION]]&lt;/nowiki&gt; where &quot;Subject Discussion&quot; would be, eg, &quot;Tait Discussion&quot; or whatever) and notice that the visible name will be &quot;DISCUSSION&quot; in full caps, so it stands out a bit.<br /> <br /> :You can initiate a discussion for any topic using the above syntax. Just make sure the discussion article you create has an unique, intuitive and reasonably brief name. Don't just create a new article called &quot;Discussion&quot; -- if one already exists, you'll just open that one for editing. And, as I've said elsewhere, just use the &quot;List All Pages&quot; sidebar link to see what current exists in the wiki.<br /> <br /> :Anybody is free to email me tim (at) hyperarts (dot com) to discuss.<br /> <br /> :I think through the group process we can get it right.<br /> <br /> :Regarding help, besides the Wikipedia Cheatsheet, you can use the Help link in the sidebar which has a page with lots of useful info. I need to create The Perfect Wiki Cheatsheet, but just haven't gotten the time what with all else that sort of exploding around me :)<br /> <br /> :[[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 10:56, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ::Tim, I think your system of Discussion is overkill. What if, and I believe this would commonly happen, someone has only a sentence or two to say about Tait? Or someone wants to respond to that in a sentence or two? We'd then be creating hundreds of Wiki pages with only a bit of content in them. <br /> <br /> ::I advocate for the creation of separate discussion pages only if there's so much discussion on a certain entry that it's bogging down the Letter page. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 15:50, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> Tim sez:&lt;br /&gt;<br /> ::I think your approach is fine, basically the same principal as adding content to the Page by Page or Alpha guides, i.e., the drilldown. Avoid clutter at all costs!<br /> <br /> ::I also think a general discussion page, such as this has become, should be archived (moved) every so often. This one's getting quite unwieldy.<br /> <br /> ::[[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 18:19, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==Attribution?==<br /> <br /> A lot of people are talking about whether we should suggest signing posts, especially those we'd consider opinion or speculation. I actually think this is a good idea, but obviously it will be up to each contributor whether he chooses to or not.[[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 15:52, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> == Copyright policy? ==<br /> <br /> The Pynchon Wiki doesn't appear to have any copyright notices or policies set out. Should we agree to release our contributions under the GFDL 1.2, like Wikipedia, a Creative Commons license or some such? [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 16:59, 2 December 2006 (PST)<br /> :Sounds good to me-- CC may be the way to go. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 17:55, 2 December 2006 (PST)<br /> ::My personal choice would be for the [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ CC Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5], or perhaps the [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike] version. [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 20:04, 3 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==Wiki Tip: Contributors would rather fill in blanks than add new entries.== <br /> Therefore, it is preferable to add unknown references marked with a question mark than to omit them entirely. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 17:57, 3 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> == Referencing ==<br /> <br /> As we gradually increase the sophistication of our pages, a system of speedily generating footnotes (or other citation mechanisms) will become important. Right now, we seem to be handling everything with direct external hyperlinks, which is fine for the moment, but pretty soon, we'll be wanting to give footnotes or Harvard references to journal articles and specific pages of books. (Yes, you know, all that Pynchon-relevant material which is not yet online?) Adopting the [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cite/Cite.php Cite.php extension to MediaWiki] might be a very good idea. See, oh, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism Transhumanism] for an example using this referencing style to its fullest. [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 20:12, 3 December 2006 (PST)<br /> :again, I whole-heartedly agree. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 21:43, 3 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> :'''Tim sez:''' I have installed Cite.php. It's fairly easy to use and, as above, here's [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cite/Cite.php the Cite.php page with instructions.] Basically, after an entry you want to cite, put the references between these two tags: &lt;nowiki&gt;&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/nowiki&gt;, and at the bottom, where you want to references to be listed, put this tag: &lt;nowiki&gt;&lt;references/&gt;&lt;/nowiki&gt;. Very cool, and thanks for the suggestion. <br /> <br /> :[[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 05:53, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> :::You're welcome! I have used these footnotes on the page [[Thomas Pynchon]] to set an example. [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 16:52, 5 December 2006 (PST)</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Thomas_Pynchon&diff=3296 2006-12-06T00:50:09Z

<p>BlakeStacey: change Harvard references to Cite.php footnotes</p> <hr /> <div>'''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: ''[[V.]]'' (1963), ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]'' (1966), ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'' (1973), ''[[Vineland]]'' (1990), ''[[Mason &amp; Dixon]]'' (1997), and ''[[Against the Day]]'' (2006). <br /> <br /> 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.<br /> <br /> ==Biography==<br /> 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, [[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 &quot;[[The Secret Integration]]&quot; (1964) and ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]''. <br /> <br /> ===Childhood and education===<br /> Pynchon attended Oyster Bay High School, where he was awarded &quot;student of the year&quot; and contributed short fictional pieces to his school newspaper: &quot;Voice of the Hamster&quot;,&lt;ref&gt;[http://themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_hamster.html &quot;Voice of the Hamster&quot;]&lt;/ref&gt; &quot;The Boys&quot;,&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_boys.html &quot;The Boys&quot;]&lt;/ref&gt; and &quot;Ye Legend of Sir Stupid and the Purple Knight&quot;.&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_knight.html &quot;Ye Legend of Sir Stupid and the Purple&quot;]&lt;/ref&gt; 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 [[United States Navy|U.S. Navy]]. In 1957, Pynchon returned to Cornell to pursue a degree in English. His first published story, &quot;The Small Rain&quot;, appeared in the ''Cornell Writer'' in May 1959, and narrates an actual experience of a friend who had served in the [[United States Army|army]]; subsequently, however, episodes and characters throughout Pynchon's fiction draw freely upon his own experiences in the navy. <br /> <br /> While at Cornell, Pynchon became a friend of [[Richard Fariña]], and both briefly led what Pynchon has called a &quot;micro-cult&quot; around Oakley Hall's [[1958 in literature|1958]] novel ''[[Warlock (novel)|Warlock]]''. (He later reminisced about his college days in the introduction he wrote in 1983 for Fariña's novel ''[[Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me]],'' first published in 1966.) Pynchon also reportedly attended lectures given by [[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. Pynchon received his BA in June 1959.<br /> <br /> ===Early career===<br /> 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, Washington|Seattle]], where he compiled safety articles for the ''Bomarc Service News,''&lt;ref&gt;Wisnicki 2000-1&lt;/ref&gt; 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 &quot;[[Yoyodyne]]&quot; corporation in ''[[V.]]'' and ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]],'' and both his background in physics and the technical journalism he undertook at Boeing provided much raw material for ''[[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.<br /> <br /> 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, California|Manhattan Beach]].&lt;ref&gt;Frost 2003&lt;/ref&gt; Pynchon during this period embraced the lifestyle and values of the [[hippie]] [[counterculture]], which he would later make use of in his 1990 novel ''[[Vineland]].''&lt;ref&gt;Gordon 1994&lt;/ref&gt; In 1964, his application to study mathematics as a graduate student at the [[University of California, Berkeley]], was turned down.&lt;ref name=&quot;royster2005&quot;&gt;Royster 2005&lt;/ref&gt; In 1966, he wrote a first-hand report on the aftermath and legacy of the [[Watts riots]] in Los Angeles. Entitled &quot;A Journey Into the Mind of Watts,&quot; the article was published in the ''New York Times Magazine.''&lt;ref&gt;Pynchon 1966&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> 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 &quot;neglected books&quot;, as part of a feature entitled &quot;A Gift of Books&quot; in the December 1965 issue of ''Holiday.''<br /> <br /> Pynchon's second novel, ''The Crying of Lot 49,'' is also set in California. It was published in 1966, and won the Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Foundation Award. Although more concise and linear in its structure than Pynchon's other novels, its labyrinthine plot features an ancient, underground mail service known as &quot;The Tristero&quot; or &quot;Trystero,&quot; a parody of a [[revenge play|Jacobean revenge drama]] entitled &quot;The Courier's Tragedy,&quot; 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.''<br /> <br /> In 1968, Pynchon was one of 447 signatories to the &quot;Writers and Editors War Tax Protest.&quot; 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 &quot;the proposed 10% income tax surcharge or any war-designated tax increase,&quot; and stated their belief &quot;that American involvement in Vietnam is morally wrong&quot;.&lt;ref&gt;''New York Review of Books'' 1968:9&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ===''Gravity's Rainbow'' and Pynchon's rise to prominence===<br /> Pynchon's most celebrated novel is his third, ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'', published in [[1973 in literature|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 theory|conspiracy]], [[synchronicity]], and [[entropy]], the novel has spawned a wealth of commentary and critical material, including two reader's guides,&lt;ref&gt;Fowler 1980; Weisenburger 1988&lt;/ref&gt; books and scholarly articles, on-line concordances and discussions,&lt;ref&gt;[http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/ Pynchon HyperArts]&lt;/ref&gt; 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 [[World War II|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 &quot;plot&quot;, 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.<br /> <br /> ''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 &quot;unreadable&quot;, &quot;turgid&quot;, &quot;overwritten&quot;, and in parts &quot;obscene&quot;, and no prize was awarded.&lt;ref&gt;Kihss 1974&lt;/ref&gt; In 1975, Pynchon declined the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.<br /> <br /> ===Post-''Gravity's Rainbow''===<br /> A collection of Pynchon's early short stories, entitled ''[[Slow Learner]]'', was published in 1984, with a lengthy autobiography|autobiographical introduction. In October of the same year, an article entitled &quot;Is It O.K. to Be a Luddite?&quot; 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 &quot;The Heart's Eternal Vow&quot;. Another article, entitled &quot;Nearer, My Couch, to Thee&quot;, 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 &quot;Sloth&quot;. <br /> <br /> Pynchon's fourth novel, ''[[Vineland]]'', was published in 1990. The novel is set in California in the 1980s and 1960s, and describes the relationship between an [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|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. <br /> <br /> In 1988, he received a MacArthur Fellowship and, since the early 1990s at least, many observers have mentioned Pynchon as a Nobel Prize contender.&lt;ref&gt;See, for example, Grimes 1993, CNN Book News 1999, Ervin 2000&lt;/ref&gt; 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. <br /> <br /> Pynchon's fifth novel is ''[[Mason &amp; Dixon]]'', a work which had been in the pipeline since 1978 at least.&lt;ref&gt;Roeder 1978; see also Ulin 1997&lt;/ref&gt; Published in 1997, the meticulously-researched novel is a sprawling saga recounting the lives and careers of the English astronomer, [[Charles Mason]], and his partner, the surveyor [[Jeremiah Dixon]], and the birth of the [[American Revolution|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.<br /> <br /> ===''Against the Day''===<br /> <br /> A variety of rumors pertaining to the subject matter of Pynchon's [[Against the Day|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 &quot;a Russian mathematician [who] studied for [[David Hilbert]] in [[Göttingen]]&quot;, and that the new novel would trace the life and loves of [[Sofia Kovalevskaya]]. <br /> <br /> 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 [[World's Columbian Exposition|1893 Chicago World's Fair]] and the time immediately following [[World War I]]. &quot;With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead,&quot; Pynchon writes in his Book Description, &quot;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.&quot; He promises cameos by [[Nikola Tesla]], [[Bela Lugosi]] and [[Groucho Marx]], as well as &quot;stupid songs&quot; and &quot;strange sexual practices&quot;. Subsequently, the title of the new book was reported as ''[[Against the Day]]'' and a Penguin spokesperson confirmed that the synopsis was Pynchon's.&lt;ref&gt;Patterson 2006b; Italie 2006&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ''[[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.<br /> <br /> ==Themes and influence==<br /> 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 &quot;High&quot; and &quot;low&quot; culture, sometimes interpreted as a &quot;deconstruction&quot;, is seen as one of the defining characteristics of postmodernism.<br /> <br /> 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 [[Ornette Coleman]], [[Charlie Parker]] and [[Thelonious Monk]]. In ''The Crying of Lot 49'', the lead singer of &quot;The Paranoids&quot; sports &quot;a [[The Beatles|Beatle]] haircut&quot; 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 [[The Fool (band)|The Fool]] in the 1960s (having [[Magic realism|magically]] recovered the latter instrument, his &quot;harp&quot;, 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 &quot;Cherokee&quot;, 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 &quot;The Corvairs&quot;, while Isaiah played in a punk band called &quot;Billy Barf and the Vomitones&quot;. In ''Mason &amp; Dixon'', one of the characters plays on the &quot;Clavier&quot; the varsity drinking song which will later become &quot;The Star-Spangled Banner&quot;. <br /> <br /> In his ''[[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 &quot;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.&quot; He is also known to be a fan of Roky Erickson.<br /> <br /> 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 &quot;Introduction&quot; 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 &quot;[[Tommaso Pincio]]&quot; whose pseudonym is an Italian rendering of Pynchon's name.<br /> <br /> 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, &quot;Low-lands&quot; (1960), features a meditation on [[Werner Heisenberg|Heisenberg's]] [[uncertainty principle]] as a metaphor for telling stories about one's own experiences. His next published work, &quot;Entropy&quot; (1960), introduced [[entropy|the concept]] which was to become synonymous with Pynchon's name (though Pynchon later admitted the &quot;shallowness of [his] understanding&quot; of the subject, and noted that choosing an abstract concept first and trying to construct a narrative around it was &quot;a lousy way to go about writing a story&quot;). Another early story, &quot;Under the Rose&quot; (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.'' &quot;The Secret Integration&quot; (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 [[antiderivative|mathematical operation]], the only sense of the word with which they are familiar. <br /> <br /> ''The Crying of Lot 49'' also alludes to entropy and [[communication theory]], and contains scenes and descriptions which parody or appropriate [[calculus]], [[Zeno's paradoxes]], and the thought experiment known as [[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 [[hallucinogen]]s, 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 &amp; Dixon'', explores the scientific, theological, and sociocultural foundations of the [[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.<br /> <br /> 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, 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 &quot;cyberpunk&quot; did not become prevalent until the early 1980s, many readers retroactively include ''Gravity's Rainbow'' in the genre, along with other works&amp;mdash;''e.g.,'' Samuel R. Delany's ''Nova'' and many works of Philip K. Dick&amp;mdash;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 [[hypertext fiction]] movement of the 1990s.&lt;ref&gt;Page 2002; Krämer 2005&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> ''Gravity's Rainbow'' and the more recent ''Mason &amp; 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.<br /> <br /> ==Media scrutiny==<br /> 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. <br /> <br /> A review of ''V.'' in the ''New York Times Book Review'' described Pynchon as &quot;a recluse&quot; living in Mexico, thereby introducing the media label which has pursued Pynchon throughout his career.&lt;ref&gt;Plimpton 1963: 5&lt;/ref&gt; 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. <br /> <br /> ===1970s and 1980s===<br /> 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 [[Irwin Corey|&quot;Professor&quot; Irwin Corey]] to accept the prize on Pynchon's behalf.&lt;ref name=&quot;royster2005&quot;/&gt; 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.&lt;ref&gt;Corey 1974&lt;/ref&gt; Towards the end of Corey's address a streaker ran through the hall, adding further to the confusion.<br /> <br /> An article published in the ''Soho Weekly News'' claimed that Pynchon was in fact J. D. Salinger.&lt;ref&gt;Batchelor 1976&lt;/ref&gt; Pynchon's written response to this theory was simple: &quot;Not bad. Keep trying.&quot;&lt;ref&gt; Reported in Tanner 1982&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> 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 &quot;Tom&quot; 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 &quot;[e]very weirdo in the world is on my wavelength&quot;,&lt;ref&gt;Siegel 1977&lt;/ref&gt; 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.<br /> <br /> ===1990s and 2000s===<br /> 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 &quot;reclusive&quot;. 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, &quot;For Mr. Voss or Occupant&quot; (1991), explains to her daughter that she is writing<br /> :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.&lt;ref&gt;Hospital 1995: 361-2&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> More recently, book critic Arthur Salm has written that<br /> :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&amp;mdash;the circumstances, I admit, are beyond imagining&amp;mdash;the resulting matter/antimatter explosion would vaporize everything from here to Tau Ceti IV.&lt;ref&gt;Salm 2004&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> 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.&lt;ref&gt;Pynchon 1989&lt;/ref&gt; 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 City|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.&lt;ref&gt;Hitchens 1997&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> In the early 1990s, Pynchon married his literary agent, Melanie Jackson &amp;mdash; a great-granddaughter of Theodore Roosevelt &amp;mdash; 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 &amp; 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, &quot;My belief is that 'recluse' is a code word generated by journalists ... meaning, 'doesn't like to talk to reporters'.&quot; CNN also quoted him as saying, &quot;Let me be unambiguous. I prefer not to be photographed.&quot;&lt;ref&gt;CNN 1997&lt;/ref&gt; The next year, a reporter for the ''Sunday Times'' managed to snap a photo of him as he was walking with his son.&lt;ref&gt;Bone 1998&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> 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 (&quot;Pandemonium of the Sun&quot;), the novelist apparently vetoed a final scene that called for an extra playing him to be filmed from behind, walking away from shot.&lt;ref&gt;CNN 1997; Glenn 2003&lt;/ref&gt; 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 (&quot;Lunch With Lotion&quot;) for ''Esquire'' in June 1996 in the lead-up to the publication of ''Mason &amp; 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.''&lt;ref&gt;Warner 2001&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> 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 &quot;[[Wanda Tinasky]]&quot; 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. &quot;Literary detective&quot; 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 &quot;Tinasky&quot; letters had been written.&lt;ref&gt;Foster 2000&lt;/ref&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;!-- [[Image:Pynchon-Simpsons-001.jpg|right|thumb|200px|Pynchon depicted in ''[[The Simpsons]]'' episode &quot;Diatribe of a Mad Housewife&quot;. His ''Simpsons'' appearances are the only times that Pynchon's voice has been broadcast in the media.]] --&gt;<br /> 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 &quot;Diatribe of a Mad Housewife&quot;, 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: &quot;Here's your quote: Thomas Pynchon loved this book, almost as much as he loves cameras!&quot; He then starts yelling at passing cars: &quot;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!&quot; The second appearance occurs in &quot;All's Fair in Oven War,&quot; which was the sixteenth-season premiere. In this appearance, Pynchon's dialogue consists entirely of [[pun]]s on his novel titles (&quot;These wings are 'V'-licious! I'll put this recipe in 'The Gravity's Rainbow Cookbook', right next to 'The Frying of Latke 49'.&quot;). Pynchon makes a third, non-speaking cameo, when he is seen at the fictional WordLoaf convention in the 18th season (2006) episode, &quot;Moe'N'a Lisa.&quot; 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.<br /> <br /> 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''.<br /> <br /> ==Works==<br /> * ''[[V.]]'' (1963), winner of [[William Faulkner Foundation]] Award<br /> * ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]'' (1966), winner of Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Foundation Award<br /> * ''[[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)<br /> * ''[[Slow Learner]]'' (1984), collection of early short stories<br /> * ''[[Vineland]]'' (1990)<br /> * ''[[Mason &amp; Dixon]]'' (1997)<br /> * ''[[Against the Day]]'' (21 November, 2006)<br /> <br /> 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.<br /> <br /> ==Notes and references==<br /> <br /> :&lt;small&gt;''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&amp;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.]''&lt;/small&gt;<br /> <br /> &lt;references/&gt;<br /> <br /> * Batchelor, J.C. &quot;Thomas Pynchon is not Thomas Pynchon, or, This is End of the Plot Which Has No Name&quot;. ''Soho Weekly News'', 22 April 1976.<br /> * Bone, James. [http://www.suntimes.co.za:80/1998/06/07/lifestyle/life01.htm &quot;Who the hell is he?]&quot; ''Sunday Times'' (South Africa), 7 June 1998.<br /> * CNN. &quot;[http://cgi.cnn.com/US/9706/05/pynchon/ Where's Thomas Pynchon?]&quot; 5 June 1997.<br /> * CNN Book News. &quot;[http://www.cnn.com/books/news/9909/29/nobel.prize/index.html Early Nobel announcement prompts speculation]&quot;. 29 September 1999.<br /> * Corey, Irwin. &quot;[http://www.irwincorey.org/routines.html Transcript of National Book Award acceptance speech]&quot;, delivered 18 April 1974.<br /> * Ervin, Andrew. &quot;[http://citypaper.net/articles/091400/ae.books.shtml Nobel Oblige]&quot;. ''Philadelphia City Paper'' 14&amp;ndash;21 September 2000.<br /> * Foster, Don. ''Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous''. Henry Holt, New York, 2000.<br /> * Fowler, Douglas. ''A Reader's Guide to [[Gravity's Rainbow]]''. Ardis Press, 1980.<br /> * Frost, Garrison. &quot;[http://www.theaesthetic.com/NewFiles/pynchon.html Thomas Pynchon and the South Bay]&quot;. ''The Aesthetic'', 2003.<br /> * Getlin, Josh. &quot;[http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-wk-quick22.3jun22,0,5673134.story?coll=cl-calendar Pynchon Novel Out in December]&quot;. ''LA Times'', 22 June 2006.<br /> * Glenn, Joshua. &quot;[http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2003/10/19/pynchon_and_homer/ Pynchon and Homer]&quot;. ''Boston Globe'', 19 October 2003.<br /> * Gordon, Andrew. &quot;[http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/agordon/pynchon.htm Smoking Dope with Thomas Pynchon: A Sixties Memoir]&quot;.<br /> * Grimes, William. [http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/01/11/home/28957.html &quot;Toni Morrison Is '93 Winner Of Nobel Prize in Literature&quot;]. ''New York Times Book Review'', 8 October 1993.<br /> * Hitchens, Christopher. &quot;[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.]&quot; ''The Progressive'', October 1997.<br /> * Hospital, Janette Turner. ''Collected Stories 1970-1995''. University of Queensland Press, 1995.<br /> * Italie, Hillel. &quot;[http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060720/ap_en_ot/books_thomas_pynchon_1 New Thomas Pynchon Novel is on the way]&quot; ''Associated Press'', 20 July 2006.<br /> * Kihss, Peter. &quot;Pulitzer Jurors; His Third Novel&quot;. ''The New York Times'', 8 May 1974, p. 38.<br /> * Krämer, Oliver. &quot;[http://www.sicetnon.org/modules.php?op=modload&amp;name=PagEd&amp;file=index&amp;topic_id=40&amp;page_id=208 Interview mit John M. Krafft, Herausgeber der 'Pynchon Notes']&quot;. ''Sic et Non.''<br /> * ''New York Review of Books''. &quot;Writers and Editors War Tax Protest&quot; (advertisement). Vol. 10, No. 3, 15 February 1968, p. 9.<br /> * Page, Adrian. &quot;Towards a poetics of hypertext fiction&quot;. 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.<br /> * Patterson, Troy (a). &quot;[http://www.slate.com/id/2146152 Did the master make an appearance on his Amazon page?]&quot; ''Slate'', 20 July 2006.<br /> * Patterson, Troy (b). &quot;[http://www.slate.com/id/2146272 Mystery solved]&quot; ''Slate'', 20 July 2006.<br /> * Plimpton, George. &quot;Mata Hari with a Clockwork Eye, Alligators in the Sewer&quot;. Rev. of ''V.'' ''New York Times Book Review'', 21 April 1963, p. 5.<br /> * Pynchon, Thomas. &quot;[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_watts.html A Journey into the Mind of Watts]&quot;. ''New York Times Magazine'', 12 June 1966, pp. 34-35, 78, 80-82, 84.<br /> * Pynchon, Thomas. &quot;[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_rushdie.html Words for Salman Rushdie]&quot;. ''[[New York Times Book Review]]'', 12 March 1989, p. 29.<br /> * Pynchon, Thomas. [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159420120X/ Editorial review on ''Untitled Thomas Pynchon''], [[Amazon.com]] 14 July 2006.<br /> * Roeder, Bill. &quot;After the Rainbow&quot;. ''Newsweek'' 92, 7 August 1978.<br /> * Royster, Paul. &quot;[http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libraryscience/2/ Thomas Pynchon: A Brief Chronology]&quot;. Faculty Publications, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2005.<br /> * Salm, Arthur. &quot;A screaming comes across the sky (but not a photo)&quot;. San Diego ''Union-Tribune'', 8 February 2004.<br /> * Siegel, Jules. &quot;Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?&quot; ''Playboy'', March 1977.<br /> * Tanner, Tony. ''Thomas Pynchon''. Methuen &amp; Co., 1982.<br /> * Ulin, David. &quot;[http://www.salon.com/april97/media/media970425.html Gravity's End]&quot;. ''Salon'', 25 April 1997.<br /> * Warner, Simon. &quot;[http://www.popmatters.com/books/features/010802-hadju.shtml A king, a queen and two knaves?: An Interview with David Hajdu]&quot;. ''Pop Matters'', 2 August 2001.<br /> * Weisenburger, Steven C. ''A [[Gravity's Rainbow]] Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's Novel''. University of Georgia Press, 1988.<br /> * Wisnicki, Adrian. &quot;A Trove of New Works by Thomas Pynchon? Bomarc Service News Rediscovered.&quot; ''Pynchon Notes'' 46-49 (2000-1), pp. 9-34.<br /> <br /> ==External links==<br /> <br /> :''The following links were last verified on 30 November 2006.''<br /> <br /> * [http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/thomaspynchon/ Official UK publisher's site]<br /> * [http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&amp;UID=3673 Literary Encyclopedia biography]<br /> * [http://www.newenglandancestors.org/education/articles/research/special_guests/gary_boyd_roberts/48_659_448.asp The Ancestry of Novelist Thomas Pynchon]<br /> * [http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/ HyperArts Pynchon Pages]<br /> * [http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/ Pynchon Index]<br /> * [http://waste.org/pynchon-l The Pynchon-L mailing list] <br /> * ''[http://www2.ham.muohio.edu/~krafftjm/pynchon.html Pynchon Notes],'' a journal operated by Miami University in Oxford, Ohio <br /> * [http://pynchonoid.blogspot.com/ pynchonoid.blogspot.com]<br /> * [http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/ San Narciso Pynchon Page], hosted in Claremont, California, &quot;a town that looks a lot, in fact, like [[San Narciso]]&quot;<br /> * [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/index.html Spermatikos Logos]<br /> <br /> <br /> :'''''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.]]'''''</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:Main_Page&diff=3294 2006-12-06T00:29:46Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* Referencing */</p> <hr /> <div>==Added Annotation by Page==<br /> <br /> Hey, I've started to add a different type of annotation that the Alphabetical Index. I like this method because it gives the reader all the references on the page, as he reads, in a non-spoilerish fashion. No idea if this will take off aside from my contributions, and also no idea how to integrate it with the Alphabetical Index, but these problems I leave to future Pynchonwiki contributors as well as my future self. <br /> <br /> I also have not followed the naming guidelines on the main page, for the simple reason that I don't know how...! These pages can be renamed and moved by whoever knows how to do so.<br /> <br /> [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 08:51, 22 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> : I would name the page-by-page pages eg: ATD 1-25, etc. Ultimately, all Pynchon's works will be in the Wiki, so it's important to establish this convention. I have moved the three pages you created to reflect this naming.<br /> <br /> : I changed the page number headers to a 2nd level from a 1st level, to reflect semantically their heirarchy on the page (they appeared at the same level as &quot;Pages 1-25&quot;; thus, for example, I changed<br /> <br /> ::&lt;nowiki&gt;=Page 1=&lt;/nowiki&gt;<br /> <br /> ::to<br /> <br /> ::&lt;nowiki&gt;==Page1==&lt;/nowiki&gt;<br /> <br /> : I would suggest that eventually we have a link to the ToC for the page-by-page, as it will be a '''very long''' ToC!<br /> <br /> :[[User:WikiAdmin|Tim]] November 22, 2006<br /> <br /> :::good call! I'll handle that ToC soon. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:26, 23 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> I think the page-by-page (can we now call that the PbP?) is a lot more fun to edit, since it follows the way I am reading the book.<br /> --[[User:Fblau|Fblau]] 09:03, 25 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> == PbP Annotations added to sidebar - 11/30/06==<br /> This should make things a bit easier, nav-wise. I set up a template that can be accessed by entering in the search box &quot;Template:ATD PbP&quot; - so that's where all the edits get made.<br /> <br /> [[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 18:22, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==What can the Pynchonwiki do better than Amazon.com full text search?==<br /> <br /> I note that Amazon.com's full text search of Pynchon's novels does exactly the same thing as one function of Thomaspynchon.com's previous guides: giving the page numbers where a given character or thing is mentioned. That said, I think we need to articulate what the guides and Pynchon wiki do ''in addition'' to justify all the human labor involved, and then communicate that to potential wiki contributors. (also, Amazon doesn't do this for AtD yet, but since it's available for all his other works, I assume it's just a matter of time). Thoughts? [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:26, 23 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==Change of logo/cover image==<br /> <br /> Shouldn't we change the cover image/logo for Pynchon wiki (upper left corner) to the final version of the cover? And, for accuracy's sake, shouldn't we include the white border around the cover? [[User:Torerye|Torerye]] 01:21, 24 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> :agreed-- Tim will have to take care of that, though. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 14:17, 24 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> '''Tim sez:'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> This brings up the general branding of this site. I would like to have Wikis for all the works, and use the Category namespace to separate them. Having them all in this wiki means that a user can search in all the novels.<br /> <br /> So, I'm thinking I just create a &quot;logo&quot; image that's general, for &quot;Pynchon Wiki&quot;.<br /> <br /> I'd surely love to hear anyone's thoughts on this so we can brainstorm the best decision. Email me directly at tim (at) hyperarts (dot com).<br /> <br /> --[[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 15:00, 24 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==Missing caption?==<br /> <br /> Um, was the picture caption removed as a spoiler, or what? [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 22:49, 27 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> : No, I just took it off to free up the image, jettisoning signifiers. As I looked at it, I just thought it worked better if the reader just sort of recognizes it as that Chums of Chance bit without being too literal.<br /> <br /> : [[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 23:28, 27 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> == The impending anarchist miracle ==<br /> <br /> :''The following is copied from [http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&amp;month=0611&amp;msg=111809&amp;sort=date A. A.'s message on PYNCHON-L].''<br /> <br /> Jasper Fidget &lt;jasper.fidget@[omitted]&gt; wrote:<br /> &gt; [...] I anticipate the wiki turning into a junkyard full of people's <br /> &gt; half-baked opinions and<br /> &gt; Kinbote-esque commentary (i.e. worse than useless).<br /> <br /> In reply to which, pynchonoid &lt;pynchonoid@[omitted]&gt; wrote:<br /> &gt; That's Pynchon-l you're describing, certainly.<br /> &gt;<br /> &gt; I think you're wrong about the potential for<br /> &gt; http://pynchonwiki.com. So far, it is nothing like<br /> &gt; your description and is instead a useful resource that<br /> &gt; will grow more so as more people contribute useful<br /> &gt; information.<br /> &gt;<br /> <br /> And in reply to the above, I say:<br /> <br /> First of all, Kinbote's commentary isn't &quot;worse than useless&quot;. His digressions on Zembla have blasted little to do with John Shade's Appalachia, but leaving aside the value of the Forward (which gives the reader their first brush with Shade and, in some respects, a more complete visual impression), the Commentary and Index provide a counterpart and complement to the 999 lines of the poem itself. The book in its entirety is an artifice, deceptive and illuminating; if pynchonwiki.com produces anything like ''Pale Fire,'' its authors would have every right to be proud.<br /> <br /> &quot;[http://burks.brighton.ac.uk/burks/foldoc/6/51.htm Ha ha, only serious.]&quot;<br /> <br /> Second, the pynchonwiki has the potential to become something I wished Wikipedia could provide: a place to provide factual material of scholarly use, backed up with pointers to papers and books, ''plus'' the opportunity to generate new literary talk with kindred folks. You can't do that over at WP. Even applying the bread-and-butter methods of lit-crit one learns in the undergraduate years is a sin, or in the argot, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research Original Research]. In WP territory, you can't discuss a new book, even with old methods, only report what other people have said about old books. This is appropriate for an encyclopedia, but it can't constitute the whole of discourse.<br /> <br /> Human behavior implies some basic facts about wiki life. Foremost is the under-acknowledged issue that in any situation where the wiki grows by people contributing their free time, the majority of edits will be minor ones, affecting (and affected by) only their immediate environment. Lists can grow item by item, for example, much more easily than entire articles can be overhauled. Thus, even in cases where a page contains all the ''facts'' one needs, the organization will often be poor. Also, ensuring coordination among multiple pages can be difficult and tiresome to achieve.<br /> <br /> These societal traits make wikis a good repository for things like lists of typos, catalogs of character names and so forth. In these cases, small edits ''can'' build a workable and useful whole by incremental additions. However, there is an unhappy flipside. Most of the really good articles on WP (say, those listed in &quot;Featured Articles&quot;) are the work of one person or a small group, say a couple-three editors, who assemble a clear and thorough exposition of a topic which interests them. Remarkably often, such people can do a really terrific job. They push the article up to Featured status (I<br /> did this five times &amp;mdash; all it takes is energy and care), where it can sit and bask in the glory. . . . And attract a stream of well-meaning editors who come along, adding their favorite tidbit of information, little drops of this or that which may well be completely accurate but which don't fit into the scheme painfully worked out by the original authors.<br /> <br /> After this goes on for long enough, the original authors or others with a like-minded sense of dedication have to go through and clean up the cruft.<br /> <br /> I saw several cycles of this happen with the article ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_and_Hobbes Calvin and Hobbes]''. Everybody has their own favorite ''Calvin and Hobbes'' strip, and damn if they don't want to talk about it! This sort of thing is a big reason why WP has &quot;Featured Article Review&quot;, a mechanism for forcing cruft patrol and, if necessary, taking pages off the honor roll.<br /> <br /> If pynchonwiki is to be a going concern, it'll need mechanisms for keeping track of good content. Somebody will also have to institute ground rules for keeping debate fair and dealing with the inevitable hotheads and trolls (trust me, no subject is too obscure to attract crackpottery). Otherwise, we're just prayin' for that anarchist miracle.<br /> <br /> Pirate Prentice wrote:<br /> <br /> &gt; There's basically 3 things the wiki does at the moment: 1) straight up<br /> &gt; reference (what was the Chicago World's Fair and when did it happen?),<br /> &gt; 2) connections to other Pynchon novels (&quot;single up all lines&quot; also<br /> &gt; appears on these pages of GR and V., &quot;entropy&quot; was a major theme in<br /> &gt; GR, etc), and 3) interpretation.<br /> <br /> I think that any work people do on #3 (which is what Wikipediphiles call &quot;original research&quot;) should be credited to the people who do it, since it is after all value generated by labor. To an extent, #2 shades into #3, depending upon how much one has to squint to draw the connections. The many avatars of Pig Bodine are less subtle than the postage-stamp references in ATD, for example.<br /> <br /> [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 15:44, 29 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> :What do we do about interpretation? As you say, the Pynchonwiki differs from Wikipedia in that there's room for people to add their own interpretations. Jasper on Pynchon-L warned that this could easily turn into a BS free-for-all, and maybe he's right. Who knows? This is one grand experiment! I foresee that someday, perhaps soon, we will need to agree on some hard and fast rules regarding opinions/interpretation (i.e. should users sign their opinions, do we keep interpretation in the discussion pages, etc), but for now, I for one say let's just sit back and see what the 125+ registered users we've got come up with. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 19:58, 29 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ::I floated an idea on PYNCHON-L which seems reasonable, at first glance. What if we institute a rule like Wikipedia's &quot;No original research&quot; policy for the articles themselves, allow a free-for-all on the ''discussion'' side, and then host periodic debates on issues of interest? We pick a topic relating to ATD, people who want to throw lit-crit around write their positions, and after a week, the moderator (''i.e.,'' a screwball with scholarly pretensions and too much free time) writes up the debate's &quot;greatest hits&quot; as an article. Giving proper attribution to all participants, naturally. This way, we can cover whatever issues arise naturally in close-reading ATD, letting everyone who wants to rant do so, while making sure important ideas don't get lost. [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 08:37, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> :::[[User:Ande|Ande]]+++Not quite sure how to &quot;discuss&quot; here yet---but since I stirred the pot on the pynchon-l site, I will try to move my musings here. As always with Wikipedia and actually anything (see recent gatt.org hacks of WTO, news stories about faked research at the university level, etc.) Reader Beware! It seems that when speculating, there is speculating language properly employed (wiggle words like &quot;seems to me, mayhaps, IMHO--if you are partial to internet convention) that can signal departure from fact to opinion. But the &quot;facts&quot; are only so good too--there is nothing to stop me from presenting myself as a scholar of esoteric Sanskrit calligraphy and providing translation of the text of the seal, nefariously if I wish, to promote some pet close reading. On the other hand, part of the joy of reading,esp reading Pynchon, is the unexpected depth gained by digging just a bit-- I'm not a WWI naval buff--my experience being limited to loving __Riddle of the Sands__ and a quick read of __Dreadnought__, so my initial read of 'dazzle painting'(AtD 122) had more Star Trek NG-Romulan Ships appearing off the aft deck-type connotations, but I marked it, looked it up, found it to be fascinating (esp when you consider that the periscopes looking at the painted patterns were made of Iceland Spar), and found that the wiki was a great place to share my discovery--without feeling too shy about the &quot;well duh, of course everyone knows that...&quot; responses that one might subject oneself to in an open forum...<br /> <br /> :::As to attribution, I started this discussion of speculation on the wiki on the P-List, because I found an off-hand comment I made in the course of (what I had assumed) was a less than serious discussion, suddenly &quot;attributed&quot; to me on the wiki--now, I understand that I can &quot;edit&quot; said attribution into wiki oblivion (or into a wiki war) but last vestiges of my Mother's WASPish upbringing cause me to hesitate to disturb the work of others...I could just retreat into politeness and not talk to strangers at all.<br /> <br /> :::So, as to the issue of No. 3--Interpretation--I agree with A.A., No.2 will bleed into No. 3, attribution is essential--and such posts should include a signature--preferably not just the digital signature available if you dig in the wiki history. We may even want to create a system so that people can discreetly mark posts as 1, 2 or 3, if they forget to use speculative language. And in the meantime, I would ask that until we have a moderated discussion, where Ideas are tempered in the furnace of debate, we be careful about &quot;attributing&quot; passing thoughts as &quot;original research.&quot; Ande [[User:Ande|Ande]] 10:49, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ::::Quick hints about the mechanics of wiki-work: you can indent paragraphs by using colons, ''italicize text'' by using double apostrophes (&lt;nowiki&gt;''&lt;/nowiki&gt;), '''bold text''' by using triple apostrophes (&lt;nowiki&gt;'''&lt;/nowiki&gt;), sign your name by using four tildes (&lt;nowiki&gt;~~~~&lt;/nowiki&gt; for me gives [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 10:10, 30 November 2006 (PST)) and make &quot;wikilinks&quot; to other pages by using double square brackets. &lt;nowiki&gt;[[Thomas Pynchon]]&lt;/nowiki&gt;, for example, gives [[Thomas Pynchon]]. Wikipedia has a &quot;[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cheatsheet Cheatsheet]&quot; on these matters; all of those tricks should work the same here. Best wishes, [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 10:10, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> <br /> :::I think Ande's ideas are all good ones, and particularly like the idea of keeping separate the discussion and annotation sections. &lt;br&gt;Of course, with Pynchon, there's plenty to draw connections with, and I think it's worthwhile to bracket non-obvious connections with contingent language. Not only does this indicate their interprative nature, it also more fully allows the possiblity of other readings.[[User:Ahpsp|Ahpsp]] 10:42, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> '''Tim sez:'''<br /> I already laid out on the home page, under &quot;Pynchon Wiki Help and Contributor Guidelines&quot;, how to handle discussion:<br /> <br /> :To open a discussion on an individual listing of the Alpha Index, [[ATD-T|see the page on Tait]]. Basically, give it a name that identifies the alpha listing (eg &lt;nowiki&gt;[[Subject Discussion|DISCUSSION]]&lt;/nowiki&gt; where &quot;Subject Discussion&quot; would be, eg, &quot;Tait Discussion&quot; or whatever) and notice that the visible name will be &quot;DISCUSSION&quot; in full caps, so it stands out a bit.<br /> <br /> :You can initiate a discussion for any topic using the above syntax. Just make sure the discussion article you create has an unique, intuitive and reasonably brief name. Don't just create a new article called &quot;Discussion&quot; -- if one already exists, you'll just open that one for editing. And, as I've said elsewhere, just use the &quot;List All Pages&quot; sidebar link to see what current exists in the wiki.<br /> <br /> :Anybody is free to email me tim (at) hyperarts (dot com) to discuss.<br /> <br /> :I think through the group process we can get it right.<br /> <br /> :Regarding help, besides the Wikipedia Cheatsheet, you can use the Help link in the sidebar which has a page with lots of useful info. I need to create The Perfect Wiki Cheatsheet, but just haven't gotten the time what with all else that sort of exploding around me :)<br /> <br /> :[[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 10:56, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ::Tim, I think your system of Discussion is overkill. What if, and I believe this would commonly happen, someone has only a sentence or two to say about Tait? Or someone wants to respond to that in a sentence or two? We'd then be creating hundreds of Wiki pages with only a bit of content in them. <br /> <br /> ::I advocate for the creation of separate discussion pages only if there's so much discussion on a certain entry that it's bogging down the Letter page. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 15:50, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> Tim sez:&lt;br /&gt;<br /> ::I think your approach is fine, basically the same principal as adding content to the Page by Page or Alpha guides, i.e., the drilldown. Avoid clutter at all costs!<br /> <br /> ::I also think a general discussion page, such as this has become, should be archived (moved) every so often. This one's getting quite unwieldy.<br /> <br /> ::[[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 18:19, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==Attribution?==<br /> <br /> A lot of people are talking about whether we should suggest signing posts, especially those we'd consider opinion or speculation. I actually think this is a good idea, but obviously it will be up to each contributor whether he chooses to or not.[[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 15:52, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> == Copyright policy? ==<br /> <br /> The Pynchon Wiki doesn't appear to have any copyright notices or policies set out. Should we agree to release our contributions under the GFDL 1.2, like Wikipedia, a Creative Commons license or some such? [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 16:59, 2 December 2006 (PST)<br /> :Sounds good to me-- CC may be the way to go. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 17:55, 2 December 2006 (PST)<br /> ::My personal choice would be for the [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ CC Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5], or perhaps the [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike] version. [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 20:04, 3 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==Wiki Tip: Contributors would rather fill in blanks than add new entries.== <br /> Therefore, it is preferable to add unknown references marked with a question mark than to omit them entirely. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 17:57, 3 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> == Referencing ==<br /> <br /> As we gradually increase the sophistication of our pages, a system of speedily generating footnotes (or other citation mechanisms) will become important. Right now, we seem to be handling everything with direct external hyperlinks, which is fine for the moment, but pretty soon, we'll be wanting to give footnotes or Harvard references to journal articles and specific pages of books. (Yes, you know, all that Pynchon-relevant material which is not yet online?) Adopting the [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cite/Cite.php Cite.php extension to MediaWiki] might be a very good idea. See, oh, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism Transhumanism] for an example using this referencing style to its fullest. [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 20:12, 3 December 2006 (PST)<br /> :again, I whole-heartedly agree. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 21:43, 3 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> :'''Tim sez:''' I have installed Cite.php. It's fairly easy to use and, as above, here's [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cite/Cite.php the Cite.php page with instructions.] Basically, after an entry you want to cite, put the references between these two tags: &lt;nowiki&gt;&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;/nowiki&gt;, and at the bottom, where you want to references to be listed, put this tag: &lt;nowiki&gt;&lt;references/&gt;&lt;/nowiki&gt;. Very cool, and thanks for the suggestion. <br /> <br /> :[[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 05:53, 5 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> :::You're welcome! [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 16:29, 5 December 2006 (PST)</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:Errata&diff=3141 2006-12-04T15:52:20Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* Updates */</p> <hr /> <div>There's a &quot;that&quot; which should be &quot;than&quot;, as well as a missing quotation mark, somewhere in the first 800 pages, but I was too foolish to note where I found them. Don't I feel like a schmuck. [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 16:42, 2 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> == Updates ==<br /> <br /> How do you think I feel mistyping the line for an error right in front of me?<br /> <br /> (Thanks for the catch, Bleakhaus!)<br /> <br /> I have all sympathy for Penguin (as long as they correct 'em.) This must have been a bear to proof, and perfection is not given to mortals... [[User:monte.davis|monte.davis]] 04:25, 3 December 2006 (EST)<br /> <br /> :We are, after all, doing Penguin's work for free. :-/ [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 07:52, 4 December 2006 (PST)</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:Main_Page&diff=3116 2006-12-04T04:12:52Z

<p>BlakeStacey: Referencing</p> <hr /> <div>==Added Annotation by Page==<br /> <br /> Hey, I've started to add a different type of annotation that the Alphabetical Index. I like this method because it gives the reader all the references on the page, as he reads, in a non-spoilerish fashion. No idea if this will take off aside from my contributions, and also no idea how to integrate it with the Alphabetical Index, but these problems I leave to future Pynchonwiki contributors as well as my future self. <br /> <br /> I also have not followed the naming guidelines on the main page, for the simple reason that I don't know how...! These pages can be renamed and moved by whoever knows how to do so.<br /> <br /> [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 08:51, 22 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> : I would name the page-by-page pages eg: ATD 1-25, etc. Ultimately, all Pynchon's works will be in the Wiki, so it's important to establish this convention. I have moved the three pages you created to reflect this naming.<br /> <br /> : I changed the page number headers to a 2nd level from a 1st level, to reflect semantically their heirarchy on the page (they appeared at the same level as &quot;Pages 1-25&quot;; thus, for example, I changed<br /> <br /> ::&lt;nowiki&gt;=Page 1=&lt;/nowiki&gt;<br /> <br /> ::to<br /> <br /> ::&lt;nowiki&gt;==Page1==&lt;/nowiki&gt;<br /> <br /> : I would suggest that eventually we have a link to the ToC for the page-by-page, as it will be a '''very long''' ToC!<br /> <br /> :[[User:WikiAdmin|Tim]] November 22, 2006<br /> <br /> :::good call! I'll handle that ToC soon. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:26, 23 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> I think the page-by-page (can we now call that the PbP?) is a lot more fun to edit, since it follows the way I am reading the book.<br /> --[[User:Fblau|Fblau]] 09:03, 25 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> == PbP Annotations added to sidebar - 11/30/06==<br /> This should make things a bit easier, nav-wise. I set up a template that can be accessed by entering in the search box &quot;Template:ATD PbP&quot; - so that's where all the edits get made.<br /> <br /> [[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 18:22, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==What can the Pynchonwiki do better than Amazon.com full text search?==<br /> <br /> I note that Amazon.com's full text search of Pynchon's novels does exactly the same thing as one function of Thomaspynchon.com's previous guides: giving the page numbers where a given character or thing is mentioned. That said, I think we need to articulate what the guides and Pynchon wiki do ''in addition'' to justify all the human labor involved, and then communicate that to potential wiki contributors. (also, Amazon doesn't do this for AtD yet, but since it's available for all his other works, I assume it's just a matter of time). Thoughts? [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:26, 23 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==Change of logo/cover image==<br /> <br /> Shouldn't we change the cover image/logo for Pynchon wiki (upper left corner) to the final version of the cover? And, for accuracy's sake, shouldn't we include the white border around the cover? [[User:Torerye|Torerye]] 01:21, 24 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> :agreed-- Tim will have to take care of that, though. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 14:17, 24 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> '''Tim sez:'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> This brings up the general branding of this site. I would like to have Wikis for all the works, and use the Category namespace to separate them. Having them all in this wiki means that a user can search in all the novels.<br /> <br /> So, I'm thinking I just create a &quot;logo&quot; image that's general, for &quot;Pynchon Wiki&quot;.<br /> <br /> I'd surely love to hear anyone's thoughts on this so we can brainstorm the best decision. Email me directly at tim (at) hyperarts (dot com).<br /> <br /> --[[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 15:00, 24 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==Missing caption?==<br /> <br /> Um, was the picture caption removed as a spoiler, or what? [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 22:49, 27 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> : No, I just took it off to free up the image, jettisoning signifiers. As I looked at it, I just thought it worked better if the reader just sort of recognizes it as that Chums of Chance bit without being too literal.<br /> <br /> : [[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 23:28, 27 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> == The impending anarchist miracle ==<br /> <br /> :''The following is copied from [http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&amp;month=0611&amp;msg=111809&amp;sort=date A. A.'s message on PYNCHON-L].''<br /> <br /> Jasper Fidget &lt;jasper.fidget@[omitted]&gt; wrote:<br /> &gt; [...] I anticipate the wiki turning into a junkyard full of people's <br /> &gt; half-baked opinions and<br /> &gt; Kinbote-esque commentary (i.e. worse than useless).<br /> <br /> In reply to which, pynchonoid &lt;pynchonoid@[omitted]&gt; wrote:<br /> &gt; That's Pynchon-l you're describing, certainly.<br /> &gt;<br /> &gt; I think you're wrong about the potential for<br /> &gt; http://pynchonwiki.com. So far, it is nothing like<br /> &gt; your description and is instead a useful resource that<br /> &gt; will grow more so as more people contribute useful<br /> &gt; information.<br /> &gt;<br /> <br /> And in reply to the above, I say:<br /> <br /> First of all, Kinbote's commentary isn't &quot;worse than useless&quot;. His digressions on Zembla have blasted little to do with John Shade's Appalachia, but leaving aside the value of the Forward (which gives the reader their first brush with Shade and, in some respects, a more complete visual impression), the Commentary and Index provide a counterpart and complement to the 999 lines of the poem itself. The book in its entirety is an artifice, deceptive and illuminating; if pynchonwiki.com produces anything like ''Pale Fire,'' its authors would have every right to be proud.<br /> <br /> &quot;[http://burks.brighton.ac.uk/burks/foldoc/6/51.htm Ha ha, only serious.]&quot;<br /> <br /> Second, the pynchonwiki has the potential to become something I wished Wikipedia could provide: a place to provide factual material of scholarly use, backed up with pointers to papers and books, ''plus'' the opportunity to generate new literary talk with kindred folks. You can't do that over at WP. Even applying the bread-and-butter methods of lit-crit one learns in the undergraduate years is a sin, or in the argot, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research Original Research]. In WP territory, you can't discuss a new book, even with old methods, only report what other people have said about old books. This is appropriate for an encyclopedia, but it can't constitute the whole of discourse.<br /> <br /> Human behavior implies some basic facts about wiki life. Foremost is the under-acknowledged issue that in any situation where the wiki grows by people contributing their free time, the majority of edits will be minor ones, affecting (and affected by) only their immediate environment. Lists can grow item by item, for example, much more easily than entire articles can be overhauled. Thus, even in cases where a page contains all the ''facts'' one needs, the organization will often be poor. Also, ensuring coordination among multiple pages can be difficult and tiresome to achieve.<br /> <br /> These societal traits make wikis a good repository for things like lists of typos, catalogs of character names and so forth. In these cases, small edits ''can'' build a workable and useful whole by incremental additions. However, there is an unhappy flipside. Most of the really good articles on WP (say, those listed in &quot;Featured Articles&quot;) are the work of one person or a small group, say a couple-three editors, who assemble a clear and thorough exposition of a topic which interests them. Remarkably often, such people can do a really terrific job. They push the article up to Featured status (I<br /> did this five times &amp;mdash; all it takes is energy and care), where it can sit and bask in the glory. . . . And attract a stream of well-meaning editors who come along, adding their favorite tidbit of information, little drops of this or that which may well be completely accurate but which don't fit into the scheme painfully worked out by the original authors.<br /> <br /> After this goes on for long enough, the original authors or others with a like-minded sense of dedication have to go through and clean up the cruft.<br /> <br /> I saw several cycles of this happen with the article ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_and_Hobbes Calvin and Hobbes]''. Everybody has their own favorite ''Calvin and Hobbes'' strip, and damn if they don't want to talk about it! This sort of thing is a big reason why WP has &quot;Featured Article Review&quot;, a mechanism for forcing cruft patrol and, if necessary, taking pages off the honor roll.<br /> <br /> If pynchonwiki is to be a going concern, it'll need mechanisms for keeping track of good content. Somebody will also have to institute ground rules for keeping debate fair and dealing with the inevitable hotheads and trolls (trust me, no subject is too obscure to attract crackpottery). Otherwise, we're just prayin' for that anarchist miracle.<br /> <br /> Pirate Prentice wrote:<br /> <br /> &gt; There's basically 3 things the wiki does at the moment: 1) straight up<br /> &gt; reference (what was the Chicago World's Fair and when did it happen?),<br /> &gt; 2) connections to other Pynchon novels (&quot;single up all lines&quot; also<br /> &gt; appears on these pages of GR and V., &quot;entropy&quot; was a major theme in<br /> &gt; GR, etc), and 3) interpretation.<br /> <br /> I think that any work people do on #3 (which is what Wikipediphiles call &quot;original research&quot;) should be credited to the people who do it, since it is after all value generated by labor. To an extent, #2 shades into #3, depending upon how much one has to squint to draw the connections. The many avatars of Pig Bodine are less subtle than the postage-stamp references in ATD, for example.<br /> <br /> [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 15:44, 29 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> :What do we do about interpretation? As you say, the Pynchonwiki differs from Wikipedia in that there's room for people to add their own interpretations. Jasper on Pynchon-L warned that this could easily turn into a BS free-for-all, and maybe he's right. Who knows? This is one grand experiment! I foresee that someday, perhaps soon, we will need to agree on some hard and fast rules regarding opinions/interpretation (i.e. should users sign their opinions, do we keep interpretation in the discussion pages, etc), but for now, I for one say let's just sit back and see what the 125+ registered users we've got come up with. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 19:58, 29 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ::I floated an idea on PYNCHON-L which seems reasonable, at first glance. What if we institute a rule like Wikipedia's &quot;No original research&quot; policy for the articles themselves, allow a free-for-all on the ''discussion'' side, and then host periodic debates on issues of interest? We pick a topic relating to ATD, people who want to throw lit-crit around write their positions, and after a week, the moderator (''i.e.,'' a screwball with scholarly pretensions and too much free time) writes up the debate's &quot;greatest hits&quot; as an article. Giving proper attribution to all participants, naturally. This way, we can cover whatever issues arise naturally in close-reading ATD, letting everyone who wants to rant do so, while making sure important ideas don't get lost. [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 08:37, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> :::[[User:Ande|Ande]]+++Not quite sure how to &quot;discuss&quot; here yet---but since I stirred the pot on the pynchon-l site, I will try to move my musings here. As always with Wikipedia and actually anything (see recent gatt.org hacks of WTO, news stories about faked research at the university level, etc.) Reader Beware! It seems that when speculating, there is speculating language properly employed (wiggle words like &quot;seems to me, mayhaps, IMHO--if you are partial to internet convention) that can signal departure from fact to opinion. But the &quot;facts&quot; are only so good too--there is nothing to stop me from presenting myself as a scholar of esoteric Sanskrit calligraphy and providing translation of the text of the seal, nefariously if I wish, to promote some pet close reading. On the other hand, part of the joy of reading,esp reading Pynchon, is the unexpected depth gained by digging just a bit-- I'm not a WWI naval buff--my experience being limited to loving __Riddle of the Sands__ and a quick read of __Dreadnought__, so my initial read of 'dazzle painting'(AtD 122) had more Star Trek NG-Romulan Ships appearing off the aft deck-type connotations, but I marked it, looked it up, found it to be fascinating (esp when you consider that the periscopes looking at the painted patterns were made of Iceland Spar), and found that the wiki was a great place to share my discovery--without feeling too shy about the &quot;well duh, of course everyone knows that...&quot; responses that one might subject oneself to in an open forum...<br /> <br /> :::As to attribution, I started this discussion of speculation on the wiki on the P-List, because I found an off-hand comment I made in the course of (what I had assumed) was a less than serious discussion, suddenly &quot;attributed&quot; to me on the wiki--now, I understand that I can &quot;edit&quot; said attribution into wiki oblivion (or into a wiki war) but last vestiges of my Mother's WASPish upbringing cause me to hesitate to disturb the work of others...I could just retreat into politeness and not talk to strangers at all.<br /> <br /> :::So, as to the issue of No. 3--Interpretation--I agree with A.A., No.2 will bleed into No. 3, attribution is essential--and such posts should include a signature--preferably not just the digital signature available if you dig in the wiki history. We may even want to create a system so that people can discreetly mark posts as 1, 2 or 3, if they forget to use speculative language. And in the meantime, I would ask that until we have a moderated discussion, where Ideas are tempered in the furnace of debate, we be careful about &quot;attributing&quot; passing thoughts as &quot;original research.&quot; Ande [[User:Ande|Ande]] 10:49, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ::::Quick hints about the mechanics of wiki-work: you can indent paragraphs by using colons, ''italicize text'' by using double apostrophes (&lt;nowiki&gt;''&lt;/nowiki&gt;), '''bold text''' by using triple apostrophes (&lt;nowiki&gt;'''&lt;/nowiki&gt;), sign your name by using four tildes (&lt;nowiki&gt;~~~~&lt;/nowiki&gt; for me gives [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 10:10, 30 November 2006 (PST)) and make &quot;wikilinks&quot; to other pages by using double square brackets. &lt;nowiki&gt;[[Thomas Pynchon]]&lt;/nowiki&gt;, for example, gives [[Thomas Pynchon]]. Wikipedia has a &quot;[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cheatsheet Cheatsheet]&quot; on these matters; all of those tricks should work the same here. Best wishes, [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 10:10, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> <br /> :::I think Ande's ideas are all good ones, and particularly like the idea of keeping separate the discussion and annotation sections. &lt;br&gt;Of course, with Pynchon, there's plenty to draw connections with, and I think it's worthwhile to bracket non-obvious connections with contingent language. Not only does this indicate their interprative nature, it also more fully allows the possiblity of other readings.[[User:Ahpsp|Ahpsp]] 10:42, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> '''Tim sez:'''<br /> I already laid out on the home page, under &quot;Pynchon Wiki Help and Contributor Guidelines&quot;, how to handle discussion:<br /> <br /> :To open a discussion on an individual listing of the Alpha Index, [[ATD-T|see the page on Tait]]. Basically, give it a name that identifies the alpha listing (eg &lt;nowiki&gt;[[Subject Discussion|DISCUSSION]]&lt;/nowiki&gt; where &quot;Subject Discussion&quot; would be, eg, &quot;Tait Discussion&quot; or whatever) and notice that the visible name will be &quot;DISCUSSION&quot; in full caps, so it stands out a bit.<br /> <br /> :You can initiate a discussion for any topic using the above syntax. Just make sure the discussion article you create has an unique, intuitive and reasonably brief name. Don't just create a new article called &quot;Discussion&quot; -- if one already exists, you'll just open that one for editing. And, as I've said elsewhere, just use the &quot;List All Pages&quot; sidebar link to see what current exists in the wiki.<br /> <br /> :Anybody is free to email me tim (at) hyperarts (dot com) to discuss.<br /> <br /> :I think through the group process we can get it right.<br /> <br /> :Regarding help, besides the Wikipedia Cheatsheet, you can use the Help link in the sidebar which has a page with lots of useful info. I need to create The Perfect Wiki Cheatsheet, but just haven't gotten the time what with all else that sort of exploding around me :)<br /> <br /> :[[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 10:56, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ::Tim, I think your system of Discussion is overkill. What if, and I believe this would commonly happen, someone has only a sentence or two to say about Tait? Or someone wants to respond to that in a sentence or two? We'd then be creating hundreds of Wiki pages with only a bit of content in them. <br /> <br /> ::I advocate for the creation of separate discussion pages only if there's so much discussion on a certain entry that it's bogging down the Letter page. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 15:50, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> Tim sez:&lt;br /&gt;<br /> ::I think your approach is fine, basically the same principal as adding content to the Page by Page or Alpha guides, i.e., the drilldown. Avoid clutter at all costs!<br /> <br /> ::I also think a general discussion page, such as this has become, should be archived (moved) every so often. This one's getting quite unwieldy.<br /> <br /> ::[[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 18:19, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==Attribution?==<br /> <br /> A lot of people are talking about whether we should suggest signing posts, especially those we'd consider opinion or speculation. I actually think this is a good idea, but obviously it will be up to each contributor whether he chooses to or not.[[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 15:52, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> == Copyright policy? ==<br /> <br /> The Pynchon Wiki doesn't appear to have any copyright notices or policies set out. Should we agree to release our contributions under the GFDL 1.2, like Wikipedia, a Creative Commons license or some such? [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 16:59, 2 December 2006 (PST)<br /> :Sounds good to me-- CC may be the way to go. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 17:55, 2 December 2006 (PST)<br /> ::My personal choice would be for the [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ CC Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5], or perhaps the [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike] version. [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 20:04, 3 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==Wiki Tip: Contributors would rather fill in blanks than add new entries.== <br /> Therefore, it is preferable to add unknown references marked with a question mark than to omit them entirely. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 17:57, 3 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> == Referencing ==<br /> <br /> As we gradually increase the sophistication of our pages, a system of speedily generating footnotes (or other citation mechanisms) will become important. Right now, we seem to be handling everything with direct external hyperlinks, which is fine for the moment, but pretty soon, we'll be wanting to give footnotes or Harvard references to journal articles and specific pages of books. (Yes, you know, all that Pynchon-relevant material which is not yet online?) Adopting the [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cite/Cite.php Cite.php extension to MediaWiki] might be a very good idea. See, oh, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism Transhumanism] for an example using this referencing style to its fullest. [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 20:12, 3 December 2006 (PST)</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:Main_Page&diff=3115 2006-12-04T04:04:46Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* Copyright policy? */</p> <hr /> <div>==Added Annotation by Page==<br /> <br /> Hey, I've started to add a different type of annotation that the Alphabetical Index. I like this method because it gives the reader all the references on the page, as he reads, in a non-spoilerish fashion. No idea if this will take off aside from my contributions, and also no idea how to integrate it with the Alphabetical Index, but these problems I leave to future Pynchonwiki contributors as well as my future self. <br /> <br /> I also have not followed the naming guidelines on the main page, for the simple reason that I don't know how...! These pages can be renamed and moved by whoever knows how to do so.<br /> <br /> [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 08:51, 22 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> : I would name the page-by-page pages eg: ATD 1-25, etc. Ultimately, all Pynchon's works will be in the Wiki, so it's important to establish this convention. I have moved the three pages you created to reflect this naming.<br /> <br /> : I changed the page number headers to a 2nd level from a 1st level, to reflect semantically their heirarchy on the page (they appeared at the same level as &quot;Pages 1-25&quot;; thus, for example, I changed<br /> <br /> ::&lt;nowiki&gt;=Page 1=&lt;/nowiki&gt;<br /> <br /> ::to<br /> <br /> ::&lt;nowiki&gt;==Page1==&lt;/nowiki&gt;<br /> <br /> : I would suggest that eventually we have a link to the ToC for the page-by-page, as it will be a '''very long''' ToC!<br /> <br /> :[[User:WikiAdmin|Tim]] November 22, 2006<br /> <br /> :::good call! I'll handle that ToC soon. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:26, 23 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> I think the page-by-page (can we now call that the PbP?) is a lot more fun to edit, since it follows the way I am reading the book.<br /> --[[User:Fblau|Fblau]] 09:03, 25 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> == PbP Annotations added to sidebar - 11/30/06==<br /> This should make things a bit easier, nav-wise. I set up a template that can be accessed by entering in the search box &quot;Template:ATD PbP&quot; - so that's where all the edits get made.<br /> <br /> [[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 18:22, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==What can the Pynchonwiki do better than Amazon.com full text search?==<br /> <br /> I note that Amazon.com's full text search of Pynchon's novels does exactly the same thing as one function of Thomaspynchon.com's previous guides: giving the page numbers where a given character or thing is mentioned. That said, I think we need to articulate what the guides and Pynchon wiki do ''in addition'' to justify all the human labor involved, and then communicate that to potential wiki contributors. (also, Amazon doesn't do this for AtD yet, but since it's available for all his other works, I assume it's just a matter of time). Thoughts? [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:26, 23 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==Change of logo/cover image==<br /> <br /> Shouldn't we change the cover image/logo for Pynchon wiki (upper left corner) to the final version of the cover? And, for accuracy's sake, shouldn't we include the white border around the cover? [[User:Torerye|Torerye]] 01:21, 24 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> :agreed-- Tim will have to take care of that, though. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 14:17, 24 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> '''Tim sez:'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> This brings up the general branding of this site. I would like to have Wikis for all the works, and use the Category namespace to separate them. Having them all in this wiki means that a user can search in all the novels.<br /> <br /> So, I'm thinking I just create a &quot;logo&quot; image that's general, for &quot;Pynchon Wiki&quot;.<br /> <br /> I'd surely love to hear anyone's thoughts on this so we can brainstorm the best decision. Email me directly at tim (at) hyperarts (dot com).<br /> <br /> --[[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 15:00, 24 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==Missing caption?==<br /> <br /> Um, was the picture caption removed as a spoiler, or what? [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 22:49, 27 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> : No, I just took it off to free up the image, jettisoning signifiers. As I looked at it, I just thought it worked better if the reader just sort of recognizes it as that Chums of Chance bit without being too literal.<br /> <br /> : [[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 23:28, 27 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> == The impending anarchist miracle ==<br /> <br /> :''The following is copied from [http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&amp;month=0611&amp;msg=111809&amp;sort=date A. A.'s message on PYNCHON-L].''<br /> <br /> Jasper Fidget &lt;jasper.fidget@[omitted]&gt; wrote:<br /> &gt; [...] I anticipate the wiki turning into a junkyard full of people's <br /> &gt; half-baked opinions and<br /> &gt; Kinbote-esque commentary (i.e. worse than useless).<br /> <br /> In reply to which, pynchonoid &lt;pynchonoid@[omitted]&gt; wrote:<br /> &gt; That's Pynchon-l you're describing, certainly.<br /> &gt;<br /> &gt; I think you're wrong about the potential for<br /> &gt; http://pynchonwiki.com. So far, it is nothing like<br /> &gt; your description and is instead a useful resource that<br /> &gt; will grow more so as more people contribute useful<br /> &gt; information.<br /> &gt;<br /> <br /> And in reply to the above, I say:<br /> <br /> First of all, Kinbote's commentary isn't &quot;worse than useless&quot;. His digressions on Zembla have blasted little to do with John Shade's Appalachia, but leaving aside the value of the Forward (which gives the reader their first brush with Shade and, in some respects, a more complete visual impression), the Commentary and Index provide a counterpart and complement to the 999 lines of the poem itself. The book in its entirety is an artifice, deceptive and illuminating; if pynchonwiki.com produces anything like ''Pale Fire,'' its authors would have every right to be proud.<br /> <br /> &quot;[http://burks.brighton.ac.uk/burks/foldoc/6/51.htm Ha ha, only serious.]&quot;<br /> <br /> Second, the pynchonwiki has the potential to become something I wished Wikipedia could provide: a place to provide factual material of scholarly use, backed up with pointers to papers and books, ''plus'' the opportunity to generate new literary talk with kindred folks. You can't do that over at WP. Even applying the bread-and-butter methods of lit-crit one learns in the undergraduate years is a sin, or in the argot, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research Original Research]. In WP territory, you can't discuss a new book, even with old methods, only report what other people have said about old books. This is appropriate for an encyclopedia, but it can't constitute the whole of discourse.<br /> <br /> Human behavior implies some basic facts about wiki life. Foremost is the under-acknowledged issue that in any situation where the wiki grows by people contributing their free time, the majority of edits will be minor ones, affecting (and affected by) only their immediate environment. Lists can grow item by item, for example, much more easily than entire articles can be overhauled. Thus, even in cases where a page contains all the ''facts'' one needs, the organization will often be poor. Also, ensuring coordination among multiple pages can be difficult and tiresome to achieve.<br /> <br /> These societal traits make wikis a good repository for things like lists of typos, catalogs of character names and so forth. In these cases, small edits ''can'' build a workable and useful whole by incremental additions. However, there is an unhappy flipside. Most of the really good articles on WP (say, those listed in &quot;Featured Articles&quot;) are the work of one person or a small group, say a couple-three editors, who assemble a clear and thorough exposition of a topic which interests them. Remarkably often, such people can do a really terrific job. They push the article up to Featured status (I<br /> did this five times &amp;mdash; all it takes is energy and care), where it can sit and bask in the glory. . . . And attract a stream of well-meaning editors who come along, adding their favorite tidbit of information, little drops of this or that which may well be completely accurate but which don't fit into the scheme painfully worked out by the original authors.<br /> <br /> After this goes on for long enough, the original authors or others with a like-minded sense of dedication have to go through and clean up the cruft.<br /> <br /> I saw several cycles of this happen with the article ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_and_Hobbes Calvin and Hobbes]''. Everybody has their own favorite ''Calvin and Hobbes'' strip, and damn if they don't want to talk about it! This sort of thing is a big reason why WP has &quot;Featured Article Review&quot;, a mechanism for forcing cruft patrol and, if necessary, taking pages off the honor roll.<br /> <br /> If pynchonwiki is to be a going concern, it'll need mechanisms for keeping track of good content. Somebody will also have to institute ground rules for keeping debate fair and dealing with the inevitable hotheads and trolls (trust me, no subject is too obscure to attract crackpottery). Otherwise, we're just prayin' for that anarchist miracle.<br /> <br /> Pirate Prentice wrote:<br /> <br /> &gt; There's basically 3 things the wiki does at the moment: 1) straight up<br /> &gt; reference (what was the Chicago World's Fair and when did it happen?),<br /> &gt; 2) connections to other Pynchon novels (&quot;single up all lines&quot; also<br /> &gt; appears on these pages of GR and V., &quot;entropy&quot; was a major theme in<br /> &gt; GR, etc), and 3) interpretation.<br /> <br /> I think that any work people do on #3 (which is what Wikipediphiles call &quot;original research&quot;) should be credited to the people who do it, since it is after all value generated by labor. To an extent, #2 shades into #3, depending upon how much one has to squint to draw the connections. The many avatars of Pig Bodine are less subtle than the postage-stamp references in ATD, for example.<br /> <br /> [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 15:44, 29 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> :What do we do about interpretation? As you say, the Pynchonwiki differs from Wikipedia in that there's room for people to add their own interpretations. Jasper on Pynchon-L warned that this could easily turn into a BS free-for-all, and maybe he's right. Who knows? This is one grand experiment! I foresee that someday, perhaps soon, we will need to agree on some hard and fast rules regarding opinions/interpretation (i.e. should users sign their opinions, do we keep interpretation in the discussion pages, etc), but for now, I for one say let's just sit back and see what the 125+ registered users we've got come up with. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 19:58, 29 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ::I floated an idea on PYNCHON-L which seems reasonable, at first glance. What if we institute a rule like Wikipedia's &quot;No original research&quot; policy for the articles themselves, allow a free-for-all on the ''discussion'' side, and then host periodic debates on issues of interest? We pick a topic relating to ATD, people who want to throw lit-crit around write their positions, and after a week, the moderator (''i.e.,'' a screwball with scholarly pretensions and too much free time) writes up the debate's &quot;greatest hits&quot; as an article. Giving proper attribution to all participants, naturally. This way, we can cover whatever issues arise naturally in close-reading ATD, letting everyone who wants to rant do so, while making sure important ideas don't get lost. [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 08:37, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> :::[[User:Ande|Ande]]+++Not quite sure how to &quot;discuss&quot; here yet---but since I stirred the pot on the pynchon-l site, I will try to move my musings here. As always with Wikipedia and actually anything (see recent gatt.org hacks of WTO, news stories about faked research at the university level, etc.) Reader Beware! It seems that when speculating, there is speculating language properly employed (wiggle words like &quot;seems to me, mayhaps, IMHO--if you are partial to internet convention) that can signal departure from fact to opinion. But the &quot;facts&quot; are only so good too--there is nothing to stop me from presenting myself as a scholar of esoteric Sanskrit calligraphy and providing translation of the text of the seal, nefariously if I wish, to promote some pet close reading. On the other hand, part of the joy of reading,esp reading Pynchon, is the unexpected depth gained by digging just a bit-- I'm not a WWI naval buff--my experience being limited to loving __Riddle of the Sands__ and a quick read of __Dreadnought__, so my initial read of 'dazzle painting'(AtD 122) had more Star Trek NG-Romulan Ships appearing off the aft deck-type connotations, but I marked it, looked it up, found it to be fascinating (esp when you consider that the periscopes looking at the painted patterns were made of Iceland Spar), and found that the wiki was a great place to share my discovery--without feeling too shy about the &quot;well duh, of course everyone knows that...&quot; responses that one might subject oneself to in an open forum...<br /> <br /> :::As to attribution, I started this discussion of speculation on the wiki on the P-List, because I found an off-hand comment I made in the course of (what I had assumed) was a less than serious discussion, suddenly &quot;attributed&quot; to me on the wiki--now, I understand that I can &quot;edit&quot; said attribution into wiki oblivion (or into a wiki war) but last vestiges of my Mother's WASPish upbringing cause me to hesitate to disturb the work of others...I could just retreat into politeness and not talk to strangers at all.<br /> <br /> :::So, as to the issue of No. 3--Interpretation--I agree with A.A., No.2 will bleed into No. 3, attribution is essential--and such posts should include a signature--preferably not just the digital signature available if you dig in the wiki history. We may even want to create a system so that people can discreetly mark posts as 1, 2 or 3, if they forget to use speculative language. And in the meantime, I would ask that until we have a moderated discussion, where Ideas are tempered in the furnace of debate, we be careful about &quot;attributing&quot; passing thoughts as &quot;original research.&quot; Ande [[User:Ande|Ande]] 10:49, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ::::Quick hints about the mechanics of wiki-work: you can indent paragraphs by using colons, ''italicize text'' by using double apostrophes (&lt;nowiki&gt;''&lt;/nowiki&gt;), '''bold text''' by using triple apostrophes (&lt;nowiki&gt;'''&lt;/nowiki&gt;), sign your name by using four tildes (&lt;nowiki&gt;~~~~&lt;/nowiki&gt; for me gives [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 10:10, 30 November 2006 (PST)) and make &quot;wikilinks&quot; to other pages by using double square brackets. &lt;nowiki&gt;[[Thomas Pynchon]]&lt;/nowiki&gt;, for example, gives [[Thomas Pynchon]]. Wikipedia has a &quot;[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cheatsheet Cheatsheet]&quot; on these matters; all of those tricks should work the same here. Best wishes, [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 10:10, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> <br /> :::I think Ande's ideas are all good ones, and particularly like the idea of keeping separate the discussion and annotation sections. &lt;br&gt;Of course, with Pynchon, there's plenty to draw connections with, and I think it's worthwhile to bracket non-obvious connections with contingent language. Not only does this indicate their interprative nature, it also more fully allows the possiblity of other readings.[[User:Ahpsp|Ahpsp]] 10:42, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> '''Tim sez:'''<br /> I already laid out on the home page, under &quot;Pynchon Wiki Help and Contributor Guidelines&quot;, how to handle discussion:<br /> <br /> :To open a discussion on an individual listing of the Alpha Index, [[ATD-T|see the page on Tait]]. Basically, give it a name that identifies the alpha listing (eg &lt;nowiki&gt;[[Subject Discussion|DISCUSSION]]&lt;/nowiki&gt; where &quot;Subject Discussion&quot; would be, eg, &quot;Tait Discussion&quot; or whatever) and notice that the visible name will be &quot;DISCUSSION&quot; in full caps, so it stands out a bit.<br /> <br /> :You can initiate a discussion for any topic using the above syntax. Just make sure the discussion article you create has an unique, intuitive and reasonably brief name. Don't just create a new article called &quot;Discussion&quot; -- if one already exists, you'll just open that one for editing. And, as I've said elsewhere, just use the &quot;List All Pages&quot; sidebar link to see what current exists in the wiki.<br /> <br /> :Anybody is free to email me tim (at) hyperarts (dot com) to discuss.<br /> <br /> :I think through the group process we can get it right.<br /> <br /> :Regarding help, besides the Wikipedia Cheatsheet, you can use the Help link in the sidebar which has a page with lots of useful info. I need to create The Perfect Wiki Cheatsheet, but just haven't gotten the time what with all else that sort of exploding around me :)<br /> <br /> :[[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 10:56, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ::Tim, I think your system of Discussion is overkill. What if, and I believe this would commonly happen, someone has only a sentence or two to say about Tait? Or someone wants to respond to that in a sentence or two? We'd then be creating hundreds of Wiki pages with only a bit of content in them. <br /> <br /> ::I advocate for the creation of separate discussion pages only if there's so much discussion on a certain entry that it's bogging down the Letter page. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 15:50, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> Tim sez:&lt;br /&gt;<br /> ::I think your approach is fine, basically the same principal as adding content to the Page by Page or Alpha guides, i.e., the drilldown. Avoid clutter at all costs!<br /> <br /> ::I also think a general discussion page, such as this has become, should be archived (moved) every so often. This one's getting quite unwieldy.<br /> <br /> ::[[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 18:19, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==Attribution?==<br /> <br /> A lot of people are talking about whether we should suggest signing posts, especially those we'd consider opinion or speculation. I actually think this is a good idea, but obviously it will be up to each contributor whether he chooses to or not.[[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 15:52, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> == Copyright policy? ==<br /> <br /> The Pynchon Wiki doesn't appear to have any copyright notices or policies set out. Should we agree to release our contributions under the GFDL 1.2, like Wikipedia, a Creative Commons license or some such? [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 16:59, 2 December 2006 (PST)<br /> :Sounds good to me-- CC may be the way to go. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 17:55, 2 December 2006 (PST)<br /> ::My personal choice would be for the [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/ CC Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5], or perhaps the [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike] version. [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 20:04, 3 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==Wiki Tip: Contributors would rather fill in blanks than add new entries.== <br /> Therefore, it is preferable to add unknown references marked with a question mark than to omit them entirely. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 17:57, 3 December 2006 (PST)</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:Main_Page&diff=3058 2006-12-03T00:59:33Z

<p>BlakeStacey: Copyright policy?</p> <hr /> <div>==Added Annotation by Page==<br /> <br /> Hey, I've started to add a different type of annotation that the Alphabetical Index. I like this method because it gives the reader all the references on the page, as he reads, in a non-spoilerish fashion. No idea if this will take off aside from my contributions, and also no idea how to integrate it with the Alphabetical Index, but these problems I leave to future Pynchonwiki contributors as well as my future self. <br /> <br /> I also have not followed the naming guidelines on the main page, for the simple reason that I don't know how...! These pages can be renamed and moved by whoever knows how to do so.<br /> <br /> [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 08:51, 22 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> : I would name the page-by-page pages eg: ATD 1-25, etc. Ultimately, all Pynchon's works will be in the Wiki, so it's important to establish this convention. I have moved the three pages you created to reflect this naming.<br /> <br /> : I changed the page number headers to a 2nd level from a 1st level, to reflect semantically their heirarchy on the page (they appeared at the same level as &quot;Pages 1-25&quot;; thus, for example, I changed<br /> <br /> ::&lt;nowiki&gt;=Page 1=&lt;/nowiki&gt;<br /> <br /> ::to<br /> <br /> ::&lt;nowiki&gt;==Page1==&lt;/nowiki&gt;<br /> <br /> : I would suggest that eventually we have a link to the ToC for the page-by-page, as it will be a '''very long''' ToC!<br /> <br /> :[[User:WikiAdmin|Tim]] November 22, 2006<br /> <br /> :::good call! I'll handle that ToC soon. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:26, 23 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> I think the page-by-page (can we now call that the PbP?) is a lot more fun to edit, since it follows the way I am reading the book.<br /> --[[User:Fblau|Fblau]] 09:03, 25 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> == PbP Annotations added to sidebar - 11/30/06==<br /> This should make things a bit easier, nav-wise. I set up a template that can be accessed by entering in the search box &quot;Template:ATD PbP&quot; - so that's where all the edits get made.<br /> <br /> [[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 18:22, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==What can the Pynchonwiki do better than Amazon.com full text search?==<br /> <br /> I note that Amazon.com's full text search of Pynchon's novels does exactly the same thing as one function of Thomaspynchon.com's previous guides: giving the page numbers where a given character or thing is mentioned. That said, I think we need to articulate what the guides and Pynchon wiki do ''in addition'' to justify all the human labor involved, and then communicate that to potential wiki contributors. (also, Amazon doesn't do this for AtD yet, but since it's available for all his other works, I assume it's just a matter of time). Thoughts? [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 12:26, 23 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==Change of logo/cover image==<br /> <br /> Shouldn't we change the cover image/logo for Pynchon wiki (upper left corner) to the final version of the cover? And, for accuracy's sake, shouldn't we include the white border around the cover? [[User:Torerye|Torerye]] 01:21, 24 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> :agreed-- Tim will have to take care of that, though. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 14:17, 24 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> '''Tim sez:'''&lt;br /&gt;<br /> This brings up the general branding of this site. I would like to have Wikis for all the works, and use the Category namespace to separate them. Having them all in this wiki means that a user can search in all the novels.<br /> <br /> So, I'm thinking I just create a &quot;logo&quot; image that's general, for &quot;Pynchon Wiki&quot;.<br /> <br /> I'd surely love to hear anyone's thoughts on this so we can brainstorm the best decision. Email me directly at tim (at) hyperarts (dot com).<br /> <br /> --[[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 15:00, 24 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==Missing caption?==<br /> <br /> Um, was the picture caption removed as a spoiler, or what? [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 22:49, 27 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> : No, I just took it off to free up the image, jettisoning signifiers. As I looked at it, I just thought it worked better if the reader just sort of recognizes it as that Chums of Chance bit without being too literal.<br /> <br /> : [[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 23:28, 27 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> == The impending anarchist miracle ==<br /> <br /> :''The following is copied from [http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&amp;month=0611&amp;msg=111809&amp;sort=date A. A.'s message on PYNCHON-L].''<br /> <br /> Jasper Fidget &lt;jasper.fidget@[omitted]&gt; wrote:<br /> &gt; [...] I anticipate the wiki turning into a junkyard full of people's <br /> &gt; half-baked opinions and<br /> &gt; Kinbote-esque commentary (i.e. worse than useless).<br /> <br /> In reply to which, pynchonoid &lt;pynchonoid@[omitted]&gt; wrote:<br /> &gt; That's Pynchon-l you're describing, certainly.<br /> &gt;<br /> &gt; I think you're wrong about the potential for<br /> &gt; http://pynchonwiki.com. So far, it is nothing like<br /> &gt; your description and is instead a useful resource that<br /> &gt; will grow more so as more people contribute useful<br /> &gt; information.<br /> &gt;<br /> <br /> And in reply to the above, I say:<br /> <br /> First of all, Kinbote's commentary isn't &quot;worse than useless&quot;. His digressions on Zembla have blasted little to do with John Shade's Appalachia, but leaving aside the value of the Forward (which gives the reader their first brush with Shade and, in some respects, a more complete visual impression), the Commentary and Index provide a counterpart and complement to the 999 lines of the poem itself. The book in its entirety is an artifice, deceptive and illuminating; if pynchonwiki.com produces anything like ''Pale Fire,'' its authors would have every right to be proud.<br /> <br /> &quot;[http://burks.brighton.ac.uk/burks/foldoc/6/51.htm Ha ha, only serious.]&quot;<br /> <br /> Second, the pynchonwiki has the potential to become something I wished Wikipedia could provide: a place to provide factual material of scholarly use, backed up with pointers to papers and books, ''plus'' the opportunity to generate new literary talk with kindred folks. You can't do that over at WP. Even applying the bread-and-butter methods of lit-crit one learns in the undergraduate years is a sin, or in the argot, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research Original Research]. In WP territory, you can't discuss a new book, even with old methods, only report what other people have said about old books. This is appropriate for an encyclopedia, but it can't constitute the whole of discourse.<br /> <br /> Human behavior implies some basic facts about wiki life. Foremost is the under-acknowledged issue that in any situation where the wiki grows by people contributing their free time, the majority of edits will be minor ones, affecting (and affected by) only their immediate environment. Lists can grow item by item, for example, much more easily than entire articles can be overhauled. Thus, even in cases where a page contains all the ''facts'' one needs, the organization will often be poor. Also, ensuring coordination among multiple pages can be difficult and tiresome to achieve.<br /> <br /> These societal traits make wikis a good repository for things like lists of typos, catalogs of character names and so forth. In these cases, small edits ''can'' build a workable and useful whole by incremental additions. However, there is an unhappy flipside. Most of the really good articles on WP (say, those listed in &quot;Featured Articles&quot;) are the work of one person or a small group, say a couple-three editors, who assemble a clear and thorough exposition of a topic which interests them. Remarkably often, such people can do a really terrific job. They push the article up to Featured status (I<br /> did this five times &amp;mdash; all it takes is energy and care), where it can sit and bask in the glory. . . . And attract a stream of well-meaning editors who come along, adding their favorite tidbit of information, little drops of this or that which may well be completely accurate but which don't fit into the scheme painfully worked out by the original authors.<br /> <br /> After this goes on for long enough, the original authors or others with a like-minded sense of dedication have to go through and clean up the cruft.<br /> <br /> I saw several cycles of this happen with the article ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_and_Hobbes Calvin and Hobbes]''. Everybody has their own favorite ''Calvin and Hobbes'' strip, and damn if they don't want to talk about it! This sort of thing is a big reason why WP has &quot;Featured Article Review&quot;, a mechanism for forcing cruft patrol and, if necessary, taking pages off the honor roll.<br /> <br /> If pynchonwiki is to be a going concern, it'll need mechanisms for keeping track of good content. Somebody will also have to institute ground rules for keeping debate fair and dealing with the inevitable hotheads and trolls (trust me, no subject is too obscure to attract crackpottery). Otherwise, we're just prayin' for that anarchist miracle.<br /> <br /> Pirate Prentice wrote:<br /> <br /> &gt; There's basically 3 things the wiki does at the moment: 1) straight up<br /> &gt; reference (what was the Chicago World's Fair and when did it happen?),<br /> &gt; 2) connections to other Pynchon novels (&quot;single up all lines&quot; also<br /> &gt; appears on these pages of GR and V., &quot;entropy&quot; was a major theme in<br /> &gt; GR, etc), and 3) interpretation.<br /> <br /> I think that any work people do on #3 (which is what Wikipediphiles call &quot;original research&quot;) should be credited to the people who do it, since it is after all value generated by labor. To an extent, #2 shades into #3, depending upon how much one has to squint to draw the connections. The many avatars of Pig Bodine are less subtle than the postage-stamp references in ATD, for example.<br /> <br /> [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 15:44, 29 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> :What do we do about interpretation? As you say, the Pynchonwiki differs from Wikipedia in that there's room for people to add their own interpretations. Jasper on Pynchon-L warned that this could easily turn into a BS free-for-all, and maybe he's right. Who knows? This is one grand experiment! I foresee that someday, perhaps soon, we will need to agree on some hard and fast rules regarding opinions/interpretation (i.e. should users sign their opinions, do we keep interpretation in the discussion pages, etc), but for now, I for one say let's just sit back and see what the 125+ registered users we've got come up with. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 19:58, 29 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ::I floated an idea on PYNCHON-L which seems reasonable, at first glance. What if we institute a rule like Wikipedia's &quot;No original research&quot; policy for the articles themselves, allow a free-for-all on the ''discussion'' side, and then host periodic debates on issues of interest? We pick a topic relating to ATD, people who want to throw lit-crit around write their positions, and after a week, the moderator (''i.e.,'' a screwball with scholarly pretensions and too much free time) writes up the debate's &quot;greatest hits&quot; as an article. Giving proper attribution to all participants, naturally. This way, we can cover whatever issues arise naturally in close-reading ATD, letting everyone who wants to rant do so, while making sure important ideas don't get lost. [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 08:37, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> :::[[User:Ande|Ande]]+++Not quite sure how to &quot;discuss&quot; here yet---but since I stirred the pot on the pynchon-l site, I will try to move my musings here. As always with Wikipedia and actually anything (see recent gatt.org hacks of WTO, news stories about faked research at the university level, etc.) Reader Beware! It seems that when speculating, there is speculating language properly employed (wiggle words like &quot;seems to me, mayhaps, IMHO--if you are partial to internet convention) that can signal departure from fact to opinion. But the &quot;facts&quot; are only so good too--there is nothing to stop me from presenting myself as a scholar of esoteric Sanskrit calligraphy and providing translation of the text of the seal, nefariously if I wish, to promote some pet close reading. On the other hand, part of the joy of reading,esp reading Pynchon, is the unexpected depth gained by digging just a bit-- I'm not a WWI naval buff--my experience being limited to loving __Riddle of the Sands__ and a quick read of __Dreadnought__, so my initial read of 'dazzle painting'(AtD 122) had more Star Trek NG-Romulan Ships appearing off the aft deck-type connotations, but I marked it, looked it up, found it to be fascinating (esp when you consider that the periscopes looking at the painted patterns were made of Iceland Spar), and found that the wiki was a great place to share my discovery--without feeling too shy about the &quot;well duh, of course everyone knows that...&quot; responses that one might subject oneself to in an open forum...<br /> <br /> :::As to attribution, I started this discussion of speculation on the wiki on the P-List, because I found an off-hand comment I made in the course of (what I had assumed) was a less than serious discussion, suddenly &quot;attributed&quot; to me on the wiki--now, I understand that I can &quot;edit&quot; said attribution into wiki oblivion (or into a wiki war) but last vestiges of my Mother's WASPish upbringing cause me to hesitate to disturb the work of others...I could just retreat into politeness and not talk to strangers at all.<br /> <br /> :::So, as to the issue of No. 3--Interpretation--I agree with A.A., No.2 will bleed into No. 3, attribution is essential--and such posts should include a signature--preferably not just the digital signature available if you dig in the wiki history. We may even want to create a system so that people can discreetly mark posts as 1, 2 or 3, if they forget to use speculative language. And in the meantime, I would ask that until we have a moderated discussion, where Ideas are tempered in the furnace of debate, we be careful about &quot;attributing&quot; passing thoughts as &quot;original research.&quot; Ande [[User:Ande|Ande]] 10:49, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ::::Quick hints about the mechanics of wiki-work: you can indent paragraphs by using colons, ''italicize text'' by using double apostrophes (&lt;nowiki&gt;''&lt;/nowiki&gt;), '''bold text''' by using triple apostrophes (&lt;nowiki&gt;'''&lt;/nowiki&gt;), sign your name by using four tildes (&lt;nowiki&gt;~~~~&lt;/nowiki&gt; for me gives [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 10:10, 30 November 2006 (PST)) and make &quot;wikilinks&quot; to other pages by using double square brackets. &lt;nowiki&gt;[[Thomas Pynchon]]&lt;/nowiki&gt;, for example, gives [[Thomas Pynchon]]. Wikipedia has a &quot;[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cheatsheet Cheatsheet]&quot; on these matters; all of those tricks should work the same here. Best wishes, [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 10:10, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> <br /> :::I think Ande's ideas are all good ones, and particularly like the idea of keeping separate the discussion and annotation sections. &lt;br&gt;Of course, with Pynchon, there's plenty to draw connections with, and I think it's worthwhile to bracket non-obvious connections with contingent language. Not only does this indicate their interprative nature, it also more fully allows the possiblity of other readings.[[User:Ahpsp|Ahpsp]] 10:42, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> '''Tim sez:'''<br /> I already laid out on the home page, under &quot;Pynchon Wiki Help and Contributor Guidelines&quot;, how to handle discussion:<br /> <br /> :To open a discussion on an individual listing of the Alpha Index, [[ATD-T|see the page on Tait]]. Basically, give it a name that identifies the alpha listing (eg &lt;nowiki&gt;[[Subject Discussion|DISCUSSION]]&lt;/nowiki&gt; where &quot;Subject Discussion&quot; would be, eg, &quot;Tait Discussion&quot; or whatever) and notice that the visible name will be &quot;DISCUSSION&quot; in full caps, so it stands out a bit.<br /> <br /> :You can initiate a discussion for any topic using the above syntax. Just make sure the discussion article you create has an unique, intuitive and reasonably brief name. Don't just create a new article called &quot;Discussion&quot; -- if one already exists, you'll just open that one for editing. And, as I've said elsewhere, just use the &quot;List All Pages&quot; sidebar link to see what current exists in the wiki.<br /> <br /> :Anybody is free to email me tim (at) hyperarts (dot com) to discuss.<br /> <br /> :I think through the group process we can get it right.<br /> <br /> :Regarding help, besides the Wikipedia Cheatsheet, you can use the Help link in the sidebar which has a page with lots of useful info. I need to create The Perfect Wiki Cheatsheet, but just haven't gotten the time what with all else that sort of exploding around me :)<br /> <br /> :[[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 10:56, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ::Tim, I think your system of Discussion is overkill. What if, and I believe this would commonly happen, someone has only a sentence or two to say about Tait? Or someone wants to respond to that in a sentence or two? We'd then be creating hundreds of Wiki pages with only a bit of content in them. <br /> <br /> ::I advocate for the creation of separate discussion pages only if there's so much discussion on a certain entry that it's bogging down the Letter page. [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 15:50, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> Tim sez:&lt;br /&gt;<br /> ::I think your approach is fine, basically the same principal as adding content to the Page by Page or Alpha guides, i.e., the drilldown. Avoid clutter at all costs!<br /> <br /> ::I also think a general discussion page, such as this has become, should be archived (moved) every so often. This one's getting quite unwieldy.<br /> <br /> ::[[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 18:19, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> ==Attribution?==<br /> <br /> A lot of people are talking about whether we should suggest signing posts, especially those we'd consider opinion or speculation. I actually think this is a good idea, but obviously it will be up to each contributor whether he chooses to or not.[[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] 15:52, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> == Copyright policy? ==<br /> <br /> The Pynchon Wiki doesn't appear to have any copyright notices or policies set out. Should we agree to release our contributions under the GFDL 1.2, like Wikipedia, a Creative Commons license or some such? [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 16:59, 2 December 2006 (PST)</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:Thomas_Pynchon&diff=3057 2006-12-03T00:56:45Z

<p>BlakeStacey: </p> <hr /> <div>I hope I didn't derange anyone's plans for this page. Noticing that the p-wiki was lacking in biographical stuff, I slavishly sucked the Wikipedia's article on TRP (of which I had been a contributor anyway), did some cleanup work and posted it under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. I removed lots of links to tangential subjects but left those which I judged the p-wiki should likely have articles in the future. [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 09:56, 30 November 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> Great idea!<br /> <br /> [[User:WikiAdmin|WikiAdmin]] 17:21, 1 December 2006 (PST)<br /> <br /> :I notice that [[User:Bleakhaus|Bleakhaus]] is already improving this page on top of what Wikipedia had to offer &amp;mdash; yippee! Also, it would be nice to have pictures to illustrate this article, such as the &quot;night out with Pig Bodine&quot; photo and a ''Simpsons'' frame (maybe I can go out and deface a building with a post horn?). [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 16:56, 2 December 2006 (PST)</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:Errata&diff=3056 2006-12-03T00:42:23Z

<p>BlakeStacey: </p> <hr /> <div>There's a &quot;that&quot; which should be &quot;than&quot;, as well as a missing quotation mark, somewhere in the first 800 pages, but I was too foolish to note where I found them. Don't I feel like a schmuck. [[User:BlakeStacey|BlakeStacey]] 16:42, 2 December 2006 (PST)</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Against_the_Day_description&diff=2987 2006-12-02T00:16:07Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* Difference in the Texts */ add link to errata</p> <hr /> <div>The following is the blurb, attributed to Thomas Pynchon, that appeared, disappeared and reappeared on Amazon.com, for Pynchon's latest novel, ''Against the Day'', released 11/21/06 by Penguin Press. This piece of writing was also used in promotional materials by the publisher, and was eventually edited down (with all author attribution removed) for the book jacket flap copy.<br /> <br /> ==Comparison of description versions==<br /> <br /> {{col-begin}}<br /> {{col-2}}<br /> <br /> '''As posted on Amazon.com'''<br /> <br /> Spanning the period between the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_Columbian_Exposition Chicago World's Fair of 1893] and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cripple_Creek_miners'_strike_of_1894 labor troubles in Colorado] to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Göttingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event Tunguska Event], Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all. <br /> <br /> 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. <br /> <br /> The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances 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]. <br /> <br /> As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's their lives that pursue them. <br /> <br /> Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. 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. <br /> <br /> Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck. <br /> <br /> &amp;mdash;Thomas Pynchon<br /> <br /> {{col-2}}<br /> <br /> '''As seen on the book jacket'''<br /> <br /> Spanning the period between the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_Columbian_Exposition Chicago World's Fair of 1893] and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cripple_Creek_miners'_strike_of_1894 labor troubles in Colorado] to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Göttingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event Tunguska Event], Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all. <br /> <br /> 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.<br /> <br /> The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla Nikolai Tesla], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bela_Lugosi Bela Lugosi], and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groucho_Marx Groucho Marx].<br /> <br /> As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's their lives that pursue them. <br /> <br /> Meanwhile, Thomas Pynchon is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. Maybe it's not the world, but with a minor adjustment or two it's what the world might be.<br /> {{col-end}}<br /> <br /> ==Difference in the Texts==<br /> <br /> # &quot;No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.&quot; (Amazon only)<br /> # &quot;Nikola Tesla&quot; in the Amazon description becomes &quot;Nikolai Tesla&quot; on the hardcover book jacket (see [[errata]]).<br /> # &quot;Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business&quot; (Amazon version) becomes &quot;Meanwhile, Thomas Pynchon is up to his usual business&quot; (book version).<br /> # &quot;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.&quot; (Amazon version) &quot;Maybe it's not the world, but with a minor adjustment or two it's what the world might be.&quot; (book version)<br /> # &quot;Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck. &amp;mdash;Thomas Pynchon&quot; (Amazon only)<br /> <br /> ==Spoiler-free Commentary on the differences==<br /> <br /> The book jacket omits two extremely important statements, numbers 1 and 4 above, important because they are rare instances of Pynchon stepping outside of his fiction to articulate the motivations behind his art: veiled satire of the present day and, secondly, imagining what he considers a better world. Pynchon's statement of &quot;the world as it might be&quot; is echoed on [[ATD_26-56#Page_51|page 51]] of the text.<br /> <br /> &quot;Let the reader decide, let the reader beware&quot; may be a reflection of Pynchon's seemingly anti-critic stance, part of his larger anti-reporter and generally anti-mass media stance. Although one [http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/agordon/pynchon.htm source] tells us that Pynchon &quot;follows the reviews and evidently cares what critics say about him,&quot; the fact that reviewers are always given so little time to review his novels suggests that he mistrusts them, or at least prefers to have readers themselves judge the merit of his books. This statement lends credence to that assumption. <br /> <br /> Further, Pynchon may be warning his readers to &quot;beware&quot; of not only critics, but the difficulty of the book itself. That &quot;good luck&quot; could mean a lot of things. It may be interpreted as a kindly message to his readers, but also &quot;good luck&quot; reading this enormous, difficult novel...! Also, it is possible that Pynchon may guess or intend that AtD will be his final novel (for the simple fact that he is pushing 70 and takes a decade to write one, and, additionally, the title of Part Five of AtD). If that's the case, and it's by no means certain, this &quot;good luck&quot; may end up being, whether intended or not, his final statement of best wishes to his readers.<br /> <br /> {{ATD_Alpha_Nav}}</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Errata&diff=2986 2006-12-02T00:15:49Z

<p>BlakeStacey: add category note</p> <hr /> <div>== Errata in first printing (Nov. 2006), first US edition ==<br /> <br /> <br /> [[Against the Day description|Front flap]]: &quot;Nikolai&quot; Tesla, elsewhere (and conventionally) &quot;Nikola&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 82 line 1 &quot;richochets&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 87 line 2 &quot;be&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 87 line 32 &quot;ridegrunning&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 92 line 15 &quot;what&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 116 line 39 &quot;de[c]lared&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 236 line 38: &quot;exhiliration&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 240 line 8 &quot;Re[n]frew&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 248 line 18: Culo should be followed by single quote<br /> <br /> Page 254 line 31 &quot;recon[n]aissance&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 334 line 19 &quot;of&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 420 line 28 &quot;opportunit[i]es&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 427 line 7 &quot;esssential&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 440 line 33 &quot;sib[i]lance&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 505 line 1 &quot;momument&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 513 line 11 &quot;smlled&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 515 line 32 &quot;th[r]oughout&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 518 line 1 &quot;off&quot; for &quot;of&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 524 line 10 &quot;exhilirated&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 531 Line 13 &quot;rende[z]vous&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 552 line 22 &quot;be&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 616 line 21 dueling transliterations: &quot;Izmeren[i]ye&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 636 line 4 &quot;f[r]om&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 652 line 12 &quot;opportunit[i]es&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 680 line 10 &quot;Colonnel&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 782 line 16 &quot;when&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 786 line 5 &quot;th[r]ough&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 790 line 5-6 &quot;interrested&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 790 line 24 &quot;a[r]rival&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 799 line 4 &quot;st[r]eet&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 801 line 12 &quot;susceptib[i]lity&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 831 line 5 &quot;ar[t]ificial&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 880 line 38 &quot;Gradengio&quot; for Gradenigo<br /> <br /> Page 896 line 37 &quot;Tallis Fantasia&quot; [of Vaughan Williams]: misleading italics<br /> <br /> Page 900 line 19 &quot;the&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 915 line 16 &quot;perfo[r]ming&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 943 line 4 &quot;Ou[t]side&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 943 line 36 &quot;unfor[e]seen [variant, 'fore' used elsewhere] <br /> <br /> Page 968 line 27 &quot;every[b]ody&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 971 line 4 &quot;were&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 1000 line 14 final period omitted from L.A.H.D.I.H.D.A[]<br /> <br /> Page 1037 line 29 &quot;tran[s]parencies&quot;<br /> <br /> [[Category:ATD]]</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Errata&diff=2985 2006-12-02T00:14:00Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* Errata in first printing (Nov. 2006), first US edition */ wikilink</p> <hr /> <div>== Errata in first printing (Nov. 2006), first US edition ==<br /> <br /> <br /> [[Against the Day description|Front flap]]: &quot;Nikolai&quot; Tesla, elsewhere (and conventionally) &quot;Nikola&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 82 line 1 &quot;richochets&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 87 line 2 &quot;be&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 87 line 32 &quot;ridegrunning&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 92 line 15 &quot;what&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 116 line 39 &quot;de[c]lared&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 236 line 38: &quot;exhiliration&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 240 line 8 &quot;Re[n]frew&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 248 line 18: Culo should be followed by single quote<br /> <br /> Page 254 line 31 &quot;recon[n]aissance&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 334 line 19 &quot;of&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 420 line 28 &quot;opportunit[i]es&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 427 line 7 &quot;esssential&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 440 line 33 &quot;sib[i]lance&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 505 line 1 &quot;momument&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 513 line 11 &quot;smlled&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 515 line 32 &quot;th[r]oughout&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 518 line 1 &quot;off&quot; for &quot;of&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 524 line 10 &quot;exhilirated&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 531 Line 13 &quot;rende[z]vous&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 552 line 22 &quot;be&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 616 line 21 dueling transliterations: &quot;Izmeren[i]ye&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 636 line 4 &quot;f[r]om&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 652 line 12 &quot;opportunit[i]es&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 680 line 10 &quot;Colonnel&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 782 line 16 &quot;when&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 786 line 5 &quot;th[r]ough&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 790 line 5-6 &quot;interrested&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 790 line 24 &quot;a[r]rival&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 799 line 4 &quot;st[r]eet&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 801 line 12 &quot;susceptib[i]lity&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 831 line 5 &quot;ar[t]ificial&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 880 line 38 &quot;Gradengio&quot; for Gradenigo<br /> <br /> Page 896 line 37 &quot;Tallis Fantasia&quot; [of Vaughan Williams]: misleading italics<br /> <br /> Page 900 line 19 &quot;the&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 915 line 16 &quot;perfo[r]ming&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 943 line 4 &quot;Ou[t]side&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 943 line 36 &quot;unfor[e]seen [variant, 'fore' used elsewhere] <br /> <br /> Page 968 line 27 &quot;every[b]ody&quot;<br /> <br /> Page 971 line 4 &quot;were&quot; doubled<br /> <br /> Page 1000 line 14 final period omitted from L.A.H.D.I.H.D.A[]<br /> <br /> Page 1037 line 29 &quot;tran[s]parencies&quot;</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Thomas_Pynchon&diff=2935 2006-12-01T16:42:10Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* 1990s and 2000s */ comment out image</p> <hr /> <div>'''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: ''[[V.]]'' (1963), ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]'' (1966), ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'' (1973), ''[[Vineland]]'' (1990), ''[[Mason &amp; Dixon]]'' (1997), and ''[[Against the Day]]'' (2006). <br /> <br /> 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.<br /> <br /> ==Biography==<br /> 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, [[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 &quot;[[The Secret Integration]]&quot; (1964) and ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]''. <br /> <br /> ===Childhood and education===<br /> Pynchon attended Oyster Bay High School, where he wrote for the school newspaper and excelled in his studies. After graduating in 1953, he studied engineering physics at [[Cornell University]], but left at the end of his second year to serve in the [[United States Navy|U.S. Navy]]. In 1957, Pynchon returned to Cornell to pursue a degree in English. His first published story, &quot;The Small Rain&quot;, appeared in the ''Cornell Writer'' in May 1959, and narrates an actual experience of a friend who had served in the [[United States Army|army]]; subsequently, however, episodes and characters throughout Pynchon's fiction draw freely upon his own experiences in the navy. <br /> <br /> While at Cornell, Pynchon became a friend of [[Richard Fariña]], and both briefly led what Pynchon has called a &quot;micro-cult&quot; around Oakley Hall's [[1958 in literature|1958]] novel ''[[Warlock (novel)|Warlock]]''. (He later reminisced about his college days in the introduction he wrote in 1983 for Fariña's novel ''[[Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me]],'' first published in 1966.) Pynchon also reportedly attended lectures given by [[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. Pynchon received his BA in June 1959.<br /> <br /> ===Early career===<br /> 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, Washington|Seattle]], where he compiled safety articles for the ''Bomarc Service News'' (see [[#ref wisnicki|Wisnicki 2000-1]]), 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 &quot;[[Yoyodyne]]&quot; corporation in ''[[V.]]'' and ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]],'' and both his background in physics and the technical journalism he undertook at Boeing provided much raw material for ''[[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.<br /> <br /> 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, California|Manhattan Beach]] (see [[#ref frost|Frost 2003]]). Pynchon during this period embraced the lifestyle and values of the [[hippie]] [[counterculture]], which he would later make use of in his 1990 novel ''[[Vineland]]'' ([[#ref gordon|Gordon 1994]]). In 1964, his application to study mathematics as a graduate student at the [[University of California, Berkeley]], was turned down ([[#ref royster|Royster 2005]]). In 1966, he wrote a first-hand report on the aftermath and legacy of the [[Watts riots]] in Los Angeles. Entitled &quot;A Journey Into the Mind of Watts,&quot; the article was published in the ''New York Times Magazine'' ([[#ref pynchon 1966|Pynchon 1966]]).<br /> <br /> 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 &quot;neglected books&quot;, as part of a feature entitled &quot;A Gift of Books&quot; in the December 1965 issue of ''Holiday.''<br /> <br /> Pynchon's second novel, ''The Crying of Lot 49,'' is also set in California. It was published in 1966, and won the Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Foundation Award. Although more concise and linear in its structure than Pynchon's other novels, its labyrinthine plot features an ancient, underground mail service known as &quot;The Tristero&quot; or &quot;Trystero,&quot; a parody of a [[revenge play|Jacobean revenge drama]] entitled &quot;The Courier's Tragedy,&quot; 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.''<br /> <br /> In 1968, Pynchon was one of 447 signatories to the &quot;Writers and Editors War Tax Protest.&quot; 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 &quot;the proposed 10% income tax surcharge or any war-designated tax increase,&quot; and stated their belief &quot;that American involvement in Vietnam is morally wrong&quot; ([[#ref nyrb|''New York Review of Books'' 1968:9]]).<br /> <br /> ===''Gravity's Rainbow'' and Pynchon's rise to prominence===<br /> Pynchon's most celebrated novel is his third, ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'', published in [[1973 in literature|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 theory|conspiracy]], [[synchronicity]], and [[entropy]], the novel has spawned a wealth of commentary and critical material, including two reader's guides ([[#ref fowler|Fowler 1980]]; [[#ref weisenburger|Weisenburger 1988]]), books and scholarly articles, [http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/ on-line concordances and discussions], 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 [[World War II|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 &quot;plot&quot;, 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.<br /> <br /> ''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 &quot;unreadable&quot;, &quot;turgid&quot;, &quot;overwritten&quot;, and in parts &quot;obscene&quot;, and no prize was awarded ([[#ref kihss|Kihss 1974]]). In 1975, Pynchon declined the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.<br /> <br /> ===Post-''Gravity's Rainbow''===<br /> A collection of Pynchon's early short stories, entitled ''[[Slow Learner]]'', was published in 1984, with a lengthy autobiography|autobiographical introduction. In October of the same year, an article entitled &quot;Is It O.K. to Be a Luddite?&quot; 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 &quot;The Heart's Eternal Vow&quot;. Another article, entitled &quot;Nearer, My Couch, to Thee&quot;, 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 &quot;Sloth&quot;. <br /> <br /> Pynchon's fourth novel, ''[[Vineland]]'', was published in 1990. The novel is set in California in the 1980s and 1960s, and describes the relationship between an [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|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. <br /> <br /> In 1988, he received a MacArthur Fellowship and, since the early 1990s at least, many observers have mentioned Pynchon as a Nobel Prize contender (see, for example, [[#ref grimes|Grimes 1993]]; [[#ref CNN 1999|CNN Book News 1999]]; [[#ref ervin|Ervin 2000]]). 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. <br /> <br /> Pynchon's fifth novel is ''[[Mason &amp; Dixon]]'', a work which had been in the pipeline since 1978 at least ([[#ref roeder|Roeder 1978]]; see also [[#ref ulin|Ulin 1997]]). Published in 1997, the meticulously-researched novel is a sprawling saga recounting the lives and careers of the English astronomer, [[Charles Mason]], and his partner, the surveyor [[Jeremiah Dixon]], and the birth of the [[American Revolution|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.<br /> <br /> ===''Against the Day''===<br /> <br /> A variety of rumors pertaining to the subject matter of Pynchon's [[Against the Day|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 &quot;a Russian mathematician [who] studied for [[David Hilbert]] in [[Göttingen]]&quot;, and that the new novel would trace the life and loves of [[Sofia Kovalevskaya]]. <br /> <br /> 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 [[World's Columbian Exposition|1893 Chicago World's Fair]] and the time immediately following [[World War I]]. &quot;With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead,&quot; Pynchon writes in his Book Description, &quot;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.&quot; He promises cameos by [[Nikola Tesla]], [[Bela Lugosi]] and [[Groucho Marx]], as well as &quot;stupid songs&quot; and &quot;strange sexual practices&quot;. 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 pattersonb|Patterson 2006b]]; [[#ref italie|Italie 2006]]).<br /> <br /> ''[[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.<br /> <br /> ==Themes and influence==<br /> 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 &quot;High&quot; and &quot;low&quot; culture, sometimes interpreted as a &quot;deconstruction&quot;, is seen as one of the defining characteristics of postmodernism.<br /> <br /> 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 [[Ornette Coleman]], [[Charlie Parker]] and [[Thelonious Monk]]. In ''The Crying of Lot 49'', the lead singer of &quot;The Paranoids&quot; sports &quot;a [[The Beatles|Beatle]] haircut&quot; 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 [[The Fool (band)|The Fool]] in the 1960s (having [[Magic realism|magically]] recovered the latter instrument, his &quot;harp&quot;, 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 &quot;Cherokee&quot;, 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 &quot;The Corvairs&quot;, while Isaiah played in a punk band called &quot;Billy Barf and the Vomitones&quot;. In ''Mason &amp; Dixon'', one of the characters plays on the &quot;Clavier&quot; the varsity drinking song which will later become &quot;The Star-Spangled Banner&quot;. <br /> <br /> In his ''[[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 &quot;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.&quot; He is also known to be a fan of Roky Erickson.<br /> <br /> 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 &quot;Introduction&quot; 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 &quot;[[Tommaso Pincio]]&quot; whose pseudonym is an Italian rendering of Pynchon's name.<br /> <br /> 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, &quot;Low-lands&quot; (1960), features a meditation on [[Werner Heisenberg|Heisenberg's]] [[uncertainty principle]] as a metaphor for telling stories about one's own experiences. His next published work, &quot;Entropy&quot; (1960), introduced [[entropy|the concept]] which was to become synonymous with Pynchon's name (though Pynchon later admitted the &quot;shallowness of [his] understanding&quot; of the subject, and noted that choosing an abstract concept first and trying to construct a narrative around it was &quot;a lousy way to go about writing a story&quot;). Another early story, &quot;Under the Rose&quot; (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.'' &quot;The Secret Integration&quot; (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 [[antiderivative|mathematical operation]], the only sense of the word with which they are familiar. <br /> <br /> ''The Crying of Lot 49'' also alludes to entropy and [[communication theory]], and contains scenes and descriptions which parody or appropriate [[calculus]], [[Zeno's paradoxes]], and the thought experiment known as [[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 [[hallucinogen]]s, 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 &amp; Dixon'', explores the scientific, theological, and sociocultural foundations of the [[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.<br /> <br /> 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, 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 &quot;cyberpunk&quot; did not become prevalent until the early 1980s, many readers retroactively include ''Gravity's Rainbow'' in the genre, along with other works&amp;mdash;''e.g.,'' Samuel R. Delany's ''Nova'' and many works of Philip K. Dick&amp;mdash;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 [[hypertext fiction]] movement of the 1990s ([[#ref page|Page 2002]]; [[#ref kramer|Krämer 2005]]).<br /> <br /> ''Gravity's Rainbow'' and the more recent ''Mason &amp; 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.<br /> <br /> ==Media scrutiny==<br /> 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. <br /> <br /> A review of ''V.'' in the ''New York Times Book Review'' described Pynchon as &quot;a recluse&quot; living in Mexico, thereby introducing the media label which has pursued Pynchon throughout his career ([[#ref plimpton|Plimpton 1963]]: 5). 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. <br /> <br /> ===1970s and 1980s===<br /> 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 [[Irwin Corey|&quot;Professor&quot; Irwin Corey]] to accept the prize on Pynchon's behalf (Royster 2005). 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|Corey 1974]]). Towards the end of Corey's address a streaker ran through the hall, adding further to the confusion.<br /> <br /> An article published in the ''Soho Weekly News'' claimed that Pynchon was in fact J. D. Salinger ([[#ref batchelor|Batchelor 1976]]). Pynchon's written response to this theory (reported in [[#ref tanner|Tanner 1982]]) was simple: &quot;Not bad. Keep trying.&quot;<br /> <br /> 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 &quot;Tom&quot; 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 &quot;[e]very weirdo in the world is on my wavelength&quot;, ([[#ref siegel|Siegel 1977]]) 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.<br /> <br /> ===1990s and 2000s===<br /> 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 &quot;reclusive&quot;. 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, &quot;For Mr. Voss or Occupant&quot; (1991), explains to her daughter that she is writing<br /> :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|Hospital 1995]]: 361-2)<br /> More recently, book critic Arthur Salm has written that<br /> :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&amp;mdash;the circumstances, I admit, are beyond imagining&amp;mdash;the resulting matter/antimatter explosion would vaporize everything from here to Tau Ceti IV. ([[#ref salm|Salm 2004]])<br /> <br /> 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|Pynchon 1989]]). 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 City|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|Hitchens 1997]]).<br /> <br /> In the early 1990s, Pynchon married his literary agent, Melanie Jackson &amp;mdash; a great-granddaughter of Theodore Roosevelt &amp;mdash; 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 &amp; 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, &quot;My belief is that 'recluse' is a code word generated by journalists ... meaning, 'doesn't like to talk to reporters'.&quot; CNN also quoted him as saying, &quot;Let me be unambiguous. I prefer not to be photographed.&quot; ([[#ref CNN 1997|CNN 1997]]) 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|Bone 1998]]).<br /> <br /> 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 (&quot;Pandemonium of the Sun&quot;), 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|CNN 1997]]; [[#ref glenn|Glenn 2003]]). 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 (&quot;Lunch With Lotion&quot;) for ''Esquire'' in June 1996 in the lead-up to the publication of ''Mason &amp; 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|Warner 2001]]).<br /> <br /> 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 &quot;[[Wanda Tinasky]]&quot; 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. &quot;Literary detective&quot; 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 &quot;Tinasky&quot; letters had been written ([[#ref foster|Foster 2000]]).<br /> <br /> &lt;!-- [[Image:Pynchon-Simpsons-001.jpg|right|thumb|200px|Pynchon depicted in ''[[The Simpsons]]'' episode &quot;Diatribe of a Mad Housewife&quot;. His ''Simpsons'' appearances are the only times that Pynchon's voice has been broadcast in the media.]] --&gt;<br /> 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 &quot;Diatribe of a Mad Housewife&quot;, 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: &quot;Here's your quote: Thomas Pynchon loved this book, almost as much as he loves cameras!&quot; He then starts yelling at passing cars: &quot;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!&quot; The second appearance occurs in &quot;All's Fair in Oven War,&quot; which was the sixteenth-season premiere. In this appearance, Pynchon's dialogue consists entirely of [[pun]]s on his novel titles (&quot;These wings are 'V'-licious! I'll put this recipe in 'The Gravity's Rainbow Cookbook', right next to 'The Frying of Latke 49'.&quot;). Pynchon makes a third, non-speaking cameo, when he is seen at the fictional WordLoaf convention in the 18th season (2006) episode, &quot;Moe'N'a Lisa.&quot; 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.<br /> <br /> 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''.<br /> <br /> ==Works==<br /> * ''[[V.]]'' (1963), winner of [[William Faulkner Foundation]] Award<br /> * ''[[The Crying of Lot 49]]'' (1966), winner of Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Foundation Award<br /> * ''[[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)<br /> * ''[[Slow Learner]]'' (1984), collection of early short stories<br /> * ''[[Vineland]]'' (1990)<br /> * ''[[Mason &amp; Dixon]]'' (1997)<br /> * ''[[Against the Day]]'' (21 November, 2006)<br /> <br /> 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.<br /> <br /> ==References==<br /> <br /> :&lt;small&gt;''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&amp;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.]''&lt;/small&gt;<br /> <br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_batchelor&quot;&gt;Batchelor, J.C. &quot;Thomas Pynchon is not Thomas Pynchon, or, This is End of the Plot Which Has No Name&quot;. ''Soho Weekly News'', 22 April 1976.&lt;/span&gt; [[#1970s and 1980s|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_bone&quot;&gt;Bone, James. [http://www.suntimes.co.za:80/1998/06/07/lifestyle/life01.htm &quot;Who the hell is he?]&quot; ''Sunday Times'' (South Africa), 7 June 1998.&lt;/span&gt; [[#1990s and 2000s|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_CNN_1997&quot;&gt;CNN. &quot;[http://cgi.cnn.com/US/9706/05/pynchon/ Where's Thomas Pynchon?]&quot; 5 June 1997.&lt;/span&gt; [[#1990s and 2000s|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_CNN_1999&quot;&gt;CNN Book News. &quot;[http://www.cnn.com/books/news/9909/29/nobel.prize/index.html Early Nobel announcement prompts speculation]&quot;. 29 September 1999.&lt;/span&gt; [[#Post-Gravity's Rainbow|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_corey&quot;&gt;Corey, Irwin. &quot;[http://www.irwincorey.org/routines.html Transcript of National Book Award acceptance speech]&quot;, delivered 18 April 1974.&lt;/span&gt; [[#1970s and 1980s|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_ervin&quot;&gt;Ervin, Andrew. &quot;[http://citypaper.net/articles/091400/ae.books.shtml Nobel Oblige]&quot;. ''Philadelphia City Paper'' 14&amp;ndash;21 September 2000.&lt;/span&gt; [[#Post-Gravity's Rainbow|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_foster&quot;&gt;Foster, Don. ''Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous''. Henry Holt, New York, 2000.&lt;/span&gt; [[#1990s and 2000s|(back)]] <br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_fowler&quot;&gt;Fowler, Douglas. ''A Reader's Guide to [[Gravity's Rainbow]]''. Ardis Press, 1980.&lt;/span&gt; [[#Gravity's Rainbow and Pynchon's rise to prominence|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_frost&quot;&gt;Frost, Garrison. &quot;[http://www.theaesthetic.com/NewFiles/pynchon.html Thomas Pynchon and the South Bay]&quot;. ''The Aesthetic'', 2003.&lt;/span&gt; [[#Early career|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_getlin&quot;&gt;Getlin, Josh. &quot;[http://www.calendarlive.com/printedition/calendar/cl-wk-quick22.3jun22,0,5673134.story?coll=cl-calendar Pynchon Novel Out in December]&quot;. ''LA Times'', 22 June 2006.&lt;/span&gt; [[#Against the Day|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_glenn&quot;&gt;Glenn, Joshua. &quot;[http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2003/10/19/pynchon_and_homer/ Pynchon and Homer]&quot;. ''Boston Globe'', 19 October 2003.&lt;/span&gt; [[#1990s and 2000s|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_gordon&quot;&gt;Gordon, Andrew. &quot;[http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/agordon/pynchon.htm Smoking Dope with Thomas Pynchon: A Sixties Memoir]&quot;. ''The Vineland Papers: Critical Takes on Pynchon's Novel''. <br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_grimes&quot;&gt;Grimes, William. [http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/01/11/home/28957.html &quot;Toni Morrison Is '93 Winner Of Nobel Prize in Literature&quot;]. ''New York Times Book Review'', 8 October 1993.&lt;/span&gt; [[#Post-Gravity's Rainbow|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_hitchens&quot;&gt;Hitchens, Christopher. &quot;[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.]&quot; ''The Progressive'', October 1997.&lt;/span&gt; [[#1990s and 2000s|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_hospital&quot;&gt;Hospital, Janette Turner. ''Collected Stories 1970-1995''. University of Queensland Press, 1995.&lt;/span&gt; [[#1990s and 2000s|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_italie&quot;&gt;Italie, Hillel. &quot;[http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060720/ap_en_ot/books_thomas_pynchon_1 New Thomas Pynchon Novel is on the way]&quot; ''Associated Press'', 20 July 2006.&lt;/span&gt; [[#Against the Day|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_kihss&quot;&gt;Kihss, Peter. &quot;Pulitzer Jurors; His Third Novel&quot;. ''The New York Times'', 8 May 1974, p. 38. &lt;/span&gt; [[#Gravity's Rainbow and Pynchon's rise to prominence|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_kramer&quot;&gt;Krämer, Oliver. &quot;[http://www.sicetnon.org/modules.php?op=modload&amp;name=PagEd&amp;file=index&amp;topic_id=40&amp;page_id=208 Interview mit John M. Krafft, Herausgeber der 'Pynchon Notes']&quot;. ''Sic et Non.''&lt;/span&gt;<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_nyrb&quot;&gt;''New York Review of Books''. &quot;Writers and Editors War Tax Protest&quot; (advertisement). Vol. 10, No. 3, 15 February 1968, p. 9.&lt;/span&gt; [[#Early career|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_page&quot;&gt;Page, Adrian. &quot;Towards a poetics of hypertext fiction&quot;. 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.&lt;/span&gt;<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_pattersona&quot;&gt;Patterson, Troy (a). &quot;[http://www.slate.com/id/2146152 Did the master make an appearance on his Amazon page?]&quot; ''Slate'', 20 July 2006.&lt;/span&gt; [[#Works|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_pattersonb&quot;&gt;Patterson, Troy (b). &quot;[http://www.slate.com/id/2146272 Mystery solved]&quot; ''Slate'', 20 July 2006.&lt;/span&gt; [[#Against the Day|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_plimpton&quot;&gt;Plimpton, George. &quot;Mata Hari with a Clockwork Eye, Alligators in the Sewer&quot;. Rev. of ''V.'' ''New York Times Book Review'', 21 April 1963, p. 5.&lt;/span&gt; [[#Media scrutiny|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_pynchon_1966&quot;&gt;Pynchon, Thomas. &quot;[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_watts.html A Journey into the Mind of Watts]&quot;. ''New York Times Magazine'', 12 June 1966, pp. 34-35, 78, 80-82, 84.&lt;/span&gt; [[#Early career|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_pynchon_1989&quot;&gt;Pynchon, Thomas. &quot;[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_rushdie.html Words for Salman Rushdie]&quot;. ''[[New York Times Book Review]]'', 12 March 1989, p. 29.&lt;/span&gt; [[#1990s and 2000s|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_pynchon_2006&quot;&gt;Pynchon, Thomas. [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159420120X/ Editorial review on ''Untitled Thomas Pynchon''], [[Amazon.com]] 14 July 2006.&lt;/span&gt; [[#Against the Day|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_roeder&quot;&gt;Roeder, Bill. &quot;After the Rainbow&quot;. ''Newsweek'' 92, 7 August 1978.&lt;/span&gt; [[#Post-Gravity's Rainbow|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_royster&quot;&gt;Royster, Paul. &quot;[http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libraryscience/2/ Thomas Pynchon: A Brief Chronology]&quot;. Faculty Publications, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2005.&lt;/span&gt; [[#Early career|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_salm&quot;&gt;Salm, Arthur. &quot;A screaming comes across the sky (but not a photo)&quot;. San Diego ''Union-Tribune'', 8 February 2004.&lt;/span&gt; [[#1990s and 2000s|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_siegel&quot;&gt;Siegel, Jules. &quot;Who is Thomas Pynchon, and why did he take off with my wife?&quot; ''Playboy'', March 1977.&lt;/span&gt; [[#Early career|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_tanner&quot;&gt;Tanner, Tony. ''Thomas Pynchon''. Methuen &amp; Co., 1982.&lt;/span&gt; [[#1970s and 1980s|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_ulin&quot;&gt;Ulin, David. &quot;[http://www.salon.com/april97/media/media970425.html Gravity's End]&quot;. ''Salon'', 25 April 1997.&lt;/span&gt; [[#Post-Gravity's Rainbow|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_warner&quot;&gt;Warner, Simon. &quot;[http://www.popmatters.com/books/features/010802-hadju.shtml A king, a queen and two knaves?: An Interview with David Hajdu]&quot;. ''Pop Matters'', 2 August 2001.&lt;/span&gt; [[#1990s and 2000s|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_weisenburger&quot;&gt;Weisenburger, Steven C. ''A [[Gravity's Rainbow]] Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's Novel''. University of Georgia Press, 1988.&lt;/span&gt; [[#Gravity's Rainbow and Pynchon's rise to prominence|(back)]]<br /> * &lt;span id=&quot;ref_wisnicki&quot;&gt;Wisnicki, Adrian. &quot;A Trove of New Works by Thomas Pynchon? Bomarc Service News Rediscovered.&quot; ''Pynchon Notes'' 46-49 (2000-1), pp. 9-34.&lt;/span&gt; [[#Early career|(back)]]<br /> <br /> ==External links==<br /> <br /> :''The following links were last verified on 30 November 2006.''<br /> <br /> * [http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/thomaspynchon/ Official UK publisher's site]<br /> * [http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&amp;UID=3673 Literary Encyclopedia biography]<br /> * [http://www.newenglandancestors.org/education/articles/research/special_guests/gary_boyd_roberts/48_659_448.asp The Ancestry of Novelist Thomas Pynchon]<br /> * [http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/ HyperArts Pynchon Pages]<br /> * [http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/ Pynchon Index]<br /> * [http://waste.org/pynchon-l The Pynchon-L mailing list] <br /> * ''[http://www2.ham.muohio.edu/~krafftjm/pynchon.html Pynchon Notes],'' a journal operated by Miami University in Oxford, Ohio <br /> * [http://pynchonoid.blogspot.com/ pynchonoid.blogspot.com]<br /> * [http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/ San Narciso Pynchon Page], hosted in Claremont, California, &quot;a town that looks a lot, in fact, like [[San Narciso]]&quot;<br /> * [http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/index.html Spermatikos Logos]<br /> <br /> <br /> :'''''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.]]'''''</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Against_the_Day&diff=2933 2006-12-01T16:35:01Z

<p>BlakeStacey: tiddles and tweaks</p> <hr /> <div>&lt;div style=&quot;text-align:center; margin-bottom:1em&quot;&gt;&quot;It's always night, or we wouldn't need light.&quot; - [http://en.wikipedia.org/Thelonious_Monk Thelonious Sphere Monk] (1917-1982)&lt;/div&gt;<br /> <br /> [[Image:mysterious-airship.jpg|260px|thumb|The Mysterious Airship of 1896|right]]Spanning the period between the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_Columbian_Exposition Chicago World's Fair of 1893] and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cripple_Creek_miners'_strike_of_1894 labor troubles in Colorado] to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event Tunguska Event], Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all. <br /> 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. <br /> <br /> The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances 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]. <br /> <br /> As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's their lives that pursue them. <br /> <br /> Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. 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. <br /> <br /> Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck. <br /> <br /> &amp;mdash; [[Thomas Pynchon]]<br /> <br /> * [[Against the Day Title|Title speculations]]<br /> * [[Against the Day description|More on the book description]]<br /> <br /> {{ATD_Alpha_Nav}}</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_Reviews&diff=2930 2006-12-01T16:26:55Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* Reviews */ add verb to make complete sentence</p> <hr /> <div>==Review aggregators==<br /> <br /> :[http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/popus/pynchon.htm The Complete Review]<br /> <br /> :[http://www.metacritic.com/books/authors/pynchonthomas/againsttheday Metacritic]<br /> <br /> ==Reviews==<br /> <br /> '''Please add any relevant reviews as they come in. Blog reviews are acceptable as long as they're substantial and more than just a few paragraphs.'''<br /> <br /> 12/2007 - '''[http://www.bookforum.net/leclair.html Bookforum]:''' &quot;I hope some future scholar will read the novel twenty times and either illustrate how it recapitulates the whole history of narrative or demonstrate how every piece fits together into a fourfold design that will replace four-base genetics as a model of all life.&quot;<br /> <br /> 11/29/06 - '''[http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25339-2477997,00.html The Times Online (UK)]''' &quot;This is not to say Pynchon suggests any solution. What he does is highlight how invisible our claims for salvation are, thus disturbing all the familiar comforts they might offer, including the comforts of the novel’s structure. This gets its clearest exposition in his handling of the relentlessly optimistic airborne crew at the novel’s end.&quot;<br /> <br /> 11/27/06 - '''[http://www.scifi.com/sfw/books/column/sfw14197.html Sci Fi Weekly]''' &quot;The hundreds of figures who jam into ''Against the Day'' are not in fact characters at all, because Pynchon has evacuated his book of that degree of hope. They are ''utterands'': people-shaped utterances who illuminate the stories of the old world that their Author has placed before us in funeral array; they are codes to spell his book with.&quot;<br /> <br /> 11/26/06 - '''[http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/books/review/Schillinger.t.html New York Times] (Sunday book review)''': &quot;In “Against the Day,” Pynchon’s voice seems uncharacteristically earnest. He interrupts his narrative from time to time to lay down pronouncements that, taken together, probably constitute the fullest elaboration of his philosophy yet seen in print&quot;<br /> <br /> 11/25-06 - '''[http://living.scotsman.com/books.cfm?id=1746102006 The Scotsman]''': &quot;a gaze that holds you in its grip for a thousand pages. Quite a feat.&quot;<br /> <br /> 11/22/06 - '''[http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061211/leonard/ The Nation]'''<br /> <br /> 11/21/06 - '''[http://www.salon.com/books/review/2006/11/21/pynchon/index_np.html Salon]''': &quot;it's obvious [Pynchon's] disciples now write better Big Idea novels than he does.&quot;<br /> <br /> 11/20/06 - '''[http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/reviews/2006-11-20-thomas-pynchon_x.htm USA Today]''': &quot;Falling into a novel can be like enjoying a weekend trip to a place you've never been. Against the Day is more like going away for a month, getting lost on your way there and back, returning exhausted, but with bags full of stories.&quot;<br /> <br /> 11/20/06 - '''[http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/pynchon_atd.html The Modern Word]''': &quot;for those willing to suspend disbelief and leave the ground behind, Pynchon’s great Inconvenience proves to be one hell of a ride.&quot;<br /> <br /> 11/20/06 - '''[http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/articles/061127crbo_books New Yorker]''': &quot;with this one there is the feeling that the magician has fallen in love with his own stunts, as though Pynchon were composing a pastiche of a Pynchon novel.&quot;<br /> <br /> 11/20/06 - '''[http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/20/books/20kaku.html New York Times]''': &quot;It is a humongous, bloated jigsaw puzzle of a story, pretentious without being provocative, elliptical without being illuminating, complicated without being rewardingly complex.&quot; (Written by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michiko_Kakutani Michiko Kakutani], so let the reader ''definitely'' beware!)<br /> <br /> 11/19/06 - '''[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/16/AR2006111601252.html Washington Post]''': “Pynchon fans will accept this gift from the author with gratitude, but I’m not so sure about mainstream readers.”<br /> <br /> 11/19/06 - '''[http://www.calendarlive.com/books/bookreview/cl-bk-sorrentino19nov19,0,3649673.htmlstory?coll=cl-books-features Los Angeles Times]''': “A book this long that amazes even 50% of the time is amazing.”<br /> <br /> 11/19/06 - '''[http://www.statesman.com/life/content/life/stories/books/11/19/19pynchon.html Austin American-Statesman]''': &quot;Forget it, fellow Pynchonians. [Against the Day] isn’t “Gravity’s Rainbow II.” That time, that place and that writer won’t ever come together again.”<br /> <br /> 11/19/06 - '''[http://www.newsday.com/features/booksmags/ny-bkcov4977785nov19,0,7633389.story?coll=ny-bookreview-headlines Newsday]''': &quot;a novel as exhilarating, tiresome, unnerving and exhausting as all the others put together.”<br /> <br /> 11/19/06 - '''[http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2006/11/19/inspired_chaos/?page=full Boston Globe]'''<br /> <br /> 11/15/06 - '''[http://www.nysun.com/article/43545 New York Sun]''': &quot;The silliness of &quot;Against the Day&quot; about the very subjects where we are most urgently in quest of wisdom proves that, whatever he once was, Thomas Pynchon is no longer the novelist we need.&quot;<br /> <br /> 11/14/06 - '''[http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/popus/pynchon.htm The Complete Review]''': &quot;impressive in its parts, but near confounding as a whole.&quot;<br /> <br /> 11/14/06 - '''[http://www.thephoenix.com/article_ektid27434.aspx The Phoenix]''': “Undaunted in the past by the big questions that bug a guy, he here takes on, in addition to the elusive quality of light... time travel, multiple universes, the death struggle between anarchism and capitalism, the dance of order and chaos.”<br /> <br /> 11/13/06 - '''[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1558326-1,00.html Time]''': “More than in any of Pynchon’s previous books, just what it all means is a problem in Against the Day, where plots and ideas and fantastic developments pile up in exhausting profusion.”<br /> <br /> 11/3/06 - '''[http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/paper_earlyatd.html The Modern Word]''' (first impressions): &quot;It seems like the logical evolution/conclusion to Pynchon’s career as a prose experimentalist.&quot;<br /> <br /> 10/24/06 - '''[http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6384205.html?rssid=105 Publisher's Weekly]''': &quot;reads like half a dozen books duking it out for his, and the reader’s, attention. Most of them shine with a surreal incandescence, but even Pynchon fans may find their fealty tested now and again.&quot;</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Against_the_Day_Title&diff=2928 2006-12-01T16:25:26Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* Biblical connotations */ punctuation</p> <hr /> <div>'''Note: please keep this analysis general and spoiler-free.'''<br /> <br /> ==Contra Jour==<br /> <br /> ''Contra Jour'' is a photographic term meaning, literally, 'Against the Day' or 'Against the Light'. This seems particularly relevant given that light is a major theme in the book.<br /> <br /> ==Other books of the same title==<br /> <br /> ''Against the Day'' is also the title of a book by Michael Cronin, dealing with an alternate history of World War II.<br /> <br /> ==Biblical connotations==<br /> <br /> In his review of ''Against the Day'' in the ''Wall Street Journal'', Alexander Theroux (author of [http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&amp;location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FDarconvilles-Cat-Alexander-Theroux%2Fdp%2F0805043659&amp;tag=hyperartspynchon&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325 ''Darconville's Cat''] and the upcoming [http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&amp;location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FLaura-Warholic-Intellectual-Alexander-Theroux%2Fdp%2F1560977981%2Fsr%3D11-1%2Fqid%3D1164652830&amp;tag=hyperartspynchon&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325 ''Laura Warholic; or The Sexual Intellectual'']) traces the title of Pynchon's novel back to the Bible, 2 Peter 3:7.:<br /> <br /> :(5) For this they willfully forget, that there were heavens from of old, and an earth compacted out of water and amidst water, by the word of God;<br /> <br /> :(6) by which means the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:<br /> <br /> :(7) but the heavens that now are, and the earth, by the same word have been stored up for fire, being reserved '''against the day''' of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.<br /> <br /> :(8) But forget not this one thing, beloved, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.<br /> <br /> (Source: [http://www.spcm.org/english/ASB/B61C003.htm American Standard Bible])<br /> <br /> Theroux's review can be found in [http://online.wsj.com/home/us The Wall Street Journal], November 24, 2006, Page W8. (The website is only accessible for subscribers.)<br /> <br /> '''Romans 2:5'''<br /> <br /> &quot;Against the Day&quot; is a fairly common phrase and probably not limited to one meaning, but this passage from the King James Bible is particularly resonant, especially considering the great amount of religious and pseudo-religious imagery in the book:<br /> <br /> The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans 2:5 &quot;But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath ''against the day'' of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God&quot; (King James Bible)<br /> <br /> The bookends of the word &quot;wrath&quot; around &quot;against the day&quot; make this particularly suggestive of judgement day or the day of wrath. The passages around this one and around Matthew: 6:34 where Webb's &quot;Sufficient unto the day&quot; (p.96) appears dwell on judgement: &quot;Judge not, that ye be not judged. 7:2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.&quot;<br /> <br /> ==The themes of the book==<br /> <br /> The title, ''Against the Day,'' contains references to many of the primary themes of the novel: light, opposites, mirror imagery...<br /> <br /> ==Appearances of &quot;against the day&quot; in other Pynchon works==<br /> <br /> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mason_and_Dixon '''Mason &amp; Dixon''']<br /> <br /> p. 125<br /> :Mason nods, gazing past the little Harbor, out to Sea. None of his business where Maskelyne goes, or comes,—God let is remain so. The Stars wheel into the blackness of the broken steep Hills guarding the Mouth of the Valley. Fog begins to stir against the Day swelling near. Among the whiten'd Rock Walls of the Houses seethes a great Whisper of living Voice.<br /> <br /> p. 683<br /> :...till the Moment they must pass over the Crest of the Savage Mountain, does there remain to them, contrary to Reason, against the Day, a measurable chance, to turn, to go back out of no more than Stubbornness, and somehow make all come right...</div>

BlakeStacey https://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Against_the_Day_description&diff=2862 2006-11-30T22:54:10Z

<p>BlakeStacey: /* Difference in the Texts */ insert em-dash</p> <hr /> <div>The following is the blurb, attributed to Thomas Pynchon, that appeared, disappeared and reappeared on Amazon.com, for Pynchon's latest novel, ''Against the Day'', released 11/21/06 by Penguin Press. This piece of writing was also used in promotional materials by the publisher, and was eventually edited down (with all author attribution removed) for the book jacket flap copy.<br /> <br /> ==Comparison of description versions==<br /> <br /> {{col-begin}}<br /> {{col-2}}<br /> <br /> '''As posted on Amazon.com'''<br /> <br /> Spanning the period between the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_Columbian_Exposition Chicago World's Fair of 1893] and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cripple_Creek_miners'_strike_of_1894 labor troubles in Colorado] to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Göttingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event Tunguska Event], Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all. <br /> <br /> 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. <br /> <br /> The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances 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]. <br /> <br /> As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's their lives that pursue them. <br /> <br /> Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. 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. <br /> <br /> Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck. <br /> <br /> &amp;mdash;Thomas Pynchon<br /> <br /> {{col-2}}<br /> <br /> '''As seen on the book jacket'''<br /> <br /> Spanning the period between the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_Columbian_Exposition Chicago World's Fair of 1893] and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cripple_Creek_miners'_strike_of_1894 labor troubles in Colorado] to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Göttingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event Tunguska Event], Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all. <br /> <br /> 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.<br /> <br /> The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla Nikolai Tesla], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bela_Lugosi Bela Lugosi], and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groucho_Marx Groucho Marx].<br /> <br /> As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's their lives that pursue them. <br /> <br /> Meanwhile, Thomas Pynchon is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. Maybe it's not the world, but with a minor adjustment or two it's what the world might be.<br /> {{col-end}}<br /> <br /> ==Difference in the Texts==<br /> <br /> # &quot;No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.&quot; (Amazon only)<br /> # &quot;Nikola Tesla&quot; in the Amazon description becomes &quot;Nikolai Tesla&quot; on the hardcover book jacket.<br /> # &quot;Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business&quot; (Amazon version) becomes &quot;Meanwhile, Thomas Pynchon is up to his usual business&quot; (book version).<br /> # &quot;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.&quot; (Amazon version) &quot;Maybe it's not the world, but with a minor adjustment or two it's what the world might be.&quot; (book version)<br /> # &quot;Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck. &amp;mdash;Thomas Pynchon&quot; (Amazon only)<br /> <br /> ==Spoiler-free Commentary on the differences==<br /> <br /> The book jacket omits two extremely important statements, numbers 1 and 4 above, important because they are rare instances of Pynchon stepping outside of his fiction to articulate the motivations behind his art: veiled satire of the present day and, secondly, imagining what he considers a better world. Pynchon's statement of &quot;the world as it might be&quot; is echoed on [[ATD_26-56#Page_51|page 51]] of the text.<br /> <br /> &quot;Let the reader decide, let the reader beware&quot; may be a reflection of Pynchon's seemingly anti-critic stance, part of his larger anti-reporter and generally anti-mass media stance. Although one [http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/agordon/pynchon.htm source] tells us that Pynchon &quot;follows the reviews and evidently cares what critics say about him,&quot; the fact that reviewers are always given so little time to review his novels suggests that he mistrusts them, or at least prefers to have readers themselves judge the merit of his books. This statement lends credence to that assumption. <br /> <br /> Further, Pynchon may be warning his readers to &quot;beware&quot; of not only critics, but the difficulty of the book itself. That &quot;good luck&quot; could mean a lot of things. It may be interpreted as a kindly message to his readers, but also &quot;good luck&quot; reading this enormous, difficult novel...! Also, it is possible that Pynchon may guess or intend that AtD will be his final novel (for the simple fact that he is pushing 70 and takes a decade to write one, and, additionally, the title of Part Five of AtD). If that's the case, and it's by no means certain, this &quot;good luck&quot; may end up being, whether intended or not, his final statement of best wishes to his readers.<br /> <br /> {{ATD_Alpha_Nav}}</div>

BlakeStacey